Oh, man. Well, it's good to see you today. Please open your Bibles, if you would, or turn on your phone. We'll be using the ESV Bible translation, and we're going to be in Genesis chapter one. And if you are here today celebrating Mother's Day, happy Mother's Day. It's so wonderful to have you in the house of the Lord today. I get to see so many of my. I get to see my actual mom and then so many of my spiritual moms for so many years. You guys mean so much to me, and I'm very glad that we get to celebrate this day together as a church family. Now we're continuing a miniseries on gender and identity. So we've been in the book of Titus, and Titus sort of launched us out for a few weeks to think about gender and identity. As we saw men and women are addressed differently in Titus. Why is that? What does that mean? So we're going to be reading all the way back the beginning of the story, Genesis chapter one.
We're going to read three sections of Scripture that I hope will be helpful. And as we read, let's remember that in a world of confusion and controversy, this is God's word. Genesis 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 the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created him. Male and female. He created them, and God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Now, Genesis 2, verse 24. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Chapter three, verse one. Now, the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God has made. And he said to the woman, did God actually say, you shall not eat of any. Any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden. But God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that's in the midst of the garden. Neither shall you touch it, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God. Knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. This is God's word. And Lord, I pray for your blessing over the preaching and the hearing of your word. Give us sight and clarity today. In your name we pray. Amen.
Well, I'm going to give you a phrase and see if you can finish it. Short phrase, jeopardy. People lock in the phrase. Is this life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? You guys are such good Americans. The Declaration. I bet some of you did not even know that. You knew that. You may not even know what it's from, but you're like, yep, I got it. Pursuit of happiness. There we go. I would argue that perhaps that is America's favorite phrase in the Declaration of Independence. We're like, blah, blah, blah, King George, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The pursuit of happiness. I got that part. The problem is, I recently heard an interview with a scholar from the National Constitution center who told me I was hearing that phrase and understanding it all wrong. All wrong. He explained that what we think of today in 21st century America, when we think of the pursuit of happiness is happiness means a subjective feeling, feel happy. But the line is not actually intended to mean that 250 years ago when or so when Jefferson penned that phrase. In fact, the pursuit of happiness would be something closer in our language today as the pursuit of goodness, Life, liberty, and the pursuit of goodness, meaning not feeling good, but rather being good. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of a good life. And in intention, it wasn't intended to say we want life and liberty to feel good, to pursue feeling good. It was rather life, liberty, and the pursuit of something good. Same words, totally different meanings. Right?
And the challenge today is that when it comes to gender, we talk about being a man or being a woman or being in love or having love, or we talk about sexuality or we talk about romance. The problem is we're using all similar words, but we keep missing their meanings. We. We say we're pro woman or we want to raise good men. But what does that mean? Today in America, we're celebrating Mother's Day, and in Mexico, which is weird, happens every seven years. So you're covered for what? Yeah, all the Hispanic sons are like, finally, one day we're celebrating Mother's Day, but we can't even agree what a mom is. And Some quarters can't agree what a woman is. What is a woman? Right. Women and moms are living through one of the most tumultuous cultural moments in the last several hundred years. And to look at how our culture has reshaped our view of that, just look at pregnancy. Often pregnancy is something that's a problem to be dealt with rather than a gift to be received.
And so in the middle of all that confusion where we're all saying the same words but meaning totally different things, here's my hope. My hope is to give us in Genesis 1 through 3, a place to stand when it comes to our gender and our identity. Whether you're a mom or a woman or a man or married or unmarried or divorced, I pray that you would find in Genesis 3, Genesis 1 to 3, a place of clarity in a confused world.
So my main point is a little lengthier than normal, so give me some grace here. But the main idea I'm telling you up front is this. The path to true happiness and wholeness as a man or as a woman is found in the path of holy pursuit of God's whole design. What I mean there is, if you want to be happy as a man or as a woman, your wholeness is found in the holiness and the holy one walk, the holiness of God and your holy walk in his design.
6 · The pastor signals a structural shift into the first major question that will frame the sermon's exposition: the question of authority in defining gender identity
So we're going to unpack this with a few big questions. Number one, who says who we are as men and women? Who says who we are?
7 · The pastor traces a massive cultural shift from external, fixed identity markers (family, village, people) to internal, subjective markers (desires, feelings, preferences), showing how contemporary culture has made self-expression the organizing principle of life—from consumer choices to career decisions
Scholar called Truman has pointed out that if you asked somebody 150, 250, 500, a thousand years ago, who are you? Their answer would almost always be external. Fixed rules, realities, meaning, oh, I'm the son of so and so, or I'm from this village, or these are my people, so they're all external to define yourself. But here, today, in 21st century America, if you ask somebody the question, who are you? More often than not, they will turn very quickly to inward realities or inward reference points, meaning they would answer, oh, these are my interests, these are my dreams, these are my sexual desires. This is what I like and don't like. This is how I think about myself. We live in this culture, in a culture where the mantra is be true to yourself, where Disney movies are all about moments of heroic self expression, letting it go, even if you turn the whole kingdom to ice. Just don't worry about that, it's fine. Just be yourself, right? And everything in our lives then revolves around that self expression. It's everything from the phone you have, like oh, you're one of those guys. You have that phone. Oh, okay. That's what I thought, right? Or the clothes you wear. Oh, you shop there. Oh, I know all about you now. You're that kind of person. You shop there. Right. The shows you watch, your playlist, your. Even our jobs and careers at times are seen as self expressive.
8 · The pastor identifies Freud as a key philosophical architect of the modern view that inner desires—especially sexual desires—constitute the truest self, which transformed sexual expression from optional to necessary and explains why rejecting someone's desires is experienced as rejecting their very identity
Now, I don't have time to break down all the philosophical shifts here, nor do I think Mother's Day is probably the moment to do that, But I want to make one connection that I think is important here is you got to see something. So much of the way we think about this comes from Freud, Sigmund Freud, and related philosophers. Because Freud took the framework that our inner desires are the truest part of ourselves and affirmed it. I said, do you know what the truest part of yourself is? It is to look inward and to look at your deep desires. What you desire is who you are, and especially your sexual desires are the truest part of your self. And Freud is one of the ways, culturally, we took sexuality or sex from being an option to a need. Our inner desires went from, well, they can be expressed to they must be expressed. I have to express them because they are who I am most deeply. And it's one of the reasons that the LGBT movement has such resonance in America and in the west, because this is a. We live in a culture that is convicted that to reject your inner desires means rejecting actually yourself. And if others affirm those desires, they're not just affirming your desires, they're affirming you. They're accepting you.
9 · The pastor demonstrates that culture's self-expression project has failed—despite unprecedented freedom to express and affirm ourselves, anxiety exceeds World War II levels
Now, with all of this project the last hundred years, you would expect, okay, what we really need is just the ability and freedom to fully express ourselves and have those things affirmed by people around us. The challenge is this. In 21st century America, we have never had, in, I don't think, in world history, more freedom and ability to express ourselves, to create ourselves, and to have what we express affirmed by other people. And yet, I don't know if you've noticed this. We have not yet ushered in a golden age. Right? It's not as though, like, finally, now everything's fine, now everything's daisies and rainbows. No, in fact, if you look at the statistics, we're more fearful than we've ever been. In fact, I was looking at this stat recently. People are more fearful and anxious now than in World War II. Okay, so it's like, oh, no, the Nazis might take over the world. And we're like, yeah, whatever about that. I'M anxious. You don't know what I'm experiencing here. Right. And you're thinking, okay, what is going on? We're more stressed out than previous generations. We. We're more frustrated than previous generations. So the question is this. It seems as though our culture's solution to deciding who we are as men and women is not working. So then who are we, and where did it go wrong? Well, Genesis 1 through 3 tells us in Genesis 3 in particular, the serpent, who is the devil in disguise, tempts Adam and Eve. And notice how he tempts them. He says, essentially, stop listening to God. God says, here's who you are. And the serpent kind of goes, yeah, but you could be something else. Yeah, you could do something else. Yeah. Why are you letting that guy tell you what to do? Why don't you listen to your heart? Why don't you listen to your gut? Why don't you just do what you want to do? And we see the tragic result of that turn. And yet, in the middle of a confused world, the word of God offers this, I would say, beautiful clarity about who we are. It occurs actually four times in just a couple verses. Verse 26, you read, God says, let us make man in our image, or let us make them in our likeness, verse 27. So he made them in his own image, in the image of God. He created the. Do you see the emphasis? In his image. In his image. In his image. What's amazing is that Genesis gives us this glorious, amazing creator who's making all of these things. And yet this particular creation is unique only of men and women. Does God say, I'm going to make them in my very image to reflect me in a way that even stars and mountains and Grand Canyons do not. Right there. This is the pinnacle. This is my very image. Now that, friends, I think, is what our culture longs for, but doesn't know to look for. We long to be told who we are as men and women, not from the culture around us, but from the Creator who made us. And so the truth is this. If you want to understand yourself as a woman or as a man, if you want to understand what romance or parenthood or sex or beauty, the challenge is this. You will not find the answer to that question burrowing into yourself, but rather by looking up and out. John Calvin has this great phrase where he says, we will never truly understand ourselves until we have looked at the face of God, because we're made. In what? In his image. So it's only by looking at him that we Understand ourselves. Oh, man. So profound. We could spend all day there.
10 · The pastor signals transition from the first major question (authority in identity) to the second (human need), maintaining the structural framework established earlier
But that's the first question, who says who we are? Second, what do we need most? What do we really need most?
11 · The pastor illustrates how contemporary culture floods us with competing claims about what we most need—romance, passion, stability, career fulfillment—with no consensus because the culture has lost sight of what humans are actually for
Now, people today are more than happy to tell you what they think you need most. The Internet algorithms will figure you out and start telling you what you need most. Somehow, recently, the Internet algorithm figured out I turned 40 and is like, awesome. Here's all the things now that we're gonna feed you. Now that you've turned 40, here's all the problems you're supposed to be having. And you know what? I'm having a bunch of those problems, right? It's just like, oh, man, I am dealing with fatigue. And I. You know, like, yeah, it's true. I don't recover after workouts the way I did. And it's. He finds you, right? So the world is offering solutions. Oh, you're a man, you're a woman. Here, here. You need this. You need this, you need this. The problem is that nobody can agree on what the deepest need is. Is it that you really need romance? Is it that you really need heat and spice in your relationship? Is it that you really need? Not that, but Stability. What you need is stability. No, what you need is a fulfilling career.
12 · The pastor exposes Genesis 1-3's answer to the need question: before the fall, Adam and Eve possessed only God and His gifts, and God declared this 'very good'—establishing that humanity's deepest need is not romance, career, or any created good, but God Himself
But notice something in Genesis 1 through 3. God makes Adam and Eve. God makes man and woman. And says, it's very good. Right before there's all of this other stuff that our world is throwing at us. Saying, this is what you need. This is what you need. This is what you need. Adam and Eve are saying, no, no, no, we're okay. And the Lord is saying, it's very good with just them and the Lord. All they really have in the beginning is Him. Now, good gifts he's given, but it's very much him and him reflected in his gifts. And this is exactly what you would expect to find. If we're made to know the God of the universe, our deepest need is to know the God of the universe who made us and relates to us. You see this? David says this in Psalm 27. He has everything that you could ever want. But he says it actually pales in comparison to the one thing he wants. He has wealth and fame and victory, all that stuff. But he says this in Psalm 27:4. One thing have I asked of the Lord that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. You see what he's doing? He's imaging he's reflecting John Calvin, or Calvin is reflecting him, rather, as he looks up and he goes, when I see the face of the Creator, I know who I am. That's what I need. Not only do I know who I am, that is what I most need.
13 · The pastor establishes a theological claim about universal human need: just as adopted children possess an ineradicable need to know their biological parents, all humans possess an even deeper need to know the God who made them—a need our culture tries to suppress or minimize but which remains fundamental to human existence because we are made in His image
Every human being is made with this deep need. Over the years, I've talked to a number of people who've been adopted and maybe even very happily adopted by parents that have cared for them, love them. But they often, somewhere in their teens, will get to this moment where they come to their parents and say, but I want to know my biological parents. I want to know who they were. I want to know what were they like? Am I like them? And they often will be very clear with their adoptive parents. I'm not saying you're insufficient. I'm not saying I don't love you. But there is this need in me that I need to know my parents, right? It's very powerful. But, friends, even deeper than that is the human need to know not just our biological parents, but the God who made us, that every human being is constantly frustrated because there is this deep need that often in our culture, at least, we're pushing down and saying, that's not a need. You don't need that. In fact, oh, you want to do some religion, that's fine. It's just a little add on, a little supplement. But we're looking and going, no need. There is this need. I have to know who God is because I'm made in his image. And I'll never understand myself until I understand the Lord. And I need what I need. I need to relate to him. I need to know him. That's in every human heart.
14 · A pastoral observation about adopted children's deep need to know their biological parents serves as an analogy: if adopted children possess this ineradicable need despite loving their adoptive parents, how much more do all humans need to know the God who created them
Over the years, I've talked to a number of people who've been adopted and maybe even very happily adopted by parents that have cared for them, love them. But they often, somewhere in their teens, will get to this moment where they come to their parents and say, but I want to know my biological parents. I want to know who they were. I want to know what were they like? Am I like them? And they often will be very clear with their adoptive parents. I'm not saying you're insufficient. I'm not saying I don't love you. But there is this need in me that I need to know my parents, right? It's very powerful.
15 · The pastor articulates the theological consequence of misidentifying our deepest need: making any created good (parental approval, children's success) into our ultimate need inevitably produces disaster because only God can satisfy an ultimate need
Now, look, if we're not grounded in that, if we don't say, that's the deepest need in my heart, we'll make something else our deepest need. And it'll end in disaster. Right? You take something that's not necessarily a bad thing, like wanting your dad's approval. But if you kind of say, well, that's my deepest need, I'm gonna build everything in my life around my dad's approval, what's gonna happen? You're gonna destroy your life? Are you gonna take a son or a daughter and you think, no, I'm gonna give them everything. They're gonna be the center of my world. What I need is to see them succeed academically or athletically. That's what I need. And what's gonna happen? You're gonna crush them whenever we make anything else. The deepest need in Our life, it ends in disaster. But here's the good news. If what you need most is the God who made you, that need can be met. And when it is, everything in your life finds its right place.
16 · The pastor signals transition to the third major question: the nature of the human problem that severed our connection to God
Third question, then. What is most fundamentally wrong with us? How did we lose this? What's most fundamentally wrong with us as men and women?
17 · The pastor uses an extended analogy of a pharmacy without labels to illustrate culture's diagnostic confusion: without agreement on the human problem, we randomly try competing solutions (fitness, relationships, career, work-life balance) hoping something will work, like taking random medications without knowing what they treat
Again, because the world does not understand our deepest need, the solutions it offers are always inadequate. This is the way I think about it, okay? Imagine going into Walgreens or CVS or whatever, and you're looking around at these medications, and imagine they just removed all the four parts of the labels, right? It just has the name of the medication and no, four. And so you're walking around going like, I got a stomachache. And there's just pills, right? There's just creams and lotions and pills and things. And you're thinking, what am I supposed to be taking? And you see a guy in the pharmacy. What are you taking? He's like, I'm taking the blue one. It's good. This is the blue one. Did you get this one? You're like, okay. I guess he's saying, that's good. I guess I'll take the blue one. Yeah, I got a lot better after I took the blue one. You have no idea what you're doing. You. You're just taking meds, and what happens is then you start just taking multiple. Like, well, I guess I'll take one of these and one of these and one of these. I don't know what I'm doing. Hopefully at some point I'll feel better. That's the world's idea, right? That's what we're doing. We can't agree on the need. We're just taking solutions. You need to be more fit. You need a different spouse. You need to have a kid. You need to not have kids. You need to be unshackled from kids. You need to raise in your career. No, you need better work, life balance. We're doing all this stuff, but what's most fundamentally wrong with us?
18 · The pastor identifies culture's one point of consensus on the human problem: whatever is wrong, it's external—'them,' 'those people,' 'that stuff'—never the self
Well, here's the one thing our culture does agree on. We're not really sure what the most fundamental problem with us is, but we're pretty sure we're not the problem, right? We're pretty sure the problem is them or that or those people or that stuff. Are you the problem? Nope. I'm pretty sure that's the one thing I'm sure of, is I'm not the problem. It's you people.
19 · The pastor exegetes Genesis 3:12 to show that contemporary culture's blame-shifting is ancient—Adam's immediate response to God's confrontation was to blame the woman, then God Himself ('whom you gave')
And let me just say this, you see this actually reflected immediately after an Adam and Eve sin. In Genesis chapter 3, verse 12, God comes to Adam and says, adam, did you diso. Did you violate the command I gave you in keeping and guarding the garden? Did you violate that command? Adam says this in chapter three, verse 12, the woman. You see where he starts? God goes, adam, did you do this? And his response is, well, first of all, the woman. And notice what he doesn't even stop there. The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate. Do you see Adam in that moment is going, okay, I don't. There is a problem here. But it's not with me. It's her, it's you, it's the garden, it's this thing, it's that, it's everything else. So we're pretty sure. Notice how topsy turvy this is. Our culture is sure that the solution, the deepest need we have for self expression, that's inside of us. And the biggest problems we have, they're all outside of us. And yet the Bible solution is essentially upside down, or you could say right side up. Because the Bible basically says, no, no, no, the problem is much closer to you than any of us want to admit.
20 · The pastor exposes Adam and Eve's dual failure: Adam failed to guard the garden against the serpent (his assigned role), and Eve failed to support Adam in his guarding role
The problem is that Adam was put there to guard and keep the garden. And don't you think, like, a weird, evil talking snake would be part of his. Watch out for that job description. You're not exactly. You don't get a real long job description for Adam, but you do get guard and keep. And then there's a weird, freaky demon snake and he's like, I don't know, let's see what happens. Like, that's not good. And the woman is put there to support Adam in his role and to help them cause the garden to flourish. And yet she doesn't do that at all either. Right. They both fail at what God has given them to do. And then they come face to face with God and they see the problem immediately is as soon as they sin, they become self conscious about their nakedness, which they weren't before, and they hide themselves. They hide themselves.
21 · The pastor states the difficult theological truth: the fundamental human problem is internal, not external—though external difficulties exist, the deepest problem lies within each person
What's most fundamentally wrong with us as men and women, it's a hard truth, but a good one to see. The problem's not out there. The problem's in here way more than we want to admit. Doesn't mean that there aren't hard things out there, difficult things that people sin against us. But. But this is the deepest problem that each of us is dealing with.
22 · The pastor signals transition to the fourth major question: the solution to the internal human problem just established
So Then number four. How then can we be made whole? How can we be made whole?
23 · The pastor exposes the tragedy of Genesis 3:8-10: Adam, created for joyful relationship with God, now hears God's voice and responds with fear and hiding
Now, we already saw that. The. The world solution, Adam and Eve's solution is just to hide. God calls adam in Genesis 3. Eight, where are you? And Adam says, I heard the sound of you in the garden. And I was. This is so tragic. I was afraid. Notice how tragic that is in light of Genesis 1 and 2. God made Adam to relate to him, to find his joy in him. You have this language that God walked with Adam and Adam walked with God. They're in this relationship where. Where Adam understands creation and himself and his wife, but because he understands who God is and is secure in that. And that was meant to be his source of life. And then all of a sudden, when he turns away, I heard you. And I was afraid. The very one he was created to be near. All of a sudden, as soon as he's walking through the garden, Adam's afraid and he runs. See how tragic this is? Adam's solution is, I'm gonna hide. And I was naked, and I hid myself. Adam tries hiding, and so does our world. So do we. Right? What is our default? When we see the problems inside of us, deep inside of us, our solution is often to hide. Right? I'm just gonna bury that thing. I'm gonna cover that thing up. I'm gonna blame shift. I'm gonna deflect. I'm gonna pretend it's not a problem. And this is one of the reasons I think our world is so committed to tell ourselves, you're fine just the way you are. Why do we keep having to say that over and over and over again? Because deep down, we know we're not fine. Right? We're looking in the mirror going, you're fine, you're okay. Nobody can tell you what to do. We love you. You're the best. You're fine. You're fine. Why do we have to keep saying it? Because deep down we know I'm not fine. It's our way of hiding.
24 · The pastor shifts from human failure to divine initiative: God seeks the hiding couple (they do not seek Him), and Genesis 3:21 establishes the redemptive pattern—God provides covering for sin through death
And yet God in his grace, does not leave Adam and Eve there. Notice this. God is the one that goes looking for them. Do you notice that Adam and Eve don't wake up and go, man, we really need the Lord. Let's go back to him instead. The Lord goes looking for them. And when it comes to this fear, this hiding that they. That they are participating in, there's this beautiful verse in Genesis 3. 21 where it says, and the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife, garments of skins clothed them. This is Actually, the first reference in the Bible to something dying. And you set up this pattern, right? That in order to cover the sin of Adam and Eve, something dies. And God brings a way to be covered and to be whole. In a sense, it's tragic, but it's also beautiful that God takes a part of his creation that was meant to live, and he kills it because sin always equals death, so that he can cover Adam and Eve. Now, this is a pattern that occurs then again and again and again through the Scriptures.
25 · The pastor establishes the redemptive irony: though the problem is internal, the solution is external—God coming to us
Because here's the irony. Even though the problem is inside, the solution to that problem, the solution to our sin problem is not found inside of us, but outside of us, with God coming to us and giving us what we need. And you see a beautiful picture of this in Zechariah, chapter 3. In Zechariah 3, the people of God are pictured as a priest standing in front of God, clothed in filthy garments, clothed in dirty garments. They can't stand in front of this holy, pure, perfect, just God. They're clothed in these garments. And what does God do? He says this. See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put fine garments on you. You see the echo of Genesis there? God is saying, this is how I'm gonna solve this problem with humanity. I'm gonna take away what should not be there, and I'm gonna give you what you need and did not earn.
26 · The pastor brings the redemptive arc to its Christ-centered climax: the pattern established in Genesis 3:21 and confirmed in Zechariah 3 finds its ultimate fulfillment in Christ—God provides not an animal but His own eternal Son as the covering for human shame
And you find the solution, unsurprisingly, is always pointing to Jesus. This is why Jesus is such a big deal. Because in Jesus, we see that God takes not something he created, not an animal, but his very own eternal Son. And he sends his Son, who dies in the place of human beings, that he might do what? That he might cover their nakedness and exposure and shame. Genesis, I mean, Galatians 3:27, says this. For all of you who were baptized into have clothed yourselves with Christ. It is like standing in front of the mirror, standing like Adam and Eve, standing like that prophet in Zechariah, that priest in Zechariah, standing there exposed, going, there is no solution. I don't know what to do. And yet God comes. God removes our sin. God clothes us. That's the solution.
27 · The pastor synthesizes the sermon's core contrast: culture inverts reality by locating problems externally and solutions internally, while biblical reality locates the problem internally and the solution externally in Christ
And so we see, in fact, that the culture has it upside down. The culture is telling us, listen, the problem, it's outside of you. And the solution is inside of you. And God comes and says, no, friend, you gotta recognize the problem is inside of you. But I come from the outside and am the solution to clothe you. Isn't that good news? It is such good news. Friends, this is the progression. This is how we find wholeness again. Not by burrowing deep inside of ourselves, but by looking up and out and receiving what with grateful hands, the gift of the righteousness of Christ. That's how we're made whole.
28 · The pastor applies the gospel directly to mothers (appropriate for Mother's Day), exposing how making motherhood itself the source of wholeness produces devastating fragility—every disappointment, loss, or change threatens identity
And look, every other solution the culture offers may be partial, but it will always be insufficient. Look, this. Let me just say a word to the moms. Oftentimes, motherhood is seen in this way, that motherhood is the way that you will be whole. And there's something very powerful about it, because women are made with this desire often to be moms, in many cases. And yet, do you understand what happens when the culture says, well, this is the way to be whole? Anytime something goes wrong, anytime a child is disappointed, anytime a child is sick, anytime a child even passes away, anytime that gift is lost, or maybe you're not married, or maybe you can't have children, that gift is never received. Anytime you feel that, all of a sudden, if you're thinking, well, if motherhood is wholeness, then I'm never whole. I'm never gonna be whole. Or maybe you're there for a moment, and then the kids go off to college. All of a sudden they forget to call, and you're like, what in the world spent 18 years. They can't call me, Right? There's some of you people, you need to call your mom. Ah, that's your application. But why does that hurt so much? Well, sometimes it hurts because we're thinking, I would be whole if that happened. And it could be mother. It could be any one of a number of things. It could be that final relationship and getting married. It would be this thing. It would be whatever it is for you. You think if I had that, then I would be whole? Friend, stop waiting to be whole. Because those things will never make you fully and finally whole. But Jesus will. Jesus will. And not someday, but today in Christ. You can be whole today and receive that gift from God. What God offers friends is so much better than what the culture around us offers.
29 · The pastor signals transition to the fifth and final major question: how to navigate specific decisions about gender, sexuality, and identity in light of the gospel framework just established
Number five, then how then do we decide what it means to be a man or woman? How do we make these big decisions about, you know, forks in the road as men and women? What does that mean?
30 · The pastor uses a contemporary transgender narrative as an extreme case study of the 'be true to yourself' ethic, then immediately signals he will show how this same decision-making framework operates in less extreme but equally problematic ways for all Christians
Well, I'm gonna give you an extreme example and then kind of back up, because in our culture, it's common today to hear a particular kind of story. Imagine this story. Imagine the man. You find a man who is married, he has to a woman. He has multiple kids, but he begins to find a community online. And with the help of this community, he decides that, you know what? I'm not meant to be a man. I am actually a woman trapped in a man's body. And I need to change my gender and pursue a relationship with a man. And when he tells others, they tell him, well, that's right, you need to be true to yourself. Right? That makes sense to our culture. Now, there's all kinds of issues with that, and that may be an extreme example, but that fork in the road is a fork in the road that many of us take without ever realizing it.
31 · The pastor universalizes the transgender illustration: every Christian faces the same fundamental decision framework at multiple forks in the road—sexuality, marriage, parenting—and the question is always whether inner desires function as the final authority
What I mean is this. When the moment comes where I need to decide how do I live my life, what does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to use the gift of sexuality, what does it mean to be a parent? All of those forks in the road. Should I have an adulterous affair if it makes me feel? Should I marry a nonbeliever if they make me feel fulfilled? All of those questions come down to this is your guide being true to your inner desires as the final word? Now here is the tragedy. So often we forget that that path is the path in Genesis 3.
32 · The pastor exegetes the serpent's two-step temptation strategy in Genesis 3: (1) question what God said ('Did God actually say
And the serpent you see laying out this path in two ways. First he says, did God actually say. And then he twists God's word. Did God actually say, you can't have any fruit of any trees? Is that what God said? Oh, he's so stingy with his creations, isn't he? Oh, he wants to keep the best back from you, doesn't he? And then the second thing he says is this. You will not surely die. Do you see what he's doing? It's a two step process, getting you to question what God said and then telling you an alternate truth. A lie, right? An alternate truth is a lie. You're like. Which is another truth. No, it's not. It's a lie. Right? And this is the path, the path often that leads to tragedy is us saying, I am going to look inside myself and decide what is truest to myself. And that's what I'm going to pursue when regardless of what anybody else thinks.
33 · The pastor exposes the internal contradiction in culture's 'live your own truth' ethic: the world acknowledges no one sees the full picture, so it says trust yourself—but we know from experience our inner voice is unreliable
But here is the tragedy. It only leads to loss. So then what's the solution? Cause the world goes well then. Look, the reason everybody has to live their own truth is that nobody sees the full picture. Nobody knows what's gonna happen tomorrow. Nobody knows where all of this is going. We have this brief, momentary life. And so right now you just need to do what Feels right for you. You can't see everything. You. You don't know everyone. You just gotta do what feels right to you. So faced with a world that is, like, unknowable, what happens is that the world says, well, just trust the one thing you do know, which is your own self. The problem is this. If you look deep inside yourself, you're like, this guy's not always trustworthy, right? I hear people say, you just need to do what feels right for you. The problem is sometimes you'll be sitting in a meeting, frustrated at the person talking, and a voice in the back of your head will say, just punch him. Right? And you're like, that feels right. Feels right. I do want to punch him. You should. You know. And here's the problem. You listen to that voice, you're going to end up getting booked with a mug shot in a few hours. Right? That's where that's gonna take you.
34 · The pastor establishes the Christian alternative to subjective authority: Christians acknowledge human finitude ('neither do I have full perspective') but affirm God's omniscience—He sees everything without bias, from beginning to end, heart to actions
So the reality is this. We as Christians go. Yep, I understand. Nobody has a full perspective, but Christians go, and neither do I. So then what's the solution? The solution is that there is only one person in the whole universe that sees clearly. God himself. God made everything, and he sees it all without bias, without shading. He sees to the heart. He sees from the end to the beginning, and to the from the beginning to the end. He sees right and wrong unfiltered. Look, all of the views of life we have are partial, but his view is full. All of our views are temporal, but he sees it all. And. And you might say, okay, well, then that's great for God, but I'm down here. How does that help me? Because he gives his sight to his people in his words.
35 · The pastor defends the sufficiency of Scripture for navigating life's decisions with pastoral humor about counselees wanting 'something else' besides Bible verses
Look, sometimes I think it's easy for us to be frustrated. Like, man, I want some counsel about life. And we just keep pointing people back to the Bible. Well, this is what I'm seeing in the Bible. And I could tell sometimes when I'm in counseling people, they're like, do you have anything else? Like, you just keep bringing up Bible verses, and I just want to say, I'm sorry. That's all we've got, man. This is the only true, perfect and authoritative perspective on life, the universe and everything. And so that's what we got. And here's the good news. God gives us that gift. So notice this. So we've made a mess of our lives, but God comes after us. God takes away our sin. God gives us a new identity in Christ. And then God gives us his word to guide us. Friends, we have what we need to navigate this topsy turvy world around us. We have clarity and sanity in a world gone mad if we will take advantage of it.
36 · The pastor uses a personal story about forgetting his glasses to illustrate the Word's function: no amount of self-effort (rubbing eyes, coffee) can fix the fundamental vision problem—only putting on the glasses provides clarity
Look, there are times where I will get up in the morning and I will forget to put on my glasses. Okay? I'll just forget. I'll just be going like a kid will come in, whatever, and I'll be going throughout. Now, my vision is pretty decent, but definitely still fuzzy. Anywhere from, like, here on, okay. Like, arm's length on. And so I will start to get up and do my, you know, do my routine in the morning, getting the kids ready for school and all this stuff. And I'll just be like, man, the world is so fuzzy. I just don't understand what's going on today. And I'll just think I need to rub my eyes, blink a little bit more, wake up, have some coffee. Look, no amount of coffee is gonna fix my vision. Like, the third cup's not gonna do it. I need the glasses. And that's what the word of God is, brothers and sisters. The word of God is that, oh, now I see now all of us have vision that's off in different ways. Like, all of us have a different prescription. But all of us, what do we need? We need the clarity of God's word to navigate.
37 · The pastor crafts an original parable (which he notes is unusual for him) to illustrate the sermon's central contrast: pursuing happiness by digging into 'the mountain of self' yields only partial, disappointing gems (romance, work, parenthood) and increasing darkness, but rescue brings the discovery that these created goods shine brightest when seen in light of the Sun (God Himself), who is more beautiful than all the gems combined
So here's what I want to do. I want to end with a parable, which is something that I have not done before. So. So I guess it was the first time for everything. Cause we started out talking about the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of happiness in our culture is the pursuit of feeling good. But the true pursuit of happiness, as revealed in the word is not just feeling good. It is being good. And the funny thing about it is when you pursue being good. Being in relationship with God, you usually feel pretty good, right? So you pursue being good. Being in God's image, you find it all. Whereas if you just pursue feeling good, you lose it all. And the solution, here's what I hope you're seeing. The solution is not inward and downward. It is up and out. And so here's the parable. This is a parable of what life is like if you try to pursue happiness the world's way and the difference looking up at the Lord makes. One day, while exploring the abandoned mines near his house, Adam glimpsed a beautiful, shiny treasure in the dark. He was captivated. He went back searching for it under the mountain. And the mountain, by the way, was called self. But the more he dug, the further he dug. He couldn't find it. He was convinced he need only dig deeper and further into the mountain of self. He began devoting more and more of his hours and days until finally he began sleeping in the day and waking at night to enable better dark vision. He would find small gems. One called romance, one called work, one called parenthood. But they were never as shiny as he hoped. So he kept digging and digging. And this one. This went on for days and weeks and months. Finally digging more desperately every night, he went further and further under the mountain of self until he found a bright, remarkable gem, only to collapse in exhaustion. When he awoke, he was out from under the mountain. Someone had rescued him. He found his room so bright with the sun out setting, that had almost hurt his eyes. But they soon adjusted and laid before him were all the gems that he had collected under the windowsill, shining brighter and more beautiful. But he almost didn't notice them at all because he was drawn to a greater light. He threw back the window curtains and found the brightest and most shining. The sunrise. He had forgotten in those long years how beautiful it really was. And leaving the gems behind, he went to admire it.
38 · The pastor applies the parable by contrasting two paths: the world's path of burrowing into self versus the Christian's path of walking into the light of God's presence
Brothers and sisters, we live in a world in which everyone is pursuing happiness and wholeness by burrowing deeper and deeper into the mountain of self. But let us be as the people of God, those who love the sunshine, those who walk out and stand before the God who made us. Those who see the gifts of God are meant to reflect the beauty of God. And the question for us today is how will we pursue happiness? Will we burrow into ourselves? Or will we walk free and clear out into the sun?
39 · The pastor closes with a pastoral prayer that gathers the sermon's themes—God's Word as stable ground in a confused world—and applies them specifically to the women and mothers present, praying that they would hear God's voice declaring their identity as image-bearers above all competing cultural voices about who they are or should be
Would you stand? And let's pray. Oh, heavenly Father. Lord, I do pray a blessing on all those gathered here. We live in a world of constant confusion, a world of constant change. And yet your word gives us a place to stand and a view of life that brings life and goodness. Lord, I particularly pray over the moms of our church and the women in particular, of our church. Lord, my sisters face so many challenges when it comes to their identity. People telling them who they are or who they should be, what's wrong with them and what they need to do to fix it. Lord, I pray that you would just, in this, this last moment, quiet all the voices of the world and let them hear your voice, your voice over them, which says they are as women, made in your image, in your likeness, in the image of God, they are created. In the very likeness of God, they are created. And Lord, I pray that my sisters and my moms in the faith would rest in this moment. Not in what the world says about them or their family says about them or anyone else says about them, but in what you say about them and the way that you see them. In Jesus name, amen.