Pastor Jeff emphasizes the importance of family in God's plan, calling for unity and prayer in troubling times. He discusses the emotional impact of family dynamics and acknowledges diverse family situations. The sermon delves into the biblical foundation of the family, highlighting our identity in God's image and our purpose in gender roles. Pastor stresses the mission of the family to establish a godly lineage and advance God's Kingdom, urging listeners to embrace God's design and seek His guidance through challenges.
Sermon Transcript
Father in heaven, we just thank you so much for your son Jesus Christ and your holy spirit, who indwells all of us who believe. And we pray today, Lord, that you would move mighty in this service. Lord, it's been a privilege and an honor to bring you song and to sing to you and tell you how worthy you are, because you are. And our greatest admiration and praise belongs to you and to you alone. Father, we do pray for our nation, Lord, to see on television cameras an assassination attempt of our former President Trump.
Lord, we just pray for his quick recovery. Lord, we pray for the families of the victims that lost lives yesterday. Lord, we pray that you would take what was intended for evil and you would use it for good. Lord, regardless of our political conviction and affiliation, we know that that's wrong and it's dark and it's evil. And, Lord, in these days, may we truly be salt and light.
May we preserve the putrid in our culture. May we be light in the darkness in this culture. And may we learn how to pray for those who persecute us and to stand firm in a world that doesn't want anything to do with you. God, we entrust this whole election cycle to you because we believe, as already been said, that you're on your throne and you're ruling and reigning and we don't even need to vote about that, that you're still in charge of everything. But, Lord, we pray you'd have grace on our nation, that you would turn the hearts of our people back toward you.
And now, Lord, as we get ready to open up your living and active word, we pray that you would speak, because we as a people believe that every time your word is faithfully and accurately proclaimed that you are speaking. And so our prayer this morning is, Lord, speak, for we are ready to hear. And so for all of those who have gathered who desire to hear the Lord Jesus Christ speak directly to you, who will believe what he tells you and who will, by faith, put into practice what he shows you. Will you agree with me very loudly by saying the word amen. Amen.
I'm very excited to kick off this families fortified series, and there's a lot of different ways that we could tackle this. But I want to tell you from the onset, when I say the word family, I know it elicits an emotional response. For some of you, it's a response of delight. You think about your mom. You think about your dad.
Perhaps you think about your current family, your wife or your husband or your children, and you're like family's the best. Family's the place where we connect. Family's the place where we build one another up. Family's the place where I can be loved. Family's the place where I can be myself.
Family's the place that no matter what the world says, family's what keeps it all together. So, for the family, but for others, when I say the word family, it elicits different feelings. It engenders a different response. It's abuse, and it's, where was dad? And it's divorce, and it's pain and it's shattering, and it's hurt, and it's, where do I step now and what do I do?
And how come I had to endure that, and how come this happened to me? And where was God and all of these different things? And I realize I'm talking to a yemenite wide audience of people. I'm talking to young children. I'm talking to older people.
I'm talking to some of you who have never been married that want to get married. I'm talking to some of you that have never been married that say, I've watched what people in church say about marriage. I don't know that I ever want to get married. I'm talking to some of you who have been married and divorced that have experienced the pain and shattering of that, that are in a position to say, well, what's God say to me now? And how can I move on?
Some of you are widowed, and you understand the devastation of losing a spouse. Some of you are just wondering, well, what do I do now? And how do I align the pieces, and where do I go? And my situation's so complicated. So what I want to do is I want to start in the word of God and help us this morning, because so often when I've heard family series, I hear, here's what a husband should be, and here's what a wife should be, and here's what kids should be, and here's what singles should be.
And I think the Bible has a lot to tell us on all those things, and we'll get there. But the one thing I don't think that we answer quickly enough is, why even talk about the family? Like, is it really that big of a deal? Or is it just for some people to engage in? Does God have a plan for families?
Should there be a purpose of family? As a Christian, what should I think about family? And that's what we're gonna dive into today is answering the why question. We're gonna talk about God's dominion mandate for us, we're gonna talk about God's plan for dominion. And God's plan for dominion is very, very simple.
It's very, very clear for those of you that are believers that attend. Brave many of us would say, we want to see revival. We want to see God move. We want to see God move through our church out into the world. We want to see change.
We want to see everything take place. And God has the answer. And God says, if you really want to see that, the one place that I'm willing to bless and the one place I'm willing to move the most is in a covenant family. So goes the family, so goes the world. If you're a Christian, you need to understand why family is central to everything that God wants to get done.
And so we're gonna answer the question, why? Why even talk about the family? Maybe I don't want to be part of a family. Maybe I'm just waiting to grow up to get out of my family so I can be on my. I don't want family.
But according to the word of God, you do. And so I want to take a look at what scripture has to say as we begin this series. So I want you to open up your Bible to Genesis chapter one. Genesis chapter one. We're going to start right in the beginning because that's where God begins to speak about this topic.
And we're going to start in the beginning, specifically focusing on verses 26 to 31. Today we'll get into some of chapter two as we highlight that and spell it out a little more. But as you open up your Bible to Genesis chapter one, you see the most controversial passage in the entire Bible. Genesis one. One.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That is the most controversial passage in the Bible. Our world doesn't want to hear it. But what God wants to tell you is before anything ever was, I am and I created it all. And I'm going to tell you how I did it.
And if you want more specifics on what God does, because I don't have time for it. Today I did an entire series called the Alpha and Omega series. We did the first eleven chapters of Genesis, the entire book of Revelation. You can go online and you can watch all that, but I just want to spell out for you the background of where we're getting today. Because what we see in Genesis chapter one is that God created everything out of nothing.
He did it in six literal days and he rested on the 7th. And there is no other way to read or understand how that happened unless your authority is outside the Bible. If you read the Bible and say, I'm just going to believe what this says, you will come to the conclusion that God created everything out of nothing. Things visible and invisible. Thrones, dominions, rulers and authorities.
All things were created by him and through him. He did it in six literal days and rested on the 7th. You said, how do you know? Because he tells us. The only reason you don't believe that.
Well, I don't know if the day means a day, but it does. And if you can't believe Genesis, chapter one, why would you believe anything else? Okay, so that's just a little bit of welcome and truth. Yes. So there's six days and God's creating everything.
But on day six, God does something different. God creates differently. He creates a group differently than anything else that he's ever done. For the first five days, every time he creates, there's evening because he spends the whole day creating. Then there's evening night because there's a morning.
And then there's day one and then there's day two and day three and day four and day five. And after every day, God speaks to what he creates. And what does God say that is good? This is good. Why?
Because God is perfect and is a creator. And everything God creates, he says, good because I did it. And everything I create is good. But this is where we get to verse 26. This is in the middle of day six.
We read what God did and this is where we get why a covenant family is so important, what this dominion mandate's about, and how God, who created this whole perfect world, is going to get his message out. How is God going to be most glorified and how is God going to expand his rule on the planet? And he begins to answer it in verse 26. And that gives us our first point. You need to understand this.
That dominion starts with identity rooted. The image of God. Your identity and every other human being's identity is rooted in the image of God. Listen to what he says. Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
So he said, I'm going to create humankind and I'm going to do it different than anything else I've created thus far. This is going to be different than the moon. It's going to be different than the stars. It's going to be different than all the galaxies. It's going to be different than the trees and the bushes and the animals.
When I create this distinct group, I'm going to create them differently than any other group that I've created. And I'm going to create them in my image. And who's he going to create? Mankind. And you're going to see exactly how he creates mankind because God's even going to tell us that.
So how does he create? He creates us in his image. Now what does that mean? It means you're distinct from anything else in all of God's creation. You're different than animals, you're different than trees, you're different than planets.
You're different than the sun. You're created in the image of God. That's where your value comes from. In case you woke up today and said, I don't even know why I'm living anymore. I don't even have any value.
Nobody appreciates me. You have value because the God of the universe is the one who created you and gave you your life. That's your central part of why you're valuable. That's the central reason why anybody on this planet is valuable. And anybody, any life is created in the image of God.
Which means every single person has value because God gave them value. You understand that? Now we say that we do, but we really don't. Now, when it talks about being created in the image of God, he's not talking physically, he's talking intrinsically. I mean, for those of you who've been to the gym, you see guys flex in front of the mirror and think that they're God, but they're not.
I mean, the reality is, it's talking about intrinsic value. It's talking about those internal things that God created you different than he created the animals and the trees and the plants. So what are those things? What does it mean to be created in the image of God? Let me share just a few of them.
Mentally, you're created in the image of God. You're aware that you have freedom to make choices. You can create and you can destroy. I mean, dogs can think and you can train a dog to not do this or to put out its paw and all that. But a dog can't sit down and decide to write a symphony or paint a picture or create something.
Any building you've ever walked into, like the one that you're sitting in, or if you've ever used a glass or a straw or a pen or paper, those were ideas that somebody had once upon a time, that became a reality. Why do people have these ideas and visions and understandings? Because you're created in the image of God. To create because God's a creator. Animals can't do that.
Trees can't do that. Human beings can do that. You're different. You're distinct than anybody else in all of creation. What about this?
Relationally. Relationally, you're created in the image of God. There is a desire in the heart of every human being to be in relationships. Now why is that? Because our God is relational.
Long before he created anything, we learned that Godhead is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the Father is not the Son or the spirit, and the Son is not the father or the spirit. And the spirit is not the father or the Son. They are three distinct persons, but they are one distinct essence. And that is what makes up the godhead.
If you ask me to explain that to you, I would just say glory can't explain that. But I know that they relate to one another. And that's why from the time you're born, there's this hunger to be in relationships, why a baby craves a mother. It's why we want to be in relationship with other people. It's why we crave friendships.
It's why we want to be known. And we want people to like who we are. Why? Because God created you that way. Ministry is relationships.
Jesus said the entire law was summed up by loving the Lord your God, with all your heart, soul and mind, and loving your neighbor as yourself. What's that? It's relationship. God's not just some distant being that sits on a chair. God's active in everything we do.
He's relating to us. And if you've repented and believed in Christ, then God wants you in the way that you're relating to him than to relate to others. There's a relational component that no one else has in all of creation. Yeah, you say, well, my dog likes to be loved. It's different.
They don't crave relationship. They don't crave being known. They don't crave getting their heart out and sharing everything that they believe and what they think and why they think it, and relating back and forth. Morally, you're different. There's an innate knowing when something is good or bad.
Even little kids have it. Whether they've been raised in the church or not, they know when they've crossed a line. It's true of all cultures everywhere. Everybody knows that cold blooded murder is wrong. Why do you know that?
That's wrong. What makes that wrong? Because God is the one who convicts of sin, righteousness and judgment. We know it's wrong. Right?
Because you're created in the image of God. Spiritually, you're created in the image of God. That's why you're ultimately curious about God and how we were supposed to relate to him. That's why even if you're a hardened atheist, you're not settled. That's why even if you're an agnostic, you're not settled.
Because deep down in your heart you wonder, is there someone greater? Is there someone bigger? It's the reason you ask the questions you ask and read the things you read and do the things you do, because there's an innate desire to know. Because you're a spiritual being. What's out there and who am I?
And it's normal for a human being to ask those questions. It's not normal for a cat. They don't ask why they're here, why they were born in that litter, or why they did this. And a fish doesn't ask those questions, but you ask them and they're normal because you were created in the image of God. Let me give you one other way.
Mentally, relationally, morally, spiritually. And then how about willfully? Willfully, you have the ability to align yourself with the word of God, to extend and reproduce his work of creation. You can choose to repent of your sin and believe in Jesus. You can choose to believe that this is the authority of God's word.
You can choose to place yourself under it. You can choose to say, I'm going to do it God's way. That's what separates you from everyone else. And if you watch television or you watch movies for the last decades of years, they try to make animals seem more important, cartoons make animals seem more important, and humans less than, or planets more important, and humans less than. Why?
Because God says human beings are the crown of his creation and they're created in his image. Friends, listen to me. I know many christians will nod at this. I get it. I get it.
But do you own it? That your value, the centrality of your value is that you were created in the image of God, period, end of story. That's why you're valuable. Even if you would choose to rebel against God, even if you choose to go the other way, even if you choose sinful behaviors, even if you choose to do things God doesn't love, you still have value because you're created in the image of God. When I stand on the platform here at the end of service and say, you are loved.
I'm not saying God's pleased with you. I'm not saying you did everything right this week. I'm telling those of you who have repented and believe that God has an unconditional love for you. And I'm telling you that haven't come to Christ yet, that even though you haven't, he still has a love for you because he created you and he still is yearning for you to come to him. That's why you're loved.
Now, we say we believe this, but our culture would say the opposite. Our culture would say you have value based upon your contribution, your abilities or your talents. In other words, if you can contribute something to society, if you're talented or you have abilities, or I value you because you can do something for me now, you have worth, but the Bible says, no, you have worth because you are created by God, even if you don't do anything. And that's important for us to understand as christians, because for those of us who have repented and believed in Christ, we have the identity of Christ. We're forgiven, we're loved, we're holy, we're set apart.
The devil can't touch us. Those are all true of us, not based on anything we've done, but who we are in Jesus. And it means when we look out at the world for people that don't love Jesus, that are living in sinful rebellion against him, they still have value because God is the one who created them. And while we may vehemently disagree with their positions, their attitudes, their behaviors, they still have intrinsic value because God was the author of their life. Do you believe that?
I think we as christians need to believe that, because when we disagree with people outside, we need to realize we're disagreeing with someone that was created in the image of God. I mean, let me just put some pictures up on the screen. You tell me, does this person have value? Does that person have value? He doesn't have value necessary for what he's doing.
You might say he took those goods and they didn't belong to him, or he's asking for money at the corner, but he has value because he's created in the image of Goddesse. What about this person? Basically, that's a picture of somebody I found in Colorado. Of course they have intrinsic worth. Doesn't matter what they do.
Created in the image of God. What about this group of people? Oh, they matter. As a matter of fact, the New Testament said we should even go visit those in prison because they have such intrinsic value. What about this person?
What about if you're anesthetized, you're under surgery? I mean, you can't do anything. You can't even think for your. Does that person at that moment have value? Of course they do.
It doesn't matter what you're able to bring at any given moment. If you're a human life, you have value. What about this group of people?
They may go against God in every single way and what we're going to talk about this morning, but they have intrinsic value because they were created in the image of Goddesse. If you believe that. What about this picture?
Do you know what that's a picture of? It's a picture of a zygote. That's what happens when a sperm joins an egg and you have 23 chromosomes from the man, you have 23 chromosomes from the woman and you have 46 chromosomes. That's called a zygote. It's a cell formed by fusion of two gametes.
That's what you used to look like.
Does that have value? It 100% has value because God is the one that created the life.
I don't care about your political convictions. I'm telling you abortion is murder 100% of the time. And I'm going to pause and say something else here too, because I know I'm talking to a group where probably a quarter of the people here have gone through that or experienced that there is redemption and forgiveness in that, but it's not God's plan. And I'll tell you this. If you're pregnant and you can't find a place and you're freaking out, you come see me and if my wife and I can't adopt that child, we will find somebody that will.
I promise you that.
And let me just say this while we're on the topic. This is not a woman's issue. I was just at a conference this week and I was listening. Do you know the number one indicator as to whether a woman will get an abortion or not? Do you know what the number one indicator is?
Whether the man will support her or not. That's the number one man. This is not a woman's issue. You're culpable. If you get a woman pregnant, then you take care of that kid and you do everything for that kid until the kid's 18 and out of the house.
That's just what God would teach. And this is what we have to get to. Because if we don't see everybody that has intrinsic value because they're creating the image of goddess. We will argue and debate, but we won't do it from a heart of love. We'll do it from a heart of anger.
We have to love all people because God created all people. It doesn't mean we have to agree with all people. It doesn't mean we have to help their sinful conditions. It doesn't mean we have to go along with what they say. We can love them enough to point them to truth.
But that never takes away from genuinely showing respect and love because that person that we're talking to, that person we're disagreeing with, is what created in the image of God and they have intrinsic value and worth. You think about that during this election cycle. You think about it when you see things and you read things in the paper where your heart rate's coming off the chart. You think about things when you watch our school systems and you watch our politics and you watch our government and you watch our financial crisis and you want, you think about that when you come, every single person you're like, I do not agree with anything that person says. Can't stand the way created in the image of God.
God loved them so much, he sent his son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for them in hopes that they would repent and believe that he's the Christ, the son of the living God. Amen.
And if we're going to have dominion in this world and do things God's way, it starts with our identity being rooted in the image of God and realizing that all people's identity is rooted in the image of God, even when they don't respond to it. Amen. Let me give you a second one now, just before I tell you this, don't write me any emails because I'm not going to read them and just go back and disagree with the word and argue it all you want and that's fine. And you can disagree with me because I've told you many times, if I'm saying something that's not true in the word, believe the the word is authoritative. I am not.
I'm just trying to do my best job to present it. But if dominion starts with your identity rooted in the image of God, it also starts with your purpose. You want to know your purpose. Your purpose is rooted in your God given gender. Your purpose and why God put you here is rooted in the gender that you are.
Okay?
Now, verse 27 says that God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female. He created them. Question according to the authority of God's word.
How many genders are there? Two. There are male and female, and there are no others. I don't care if you think there's 39, 74. There's two.
There's always been two. There will always be two. And you have your gender because God's the one who gave it to you. And I want to let you know something. I know a lot of people have these gender reveal parties where they pop a balloon and it pops pink, pops blue, which probably in ten to 20 years those kids are going to sue and say, you misgendered me in the womb and I'll, you know.
But what you're really doing is you're taking a look at what God said he was going to do. So in psalm, chapter 139, we read exactly what God says in verse 13. He says, for you, formed of my inward parts, you wove me together in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, and my soul knows it very well.
Who created your inmost parts? Who created every part about you? God did. And he said, it's fearfully and wonderfully made. So when you have a child and you're checking out their gender, let me just give you some quick science and authority from God's word.
If that baby has a penis, it's a boy. And when the boy comes out, he is to grow into a man. And that boy should be as masculine as that boy can ever be because that's God's design for that boy.
When you check in utero, that child has a vagina, that child is a girl, and that child is going to come out as a girl and she's going to grow into a woman. And God wants her to be as feminine as she can possibly be and fulfill his design for her as a woman for her entire life.
And isn't it interesting that everything that God makes so clear and distinct, Satan always tries to blend, and anytime that you say, well, I don't like my gender, or I don't feel this way, and I don't want to be this way, God would say, I don't care because I made you that way. Now let me say something here really clear. Some of you have families where you're dealing with this, in your family where some are saying, I don't know, I was born a boy, but I don't know that I feel like a boy or I was born a girl, but I don't know that I feel like a girl, it's a real thing. And I want to tell you, it's hard to stand in the gap and point people. And by the way, if you're a young kid, it's totally normal to ask questions, why did God make me a girl?
Or why did God make me a guy? Totally normal. As long as you're going to the Bible to get your answers, it's totally normal to go through puberty and wonder why? Because God made you that way. Let's give some biblical answers.
Side note, if you send your kid to public school, and you can send your kid to public school and you're the parents, you get to do that, you need to know that the public school can train your kid to be any gender your kid wants without your knowledge and take them away from you. And it's happening right here in Colorado. So just be aware of that. But some of you even here personally, like man, I tell you, Pastor Jeff, I want to love Jesus, but I'm telling you, I was born as a guy, but I feel like a gal. Here's the reality.
Satan always tempts us to go against what God designed us to be. But if God designed you to be the way he designed you to be, the greatest joy is in being that. And I could bring hundreds of people up here on this platform that could testify who were former lesbians, former homosexuals, former trans people who have been born again saying, that's not who I was. I was confused. Now that I know the Lord, I'm living for him.
And one more word on this while we're on the topic, because I hear christians ask all the time, well, how do you know they weren't born that way? Because the Bible says they weren't. Because God said he gave you the gender he gave you, period, end of story. Argue with the word. I'm just the deliverer of the message, right?
And you need to realize that if you were born as a boy, then God has a plan for you as a man that's distinct and different than if you would have been born as a woman. And if you were born as a girl. He has a plan that's distinct and different from you being a woman than if he had made you a man. And all of your purpose in life is linked to your gender. Why do you think Satan is trying to attack that so strongly?
Why do you think he even uses the pride flag, which is a rainbow, which God uses a covenant to promise after a sinful world when he destroyed him by water. I won't destroy you by water again, I'll give you this covenant. And they're like, we'll take that covenant and we'll rebel against you even harder. I mean, do you see what Satan is doing? I'm just telling you from the authority of God's word, whatever you were born is whatever God wanted you to be, and your purpose is LinkedIn to that.
I mean, all throughout the Bible we see it. And here's the problem. Most of us, because we don't believe in our God given identity, and we don't believe our value from what God has, and we don't believe in the value of the gender he gave us. We try to find value somewhere else. We try to find it in the sports world, we try to find it in the business world.
We try to find it out there. We try to get kudos for all these different things. And all of us are looking outside rather than vertical to gain our value all the time. And God says, no, just look to me. You have value because I created you.
And if you'll be who I made you, that would be great. And we'll take a look at some of these things here in just a minute when we unpack chapter two. But I mean, think about it. I mean, I just want to say something to the women right here. I mean, all throughout the scriptures, God talks about women being wives and mothers.
He champions that he doesn't forbid women to work. There's nowhere in the Bible that says a woman cannot work outside the home. It doesn't say that. But her primary responsibility is in the home. As a matter of fact, Titus two five makes it so clear that women are to be workers at home.
You can't get any more clear than that. I don't know that I like it. It's not very rewarding. I get it. It's impossible.
Apart from the spirit of God. That's what he says. Well, Pastor Jeff, haven't you read proverbs 31? I have. Have.
Haven't you read about that woman? Yeah, I have. I mean, she was so valuable. She does good all the days of her life. She brings her husband no harm.
She considers a field and buys it. So she's in the real estate business, she works out, she's looking fine, she helps the poor, she's making clothes, and she empowers her husband. But I want to tell you something. All of that is in the context of the home. She's choosing a field and buying it for her family.
She's making clothes for her family, she's working out with her family. She's empowering her husband with her family. She's doing it all for her kids. And so at the end of proverbs, chapter 31, the kids even stand up and arise and call their mother blessed. And then the husband praises her too and says, many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.
Why? Because she's devoted to her home. Can I just say this? If you're a woman, there's something innate in you that wants to be cherished, that wants to feel honor, that wants to feel respect for having a desire to be a wife and a mother and to be championed in that role. And if that's your heart's desire, God would tell you.
If that's the only thing you ever do, you're a winner in his book. Amen.
And here's what the world won't do. They will not applaud that. They will not. You could have a job. You could have your PhD.
You could have this. You could have. Yeah, but I got a family and I got kids and I got God. And I'm going to honor him first and foremost. Right.
And we'll get after the men here in a little bit too, because the men's number one responsibility is in their home as well. Without question. It's not what people in the marketplace say and it's not what your bank book says and it's not any of these things. It's how you love your wife and your kids that's most important. But it starts with this.
It starts with your identity being rooted in Christ, identity being rooted in God, and your purpose rooted in your God given gender because he's got different paths for men than for women. And if you get that, then you get point number three, which I think is the most important point of this entire text. And that is this dominion mandate for seeing God move throughout the world starts with mission. Your mission rooted in establishing a godly family. I'm gonna say it again because you need to ponder this a little bit.
Your mission in this life is rooted in establishing a godly family. Just think about it. God's the designer of your life. You're created in his image. He gave you a gender.
Why did he give you a gender? So you would get married and have babies and produce the next godly offspring for the next generation. That's why he gave you what he gave you. And we'll get into this when we talk about intimacy, but you need to understand that intimacy in a marriage is all about serving somebody else. It's never about serving yourself.
So anything that falls shy of serving someone else in the covenant of marriage is sin every single time. Every single time. I mean, listen to what the word of God says. God blessed them, verse 28 of chapter one. And God said to them, so we're going to read what God said to Adam first.
But this is the first time he's speaking to the couple directly after their marriage. And what does he say? First command to men and women on planet Earth, be fruitful and multiply. We kind of miss that command. We kind of think, well, that's for some people, not for others.
No, no, it's for everybody on planet Earth. Be fruitful and multiply. Get married. Be fruitful and multiply. That's the command.
Now, let's see how all this took place in Genesis, chapter two, starting in verse four. What we get is a depiction of day six. And like I said, you can go back and listen to sermons on this, but what you see on day six is during that day, if you go down to chapter two and verse seven, it says, then the Lord God formed man out of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. And if that doesn't take your breath away, you don't understand what just happened. The God of the universe took dust, put it together, breathed life into it.
It's a man. He made a man in his image out of nothing but the dust that he had created. I mean, amazing. So he creates man first, right? And then he's going to take the man in the very next verse, and he's going to place him in a garden toward the east in Eden.
And there he placed the man whom he had formed. So he makes the man in his image, puts him in a garden, drop down to verse 15. Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to do two things, to cultivate it and to keep it. So what's his responsibility? It's cultivated.
God made the world in such a way that it took the responsibility of a man to make it go. He didn't just make everything grow and everything do everything, it took the cultivation, it took man doing one thing and one thing. Only working man had to work. He had to cultivate it, and then he had to keep it, which means this. He protected it.
So you got to work it and protect it. Here's a man's responsibility. Listen, listen, listen. This is what you're created for. If you're a boy, this is what you're growing into.
You provide and you protect. That's what you do. That's your responsibility as a man.
It means this. If you don't have a job, go get one. Not like, look for one. Like, go get one. Yeah, but this isn't what I'm looking for.
Go work. It's noble to work. The fall hasn't even happened. Sin hasn't even crept in. God's saying, work.
And then when you work, protect what you're working for. Guys, your responsibility in a marriage is to do two things, provide and protect. That's called leadership. You're providing and protecting. Now, some of you need to realize it's time to get married.
It's time to quit sitting on the fence and thinking about it. Because the most important thing you'll ever do is get married. Let me say it from my perspective. When I get to heaven, I know I'm judged more harshly because I'm a teacher of the word of God, and I have a responsibility before the Lord to teach the word in such a way that's clear and accurate. That's my job.
Now, hopefully I do that as well as I can, but to the extent that I don't believe the Bible because that's authoritative, I'm not. But at the end of days, do you know what God cares about more in my life than what I do here? How I treat my wife Kim and my three kids? That's way more important to God than what I do here. Way more important.
Because if your values and your identity in the Lord and your purpose is in why God gave you your gender, then what God's going to care about is how did you propagate the next generation of offspring? For me to serve. For them to serve me. Like, that's what God's asking. That's most important in your life.
Guys, the most important thing is not your job. It's not what people say about you. It's not your bank account. It's not how gifted you are. It's what does your wife and your kids say about how closely you follow the Lord, period.
That's your job. That's your most important job, right? Why is your most important job if you're married? It's to be a wife and a mother. That's your most important job.
And if we have more priority of the family, we wouldn't be in the mess that we're in. Right? So why does Satan attack gender? Why does Satan attack family? Because he knows that's where God's at work.
I mean, think about it. Satan could have attempted man to cut down trees. He could have tempted Eve to, like, do all sorts of different things. He could have, you know, whatever. Burn the grass up.
I don't know. I mean, he didn't do that. He could have killed animals. That's not what he did. He went right after the family, right after what God was establishing.
Well, what he got established, so he got man. He brings man into the garden, tells him to provide for the garden, protect the garden. And then the Lord commanded the man, not the woman, but the man, because the woman wasn't alive yet. From any tree in the garden, you may eat freely. But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat.
From the day that you eat of it, you will surely die. The day you eat of that tree right there, dying, you will die. You're going to start dying, and you will be dead. And the reason we know that Adam and Eve ate the tree is because they're not here. Because they died.
It started in motion the day they ate it. But who did he give the command to? He gave the command to the man. Because it's always the man's job to bring the word of God to the woman. It's always been that way.
Eve wasn't there. The reason Eve was deceived is not because she's all emotional and didn't know any better. The reason Eve was deceived is because her husband was a lummix or something like this. And instead of being there and telling his wife, don't listen to him. Or cutting the head of the serpent off, he's like, oh, well, you should listen to him too.
I mean, and that's what we as guys do. We think devotions is a woman's job. We think raising the family spiritually is a woman's job. Man, it is your job, period. So then here's what he says after he tells him, just don't eat that.
Then he said, it's not good for the man to be alone. Let that one sink in. Men, it's not good for you to be alone. You need help.
I mean, that's what God's saying. God's just gotten done for six straight days. It's good. It's good, it's good, it's good. Now, don't eat off that tree.
And by the way, it is not good that you're alone. I mean, do you see the significance of it? It's not good.
Men, if you think that your best is being independent and separated from everybody else, you don't understand who God created. You to be your best is being connected to another woman in marriage. That's just it. I mean, family is the foundation. Now, if you're one of the zero 0% of people that have been given the gift of celibacy, meaning I never think about sexual intimacy, I don't want that.
And I want to spend an extra five to 10 hours a day serving the Lord with gladness. Great. That's you. But that's not the majority of people. Majority of people be fruitful and multiply.
So what does the Lord do? The Lord brings all the animals. Adam names them, showing his dominion over them. And then verse 21. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man.
And he slept, and he took out one of his ribs and closed up the flesh. At that place, the Lord God fashioned into a woman the ribbon which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man. He didn't make the woman out of the man's head because she wasn't to boss him. He didn't make her out of the man's. He didn't make her out of the man's feet so he could step on her.
He made them out of her side so that they could be connected because they have equal value. Amen.
And he fashions the woman. And then Adam woke up from his nap, which would probably be the most delightful thing he'd ever done. And the man said, this is now bone in my bones and flesh and my flesh, you shall be called woman. For she was taken out of a man like he's looking at Eve in all of her glory. Like God.
Good job.
Like God's been saying, this is good. This is good. This is Adam's way of saying, this is good. Right?
And then notice verse 24. It says, for this reason. Have you ever seen that there before? It's quoted at weddings when we do marital counseling and premarital counseling, post marital counseling, these are the two verses we go to. Because you get this right, you get everything right, you get this wrong, you get everything wrong for this reason.
What reason? What reason? I just gave you all three reasons. Can I give them to you again? Because God's been spelling out the reasons.
Here's the reason number one is that your identity is rooted in the image of God. Reason number two is that your purpose is rooted in your gender. Reason number three is that your mission is rooted in establishing a godly family. For this reason. For these reasons, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
And the man and his wife are both naked and not ashamed. Now what God makes distinct. Satan always tries to blur male and female. He tries to blur it, right. Singles, you'll understand this.
You'll understand half of this when you're single. There's this push from the enemy to try to get you to be one with whomever you're dating. Hey, if we just share a phone bill, if we just move in together, if we just share a bed, if we just move in together, we can save money, we can kind of pretend that we're married even though we're not married. We can come together. We can handle this.
There's this push to come together. Singles, do you know what the push is after you become one? I don't know if I married the right one. I don't know. This isn't what I thought it was going to be.
There's a pull, because what happens in a marriage between a man and a wife when you give vows, you're not giving your vows to the priest or the pastor. You're giving your vows to God till death do you part. God, I will honor this other person. And we're not two individuals under the same roof. We are one.
And you're as one as one will ever be the moment you say, I do. And you can grow in oneness or you can fight it, but you're one for the rest of your life till one of you dies. That's marriage. Well, I didn't know it was going to be like this. That's why you take vows.
That's why you don't live together for six months before you get married. It doesn't help because oneness looks different and God sees you as one and even one. Peter three seven says, your prayers can be hindered if you're not fighting for oneness. So you walk down the aisle, you're two, you're two, you're two, you're two. You leave, you're one.
God sees you as one. And then the rest of your life, here's what you do. You fight for oneness because nobody knows the trouble that you're going to see in your marriage. It could be health problems, it could be financial problems, it could be child raising problems, it could be infertility problems, it can be bankruptcy. You don't know what's coming.
But if you try to fix that problem and get away from your oneness, it'll break you up. But if you fight for oneness, like, hey, this is a real issue, but together we're going to get through this. God will forge a depth of relationship you didn't even know was possible. Amen.
Yeah, but he's so different than me. Yes, he is. Fundamentally, he's totally different than you. It's not just anatomically. It's in every way.
Women, you're different than men, and men, you're different than women. And I can't believe I have to preach that having raised daughters and a son, they're different. They think different, and they should think different, because they are different. Fundamentally different. Men, you do not need to become effeminate to fit into society.
We need more godly, strong men than we've ever had before.
And women, you don't need to fit into society. We need the most godly, feminine women that we can ever possibly have. That's who God wants you to be.
And we can be equal in God's sight. But when you go to counselling, like, you know. But he doesn't understand me. She doesn't understand me. I've been married now almost 20 years.
My wife and I can go to a basketball game. We can go to a football game. We can go to a vacation. We can go do a play. We can go see anything.
And we come home and we unpack what we just saw. And I look at my wife, like, were we even in the same place? Like, I don't even remember any of that. And I'll tell her, this is the way it happens. She's like, it did not happen that way, let me tell you.
And I'm like, okay, fine. Because we see it different. That's the beauty of it. Your wife will never be like you. Guys and wives, your husbands will never be like you.
They won't speak like you or think like you. And they don't need to be. They need to be honoring to you. Amen. And we'll talk more about this as we go on.
But if marriage was only designed for your happiness, divorce would be all over the place. It wasn't. It was designed for your holiness, which, if you're going through a really rough patch, you're like, I don't know how I'm going to make it through. I'm like, well, you vowed to God that you wanted him to use this relationship to make you holy. Do you have any more opportunities to grow in holiness?
Oh, yeah, I got a ton. Great. Thank God for your marriage. It's the heavenly sandpaper you'd been praying for. But I want to tell you this, too.
I mean, you look at it, I mean, plants multiply but they don't marry. Animals mate, but they don't marry. God designed marriage as a beautiful thing. All marriages have hardships because you have two centers and you have two genders and you have two different family backgrounds, and you have two different areas of hurts and pains and everything else that you dealt with growing up and two different ways of seeing the world. And then you get together, and because you spent six months planning it and picking out a great cake, you think it's going to be awesome.
And you realize very quickly there's a lot of things we got to grow in, and there's a lot of things I've got to change and my spouse has got to change if we're really going to center on the lord here. Let me tell you something else too, because I feel the need to just say this, because for some of you here, I mean, even as you're hearing this, there's pain in your life. I know there's pain in your life, man. I know some of you, your faces, I can see it. And I want you to know something special.
And even the way that Jesus describes family in the Bible, it's interesting because in psalm 68 five, he said he'll be the father to the fatherless. I didn't have a good dad, but you have a really good dad if you're in Christ. Amen. Amen.
It's interesting. John 112 says that he gave us the right to become children of goddess. You know, we're in God's family. Romans 815 says, we've been adopted into his family. He uses language like that to say, you're part of my family.
And Jesus wanted us to know that spiritual relationships and that kind of church family in some ways is even deeper than a regular family. Remember when Jesus was being asked in Matthew chapter twelve? You know, they said, master, your mother and your brothers are outside seeking to speak to you. And Jesus said, in Matthew 1248, he said, who is my mother and who are my brothers? And stretching out his hand towards his disciples, he said, behold my mother and my brothers.
For whoever does the will of my father who is in heaven, he is my brother and my sister and my mother. What was he saying? He wasn't saying family is not important. What he was saying is spiritual connections in a family can sometimes be even deeper. So I don't really have a family.
Well, then be part of a church family with people that can go deep in the lord with you and help you and encourage you and bless you. Amen.
We'll talk more about it I mean, as we go on in this series, because there's a shattering of families that's happened in our culture. Sometimes it's not even your fault. Like, I didn't know. I didn't know. How would I have predicted that?
I didn't know. And here we are. And, you know, Malkatu says a guy hates divorce. He doesn't hate divorce just because of the pain that's caused during divorce. He doesn't just hate divorce because he hates seeing it.
He set a standard and you broke it. I mean, we break God's standards all the time. What God hates about divorce is God brought the family together so that you could produce offspring and advance the kingdom. And one more thing I know I need to say about this because I'll get letters say, well, Pastor Jeff, we wanted to have kids, but we're infertile. We can't do it.
Okay, I'm going to tell you two things about that. Number one author, all throughout the Bible, God's the one that opens the womb. There are plenty of people in the Bible that couldn't get pregnant. Couldn't get pregnant, couldn't get pregnant, couldn't get pregnant. God said, okay, you're getting pregnant now.
They got pregnant about a year and a half ago. I stood here, I felt convicted before a sermon. I said, hey, for those of you in here, you're trying to get pregnant. You can't get pregnant. Let's just seek the Lord.
If you have the courage to stand today, I want to pray over you. We've had 19 babies in our church since that prayer.
God can open a womb. Does that mean God always opens a womb? No, because there's some of you I know that are close friends of mine, like, didn't open ours. That's okay. Then there's other options, too.
Keep your options open, because if God brought your family together to propagate the gospel, maybe adoption's in order, maybe fostering's in order. Maybe God's got unique plans for your life he didn't have for anybody else. That's fine, too. And it doesn't really matter what the world says. It's, what is God saying to you?
And his mandate when they came together as a couple is be fruitful and multiply. Nowhere in the Bible does it talk about birth control. It doesn't mean that birth control is necessarily wrong if it, you know, prevents a pregnancy. But once a pregnancy started, it's not birth control, it's murder. Okay, but I would say this, the general tenor of the scriptures is get married, have a family.
Have a big family. And use that family to propagate the gospel of Jesus Christ. Everywhere you go, it's a blessing. Children are a blessing. Now, this is something that I wish I would have heard when I was twelve.
This is something my wife and I, we got married a little later in life. My wife and I always wish we had more kids. Wish we had more kids. Wish we had more kids. And now if we do, I'll be preaching on the Abraham story.
But that's a whole nother thing. But there's something special about kids, if you understand. They're a blessing. They're not a burden, they're not a pain. They're the next generation.
And God loves children. So bless the children. Amen. So then he says this, he goes, okay, now that you're married, here's what I want you to do. I want you to subdue and I want you to rule the earth.
Back in Genesis, chapter one, verse 28, the second part, after he says, be fruitful and multiply, he goes, fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over that means have dominion. Make the earth subject to you. Rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Then God said, behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth and every tree which has fruit yielding seed, it shall be food for you. And to every beast of the earth and every bird of the sky and everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given you every green plant for food.
And it was so. So let me give you the fourth point. The dominion mandate starts with resources that are rooted in your relationship with God. Resources that are rooted in your relationship with God. Because I know some of you are like, well, if I get married and have a family, that's gonna be real expensive.
Yeah, it is. I was just reading a report this week that said the average child today in 2024 costs $13,000 a year. So you take that over 18 years, $234,000 a child. I can't afford that. You don't have to.
When you do things God's way, God provides. He provides. He may not provide in the way you want him to. He may not provide in all these different things. But if you're saying God, I prioritize my family, I'm prioritizing my wife, I'm prioritizing my husband, we're prioritizing our kids.
It doesn't mean you'll have everything you ever want. But you'll have what's needed to raise those children in the knowledge and admonition of the Lord. Just like God provided everything they needed to eat, God always provides for his kids. Don't get worked up about that. He does.
And then it's interesting here because Genesis 131 is one of my favorite scriptures in the whole Bible because now God saw all that he had made. It's not just day one through five, it's day six. And the six included human beings created in his image. And not only did he create man, he created woman on that day. Not only that, but there was a marriage on that day.
And God set everything up for success on that day. And God saw all that he had made, the family, the marriage. And behold, it was, what? Very good. Not just good, this is very good.
Because now I got image bearers bearing out my name, going on to generation. And there was evening and morning, the 6th day. Here's what I'm going to say. I mean, I know there's people here, like single women, like, just show me a guy like that. I'm being ready.
Let's go. Right? And there's guys here saying, I don't know. How do I know I'm at the right one? We'll talk about that, but just be the right one and tell the Lord, I believe your word and I want what you want.
And if you're in a marriage right now and you're like, this is hard, I get it, it can be hard in seasons. But then what you need to do is say, you know what? My spouse is created in the image of God and I'm created in the image of God. So I'm going to treat them as an image bearer and I'm going to appreciate them that they're different than me because they have a different gender than I have. And our mission is going to be to come together for the glory of God and see why God brought us together in oneness to propagate the gospel.
I mean, over the years as Kim and I have sat down and prayed, and I know her gifts, she knows mine, and I think we have a pretty good idea as to why God brought us together for such a time as this and what he wants to do in our life that's unique and different than what God would want to do in your marriage and what he'd want to do with you say, well, Pastor Jeff, I'm not even married. I don't even know what to do with this. Then find some people that are and bless them find kids of those families that are and go bless them. Go demonstrate to God that you're so for the family that you're looking for families to bless. And then God said, okay, if you're gonna bless other families, I'll bless you.
Right? Because this is the dominion mandate. We read it all the time, but we don't believe it. Be fruitful and multiply. I don't even want kids.
You have to take that up with the Lord. That's between you and the Lord. I can't tell you what the Lord is telling you, but I can tell you the general mandate for every single believer is be fruitful and multiply. It doesn't mean you're gonna be able to have kids. It doesn't mean you're gonna overcome fertility any more than it means when you're sick.
God's gonna heal every single person on this side of heaven. He doesn't do that, but his grace is bigger and he'll meet you where you're at. And I pray that where you felt conviction in this message, you just bring it before the Lord. He loves you. I'm teaching you today as much as a practitioner as I am a pastor, I'm still growing in this.
There's things here I did not know when I was twelve that I wish I would have knew when I was twelve. There's things I'm teaching you today I wish I would have known when I was a twelve year old boy that God gave me my gender because he wanted me to marry a godly woman, to have a family and that needed to be my focus. I didn't think that way. I thought about me and my career and what I wanted to do and hopefully there was a woman worthy of me. Not a good way to go through life.
Do you understand what I'm saying? I mean, this teaching is so under taught in our churches that we don't even really understand what God's going after. He craves the family because that's the backbone of everything God wants. That's why I'm for government doing what government's called to do. But I get really mad when government infringes upon what the family is supposed to do because God gave the family the mandate.
It's your family, it's your kids, and you get to choose what is best. And this is why God created you. This is why we're going to talk about family. This is why we're going to talk about it. And as we go, we'll talk about all the different things that have sabotaged families and hurt families.
But it be to blame you. And it won't be to hurt you. And it won't be to tell you what you did wrong. It'll be to show you what God wants to do, to redeem, to reorient and realign your life with his word, so that the days ahead of you are your best days you've had. Amen.
Because he loves you. He created you and he cares for you. And he loved you enough to send Jesus, who died for you and rose for you. Isn't it good to know he doesn't just die for all our past sins? That even while we're trying to figure all this out as singles, when we haven't done it right and married, says we haven't done it right?
And all his forgiveness is new. His mercies are new every single morning. And his mercy is new for you. Would you stand with me as we pray? Our Father in heaven, we give you praise, glory and honor.
We're privileged to call you our Father, that you're a good father, that you love the family, that you love us even in all of our inadequacies, Lord, that you're constantly doing things in and through us to grow your kingdom. Father, whether we're boys and girls, men or women, lord, let us prioritize the family because it's what you put your eyes on. It's what you established the first week of creation so that your name could be made famous. Lord, do a work in our heart here today as we stand with arms high and heart abandoned to the one who gave it all. We love you, Jesus, and we bless you and thank you.
Do a work in our hearts in Jesus name. Amen and amen. Could we give God praise for his word?