Sermon Transcript — March 25, 2006
This past week in the newspaper was an interesting news item of a town in Utah which is, I don't know if you would call it an ordinance or exactly what it was, some resolution perhaps the City Council passed. They defined marriage as being between one man and a woman. She stays at home and raises the kids; he goes out and earns the money. In other words, they defined marriage and family in the terms that America has extracted in its better historical times from the scripture. And of course they are getting a great deal of grief for that. We don't define marriage as being heterosexual. It's not the thing to do in this day and age.
It used to be in years past the little ditties that children would sing about each other, I think many of you who are as old or older than I am will remember this one, maybe even some who are younger. I don't know how long it survived because by the time I was in high school the 1960s hippie movement was in full swing with its sexual revolution, drug revolution, campus revolutions, etc., were well under way. But it was the way children would tease each other when they were in elementary school where a girl and a boy might sort of like each other, and they would be teased as being boyfriend and girlfriend. And maybe it was Billie and Jill. There goes Billie and Jill. And then they would sing, first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Billie in a baby carriage. (You know, the baby Billie.) It was funny, but that particular little recital, or nursery rhyme or whatever, had the order right. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby Billie in the baby carriage. Now, as I said, by the time I was getting out of high school in 1970 that order was becoming seriously jeopardized. And you have only to stop and review on what you have heard of that era or what you saw around you to know that. The late ‘60s and 1970s was the sexual revolution to where premarital sex became an accepted norm in society.
Another sexual revolution is under way, another extension of it, another battle of it, I suppose, in this day and age. People do not understand the order in which things should be done. Here is an interesting passage. Let's start with 1 Corinthians 14:40. Right at the end of the chapter. To give you some background, throughout the book of 1 Corinthians Paul had been addressing various kinds of church divisions, schisms, and disruption of the Sabbath service, and all kinds of other problems that the congregations in Corinth had been having. And he came down with a very clear mandate for them to change before he went into the next chapter, which we call the Resurrection Chapter, which was the upwards and onwards of the 1 Corinthians and finally led off with the salutation of chapter 16 dealing with the few nuts and bolts and projects that were being done. So here was the summary of the first 14 chapters.
It says, Let all things be done decently and in order. That is God's way. God's way is not haphazard. It is not helter skelter. It is not Salvador Dali on drugs. Hold it, that would be better. You know who Salvador Dali was. He was a surrealist painter from I guess the 1930s or so. I have seen his pictures sometimes. You study his pictures and think, okay what is he really trying to paint here? There are so many pieces of things. The pieces are all in proportion. Some of them too much so. But it is surreal. It doesn't fit. It is weird, in that sense you could say. So if he was on drugs he actually put his talent to use because it would improve it. I am being facetious.
But God wants things to be done decently and in order. Not scattered about. Not unprincipled, unguided. Not completely and totally spontaneous. God plans things. God the Father and Jesus Christ have been planning very important things for a great deal of time as we perceive time.
Now doing things therefore in the Church of God where we strive to live God's way of life, to do things decently means to do them fittingly or appropriately. What is appropriate as God defines appropriate, of course? And furthermore what are the implications of doing things in order? You can get a hint from the little children's ditty. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Billie in the baby carriage. You can get a hint of doing things in order. And furthermore, I will ask a question that can serve essentially as the title of the sermon. What is God's natural order of things? What is The Natural Order of Things? How should things be viewed as we look at life? And we realize we live in an age Paul referred to way back almost 1900, 2000 years ago he viewed it as this present evil age. It hasn't gotten any less evil, and it is just as present with us as it was with him.
Now back up a little bit as we analyze it. Let's look at the subject of order versus confusion. In 1 Cor 14:33, again dealing with all of the problems going on and in particular dealing with some of the issues of disruptive church services and confusing meetings of God's people. Verse 33, he said, For God is not the author of confusion but of peace as in all the churches. If God is not the author of confusion, and everything is to be done decently and in order, then using these two verses that we have read so far, then we can say that God is the author of order, of orderliness. That is what God is the order of.
Then who is the author of confusion if God is not the author of confusion? It exists. To a certain degree we all experience it in our lives. We look at the world around us and we see an awful lot of confusion at very many levels. Who is the author of confusion? It is easy enough to deduce that it is authored by Satan. Since we can deduce that God is the author of order, he has ordered life. He has ordered it in the way that we should live and worship Him. The way that God ordered things to be is in fact the natural order that we should seek. By deduction, since Satan is the author of confusion, thus we can deduce that the devil will try to confuse people from following God's order by replacing it with false standards, perversions, and added confusions.
Now when you look at life with those overarching principles, then it becomes I think clearer when you analyze why the Bible says a few chapters earlier, as a case in point, this was a big deal back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a bigger deal than it is today, but it is still of significance today, when the Bible says, does not nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair it is a dishonor to him, or a shame to him. there are various ways of approaching that subject. men should have short hair, women should have longer hair. we will look at the passages here in 1 Corinthians 11. But when you analyze, well just a minute, we are seeking the natural order, the order that God set in place, and so he says, does not nature itself teach you that it is a shame for a man to have long hair. Now by contrast before we do that we want to look at verses 1-13 for a minute. Now I praise you brethren that you remember me, as … verse 1 is imitate me as I also imitate Christ. Okay, so we try to imitate and emulate and be like our savior. I praise you brethren that you remember me in all things and keep the traditions just as I delivered them to you. The traditions being in the context the application of God's law within the community of God's people. But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. There is an order there by the way. Every man praying and prophesying, having his head covered, dishonors his head. But every woman, and some have looked at this initial long paragraph we are going through thinking that means, that means hats. Women should wear hats to worship and men should not wear hats. Men should not wear hats certainly. That would fall generally into the principle. But the context is actually discussing hair length, and verse 14 clarifies that when we get to the end of the discussion. But every woman who prays and prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head. For it is one and the same as if her head were shaved. Not wearing a hat does not equal having your head shaved. We are talking about hair length here. For if a woman is not covered let her also be shorn (or shaved). But if it is shameful for a woman to be shorn or shaved, let her be covered. For a man indeed ought not to cover his head since he is in the image and glory of God, but woman is in the glory of man.
Now what does that mean, woman is in the glory of man. That means woman was taken from man. You know the story when Eve was created a rib was taken from Adam while he was asleep and not looking, and when he woke up lo and behold God had made Eve, using that rib as the beginning point. And from then on women have been giving their men ribbings, appropriately so. For a man indeed ought not to cover his head since he is in the image and glory of God and women the glory of man. But man is not from woman but woman from man.
Now there's another scripture we will come to later that picks up on that point. I will draw it to your attention when we get to it.
Nor was man made for woman, but the woman for man. For this reason woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels. The angels are under the authority of God, and so the woman, as in the wife to her husband, is under authority to her husband. Nevertheless, neither is man independent of woman. Don't let it go to your head. Because it is not the tyrannical approach. Neither is man independent of woman, or woman independent of man in the Lord. For as women came from man, even so man also comes through woman. But all things come from God. God made them male and female. That's the way it is summarized in Genesis.
We have in this paragraph explained the fact that a woman's hair is to be longer, to be feminine. Man's hair is to be short, to be masculine. So we pick it up in verse 13. Judge among yourselves. Search your thinking. Is it proper for woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair it is a dishonor to him. But if a woman has long hair it is a glory to her. For her hair was given to her as a covering.
Okay, now we will go back and address the analysis of men to have the shorter hair and women to have the longer hair. Does not nature itself teach you? Some would say well when I look into nature I see male pheasants having longer feathers than the female pheasants, and more colorful. And quite often that is true of other species of birds too. But people are not birds, and we don't have feathers. And they say, well, male lions have long hair and female lions don't. So there. That's nature. Men are not lions. Or tigers, or bears. We are people. Then they say, there have been cultures where men wear long hair. Like many of the American Indian tribes. I don't suppose all of them, but many of them. Some would say they couldn't cut their hair; they didn't know how to do it. Oh, yes they did. They knew how to make some of the finest stone age tools you can imagine. To sharpen the edge of obsidian, which is a glass-like, it is actually lava from a volcano, glass-like lava. It makes a wonderful hunting point on an arrow and it can be sharpened to I think it's 500 times sharper than the sharpest surgical scalpel made of stainless steel. Extremely sharp. There are some plastic surgeons who use stone to make their incisions because they heal so much more cleanly than those made with metal. So they had sharp edges. That was no problem. They just chose to wear long hair on men, with the long braids that came down. But they weren't the only ones. There have been many cultures. Well that isn't nature because they were not cultures of God's people. Paul is talking to converted brethren. He said, does not nature itself teach you…So someone might say, what about Numbers 6 where it talks about a Nazarite vow could produce long hair on men. And in fact, that is the case. Samson's long hair, he had to wear long hear. He was required to. He was an exception that God had made through the Nazarite vow. If the vow lasted long enough an Israelite could dedicate himself for service at the temple, doing whatever. He wasn't a Levite necessarily, so it would be whatever service was needed, whether it be beautification of the grounds or what have you, but he would be able to work and serve at the temple for a period of time. He shaved his hair when he went there and he did not shave his hair until he left the duty of it. So he started off with a crew cut and then his hair grew. If it was only a duration of weeks or a few months, he would get a little shaggy. In Samson's case, it was a lifetime. And he was required to be under that vow for his lifetime. That is the one legal exception where men may wear long hair and have it please God.
Nature itself should teach us shorter hair on men, longer hair on women. Ah. That points to a difference. Men are different from women. Women are different from men. Exactly! When a society begins to confuse the genders and all things related to that it becomes intensely confused, perverted, twisted, and then it becomes criminal beyond just the thinking part. What is beautiful on a woman is a symbol of rebellion on a man. The woman is to have the longer hair as a sign of authority, that she is under that authority. The man who is to be in the image of God is to be the one who has been placed in authority for certain aspects of life. Thus he is to have the shorter hair. Now, people want to go and sometimes come up with excuses or reasons why men should be allowed to have long hair, or women should be able to run around and shave their heads. The newspaper printed a collection of four or five leading actresses with their heads shaved, and they always look like 10-year-old boys when they do that. It is just awful. But that is not what God intended or what God had for mankind.
We have to change our thinking. What is God's order? If God says that nature itself should teach you that it is a shame for a man to have long hair, then that is the order of things. Long hair doesn't belong on a man, it belongs on a woman. God made it that way. Pure and simple.
Now this is not the only scripture you can turn to, to have an example of that. Typically when we prove it we cite this scripture that men should have shorter hair, then we show pictures of Roman emperors. They had short hair. It was the fashion of the day within the empire. People in religious circles where they want to grow long hair tend to look at the medieval paintings of Jesus Christ, which aren't paintings of Jesus Christ at all. And he did not have long hair because he inspired this verse, and yet he is constantly portrayed with long, looking-looking hair. By the way, I am turning to Ezekiel 44 if you would like to do the same. I am reminded a few months before we moved out here from Oregon, I was driving down the street near our house, pulling up to a stop sign. The sun was bright, and someone had the moon roof on their car open. And the sun was going in and you could see it reflecting off this beautiful head of red hair right down over the shoulders... it was really pretty hair, glistening. It had actually just been washed recently. Considering the number of dreadlocks that city sported, it was remarkable in itself. And I looked at that and thought, yeah, boy that's pretty. There are a lot of red heads, sort of Celtic influence, in that part of Oregon. Then the corner was turned. I was going straight, that car was going left, and the long hair had a beard. It was a guy, and he was not handsome. That was a disappointment. You think that is a lady with beautiful hair. She is taking care of her hair. Then you turn around and it is a guy.
That was not how God ordered the Israelites. If you go to Ezekiel 44 you will find that in the millennium there will be, this is a section of chapters that talk about a temple in Jerusalem where Christ will rule from, but He will reinstitute the Levitical priesthood to offer sacrifices and proceed with the form and the ceremony of the true religion, in a kind of way where you have a blending of certain elements with a kind of impact of the sprit of the law and magnification of the law in the New Testament. It describes the priests that will attend to their duties during the thousand years. Verse 20. They will neither shave their heads, nor let their hair grow long, but they shall keep their hair well trimmed.
Now that's a description of what a guy should do with his hair. He shouldn't shave it. He doesn't let it grow long. He keeps it well trimmed. So it is a clear picture providing natural order, that's a guy. And the lady has longer hair, that's a gal. And it provides order rather than confusion. Remember, in the natural order of things we are combating things which create confusion.
Now, let's look at another really hot issue in our day and age. Going back to Genesis 1. This is a description of the creation of mankind. Verse 26. And God said, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So man was to rule Amtrak as well. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created them male and female. And God blessed them and said be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish and birds and every creeping thing that moves upon the earth.
God made mankind male and female. Adam and eve were the first two models, and they were to be the mother and father of all mankind. A great purpose of the creation, male and female, was to multiply, to have children.
In chapter 2 we further read this was not to be in the marriage situation a platonic relationship. Chapter 2:18. And the Lord said it is not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper comparable to him. So out of the ground the Lord formed every beast of the field and bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature that was its name. So Adam gave names to all the cattle, and all the birds of the air, and every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.
He got to name all the animals. All the animals came by and that was his first job. He just sat there and did it, but as he began to go over and over, coming up with creative names for all the animals, birds, and such, when he got done he didn't see any of them that looked like him. There were always pairs of them in order to multiply the cattle, or European starlings, or whatever it happened to be, there would have to be a male and a female. Then there was a dawning. God was in the teaching business. So something was dawning on Adam. It isn't specified here, but you can't help but think that Adam would report back to God and explain, well I named all the ones you sent me, and there were always two, but there is only one of me. What's the deal with that? And God said, don't worry about it Adam. It's time for you to take a nap. And so Adam goes to sleep and while he is asleep he took one of his ribs. And he closed up the flesh in its place. And the rib which the Lord had taken from man he made into woman. And he brought her to the man. He walked up and kicked Adam on the heel and said, Wake up Adam. Adam jumps up and immediately goes into a rapturous wedding ceremony, this is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. There was probably some explanation there so he would know that she was taken out of him, and he was missing a rib in the process. But Adam had to name things, so he got to name woman as well, based on the name God had given him.
Now we have man and woman, male and female. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife. And they shall become one flesh. Now there is in that statement a dynamic sexual attraction that leads to marriage. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Cain in the baby carriage. And others after that, Abel, and so on. But there is a dynamic, a sexual attraction between the male and the female, that is to be manifested in marriage. This is the marriage ceremony by the way. Because God is essentially saying in verse 24, Therefore man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked the man and his wife and they were not ashamed.
So we have then the words cleave, and one flesh, and we have this sexual attraction. And sexual activity sanctioned only within the marriage.
Now, this then is the natural order of things. This is the way it was intended to be. No clever arguments. No what ifs. No yes buts change the natural order of things. This is the tone of clarity.
Now we go to Leviticus. Because God did deal with the other issues. The issue of homosexuality is not new in our age. God dealt with every form of adultery, or the perverting of sexual attraction that was to manifest itself within the marriage of that man and that woman who married each other. Leviticus 18:22. Now it has a number of laws regarding sexual relations beginning in verse 19. But come down to verse 22. You shall not lie with a man as with a woman. It is an abomination. Nor shall you mate with any animal to defile yourself with it. Nor shall any woman stand before any animal to mate with it. It is a perversion. Now God is the one who is defining those as perversion, bestiality, homosexuality, and frankly any other kind of adultery.
One of the reasons why it was brought out at that particular time was in the pagan religions of many of the surrounding nations near Israel, that is what they did. That was a part of their culture. In fact, it was a part of their religious culture. Reading the history drawn from archaeology and whatever other historical sources they draw it from, reading the history of the ancient pagan religions is not PG related. It is more like XXX. Ritualistic adultery, or fornication, sexual immorality of all sorts was a part and parcel with most of the pagan religions. That is how they worshipped their gods and goddesses. That is twisted. That is out of order. It is confusion. Now, we are beginning to have that to be our dynamic in our age today at many levels. This is just one of them.
Now, Leviticus 20, just a page or two over, beginning in verse 10. The man who commits adultery with another man's wife, he commits adultery with his neighbors wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. Now comes the statement of the bite of the law within the community. A man who lies with his father's wife uncovers his father's nakedness and both of them shall be put to death. and their blood will be upon them. If a man lies with his daughter-in-law both of them will be put to death. And they have committed a perversion. Their blood will be upon them. And if a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman both of them will have committed an abomination and shall be put to death. And their blood will be upon them. Etc., and so on. Homosexuality, or lesbianism either way by principle, is condemned in God's word. Pure and simple. Why? It is not the way God intended. It is not the natural order of things. It is the way of confusion. Actually, the word for perversion is translated confusion in the King James translation. It is another translation of it, it can mean confusion. It is out of order. It is not the way God intended it to be. The natural order is heterosexual holy matrimony.
Now we go to Romans 1. Now the beauty of this, you read about these sins of various kinds, the beauty of it is you don't have to carry the guilt for people who have been involved in them. Increasingly in our age that is more and more people. That is where the repentance, the blood of Christ covers those sins, wipes them out. There may indeed be some serious deep core thinking to change the inclinations and to bring them in order with what God has established. But that can happen. With Christ all things are possible. And that certainly is.
Romans 1. This is talking here about the gradual collapse of a society. And some of the dynamics of Romans 1 are all too much with us in this day and age. Notice beginning in this section in Romans 1:18 it says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and the unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. So there is a suppression of God's truth, an ungodliness at a cultural level. An unrighteousness at a cultural level. We are increasingly seeing that in America. Do you know that America with all of its noise about various things, including this particular subject of sexual orientation, America many people say is the most personally conservative nations in the world. And many people reckon that it is the most religious nation in the world. For us, we think that doesn't sound right. Well, those who travel, that is one of the things they say. Europe is far beyond the issues we are dealing with, where they have accepted them. Other communities, other religions, other cultures have in many respects as well. It seems like a remarkable thing considering the way things get played up in the American news media.
All right. Verse 26, we will pick this up. For this reason, we will get to that reason and come back to that one in verses 24-25, For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. They insisted on resisting the worship of the true God, they began to worship things . Nature being one of them, or the creation. So God gave them up to vile passions. If that is the way you want to be, then I am going to stand back and let you go into the brick wall. And even the women exchange the natural use for what was against nature. Lesbianism is not natural. Likewise, also the men leaving the natural use of woman burn in their lust for one another. Men with men, committing what is shameful, receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. It is not the natural order. It is against the natural order of things. God established the order. His law defines the order of things. And wrong sexual orientation is against the order of things.
You simply have to understand these things from God's perspective. Otherwise, you can become burdened down, buried, and overwhelmed with the excuses and clever arguments that come from all sorts of quarters, the rationalizations for acceptance, and all that kind of thing. You have to go back directly to God's word. What is the natural order in which God established things to be? No argument can change it. It simply is what God established it to be. That is your reasoning point. You don't reason necessarily into the point that God states, although after the fact you can. You start with that.
Now let's look at the subject of marriage. Because in conjunction with sexual orientation is the definition of marriage, which has become hugely important on the American national scene. Again it is not as much a conflict in some other cultures because they have largely accepted this concept. Now, we read Genesis 2:24. This verse comes under this discussion too. God's natural order is this. The divine institution of marriage, when Adam and Eve were both created, when he finished the job after Adam's nap in the afternoon on the sixth day, then God married them. Verse 24 was God's portion of the marriage ceremony. By doing that God created the divine institution of marriage. This is an institution, a relationship between a man and a wife, that God created. It didn't evolve. What monkey finally decided to get married to his Mrs. Monkey? It didn't happen. It doesn't happen and it didn't happen. If we let the arguments say that it did, then how come the monkeys we see in the trees haven't evolved beyond? Why are they still here? If it is the survival of the fittest, the adaptation and all of those hocus pocus abracadabra evolutionary arguments, then how come we still have primates swinging from the trees. All except for one kind of monkeys, the lemurs. They like to run around on the ground. Go figure. It doesn't work. God created marriage for humans. It is a divine institution. Some say he created marriage for gooses. I don't know about that. Geese will mate for life and that is commendable, but I have never heard a goose's wedding ceremony being recited at all. They have very limited vocalizations and I said I don't think marriage is one of them.
In Ephesians 5:22-32 is a major segment for marriage, the mystery of marriage in that sense which is a mystery of more than just marriage because it foreshadows something of our coming into the kingdom of God. Ephesians 5:22. Wives, submit to your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is also head of the church. And he is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let wives be to their own husbands in everything.
There has to be order within marriage. Quite often marriages have conflict because order has not been agreed upon. They need direction. And to say that the husband is in charge within the marriage is not to give sanction to tyranny. Because verse 21 is already the predicate of this entire discussion, submitting to one another in the fear of God. There is a mutual submission back and forth, but there needs to be leadership within the marriage and that is the husband's duty. Husbands, your leadership is going to be based on this. You love your wives. Not the way that you think love is, but you love your wife just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her, that he might sanctify her and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that he might present her to himself as a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she should be holy, without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. No one ever hated his flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of his own body, his flesh and his bone.
That does not mean you can't be allergic to yourself, by the way. Some people are allergic to themselves, and they break out in a rash whenever they are around themselves, which they tend to be pretty rash people. I had a friend like that. But I think that has to do with the immune system being out of whack. It wasn't that he hated his body. He tried to eat right, exercise and so on.
For we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones. For this reason we are members of Christ, of his flesh and of his bones. A nd his sacrifice on the Passover with the scourging and the beatings was a part of that. His broken body was broken for us. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery. But I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let each of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and the wife see that she respects her husband.
A marriage is modeled after Christ's leadership of the church, as we have just read. It is also connected to the natural order of another passage in that regard that I want to bring to your attention, and this would be I Timothy 2:13. Many of these passages in the sermon today are sort of kingpin passages that provide our reasoning points in understanding how God has ordered life to be. I Timothy 2. I may as well deal with this issue as well right now. This is one of the key passages in understanding why in the Church of God we have a male ministry. Why we don't have women pastors. Let's begin in verse 8. I desire that men pray everywhere, lifting holy hands without wrath and doubting. And in like manner, in this prayerful manner, that women also adorn themselves in modest apparel (all right, modest apparel is the natural order of things. Would somebody please tell J.C.Penney that, and a few of the other apparel manufacturers.) With propriety and moderation, and not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly clothing, but which is proper for women professing godliness, with good works. And let a woman learn in silence with all submission. And I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man. This is again in the church context, because we know of examples that shows this to be in the church context. There was a lady named Lydia who was apparently a very wealthy businessperson back in those days. In one of the epistles of Paul, I believe it was the epistle of Romans, she carried it to Rome or to wherever it was, its particular destination. She dealt in purple, i.e., the dye to make things purple was extracted from some little sea mollusk or something like that. It was difficult to extract and therefore it was very expensive in the ancient world. Not so much today, but it certainly was then. That apparently was her business from what history has gathered. She undoubtedly had men who were under her authority in the business, the ones who dive for the little sea creature from which they extracted the purple dye and everything else. So Paul here was talking about within the context of the church, the service of the church. And here's why. Some say that just doesn't sound right. That's not fair. It doesn't sound fair to the American egalitarian approach as it has evolved since the onset of feminism, but in verse 13 it makes the point. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. That's a simple statement, but it carries a lot of weight. Adam was formed first, then Eve. Therefore, no matter what we say God is not going to change his mind. We got it. He established the order way back then. He made Adam first and made Adam go name the animals and then take a nap. Then Adam did those two things, and then he made Eve. So Adam was formed first, and God by that order established that the male would be the leader of the family, or in this case later for the church, that the ministry would be male. It is not out of derision of the female of the species, who in many respects as Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem, the female of the species is much stronger than the male by any means. It was simply because God ordered it. Somebody had to be placed in the command position, and so God placed man there. Now, by the way, when you stop and think about it you have the husband and the wife. Is one a command position and the other one a completely subservient lackey position? No. If you look for an analogy you can go to a military analogy. Some say the husband is like the general and the wife is like the private. Wrong analogy! It's the navy. The navy got it right, the army is out of order. The navy has a captain on the boat, and who is second in command? The first mate. Nice word play. So the husband is the captain, the wife is the first mate. Something happens to the captain, the first mate has to run the ship. They are both command positions. Now that's not so bad, is it? That's right, that's not so bad. God is the one who put it that way, and as we organize our thinking, sometimes we have to kind of shut out the arguments of the society around us that is just filled with confusion at every level. We simply have to get back to what God set in place. And what were his reasons for it. And here is the reason for it. Adam was formed first and then Eve. He could have reversed the order, he just didn't. That does not make one of more intrinsic value than the other. It just gives the genders certain rules within marriage, and within the ministry of the church. Now in the course of talking about marriage I have sort of diverted to discuss why we have a male ministry. But let's go back to the subject of marriage and complete the discussion of that in Genesis 3.
Genesis 3 is where the apple hit the fan, so to speak. The serpent shows up. You know the story. He says, oh man, this is really, really good. He said, has God told you that you can't eat from every tree of the garden? The woman gave him the encyclopedic answer. We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the tree that is in the midst of the garden God has said you shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it lest you die. And then Satan goes into the lying syndrome. After he creates doubt, he throws in the direct lie. You won't really die. God is telling you a lie. And so she ate. And then you know what she did, what happened? You think, Eve was the one who was wrong. She took of the fruit and she ate, and (verse 6) she also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Now when you stop and think about that, Eve ate the fruit of the tree, but Adam was right there and he ate of it too. Adam could see through the arguments. Adam was not deceived by the arguments. But he ate the fruit anyway. Now why did he do that?
What I didn't read to you is I Timothy 2:14. I'll just read it to you. You can jot it down and read it later because I want to continue in Genesis in a moment. Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression.
Adam was not deceived. So then when you go back to Genesis 3:6 and you read where Eve was deceived and ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam was not deceived and Adam was with her. He was right there, and he didn't stop her. Yes, technically she was in transgression because she ate of the fruit of the tree. Adam abdicated his leadership responsibility. He let it happen. He could have stopped it. But he let it happen. So they participated in bringing about the world we are now familiar with, didn't they.
From the Nelson Study Bible there is an interesting commentary on verse 16, and this is the upshot of all of that. In verse 16, this is where God deals with all three of them. Now he is talking to the woman. And to the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and conception. In sorrow you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. So some have said, so that's the problem. Men were given rule over the women and that is why we have the world we have today. I have got news for you. If the women ruled over the men we would have the world we have today. Just the same, only slightly different, but just as bad. Interesting commentary here. It says the word desire can also mean an attempt to usurp or control. And it is used that way, in fact, in Gen 4:7 where God tells Cain that he should control his anger and control sin. It says, if you do well will you not be accepted? If you do not do well sin lies at the door, and sin's desire is for you (to rule over you.) So when he said to Eve back in 3:16, your desire shall be for your husband, it shall be over your husband. The commentary says we can paraphrase the last two lines of the verse this way. You will now have a tendency to dominate your husband and he will have a tendency to act as a tyrant over you. The battle of the sexes had begun. Each strives for control and neither lives in the best interest of the other. The antidote is the restoration of mutual respect and dignity through Jesus Christ. And then it cites Ephesians 5, which we have already read.
Now when we look at marriage and we see the dynamics that came out of it, it explains a lot of the problems the world is facing today. What we see though in the description of marriage, not only is the husband to be the leader and the wife to be second in command, but we also to see it is to be a husband and a wife. And that was never an issue in American culture until in the past handful of years, that the definition of the two ingredients for the marriage, a male and a female, would be called into question. But finally it has gotten to our shores.
And I am ashamed to say that the state we lived in then was at the foreground of it. What amazed us at the time is that there are two university towns in two different counties. And one university is a hotbed of liberal thinking, and the other university is a worm bed of liberal thinking. No, it is a little bit more conservative. But that was the county that was the most adamant on redefining marriage to accept homosexual marriages, and our county resisted it, voting it down. You felt almost proud to be there, for awhile, until the university crowd started their rantings. It was an interesting dynamic, but it was simply indicative of what we continue to see. There is confusion in this world of what is right and what is wrong, how should life be ordered, how does it fit together. God has ordered things for us, and everything is to be done decently and in order. God is not the author of confusion. So he does not sanction things, or relationships, or ideas, or philosophies that are out of order.
Now let me bring back to mind what we read a few minutes ago in Genesis 1, where it said that God created them male and female, and he gave them dominion over the beasts of the earth, the birds of the air, and every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. In other words, God gave dominion of mankind over all of the other animals. Because technically although physically we resemble animals, technically we are not. We are humans. We are in a different plane of existence, aren't we? Man was made a little lower than the angels. This is out of the Psalms and then quoted again in Hebrews 2. We are made a little lower than the angels, but we will be higher than the angels, the Psalm goes on to say, when we live in the kingdom of God. We will be at the level of the divine children of God in his very family. That is the destiny of mankind.
The first commandment says this. You know where you can find this, in Exodus 20. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image (this is now the second commandment) and any likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, or the earth beneath, or the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them.
And then we go to a very interesting passage in Isaiah 41. That one I will ask you to turn to after we quoted Exodus. Isaiah 41:29. This is speaking of idols of all kinds. The first two commandments condemn idolatry, having any sort of god before the true God, or making any kind of idol to worship. Verse 29, Indeed they (referring to these idols) are all worthless. Idols are nothing. Their molded images are wind and confusion. That is a good and apt description of idolatry.
And now let's go back to Romans 1 again. We have mental idolatry today, but we really don't have the idolatry of the ancient pagans around us. Oh yes we do! But it has taken a new form in the modern era. Although I will give you this, it is starting to revert back to the ancient era. Now we read verse 18 earlier, and then in verse 20 I think we could jump in there. For since the creation of the world with its invisible attributes, God's invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead. In other words, the existence of the creation demands the existence of a creator. You prove the existence of God by looking at what there is. You can go to a beautiful museum and look at some really good paintings, and you look at the paintings of the same artist and you will be able to see his or her school of artistic thought, techniques, and you know, you think, there is an artist that painted these. I know it! They didn't just evolve on the wallpaper of the museum. Somebody made these. You have an epiphany, unless you are an evolutionist, then you couldn't have that epiphany, could you? Because, obviously, paintings could not be painted. They just happen. I speak facetiously.
When we look at God's paintings, the creation, then we know that God exists. And because when they knew God they did not glorify him as God, neither were they thankful but they became futile in their thoughts (this is happening to our culture) and their foolish hearts were darkened, professing to be wise (professing to be the great philosophers of the age or whatever) they became fools. They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, of birds, and four footed animals, and creeping things. And therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness and the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves (first was the heterosexual, widespread sexual immorality of the 60s and 70s, leading to finally what we are beginning to see happen today,) who exchange the truth of God for a lie, and then get this at the end of verse 25 , and worshipped and served the creature (or the creation) rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen.
We find that these people substitute things, animals, whales, trees, spotted owls, the marbled Murrelet, that's another little bird about the size of a robin in the Northwest woods, and they substitute all of those for God. What we are talking about here is extreme environmental activism. It worships the creation.
I have done some extensive research and readings over the years on that, because a great deal of the battleground on that was where we lived in Oregon , and in Washington to the north of us. The battles are there. The city we lived in has a man named Tray Arrow from Jail. I don't know what his real name is, but that is his magic decoder ring name that he got out of the cereal box I think. He is an environmental ecoterrorist as he calls it. We extradited him from Canada where they caught him. But he is one who goes around terrorizing logging operations, mainly is what he goes after, but anything that he takes a notion that does not fit his morality and is committing sacrilege to the gods of the trees that he hugs. But he is only the tip of the iceberg of that movement. Some people like to think, well I am an environmentalist. And my answer is, oh no you're not. Not the way that word is used today. I have a cousin who said that one time. And almost the whole table immediately of relatives said, oh no you're not. And we found out she was out of time. She was back when the word environmentalist had an honorable meaning.
The extreme environmental activism of today is equivalent to environmental idolatry. It is out of order. It is worshipping the creation, but it doesn't call it creation by the way. It is worshipping the creation rather than the Creator, and it is woven through and through with every sort of sexual immorality. Now as I said, the ancient idolatry practices are resurging. They call that movement the neopagan movement. And at the forefront of that is the growth of Wicca, which is witchcraft. Which really is, from what I can gather, woven largely into Celtic druidic pagan traditions as much as anything, but add mixtures of Greek and Roman, and so on. That is not a good direction. That was out of order in the ancient times when Paul was inspired to write this, and when Isaiah was inspired to write what he wrote. It is just as out of order today. It goes against the nature of things that God established.
What about the animal rights movement? In the natural order, man was given dominion over the animals. The beasts of burden, pets, and being able to dine on the clean ones. We know there is a Proverb that talks about how we should treat animals. Prov 12:10 for reference. It says, The righteous man regards the life of his beast. But the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. Man is to be a good and kind steward of the animals. That is certainly true. We are to be good stewards, quite frankly, of everything that God created. To not be an environmentalist does not mean you advocate the ruination of the trees of the forest and the land by any means. The right way is to use it for what God has given it to us for.
The apostle Peter made a clear statement back in II Peter 2. And this statement makes the point that we need to understand that the lives of animals are not equal to the lives of humans. Now if you think, yeah, so? Believe me, there is a group of people, growing in numbers because people are so out of touch with the creation itself in this country and other countries too, who do not think that. They think that animals are equal in importance to humans, and that is not right, very clearly.
I'll give you a couple of citations from them, and then we are going to read what Peter wrote. The Princeton University 's premier bioethicist, Peter Singer, is the winner of the 2003 World Technology Award for ethics, whose book entitled "Animal Liberation" was credited with launching the modern animal rights movement. Singer once wrote, "Because people are human does not mean that their lives are more valuable than animals." Now he is a primary philosopher of this kind of thinking. So you need to go back to the core philosophy to see where their roots are. He not only advocates abortion, but also killing disabled babies up to 28 days after they are born. In his book called "Practical Ethics", he wrote, "When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Often it is not wrong at all." Now that's where his core thinking goes on dealing with babies. You think, where have I heard that before? Well, it's called the 1930s, Hitler, the Nazi party in Germany, eugenics, getting the master race a good firm growing base in layman's realm, that's where it comes from. The same demon that instructed Hitler instructed this guy evidently.
Wayne Pasco, former director of the fund for animals in the magazine "Animal People", May, 1993, "One generation out we have no problem with the domestication of animals. They are creations of human selective breeding. We have no ethical obligation to preserve the different breeds of livestock produced through selective breeding. Likewise with pets.
Pet Ownership. This is from Ingrid Newkirk, president of People For The Ethical Treatment For Animals, PETA it is otherwise called. "Pet ownership is an absolutely abysmal situation brought on by human manipulation." And then one of her most famous ones, I have got a long list of them, one of her most famous statements is this. "A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They are all mammals." But it is a statement of values. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. If you want to do it graphically, a rat = a pig = a dog = a boy. Human life has no greater value than a rat or a pig or a dog. Now, PETA is kind of at the lead of that particular movement. But that is not right. That is completely against the natural order. Animals are below humans. They are not on the scale when it comes to salvation. God created the world for man. And he is growing people here. People have to take care of the animals, and in so doing we learn to build the character that God Himself has.
Now the apostle Peter makes this statement in 2 Peter 2:12. He said, But these (speaking of the depravity of the false teachers that were abounding in the church) like natural brute beasts made to be caught and destroyed (or slaughtered) speak evil of the things they do not understand and will utterly perish in their own corruption. What we see, then, very clearly is that brute beasts, the animals, are different than humans.
Now we go to Hebrews 2 as our clincher here. Hebrews 2:5. For he has not put the world to come of which we speak in subjection to angels. Angels will not rule in the world tomorrow. But one testified in a certain place (and it is from the Psalms) what is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him? You have made him a little lower than the angels. You have crowned him with glory and honor and you set him over the works of your hands. You have put all things in subjection under his feet.
Now of course, that was fulfilled first and foremost in Christ, but it is to also be fulfilled in the salvation process for all mankind. All things will be put into subjection. The angels will be in subjection to the resurrected humans who have come to be repentant and converted. The point is that animals are not on this scale. We treat them kindly, and we love them, you know, our pets. But bear in mind that the hard core animal rights activist movements do not like pets. I read that comment. And Outdoor Life magazine two months ago reported an incident where two PETA activists in Florida were finally captured and indicted. They had started a ring of taking puppies from people who could not take care of them, saying they were an adoption agency and would find homes. The home they found was a dumpster. They slaughtered about 50 of these little dogs. Because they don't believe that pets have a right to exist, any more than infants I suppose. You have got to understand we live in an age where there is a lot of confusion, and brethren that is a source of great confusion. When you look at the natural order of things, and we go back on any issue that comes up and we look at how God laid things down to be, then it fits in place. Then we move from there. We take our cues from God. We don't take our cues from this school of thought or that school of thought. You know, you could say, don't take your cues from the liberal school of thought in the world today philosophically, politically, lifestyle wise, or whatever. But you also have to be careful about the conservative school of thought. Because it goes off track in a different direction – maybe not as quick, but it will get there.
Christ road it right straight down the line where the truth was. In the days of Jesus Christ you know who the liberals were? They were the Pharisees. Most of the time you think the Pharisees were the arch conservatives, the John Birches…you don't know who John Birch was, for those who are too young. He was an arch conservative type of guy years ago. Most people think that is what the Pharisees were. The Pharisees were the liberals. The conservatives were the Sadducees. Here's why. The Sadducees believed that the inspired scriptures were the writings of Moses, that's it. If it wasn't in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, it didn't exist. There are no angels or demons according to their argument. Just a minute. They are really, really conservative on what they think is the inspired word of God. But that's off the track. Okay, now come to the Pharisees. The Pharisees believed that the entire Old Testament was inspired. You think, well that's better than the Sadducees. They didn't believe anything but what Moses wrote. Okay, that's not all. To their credit they did believe there was a resurrection. But the Pharisees went beyond. They added almost an equal part. They added into what they considered to be inspired scripture the oral tradition, the oral laws they called it, what the sages or rabbis had taught for the past hundred years up to that time. In other words, they added to God's word. The Sadducees took away from it, and the Pharisees added to it and way beyond. So when you are going to throw them on the right and left, the Sadducees had to be the arch conservatives and the Pharisees had to be the liberals. They are not really a lot different. They just have different positions they argue from. But it didn't make a lick of difference to Jesus Christ. He was where the truth was. And we need to be where the truth is. Because the truth reveals to us the natural order of things.