The sermon explores the biblical worldview of man and the conflicts that arise when the world's view contradicts it. It emphasizes that man is created in the image of God and must live according to His rules. The roles and responsibilities of man and woman are discussed, highlighting the equal value they possess as image bearers. The consequences of rejecting God's design for gender are examined, leading to societal confusion and moral decay. Ultimately, the design of man and woman reflects the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and the gospel.

I will not do a scripture reading to start with. You will see that I will, I will refer to Genesis chapter one and Genesis chapter two throughout. So if you want to keep your Bibles open there, that will be helpful. I hope that you know that we are living our lives within a society where we find conflicting world views and that you and I need to understand as Christians that we cannot live our lives according to the way the world wants us to live our lives. There are conflicts.

The world views how life should be in a certain way, but we as Christians we need to have a distinctly Christian or biblical world view. We do this by firmly holding to the principles that we already looked at, that we find in Genesis chapter 1 verse 1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. I'm going to repeat this again. This is God's will.

We are God's creation. We are created according to His design and we must live under His rules. If you can remember that throughout the series and then obviously for the rest of your life you will be someone who live your life with a Christian or a biblical worldview this is God's world we are his creation we are created by his design and we must live under his rules. Now the biblical doctrines that we want to discuss today are also widely studied in science. We, meaning the Christian Church, would refer to this part at least of the doctrine of man.

What is man? In science we studied man in biology, in psychology, in physiology, and probably anthropology, so we have all the ologies to make sure that we understand what is man. What is it that makes us man? So we will touch on some of these in the sciences, but obviously my purpose here is not to give you a biology lesson. It is to really show that even in biology and even in science, we find that which God has created.

Science is nothing more or biology is nothing more than a demonstration of that which God has created. It's his world, remember? Our main concern, therefore, is for us to understand what God's Word teaches on this topic that I think the world is quite confused over at this point in history. What is man? Now we will do so in trying to answer two questions.

First is the question I just mentioned. What is man? What is a human being? And then a second question, it's kind of the same, so we can say that's the second part of that question, is what is a man and what is a woman. So when we read in God's word, Genesis chapter 1 verse 26, 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 over the birds of the heaven, 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 him. It was 28 and God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. So that we find there already in the first few chapters of the of the Bible of God's revealed word, we see a clear statement that God created man. And he created man as male and female. So what is man?

And what is a man and what is a woman? The Bible have a very very clear answer. Now we touched on the first question last week a little bit. When we saw from Genesis 1 verse 26 that God created man in his image. This means that man is unique.

We are different from all the animals. None of the animals were created in the image of God. Only man was created in the image of God. This not only makes us indifferent from the animal world or from the rest of creation, but it gives man then a very unique place in God's creation. We stand in a place of authority and kingship over the rest of God's creation.

We exist within this world as those who bear God's image and by being created in his image we must therefore demonstrate God's character among all of God's creatures. We carry within us the image of God. And the way in which we do that is God gave us a body, male and female bodies, and within our natural biological bodies God wants us now to fill the earth. God wants us now to reign over the earth. And if you read chapter two, you will see that Adam was formed from the dust of the earth.

So man himself is part of the earth. He comes from the earth. And then Eve was formed from Adam. So both Adam and Eve were created in the image of God, both male and female. We carry the same image.

And both Adam and Eve had God's breath in them. God breathed life into us. Now let me just stop there for a moment, because it it can very easy just be things that we hear and they and they just go through our minds or might not even enter at all. Think about this for a sec. Who are you?

Who are you? You are unique. Created by God to carry his image. You are, you are created in his image. There's something about you that makes you extremely special.

I know we like hearing that, but it's true. To be made in God's image means that no part of your being is purposeless or irrelevant, whether you are male or female. So one conclusion that we can already make from this biblical truth is that man and woman share certain things in common. Everything that I've just said, and you can find this in Genesis 1 and 2, clearly teaches us that both man and woman share equally in bearing God's image and therefore have equal value as created beings within God's created world. So, I think that should already help us to understand that when the world accuses us of saying that this is a patriarchal system where women are abused and men are elevated, that's wrong.

That's not what the Bible teaches, and that should not be the case within our realms, in how we live our lives. We should have a clear understanding that both male and females are equally carrying or bearing the witness of God's image within them. And that'll become clear as we go through some of these passages today. So to sum it up, in very simple terms, if we want to answer the question, what is man, let me give you a few things to think about. First of all, man is a created being.

We are physical, We are material beings. If you touch yourself, or your wife, or your children, you will feel that you can feel it. We are physical beings. We live in a physical world. We eat things that come from the earth.

We feel the cold and the rain and the sun when it shines We are physical beings. So if you want to study man, you have to deal with the physical God created us as such but we not only physical we are created with a very spiritual aspect to us, don't we? You and I came here this morning to worship. To worship something that is bigger than us and let's not say something, God, someone who is bigger than us. That makes it possible therefore for us as human beings with a physical body and a spiritual aspect to us to stand in a relationship with God who created us.

If you ever read Ted Tripp's little book on how to raise your kids, he mentions there, he says, you will never find the animals coming together to worship. It is a very uniquely human thing, is it not? We come together to worship. You don't see the monkeys and the... Oh, I nearly said spring box...

And the other animals coming together in a group to worship God, don't they? They just roam around to eat grass or are eaten by other animals they just exist as physical beings they reflect the glory of God according to psalm 19 but they don't come to worship it's a very uniquely human thing Within that relationship with God then, God gives man certain responsibilities. He gives us a role to play and those roles are divided within male and female. And we have functions to perform, to fulfill God's purposes for his creation. Now take this biblical worldview, let me just read it quickly again, man is created being physical, with a unique spiritual aspect to him, that makes it possible to have a relationship with God who created him and within that relationship, God gives man certain responsibilities, roles, functions to fulfill God's purpose for his creation.

Now, take the the biblical worldview that I just told you and compare that with how the world views man. You would ask the world what is man? This is what they will come up with. They take away the spiritual aspect of man's nature. They take it away.

They leave only the material. They take away man's unique relationship with God. They replace man's responsibilities within creation with something else. They reverse the male-female roles as God has designed for us. They exchange our function within our created bodies and they let us live a different opposite purpose from that which God created us for.

So you can you can actually see when you look at this how the world literally just twists everything. It turns everything upside down. Within this worldview man is no more than a biological organism. Man's most important relationships are exclusively within the natural world, in this worldly worldview. He's untethered from God, so you can live without God, without responsibility.

So our greatest desire as man according to this worldview is to satisfy our natural physical desires. Food, sexual, companionship. With this worldview man's responsibilities are linked therefore to his survival and to feed that flesh. So we might cooperate and we might try to help one another, especially those very closely related to us, but we will do it all for the sake of selfish gratification or survival. Man's best attempt to formulate an anthropological answer to the question of what is man comes down to this.

Man is a living organism on the top of the evolutionary pyramid, who must satisfy his every desire, and he has now learned how to survive in a world of others trying to do the same. So in a world view where man's purpose is to survive, guess what that world will look like? Think in Darwinian terms for a moment, I know it's hard for us, but let's try. Then put some here within the congregation. Sorry, you guys, I'm gonna put you in that circle.

You are the weakest, alright? These are the fittest. Guess how long they're going to last? Because the fittest must destroy the weakest in order for them to survive. That's how the world works.

And I've said last week in this world view, one can kind of understand why the world functions the way it does. Because if this is the way you view the world, that's the way you're going to live. Every living organism must survive by forming some some symbiotic relationship with other living organisms so we learn to live together with cats and dogs because they are good companions. We learn how to how to kill animals to eat and we learn also how to use things in this world to satisfy my flesh and at the end the fittest will eat you, hurt you, deceive you, fight you and even kill you. That is natural science.

Now, do you want to hear how God describes the result of such a worldview? What will be the end of such a worldview? Man rejects God. God then goes and he gives him over to that life that man decided he wants. Now did God create the man to thrive within creation?

We see that right from the beginning when God created man, what did he say? He's very good. God wants us to thrive. God wants us to be to be satisfied with everything around us. But man have decided we will not be content with God's way.

We will reject God's design. So because man wants to live outside of God's blessed design for him, man becomes utterly unhappy and eventually completely unfit. And let me say this, even mad, and you will see it's not my words, but that's the very words that Paul uses in Romans chapter 1. Verse 28 of Romans chapter 1, Paul writes, and he says, and since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind. The debased mind is a mad mind, it is a mind that cannot think rationally anymore.

So as man decides, I do not like the way that God created the world, I do not want to fit into the design that he has for me, I want to do my own thing, God says, okay I will give you over to that and the more God gives us over to that the more our mind becomes absolutely mad debased Completely irrational in the world in which we live Now what came from that statement or what came just before that statement is what Jeremy read for us in Romans 1. It was a description of how man suppresses the truth of God and man denies and rejects even the most natural things that God has created. Even those things that we could physically see God God created and we say as men and women, we say, well, I suppress that truth. It is not real. It is not the truth that I want to align myself with.

But then look what God's word says about the end result of men and women with debased minds living in this world doing their own thing. It was 29 he says they were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, of evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to their parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, and ruthless. That, dear brothers and sisters, describe Darwinianism.

It means I don't have to care for you. I live in a physical, material world and as long as I get my way and as long as I can satisfy my flesh, I don't really care what happens to you. And this is what's happening in the world. This is what man's worldview produces. Okay, so we looked at what is man.

Man is a created being in the image of God. Now we need to ask the second question, what is a man and what is a woman? So within the broad category of man or human beings, we also see in our text that there are two variants of the same model. You have the male model and you have the female model. We are different.

We are both different biologically, physiologically, and psychologically. We all know this. None of us can deny it. If you've been married for any amount of time, you know this. If you have a brother or sister, you know that.

We are different. Now, it's interesting when you read Genesis and you are in Genesis chapter one and God says he created man. The word the Hebrew word is the word Adam, which you and I know very well. It's the name of our first parent, the first male parent Adam, but that word Adam means mankind. But when you get to chapter two, and God now says that He created the male and female, we have two different words for man and for woman.

One is ish and the other one is ishah. Man is ish and ishah comes from man. It is a root word, or it is a Hebrew word that are both related to one another. The one is linked to the other. Now you are probably aware of the incessant and malicious attacks on this very notion that they are two sexes, that they are such things as men and women.

The arguments are framed today within the concept of what is known to be gender. And it's very interesting, you don't find the concept of gender, at least not in the way in which it's described in the world. In the Bible, you do find that there are roles that men play and roles that women play. There are these differences and expressions of their maleness and femaleness. So in that sense, we could say, yes, there is such a thing as gender and expression of that which you truly are.

But The way the world defines gender is this. It depends on what you really want to be, or what you really want, or what you really feel in the moment, what you are. The argument, the arguments are framed in this concept of a fluid gender. For example, they speak about your sex as assigned at birth. There's already a problem there, because if you study any biological book you will know that from conception you have an XY or a XX chromosome.

So your sex has already been defined at conception. But the idea that you might have a biological sex, and this could supposedly be different from your gender identity, is something that you will not find in Scripture. The argument is that your gender can be fluid. You can be anything from a masculine man to the most feminine woman and anything in between and it does not matter what your biological sex might be. So the way they phrase this, and you might be very familiar with this, is they use the word identity, how you identify.

You can be whatever you want to be, as long as you identify yourself as that particular gender that you feel you are. Now I know for some of us you might sit here and just because you understand natural revelation you will shake your head. But let's give them one or two seconds of glory and ask where does this argument come from? Is it possible for us to look at the world and to say, well, I do see certain things where it looks as if you have a very masculine man and you have a very feminine man. Or you have a very masculine woman or a very feminine woman.

I think we can all agree we know that's the case. Because within our biological sex you have variations, true? And within both sexes we have those variations. I read an article, I don't have it here in my notes, it's just a terrible argument of, it's a group called the Human Rights Council, I think they are and they take this biblical argument, they take Genesis chapter one and they say that in Genesis, God creates the world in pairs. You have light and you have darkness, day and night, sea and land.

And their argument is when God comes to man, it is the same thing, male and female. And they take that and they argue and say, when you look at day and night, remember there is dawn and dusk. Remember when you look at the sea and the land, remember there are corals and there are estuaries. There's always something between, and they use God's Word to tell us that there's anything in between male and female, but more so that you can switch whenever you feel you identify as the one or the other. Now these ideologies are exactly what the Apostle Paul is referring to in Romans 1 as part of this debased mind.

When man suppresses the knowledge of God and and even deny the natural order of things, The way in which God created us, brothers and sisters, is beautiful, it is good. God though, because we choose to suppress that truth, God gives us over to a mind so corrupt that we can't even see or understand the most basic truths about ourselves. So you can be born a man, biologically, and yet you can live your life as if you are a woman. Or vice versa. This obviously goes further back than Romans 1.

It goes back to man wanting to define for himself what is good and what is evil. But I want to move on to the more positive reasons for why God created us male and female. Did God not say at the end of creation, when he created man male and female, did he not say that it is very good? Being a male is good. Being a female is good.

And I hope you rejoice in the fact and praise God for the fact that you're a man, if you are one, and a woman if you are one. Because that is exactly what God in his eternal decree decided for you to be. And within your sex, there are beautiful and wonderful gifts that God gave you so that you can fulfill your purpose here on earth. And we'll get to those. A man called Denny Burkey wrote this, he said, Our identity therefore is defined by God in his purposes for his creation and in his new creation in Christ the design of humanity is purposeful and it is good and Part of our design is that we are men and that we are women He says to deny or overturn that distinction is to nullify God's revelation both in nature and in scripture that his creation was good.

The Bible calls it suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. If anyone has the desire to use the term again to transition, that desire is a direct violation of God's good created providence in you. Let me repeat that. If anyone says I'm not happy being a man, I want to be a woman, what you are saying is God made a mistake with me. God is wrong.

You're saying I reject what God made me to be, or the body that God gave me to live in, and I will pursue my own identity and I will do this in rebellion against God. But you might hear the argument, well that is my identity or or that is my true self, that is what I feel I am. Kevin DeYoung, he writes this, he says we Christians, referring to us, he says we understand that following Christ means dying to yourself. In other words, what he's saying, it doesn't matter what you feel, know who you are in Christ. Recognize how God created you, how he created you good as a man and good as a woman.

Being renewed in our minds and no longer walking as we once did is part of how the Christian lives his life. Being true to yourself is always a false choice when it means going against God's word. Actually none of us want to be ourselves when you think of it. I don't want to be my old sinful nature. I want to be more Christ-like.

He goes on and he says so, we see clearly in the Bible that men should not act sexually as women and he gives references Leviticus 18, Romans 1 that we read, 1 Corinthians 6. He goes on and I know these next few verses are going to be the emails I received this week. The Bible goes on in Deuteronomy chapter 22 verse 5 says, A woman shall not wear a man's garment, nor shall a man put on a woman's cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God. When men and women embrace obviously other gendered expressions within their bodies or when they're in their identity, it is a disgrace, God says. It is an abomination.

He goes on in 1 Corinthians 11 verse 12 to 15, And I had to warn my dear wife this morning, she had a haircut. But this verse says for a woman was made from man. So man is now born of woman and all things are from God judge for yourself, he says, is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man with long hair it is a disgrace for him? But if a woman has long hair it is a glory and The point here is not necessarily having a legalistic church where all women should have long hair, men short hair, women please don't wear trousers, we want you all to wear dresses.

That's not what the Bible teaches here. Culturally That was the way in which you expressed your, let's use the word gender, your sex. But the point is, it should always be recognisable, even in society, there is a man, there is a woman. And we in the church should celebrate that. A woman that is feminine is to the glory of God who created her to be female.

A man who is masculine and again there are variations, but a man who is truly man shows within his maleness that he brings glory to God. If a man walks around with a dress and makeup he's not glorifying God. I think we can easily say that. We do not have an inalienable right to do whatever we want with our physical bodies. We belong to God.

Do you remember the principle? God created us, it is His will, we are created, designed by him to live according to his rules. Now part of the reason I'm preaching this topic to you as God's people is that this particular rebellion against God is growing at an alarming rate in our society. And I'm sure that if, if not in your own family, or at least in your direct circle of friends or work colleagues or university or students at school, I'm sure that you know someone who is either saying, or maybe even to that point where they have publicly lived their lives now as the opposite sex of what they actually are? Did you learn in school about percentages?

I remember, the highest percentage you can get is a hundred, but anyway that's not the way the media works, but let me read this percentage to you. In New Jersey, Those who now identify as non-binary, in other words, I'm neither male nor female, I'm something in between, or vice versa, it skyrocketed since 2019 to what they say 4, 000%. What they say, 4000%. In other words, in the last four years, an increase of people now identifying as the other six that God created them has increased by 4000%, whatever that means. I guess we can still understand the process.

It became the fashionable sin of our time. The spread of the social demonic virus is as wide, if not wider, than COVID. And it is affecting people for generations to come. The devastation, the confusion, the mental illness that this will result in will be on a scale that we have never seen before in a society. And when you go even a little bit further and you read up on these things you will see that there are a medication that they give people, puberty blockers, they go so far as to have surgical removals of body parts.

You can see this is from the pits of hell. Now let me show you the beauty again of God's design for man being a male and female. We already saw that both male and female persons are image bearers, co-equal in value, demonstrating the glory of God within creation. We also saw that God created man to reign as viceroy, and this is important, So we have a Dominion mandate. All right, so keep that in mind in the next few verses we read from Genesis chapter 2.

Let's read from verse 18. Then the Lord said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. Out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.

The man gave names to all the livestock, and to the birds of the heavens, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord had taken from the man, he made into a woman.

And he brought her to the man, and he said to the man, this at last is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman, Isha, because she was taken from man, Isha. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one in flesh. Now, I needed to read that because the next few moments and bear with me I'm, I'm almost done. But this is the important part so here you shouldn't lose any concentration. In Genesis chapter one, God created man in his image with a mandate to reign.

So there's the dominion mandate. But there was a second thing that was told man should do. What was that? To multiply and to fill the earth. Do you have these two main things that man must do in creation?

Now hold on to your seats because this is wonderful. Keep in mind for a moment that dominion and multiplication or fulfilment. The first three days of creation, God created the structure of the earth. You see him, he creates light, He creates the atmosphere, the firmament, the dry grounds and plants. And then the next three days he fills the universe with sun, the moon and stars, with birds and creatures, creepy things and land animals.

And on the last day the Lord creates man. And then he enters into his Sabbath rest. So on the first three days of creation is the structure, the framework for his creation, to support and sustain that which will come later, days four and six. Now man is now placed over these creatures, these created things, to have dominion over them. And in the creation of man on day six, God will now take man to fulfill that dominion mandate as it relates to the first three days, and he will take woman, he will create woman as she relates to the second half of the creation days where the earth is being filled.

Well, let me explain that to you a little bit because this is just mind blowing. You know that even how God created us differently shows this to us. The male, the man is taken out of the dust of the earth. The female is taken from the man's side. The differences between men and women aren't merely incidental but it is integral in our purpose.

Why did God make us male and female? By the way no evolutionary theorists can answer that question. Of course if you think of it, If the fittest survive, good luck. But this purpose of God, there's meaning to it. It relates to God's one fundamental pattern that he places us in.

And it corresponds with our very, very nature. Man is formed from the earth to till the the ground, to work on that first part of creation, to look after the soil, to work on it, to produce food. The woman is built from man's side to bring life and to communicate God's nurture and care for creation. As the man forms, man names, he tames the animals, he establishes the foundations, he guards the boundaries, the woman brings life, she brings communion, She brings glory and completion to that which man does in the field. So, in other words, it doesn't matter whether you are male or female, both together are needed in order for us to fulfill our Dominion Mandate.

We cannot reign over God's creation as men only. You women are probably happy about that. And we cannot reign over the earth without men. It is impossible because both need to play their part. It's not about difference from each other but the difference for each other that God created us male and female.

God made us distinctly different so that we can work together in fulfilling our dominion mandate. But I think I don't have to say too much to tell you how important it is to have male and female to fulfill the second part of the commandment to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth, to subdue it. Now, as I did my sermon preparation late at night during the week, I thought last night when I went to bed, how does this all relate to the Lord Jesus Christ? Doesn't the whole world testify to him and his glory? Now listen to this and with us I'll close.

How is the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ described in the New Testament? The bride, isn't she? She's described as the feminine part of God, who is eternal, the Son. And Jesus Christ comes in the place of Adam to restore creation, to actually fulfill the dominion mandate properly, where Adam failed, and he takes his bride that comes out of him and he takes his bride and he unites his bride together with him so that he who has all authority over heaven and earth by nature of being the perfect son has his bride to go and fill the earth with his glory and his name. Isn't that amazing?

That even in your sexuality being male and female something is being reflected of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and the gospel. So let me rewind a little bit. If you mess with this, you mess with the gospel. If you cannot define male and female as God's word to fire, you're messing with the gospel, messing with the church, messing with the very nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when you get to Ephesians chapter 5, what do you see?

Jesus Christ is the head of his Church. So men, as you play that role or act that role out that God has created you for as the head of your families, you be ahead as the Lord Jesus Christ is the head, full of love for your bride, because your bride comes from you. And you, dear woman, what a terrible word it is in the 21st century to expect a woman to submit to her husband. Misogyny! No!

To the glory of God you submit to your husband. Why? Because you think of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and in your submission to your husband you fulfill the mandate in Genesis to reign and rule over God's creation and you show forth in your submission and in your love for your wife you show forth the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ even as he has said it in the beginning of creation already in male and female Where do we end with the story? The story ends somewhere when everything is done, the Lord Jesus Christ returns. And he takes his bride, I always joke about this, you know, men are going to wear that white dress, face it, that's the only place where men can actually wear a dress.

Deuteronomy 22. But we will be there clothed in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we, his bride, will bring him glory. And it is in that relationship between man represents God's hardship and woman represents that submission of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ that we will enter for all eternity in that relationship where this is the clinch, where man will reign together with Christ for all eternity. Finally the dominion mandate will be fulfilled and you and I are going to be part of it just like Eve was supposed to be part of it in Adam.

I know it sounds a little bit philosophical, but I think the Bible is so clear about these things. I hope there's something for you to take home and maybe pray about and think about.