According to the Scriptures

Guest (Male): with the present concern and where it leads. Here's Pastor Damian Kyle.

Damian Kyle: What happens when your views are not anchored in thinking? They're not anchored in objective facts. They're not anchored in reality. But they are then anchored instead in something that is as subjective as our feelings. Nothing in life can operate in this way where feelings are given the preeminence over facts and over reality.

Damian Kyle: Feelings drive the decision-making of so many. Not only on a national level, but on a personal one as well. But there's a far better and proven way to go. And we'll hear about it today on According to the Scriptures with Pastor Damian Kyle.

As we continue in our series Gleanings from Genesis, we'll present a truth that has now become controversial. God made us male and female. Here now to make the case for this critical truth we began to consider last time is Pastor Damian.

Martina Navratilova, world-famous tennis champion, who is a very outspoken advocate for the homosexual community and a lesbian herself. All of this forced her to speak out in the unfairness of all of it. She said to put the argument at its most basic. A man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organization is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune and reverse his decision and go back to making babies if he so desires. It's insane and it's cheating.

Independent of Martina, there is tremendous tension within the LGBTQ movement and specifically between homosexuals and transgenders within that umbrella. This last spring in many, many places, you might have followed it yourself and seen it in the news. You had transgender women, men who identified as women, absolutely crush and dominate women.

In high school track and field events. And setting long-standing, breaking long-standing records, setting new records as they made this self-identification and then moved into that realm. And I think to myself, imagine training so hard as a young woman for years and you finally reached the pinnacle of your sport and a state meet and a chance to win a gold medal and then watching a biological male settle down into the starting blocks next to you to begin the sprint.

Even more recently, a transgender United States weightlifter, a man who identifying as a woman, he won nine medals. At the 100% raw competition on April 27th, 2019. And in the course of doing that, he smashed world records in many of those categories. And then thanked everybody for their support and their congratulations.

Fortunately, in a rare moment of sanity occurred when his mandatory urine sample came back revealing him to be male. And the governing body explained their decision to strip him of those records and and the medals by declaring our rules and the basis of separating genders for competition are based on physiological classification rather than identification.

And whether they know that they're quoting the Bible or going back to Genesis chapter 1, I don't know. But they could see trouble afar off and the absolute confusion and chaos that is on the other path. And declared the basis and rules of separating genders for competition are based on physiological classification rather than identification.

One commentator concerning all of this stated, Al Mohler in his very wonderful podcast, by the way, for any Christian to listen to that's interested in the news, in listening to it and processing it in a sanctified way, it's called The Briefing. He declared succinctly the way that he does of this trend, it's come down to a choice. You can have the transgender revolution or women's sports, but you cannot have both.

And that is the truth of the matter. And all of this chaos is of course coming to an Olympics or sporting event near you. There is also a significant number of feminists in America and in the United Kingdom. Feminists are traditionally not great advocates for God or for Christianity or for the Bible. Who are raising their voice and are staunchly anti-transgender because of the concern that this will ultimately lead to female erasure. That is the idea that being a woman actually means something.

That women are unique, and in their thinking, and certainly they're right about it. It trivializes what it means to be a woman. And one of these feminists declared interestingly, in a hearing as changes were being planned in the Scottish government's gender recognition act, she declared, women's rights exist because women are born female. Not because they identify with femininity, because they wear dresses, because they wear makeup.

That statement that she made, women are born female. I wonder if she realizes how close to the biblical account of creation. She is in making a statement like that. The opposition on the part of feminists towards this transgender movement. It also has it at its core a tremendous concern for the safety of women. That women feel safe and women need environments that are reserved solely for women and that a male of any degree or any category introduced into that environment completely changes the dynamics and changes a woman's ability to feel safe in that environment.

For instance, women's restrooms, women's locker rooms, women's showers, women's shelters, these places need to be women's prisons, places that are safe places for women, which means only women. As defined by anatomy and chromosomes should be allowed. And this is their stand. Even today, on a little bit of a lighter note, even today reveal cakes are now under attack. A reveal cake is this fairly recent tradition of announcing the sex of the baby that you're going to deliver after you've discovered the sex. By way of a sonogram who announced their sex by way of a cake.

And so everyone comes to this party, this reveal cake party, they're wondering what the sex of the baby is and what the sex of the baby is going to be revealed. And finally, the mother takes the cake and the cake is covered with the same color frosting all over the top of it and then she finally cuts into the cake and pulls a piece out and the cake underneath the frosting is either blue or pink and there you have a fun way of celebrating and letting everybody know the sex of the baby.

But the complaint today by some transgender advocates is that just because the child may be born male or female biologically. It doesn't mean that they will choose to identify with that sex later. And that in having even parties like this, you're putting undue pressure upon the child to conform to the biological sex as opposed to their chosen sex later in life. All of this, of course, is going to require a complete overhaul of language in order to accommodate it. So you have gender-specific pronouns like him or her, will have to go and be replaced by there, however uncomfortable or awkward language becomes in order to accommodate this.

And you see the chaos that is going out in all directions related to this. The Bible records male and female, He created them. And moving away from the simplicity of how our Creator created us and how we can safely view ourselves results in chaos and in disaster. Not the least of which on an individual basis.

It was in this context, in the creation of man, male and female, created he them. It was in that context that God declared concerning mankind that this was very, very good. In the fallenness of the world and mankind after the fall of Adam and Eve. The solution to any problem that we face in life or any tendency that we have within our own particular bodies. The solution to anything, including sexual confusion and identity is not to run further down the path of fallenness in order to find a resolution to our problems and to our identity problems.

The safe thing to do is to go back to what God described as good and indeed very good, embrace that and then begin to work out our problems from there. And when we do that, we will know that we're doing so from a very, very firm footing.

All of this brings to mind the old adage that exhorts us, before you tear down a wall, you might want to ask why it was built to begin with. What is it protecting you from and what is it intended to protect you from? And that is never more important than when a society is determined to tear down a wall of safety that God has introduced into human history. But we don't live in that culture anymore. We don't live in a culture that asks those kind of questions anymore. That asks, where does this lead? Where does all of this take us? Where does all of this end?

Now today, what we do is we simply feel and then we do what our feelings tell us to do with the absolute supreme confidence that somehow it will all work itself out. Until one day you push across a line when it doesn't and that line exists. It reminds me of another old saying and that is that they become so broadminded that all of their brains fell out. And I don't mean that as a cheap shot. I don't mean it as a cheap shot.

But this is what happens when your views are not anchored in thinking, they're not anchored in objective facts, they're not anchored in reality. But they are then anchored instead in something that is as subjective as our feelings. Nothing in life can operate in this way where feelings are given the preeminence over facts and over reality.

In a society that would take that very premise and apply it to our highways, it would never be safe to drive on the roads or construct a building or perform a surgery or play a sport. Everything would devolve into chaos and danger if we applied the same criteria that we're applying to sexual identification to every other sphere of life. And if something is true, it is true in every sphere of life.

Every single human being is broken. Every one of us. We are fallen and we are sinful as a result of that fall, that sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And every single one of us in this room in the world, we need a savior. We need a relationship with God to bring meaning and hope and holiness and stability into our lives.

And if you are homosexual or identify as transgender or as any of the other 57 categories of gender that are in play today in our culture. In this time in human history. It's important for you to realize that you are more broken sexually, more distant from the divine ideal in the area of sexuality than the heterosexual person. And thus, most in need of turning to God and embracing Him and His truth on this issue.

For your own safety and for your own stability, not only spiritually, but emotionally, and mentally, and and physically. And yet statistically, it shows that you will be the least likely person to do so. And the question is why.

And I think it's because generally, you count God an enemy, an enemy for simply telling you the truth about an area of your life that you're not willing to accept at this point in time. It's not an unusual response in people to anything. The Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the churches in the region of Galatia. He said, have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth? He's talking to Christians about Christian things. And they counted him an enemy for telling them the truth.

Jesus declared to the Jewish religious leaders of his day. He said, but because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Every single one of us in the world has areas in our lives that we do not want to hear the truth about. We do not want to hear God's truth about it. None of us are alone in that emotion or that that feeling.

But when I refuse God's voice into any area of my life, it's important to realize that it is because I am trying to protect something that is dark. And to protect something that is a danger to me, a spiritual danger to me. Something that will keep me from ever trusting in Jesus for the forgiveness of my sins and then being saved. Which is the greatest danger that a person faces in life. But it is also a danger to me physically and emotionally and and mentally.

Jesus declared, he said, and this is the condemnation that light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. It is Jesus who said that. Jesus who is the greatest friend that we can ever have in life. But he'll always tell us the truth.

And if your sexual identity drives you away from God and it drives you away from the word of God in order to practice it and in order to enjoy it without conviction. Then it is a darkness and it is not the way that we have been created to live. And it is not the way to live and one day it will bite us. Whatever the issue is.

And what you need to know and what you need to do is to trust Jesus to make Him your savior and to make Him your Lord today and to surrender the entirety of your life to Him. With all of your confusion, with all of your problems, with all of your messed-upness, with all of the emotion that you feel and all of it, all of what you are and you aren't, and give your life to the Lord. And make yourself His project. Not your project. Not the project of this age where everyone is experimenting so freely and so recklessly.

Turn to God and become His project. And you won't be disappointed for doing so. Because God is eager to take you on as a project, and He alone in this world is greater than every problem we have and every problem that we will ever bring to Him. And we all have big problems that we bring to Him. It doesn't mean that all of our problems will go away. It doesn't mean that all of our feelings and all of our temptations will be gone.

But by His Holy Spirit and by His word, He will then be an anchor in our lives. To keep us safe in every area of our lives during the course of our life, our pilgrimage here in this world until all of this fallenness that is within us and is around us finally gives way to eternal glory and eternal perfection. And then God getting us from this point to that point. He will never leave us and He will never forsake us.

We sang this morning about His faithfulness. How unfailing it is. And it is always so, whatever we bring to Him and need Him to be in terms of our lives. Personally, I am genuinely sorry. I think about my own life. I think about all of the things that I have to deal with, all of the hang-ups that I have as a descendant of Adam and Eve, all of the goofiness that is inside of me and all of the brokenness that is there.

And from that, I am genuinely sorry for the pain and the confusion and the rejection that a transgender or anyone else dealing with these kind of issues that they face in their life that most of us do not. I cannot imagine what it must be like. But the solution is never found in rejecting God and in rejecting His truth. But in surrendering to Him and drawing near to Him.

And you don't want to merely take my word for it. But listen to Jesus's call to you. And more than a call, His promise to you. In Matthew chapter 11 verse 28. He said, come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart. And you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Someone might listen to this today and say, you know, pastor, the sexual revolution as it began in the 1960s, it is so much more momentum today. I don't think anything you've said today is going to put any kind of a dent in it at all. And I understand that. But this morning, I have no intention of speaking to a movement. I want to speak to an individual. To speak to anyone who is in the middle of the chaos and the confusion of all of this and says, I'm not interested in a movement here. I want to know what will bring order and safety and sanity and a foundation into my life. And that's the person that I want to speak to.

I believe that God will meet anyone exactly where we are and then save us. And then conform us into the image of Christ.

Guest (Male): Good news Pastor Damian Kyle has offered up today. Jesus loves and will save. He died and rose again to provide this salvation to any who would turn to Him. If you've yet to do so, we trust you'll do so right now. And thank you for listening to According to the Scriptures.

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And join us each day as we go through Genesis with Pastor Damian Kyle here on according to the scriptures. This program is presented by Calvary Chapel Modesto.