...As the young men who are looking up to this fellow [Andrew Tate], as they are acting out, as they're belittling the woman around them. And I, I, I wanna just pause it here for a moment, that Andrew Tate is not the cause of the issues between genders in our world, but he's actually a symptom of it. Okay? if you, if you don't know who he is I guess you could say that the guy is a, a vulgar player. That he belittles woman, that he considers manhood being a user, an abuser someone that just pursues wealth. He's a complete narcissist. I, I think that encapsulates his message on social media fairly well.
But at the same time, I think we need to understand: he didn't create this situation, right? We live in a world that has many men, and, and one of the reasons why he's become so popular, popular with younger boys, and men honestly, is, is because, we're trying to raise them in a culture, in a society that essentially tells them it's wrong to be a guy, right? And this isn't new. In fact, it, it think of like any sitcom from like the seventies on, and what do you have? You've got the bumbling, idiotic, overweight, drunkard of a husband who everyone likes to make fun of.
And in fact, we see this too in kids' shows. Now, any of you ever watch Peppa Pig with your kids? Such an obnoxious show, but it's better than Cayo. I will say that. All right? Yeah. But there's, in fact, I, I could get behind Peppa Pig, except for one thing, and it's the chubby, moronic daddy pig. He says, the stupidest things comes up with the most basic ideas, and then he snorts and everybody goes, oh, daddy pig. And laughs at him. This is the way that media likes to portray men, right? We're either evil, overbearing, or we're bumbling idiots.
Now, that said, men have earned these titles at times. We have men in their thirties and forties who don't provide for their families, who don't work hard to connect with their kids, but instead absorb themselves in alternate realities on video games for hours on end. And listen, if you like video games, good on you. But is it consuming you? We also see things like the, the recent rise of the #Metoo movement. Which again, stems out of years, if not generations of rampant abuse of men onto those who are, who are under them, onto to woman in in media industries and in the corporate world. We see all these things right there. There's these divisions, and it seems like, you know, you, you'd think that over the last hundred years with the, the movement for equality, gender equality in all of these things, right? That, that we would see some sort of equality. But really what I I see is just a continued division between the sexes and, and it extends sometimes. Like, I'll, I'll go to a conference sometimes and there'll be a female pastor there, and she'll start talking about how, you know, lightheartedly, how all the, the male pastors have messed up the church, yada, yada, yada. And everyone's like, oh, that's so funny. Yeah, you're right.
But at the same time, I mean, look at so many of the churches out there that are still trying to, to tell women to know their place, right? Like, what is going on? We live in a world now, and I think this is go, this is a long time, but it's not what we see as the ideal in scripture. We live in a world where for a man and a woman just to be friends, it's instantly sexualized. Have you noticed that? Like, you can't just, you can't just be friends because obviously one of you is like, super attracted to the other one, and the other one just hasn't figured it out yet. You know what I mean?
And yet, what do we, what do we see? We see Jesus, some of his closest friends are his female followers. He sees, you know, we see Mary and Martha and his friend Lazarus. They're all together, and they're, they're hanging out (appropriately, mind you). There's division, there's putting people down, and it goes both ways. But the Bible, I believe, shows us that division was not God's original purpose, nor is it something ever meant to exist within the church. Heavenly Father, today, I ask that as we look at perhaps this rather crass title that I've given for the, the shock and awe, Lord, as we look over the next few weeks at, at cultivating relationships that don't suck. Lord, I ask that you would really help us to, to become people who grab ahold of the fact that you created us as relational beings who are supposed to be in relationship with one another, and with you, that you are the ultimate example of relationship, and that you have given us so much wisdom in the scripture for how we can have healthy relationships.
So, Jesus, today I ask that you will open our hearts to receive whatever it is that you want to whisper into our minds and our souls. And God, I ask that you'll take these feeble human words that I'm about to speak, and that you'll make them something worthwhile through the power of your Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name. Amen. I have three really brief things I wanna highlight for us, all right? In this message about man and woman, and the first one, I think anybody that went to Sunday school growing up or anything like that should be able to get their heads around this. And that is that men and women were both created in God's image, right? Can can we agree on that? Right? if, if you go actually to, to the, the first Bible verse here we'll see that at creation, God said, let us make human beings in our image to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground. So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them. (Gen 1:26-27 NLT)
I don't see any division here, do you? I don't see any kind of subjugation or anything like that. Here. I see that male and female are created in the image of God as imagers of the presence and rule of God on earth. What I also see in scripture is that when we have a exclusion of one sex versus the other, God says, it's not good, right? He'd only created man at the very beginning, and he says, it is not good for the man to be alone. I'll make a helper who is just right for him. (Gen 2:18) And listen, I I, I know that a lot of people, we think it's really funny to thing say things like, you know, yeah, God created man. And he went, oh, that's not good. So he created Human 2.0 and he got it right the second time with woman. Have you ever heard that joke? And we all laugh, but I want you to, to consider that while a joke can be funny, when it adds to the, the, the bulk of what young people especially are getting from society around them, what could be funny actually feeds into a negative thought pattern. And it hurts.
Because do you really think that God made man and went, oops, I messed up. I guess I better revise my word? The all powerful, all knowing God who exists outside of time, who has perfect foreknowledge of all that will happen. Do you really think he made man and was like, oops, I guess I'll try again? No, it was always in his plan,
Because apart, we're not full. This verse has been a source of a lot of contention especially for women in the church. I don't know if you're aware of that. But in, in the church, historically, as the cultural bias has pushed on people throughout history to, to say that, that the woman should just be silent and, and not do a whole lot, all of that, they've looked at this and said, see, God made the woman a helper for the man. Have you heard that before? She was a help meet. So she's, she's below him.
We're gonna, we're gonna dive just very briefly, surface level into some Hebrew here, all right? That word helper or help meet in scripture is the Hebrew word, azar. And azar carries the sense of help or relief. But when you do a, a search for the word azar, do you know what you find? You find that it is most often referring to one individual. Do you know who that is? God, azar most often refers to God. So you tell me, if you're using azar to say that women are subservient, that they're less, should you not then carry that logic to when God is my helper, he's less than me?
But obviously we wouldn't do that, right? Because that would be insane. So why is it that we apply this logic to this passage to push people down? We can't do that. A helper is who helps. It doesn't mean someone who's like, yes, sir, as you say, sir, how high do you want me to jump, sir? What I also see in scripture is that men and women were both esteemed in much of the early church despite cultural bias. In fact, the Bible is the most progressive text of its day. Now, a lot of us, it's not progressive enough. Pastor Stephen, it's like old-fashioned. It's falling behind. I wanna suggest to you, you know, we, we spend a lot of time in our culture looking at the Bible and struggling with passages that seem to say that women need to be quiet and subservient and submissive and all of these things.
But I think that we missed the larger picture. There's a, there's a big argument that, that we could look at that we don't have the time for, about how a persecuted church was trying to distance itself from behaviors that would cause issues for them. Imagine, if you will, a society that's already reeling with especially the rich upper class starting to dress and act. The, the woman in the rich upper class in Rome starting to dress and act in ways that culturally were untenable, very liberal, very free. It was actually kind of like the, the sixties of the first century that was going on here. And this was a, a huge social issue. And, and people would look at these, these new, this new wave of woman, and, and they would say like, anyone that buys into this type of thing is just off their rocker.
They were labeling people cults, and they were pushing back in society. And, and most considered it like completely un untoward. And, and so in this, suddenly you've got Christianity, which is coming in and proclaiming freedom and equality. And what we see in the historical record is that slaves and, and, and women, they actually began to grab a hold of this, and they started to push back. Well, you can imagine what that does in the society that's already kind of on the edge and is already looking at you going, Hey, you, you don't worship our, our emperor. You're, you're against all these different moral things that we think are totally okay. And so now you've got a church where people are starting to act out. So isn't it only natural that the one who said that he will become a, a Greek to the Greek and a Jew to the Jew, so that nothing stands in the way of reaching people with the love of Christ, that he would then begin to put prohibitions in place to make sure that the culture at large would focus on the gospel and not on the sudden freedom that people had?
And we focus on these things, and, and some of you, you're thinking, you know, in your upbringing, you're going Pastor Stephen, but it says so clearly, and you're right, it does. But then we also see things like this, and you can write these down, all right, but I, I'm not gonna read these. It would take too long. Acts 2:17. Peter stands up and he, he quotes the, the prophet Joel, and he talks about how in the last day, your sons and daughters will prophesy Acts 21:9, We're told that Phillips daughters are prophets, and that the church respects them and listens to them. Luke, his whole gospel actually looks at the role of women and actually celebrates Jesus's female followers. Luke 8:1-3, Luke describes the faithful woman who were following Jesus. And in fact, scripture makes it clear, you know, the only people who didn't abandon Jesus when he was at the cross were the ladies. Acts 18:24-26, we see Priscilla and Aquila, by the way, notice that Priscilla gets listed first. And, and we're told that this young preacher, this evangelist named Apollos, he's out there preaching the gospel with zeal, but he's not quite right on all the details. And so this couple, they take him aside and they correct him and teach him. But Pastor Stephen, doesn't the Bible say that a woman shouldn't teach a man
Huh? Romans 16:1 Paul commends Phoebe as a deacon.
And then in verse three of that same passage, he then again refers to Priscilla, an Acquia as his coworkers in the faith. Look at Mary and Martha, Jesus' friends his followers, and they're solidified for all history for all humanity in the Bible by name. You know how few people get their names in that book? Men and women were both esteemed in much of the early church. And yeah, the culture, the bias of the culture was oftentimes, "yeah, but they're women." In fact, the, the culture of the Jewish people was the woman stays home. The man can divorce the woman if she burns the soup, all that kind of stuff. Didn't, you know that, that's one of the reasons why Jesus brought that prohibition against why he called divorce and remarriage. Adultery was cuz there was actually a problem in certain schools of Jewish thinking where the men would go around and, and they would marry someone and she wouldn't live up to his expectations. So he'd divorce her, find another wife. It was like, it was like a legal way of getting to sleep around basically. Nevermind the fact that in their culture, marriage was actually protection for a woman and people were looking for a woman who was pure and undefiled and so to marry and divorce was actually a kind of condemnation on that woman's future.
But that's another message. Men and women were both esteemed in much of the early church, despite cultural bias. Here's the big one that we need to understand for today, men and women are united and equal in Christ. Paul wrote to the church in Galatia, he said, "and now that the way of faith has come, we no, no longer need the law as our guardian for you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism, have put on Christ like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or gentile slave or free male and female for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs in God's promise to Abraham belongs to you. That promise that he will bless the nations belongs to you" (Gal 3:25-29 NLT).
Suddenly we see classes that were esteemed and classes that were pushed down, listed together as, "no, no, no, these boundaries, they don't exist. These classes are gone." Don't, don't, don't you see in Christ, you are not any more important than the next person because of your skillset. You're not any more important than the next person because of your job or how much money you have, you're not any more important than the person next to you because of the color of your skin or your upbringing because somebody's your boss and you're their employee because you're a male and she's a female. Doesn't matter. We walk in here and you don't get to come up to church leadership and go, well, Pastor, because I am a man and I employ three people at the church. This is what needs to happen. It's like, great, well, let's hear from the people that you employ as to whether we should even listen to you based on your character. You know, it doesn't matter. We're all on an even playing field. Christ died for all of us. And the same Holy Spirit fills all of us.
Pastor Stephen, what's your point? If we want relationships that don't suck between men and women, and today I'm not talking about the marriage relationship, that's next week, Valentine's weekend. All right? We're gonna talk about men and women in relationship and marriage next week. But this week If, if we want men and women to be able to interact together in ways that aren't lousy, without belittling one another, without power structures coming into play that push one sex or the other down, what needs to happen is we need to cling--hold to the gospel of Jesus Christ that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And that while we were still sinners, still actively rebelling and rejecting God, Christ died for us. Us--
not me, not a a few of us. For God loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but will have everlasting life. That's the gospel. That's the message. United in Christ. You wanna see a world not sure what to do with people. Take a structure that historically has actually tried to push woman down and turn it into a place where men and women do not belittle each other, but come into one another's aid where we're each other's helpers, each other's relief, calling on God in those times where we just want to say, "ah, woman or ah, men." And remembering that we're all brothers and sisters in Christ. Imagine what would happen if you're out there in the culture, a culture that says that you need to, you know, push against those white men,
and you began to say, I don't think that the color of someone's skin or the gender that they're born is a reason to judge someone that way. We're all equal. We're all in this together. Imagine the reason that we could speak into the world if we began to respect one another, love each other; not try to climb on top of each other to get ahead in life. But if we could actually just say, let's be partners, let's be friends, let's be coworkers, and let's stand up for one another. I think that's an ethic that not only reflects the Bible and God's attitude towards humanity, but I think it also will make some people out there really uncomfortable. They might even call us weird. It's good if they call us weird, because if we look exactly like them, if we don't do anything different, then why would they ever think it worthwhile to come through the doors? What's the point of Jesus if those that follow him are exactly like those who don't? If we have exactly the same hangups as those who don't, if we're having exactly the same arguments as those who don't, or what's the point of it all? Even a culture where women are, are trying to gain
equality in places where they haven't, the church actively stands opposed to that. Food for thought. Here's what I want you to do this week. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you if your actions and attitudes towards men and women show an understanding of equality or of division. The reason I phrased it this way and didn't just say like the opposite sex is because quite often our attitudes towards our own sex can actually be worldly. We can be our own worst enemy, right? We can try to push our own sex down or try to elevate our own sex above others. So ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you if your actions and attitudes towards men and women show an understanding of equality or division. And then I'm gonna leave the next step after that to you. Ask the spirit what your first step should be. Maybe he convicts you immediately on something. Maybe it's just an awareness that comes to mind. Or maybe you just decide, eh. Listen, that's up to you. Right? I'm not your, I'm not your father, I'm not your mother.
So we gotta take some responsibility for our own actions. We gotta take some responsibility for our own accountability. And so perhaps the thing that you want to do is you want to grab or or text a couple of people from our church this coming week here and you wanna say, Hey, I need some accountability. God revealed such and such to me, and I need you to, to help me stay the course. If, if you hear me say such and such, or use this type of attitude, this type of language, will you call me on it?
We don't like accountability in our culture unless it's somebody else being held accountable. But let me tell you that the biggest gains and strides we can have in life is if we willingly enter into accountability in the things that God is moving in our hearts.
Lord Jesus today, I just asked that despite perhaps the the discomfort of talking about these sorts of things and, and revealing the attitudes that are so prevalent and, and perhaps even making some of us uncomfortable because now we have to struggle with what almost appears to be a contradiction in scripture where some scriptures say one thing about women's roles and then other scriptures seem to show a different practice in, in the very church that was saying that we needed to do this thing. Lord, I asked that you would help us to navigate these things with your guidance, that we wouldn't just jump to conclusions that support our point of view and that we wouldn't jump to conclusions because Pastor Stephen said it was so. But Lord, that we would be thinking, spirit-led people and that we would be people who can make a positive impact on one another and on this world.
Right now, why don't you get a jump on asking the Spirit to reveal your actions and attitudes to you and I I just wanna briefly talk to anyone online or in person who maybe you haven't given your life to Jesus, but something in your spirit or or in your stomach or your heart, however you wanna describe it, is, is stirring is, is twisted up. Maybe there's, there's a thought in your mind that says, I think I believe this stuff that you were talking about, what Jesus did for me and man, the idea of of being equal, that's profound. I want that. I want you to know that this is open to everyone, but that giving your life to Jesus is just that. It's giving your life over for too long. A lot of us Christians hoping to get people to raise their hands and say a prayer have said, let's ask Jesus into your heart. Let's make him a part of your life. No, no, no. The Christian life is making Jesus your life, and there'll be difficult circumstances. But let me tell you, in those difficult circumstances, you will not be alone. You can be by yourself and you're not by yourself.
You can be in a crowded room with everyone ignoring you, but there's one who's always whispering into your heart. So right now, I'm gonna lead us in a prayer. And if, if you pray this prayer with the intention of following Jesus, of accepting his gift of love and life and freedom, then I wanna welcome you after you pray this prayer. Really, if you intend to, it means that the change has already happened in your heart. I wanna welcome you to the family of God. And so let's pray this together.
Heavenly Father, I don't wanna be alone. I don't want to be judged and I don't wanna be judging others. I wanna be a part of your family. So today I give you my life. Please give me yours. Fill me with your Holy Spirit and transform me by your love. I commit my whole life to serving you. And I thank you that when I mess it all up, you don't abandon me, but you lift me back up onto my feet. I pray these things in Jesus' Name. Amen.
If you prayed that prayer from your heart today and gave your life to Jesus, first of all, welcome to the family of God. You have taken the first step on a life transforming journey. And we wanna make sure that we can get resources into your hands and connect you to, to people and organizations that can help you on this journey that you're embarking on. And so in-house, you'll see that card that in the seat back in front of you that says, connect with us. Make sure you fill that out and check off. I just gave my life to Jesus. Give that to Bobby, who's going to be in, in the back there welcoming you, or I should say sending you off, blessing you as you go. And she's got a, a Bible and some materials that she'd like to get into your hands. Online, you can go to www.ascc.life and tap on. I've just decided to follow Jesus Christ. I just gave my life to to Jesus. And fill out that form and will be in contact with you as well about resources that you may need and any guidance that you may desire.
But everyone, I I just want to encourage you, let's live this out this week. Can we do that? And be sure that you come next week as you're getting ready for, or, I, I don't know how the dates work out. I think it's before Valentine's Day that we come back together. 12Th. Yeah. So as you're getting ready for Valentine's Day, maybe you're not someone in a relationship, maybe you are, maybe you look at Valentine's Day as like, ugh, it's just another thing that I have to do for my spouse. Let's recharge your relationship next Sunday and maybe solve some problems that that are underlying things. Maybe that'll bring some romance back in. And if you're not married, don't skip out on it because it's just generally how men and women in a relationship together should behave and act towards one another. And so if you have any intention ever of dating, getting engaged, getting married, interacting with people of the opposite sex in any kind of romantic way, it should be helpful.