The Sufficiency of Scriptures for Manhood and Womanhood

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches welcomes Vote BACAM with the message the sufficiency of Scripture for manhood and womanhood. My goal here this morning is to deal with this issue of biblical manhood and womanhood, but to do it from a twofold perspective. One is to deal with the expositional issue of what the Bible has to say about manhood and womanhood. However, underlying that is this opposition to biblical manhood and womanhood that has to be addressed. So what we'll do is we'll sort of set out the opposition. We'll look at the opposition and where the opposition comes from, what the opposition has done, has wrought, and has accomplished even among believers, and then look at the importance of proper exposition on these particular issues in light of the opposition. And we're going to do all that in forty five minutes, so you have to listen fast, amen. All right, So we talk about the difference between boys and girls, and there is a difference between boys and girls. That seems like a harmless statement, right, the difference between boys and girls. But that very concept itself is under attack, as there are those who increasingly want to argue for not just the similarities, but the sameness of boys and girls with very few exceptions. And we'll talk about that. But we have to understand the effects of feminism on our view of manhood and womanhood. And when I talk about feminism, many people have a picture in their mind of, you know, what feminism is, what feminism looks like, and we will we'll talk about classic feminism, we'll talk about Gloria Steinem and some of the views of those individuals. But there is a more subtle version of that feminism. And here's why kindergarten through twelfth grade we spend fourteen thousand instructional hours in school. Let me say that again. Kindergarten through twelfth grade, we spend fourteen thousand instructional hours in school. Those fourteen thousand instructional hours are dominated if we go to government schools, and most of us in here went to government schools. Even if our children are not going to government schools, most of us went to government schools. And oftentimes when I say that, you know, people say, because I listen, I make no apologies about this. I believe it is wrong for Christian parents to send their children to the government for their education. I believe it's wrong. I do not buy this educational Antinomianism that says, oh, well, you know, public school, private school, homeschool, whatever the Lord tells you to do. Dug dealt with that last night, didn't he whatever the Lord tells you to do? With the Lord's telling me, what does that mean? And how is that biblical epistemology. It is not biblical epistemology. What has the Lord said in his word? And for a Christian parent to send their child to the government, especially this anti Christian government for their education, is biblically indefensible. There is no biblical argument for it, other than perhaps those who you know, rip Matthew five out of its context and talk about going to be salt and light. Okay, we need a whole another session just for that. But suffice it to say, that's not what Jesus was teaching. When he's talking about salt in life. He's not trying to talk about educational choices. There amen somebody, but here's what you need to know. And there are people who will say, well, you know, you went to the government schools and you're okay, you shouldn't know me if you did, you know, I'm not okay. And the fact that you think I'm okay is a good indicator to me that you're not okay, because if you were okay, you'd never say that I was okay. You just really wouldn't. There's no way in the world. So I'm not okay and you're not okay, and that's not okay. And here's one of the areas where we're not okay. We've all been indoctrinated in feminism. Now for the most part, Christians will not voice the you know, sort of radical feminist views of the sixties. We hear it in its ugliest form and we want nothing to do with it. However, there is this form. This is what it looks like in church, or we basically say women usurp the authority of men because men nowadays just won't stand up. That's soft feminism, that's Christian feminism. That's evangelical conservative feminism being disguised in the church. Oh no, no, no, we're not feminists. Men just won't step up to the plate. We're not feminists. Ignoring several issues in that one statement, like issue number one one of the reasons that women are stepping up is because we feminize the church and its ministries. Can't say men, you ought to say ouch, we feminize the church and its ministries. Well, one of the reasons that women are stepping up is because we've feminized men, and when women assert themselves in certain settings, men sort of fade to the background rather than compete with women. If you've ever been on a college campus in recent days and been involved in any college campus ministry in the last twenty years, you know this. Nobody has to tell you this. You just go to the local college, and you go to the local college Christian ministry, and you walk in there and ask them to show you pictures of their leaders the over women, majority of them will be female. Why because men won't step up. No, because these men have been feminized, that ministry has been feminized, and because once these women begin to establish themselves within that leadership, these feminized men will always back away as opposed to addressing, contradicting, or confronting any of those issues from a biblical perspective. So this is soft feminism and it's also a blatant lie. This is not why women have usurped the roles and authority of men. It was not that. Somehow in the nineteen sixties, you know, Friedman and Steinem and these radical feminists looked out and said, you know what, I just don't understand. Back earlier on, men just stepped up and fulfilled their roles. But here in the nineteen sixties, they're just not doing what they used to do. I think we better is that. No, that's not what they were doing. The radical feminists were not responding to weak men. The radical feminists were actually responding to strong men. Listen here if you will. This is from Wynny McElroy and her book Marriage and the Family, An ideological Background, her paper to the sexually correct feminist Marriage oppresses women and the family breeds patriarchy. Both result from capitalism, which is a no no to the feminists. Because feminism is birthed out of Marxism. Happily married women are considered pathological and traitorous. To justify this blast of enmity, they point to the soaring rate of domestic violence, even though violence against women has not increased except in proportion to population growth. You heard that myth. It's just a response to all this rapidly increasing violence against women. How about this myth super Bowl Sunday. There's more violence against women on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day in the year. It's a blatant lie, it's completely untrue. It's an absolute myth. But it doesn't matter to the radical feminist if they can get away with it. She continues, Although the gender feminist view of marriage borders on the absurd, for example, housework as surplus value, it is key to understanding the depth of hatred they aim at heterosexual sex and men. This, in turn, is key to understanding the emotions that fuel sexual correctness. Folks, this is where feminism was born. It was not born from men being passive. It was born from men being men and a group of women, a very small group of women, mostly in academic settings, who determined in the nineteen sixties that they were fed up with it. They were fed up with marriage, they were fed up with patriarchy. And here's what they decided to do, the same thing radicals have always done. Takeover institutions of higher learning. Because if I have the universities today, I have the grade schools tomorrow because I'm training their teachers. And if I have the grade school tomorrow because I trained their teachers. I've got the entire society next week, because everyone will send their kids to me. That's how we've gotten to this place of radical feminism. This liberal feminist critique against the family began in the nineteen sixties. Friedman's pivotal work, The Feminine Mystique, was published in eighteen sixty three. Friedman argued that American women of that era were enslaved by domesticity and defined by their roles as mother and wife. Although she called the family Listen to This a comfortable concentration camp. As her view of the family a comfortable concentration camp, Friedman's goal was not to eliminate marriage. She merely wanted women to insist on more from life, for them to reach outside of marriage for fulfillment. Does this sound familiar? It does to any one of you, like me, who has a daughter, who's a young woman who's not off in college preparing to be a man, Because you get the questions, oh, really, how old are you? Nineteen? Really? Well, what are you doing? You are you? Are? You? Are you off a university? No, I'm living at home? Oh really, what are you going to do? Well? I'm hoping I'm gonna be a wife and mother one day. Yes, but yes, but what do you want to do? Where do those questions come from? Those questions come from, freedman, those questions come from radical feminism. That's where those questions come from. That's the source of it. And it's a softened version of what was happening in the nineteen sixties. Listen to this from Gloria steinem Patriarchy requires violence or the subliminal threat of violence, in order to maintain itself. The most dangerous situation for a woman is not an unknown man in the street, or even the enemy in wartime, but a husband or a lover in the isolation of their own home. But what do we say, Oh no, no, no, no no. Men just won't stand up. And that's why we see women usurping authority and usurping roles, folks, nothing could be further from the truth. That's a lie. Not not only is it a lie, it is a deceptive lie from the enemy. What is that deceptive lie given us? It has been the practical effects of feminism. We have masculinized, masculinized girls. I've said frequently we are no longer raising women, We are raising men who happen to be biologically capable of having children. Okay, we have masculinized our girls. We're no longer even scandalized by women, not just in the military and support roles as nurses and so on. No, we're no longer scandalized by women who are pilots of attack helicopters, women who are pilots of jet fighters, women who are fighting and being trained as front line soldiers and warriors. We're not scandalized by that. When we see the death toll coming back from Afghanistan and from Iraq, and it includes women, some of whom are mothers who have been ripped away from nursing babies to go to war, we're no longer even scandalized by it. Feminized boys, feminized boys, boys who are not masculine, who don't feel free to be masculine, boys who are on riddling because they won't be still in act like girls. Delayed and confused marriages, marriage being intentionally delayed more and more and more than ever before in history, marriage roles being confused as men and women. Instead of relying on the sufficiency of scripture and going back to God's word to figure out what our roles as husbands and wives and mothers and fathers are supposed to be. We try to negotiate those things among us and reinvent the wheel, so to speak. Plummeting birth rates. Closely related to that is abortion. By the way, why am I putting abortion in plumbting birth rates in the context of radical feminism. Remember, their goal is egalitarianism, no difference between boys and girls. But folks, what's the one difference that is undeniable between boys and girls? Especially when the two of them get together, one of them gets pregnant, the other one not so much so. If you really want egalitarianism and to eliminate the differences between men and women, one of the things you must do is allow, at least potentially for women to eliminate childbearing. It is a byproduct of radical feminism, gender confusion, an epidemic of unprotected women, normalization of single parent homes. We normalize. This is no longer a scandal even among staunch conservatives. I'm listening to a conservative, you know, a talk show, and I believe it was the Laura Ingram program. I'm listening to the Laura Ingram program. Laura Ingram, staunch conservative right wing you know somewhere to the right of Attila the Hunt, okay, and she had taken a little, you know, sabbatical from her radio program, and she came back to her radio program. Why because miss Laura, with her single self, had just gone and adopted another child. We're not scandalized by that. Used to be a time when we would weep if a child had to grow up in a quote unquote broken home. Now we celebrated on conservative radio programs normalization of single parent homes and the acceptance of homosexuality. And again, folks, I'm not talking about out there in the world. I'm talking about in here among us. Yes, there are some more radical streams of this, like, for example, Brian McLaren. Listen to Brian McLaren. This was in Christianity Today, which used to be a leading Christian publication. Now not so much leading and not so much Christian. Frankly, many of us don't know what we should think about homosexuality. We've heard all sides, but no position has yet won our confidence so that we can say it seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us. That alienates us from both the liberals and the conservatives, who seem to know exactly what we should think. He's talking about homosexuality. He's a pastor, he continues, Perhaps we need a five year moratorium on making pronouncements. In the meantime, we'll practice prayerful Christian dialogue, listening respectfully, disagreeing agreeably. When decisions need to be made, they'll be admittedly provisional. We'll keep our ears attuned to scholars in biblical studies, theology, ethics, psychology, genetics, sociology, and related feeling. He just gave up the farm, and he just told you why he's in error on this issue, because he puts ethicists, psychologists, geneticists, sociologist and other related fields on par with biblical scholars as to a determination of the nature of homosexuality. Then in five years, if we have clarity, we'll speak. If not, we'll set another five years for ongoing reflection. After all, many important issues in church history took centuries to figure out. Maybe this moratory would help us resist the wind of doctrine blowing furiously from the left and the right, so we can patiently wait for the wind of the spirit to set our courts. Best selling author Brian McLaren Brian McLaren I was in Northern Ireland at a pastor's conference recently. And at this pastor's conference in Northern Ireland, there were about one hundred pastors who came in for this pastor's conference. And you know about what's happening in the UK, you know that that's getting one hundred pastors together. By the way, about two thirds of them were Anglicans. Amen, Hallelujah, praised the Lord. And so here we are with these radical on fire, reformed Bible believing Anglicans doing this pastor's conference. Well, Brian McLaren, When Brian McLaren goes to the United Kingdom, there are barely buildings big enough to contain his crowds. They're in the thousands. They're in the thousands. And this guy's waiting on the Spirit to let him know whether or not we can make pronouncements about homosexuality. Help him, Jesus. The real defensive marriage. Everybody's talking about the defensive marriage and defensive marriage acts and all these sort of things that we need and that have to happen. There are all these people who are pushing for political action on the issue of marriage. And if we just mobilize Christians, well, newsflash. If we've got Christians who would much rather listen to Brian McLaren than any sort of biblical exs of Jesus, what's it gonna look like when they're mobilized? Amen? If the overwhelming majority of them have been indoctrinated by these radical leftists, gramsyon, neo Marxists, feminist educational institutions, what's it gonna look like when we mobilize Christians? The real defensive marriage is not about a political act, because we can pass any law want and marriage still not be defended from a biblical perspective unless we get to the issue of the sufficiency of Scripture in defining manhood, in defining womanhood, and in defining marriage. Listen to this statement from the Council on Biblical Manhood Womanhood. We're concerned not merely with the behavioral roles of men and women, but also with the underlying nature of manhood and womanhood themselves. Biblical truth and clarity in this matter are important because error and confusion over sexual identity leads to and here's the four things one marriage patterns that do not portray the relationship between Christ and the Church. And this is enough. This is why the marriage issue is important. That the marriage issue is important for a number of reasons. And there are other reasons. There are four of them that they articulate, but I want to pause on reason number one. Here's reason number one why we must defend the biblical doctrine of marriage and the biblical roles of men and women within the context of marriage. There are those who argue, oh, no, no, no, that's just old fashioned. No no, no, that's just hyper patriarchy. No no, no, it's just men who want to be in power and who want to be in control. Folks understand something. Jesus thought so highly of marriage that when he determined to paint a picture of what the relationship between himself and his church looks like, he pointed to the earthly institution of marriage between a man and a woman as a picture of the gospel relationship between himself and the church. So, if we are not fighting for an appropriate understanding and the biblical understanding of what marriage is, here's what we're saying. I'm okay with the perversion of the Gospel, and I'm not. I'm not okay with the perversion of the Gospel. So my role as a husband if it's about anything must first and foremost be about my passionate desire to walk and to live, and to conduct myself as the living, breathing example that the Bible says. My role is of the love that Christ has for his church, the kind of love that led him to the cross on behalf of his bride. That's my goal for my wife. If her goal ultimately is to please me or to please those who look in on our marriage, she is an idolatry. Why because ultimately, marriage and the role of a woman in the context of marriage is about portraying her portion of that relationship between Jesus Christ and his church. So when we begin to play fast and loose with the text, and those of you who are familiar with the debate that I have with Margaret Feinberg on CNN No Less over this issue, you know that that's exactly the line that I use. She's playing fast and loose with the text. A problem with Margaret Finberg was not a political one. A problem with her is related to the Gospel, because if we start to redefine the role of husbands and the role of wives in the context of marriage, we're messing with the Gospel. Because it is a living, breathing portrait and portrayal and proclamation of the relationship between Jesus Christ and his church. That's why this is important. Secondly, parenting practices that do not train boys to be masculine and girls to be feminine. Why is this important? Is this important just because when we look out we want to see boys who look masculine, or when we look out we want to see girls who look feminine. No, it goes back to reason number one. Boys have to be masculine. Why because they turn into husbands who are to portray the relationship and love that Christ has for his bride the church. Girls are to be feminine because why they become wives and they're to portray their role in this drama and this picture of the relationship that the church has with Jesus Christ. That's why it's important, among other things. Thirdly, homosexual tendencies and increasing attempts to justify homosexual alliances. Homosexual tendencies and increasing attempts to justify homosexual alliances. Fourthly, patterns of unbiblical female leadership in the church that reflect and promote the confusion over the true meaning of manhood and womanhood folks, women in leadership in churches is not about really what we believe about women's abilities. It's not about what we believe about women's desires and passions or anything else. It's about our understanding of the sufficiency of scripture. That's what it boils down to. It's about our understanding of the sufficiency of scripture. Because when we argue for female leadership in the church, and we'll deal with some of these if we have time to get to some of these passages. When people are arguing for female leadership in the church. Here are the two major tacts that are taken. Number one, there is an exegetical tact that's taken, and the exogenical tact goes to passages of scripture and reinterprets those passages of scripture. For example, you know there's no longer male or female and things of this nature, and Colossians three twenty eight. We'll go there and take passages like that, reinterpret those passages in order to make room for female leadership within the context of the church, particularly female elders and female pastors in the context of the church. Well, that's a problem because we're going to the root of the sufficiency of scripture. Well, what's the other tack. The other tack is this, Well, if a woman feels called to it, and a woman happens to be gifted for it, how can we deny her? Well, guess what you've just done. You've undermined the sufficiency of scripture at the other extreme. On the one extreme, we can interpret the scripture anyway we wish in order to get to our desired end. On the other extreme, the scriptures don't matter if you've got passion and gifts. Passion in gifts overwrite the scriptures. I hear this all the time. So what if a woman has a passion for Oh, what if I have a passion for polygamy? Does that make it Okay? That's good. I got a passion for it. Man, it's just multiple wives. It's a passion. Well do you feel like you're gifted? I mean, yeah, man, I feel like you know I can Yeah, I'm gifted in that regard. Come on, what's the deal. I have passion, I have gifts. You see, we laugh, But when it comes to the female pastor, we're not laughing anymore. She's got passion, she's got gifts. That's more important. Than what the Bible says. By the way, it's easier to argue against a war in leadership and a church than it is to argue against polygamy. I mean exogetically. It is as far more straightforward evidence against women being in leadership in church and having authority over a man or over a man then there is against polygamy, just straight out, much easier argument. But on the one it's so absurd that we laugh. On the other, we're so uncomfortable that in most rooms you could hear pindrop, even among Christians. When you stand and speak authoritatively on this issue, it's in a cavan on marriage in its defense and why it's important. Moses now relates that marriage was divinely instituted, which is especially useful to be known for since Adam did not take a wife to himself at his own will, but received her as offered and appropriated to him by God. The sanctity of marriage hence more clearly appears because we recognize God as its author. The more Satan has endeavored to dishonor marriage, the more we should vindicate it from all reproach and abuse, that it may receive its due reverence. Now with that backdrop, and again we went through that quickly. But with that backdrop, let's do a LITTLECS of Jesus here, and let's deal with some of the feminist arguments that have even crept into the church as it relates to manhood womanhood. First, let's lay a foundation fla a foundation open to Genesis chapter two, Genesis two fifteen. And in Genesis two, beginning of verse fifteen, here's what you see, these three areas. And by the way, this is pre fall. This is pre fall. We have these three areas of manhood right here in Genesis chapter two. We have a man who's committed to God honoring work. A man out of work, Amen, belongs right there. A man ought to work, Amen, A man ought to work. That's no longer our ideal. The ideal used to be that a man would work, that he would find some work to do, and that he would devote himself to that work. That ideal has now been replaced. Now the ideal is early retirement. If you can't say amen, you ought to say ouch, man out of work. Secondly, he had a commitment to the law of God. Man ought to be committed to the law of God. Thirdly, he had a commitment to the family. All of this pre fall. When we see this beginning of chapter fifteen of Genesis chapter two. Let's look here, beginning chapter fifteen, the Lord took the Chapter two I'm sorry, Verse fifteen. The Lord took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord commanded the man, by the way, this is before the fall. He puts the man in the garden before the fall, commands the man to work before the fall. So in his most pristine condition, God says, man needs work, in the most perfect environment ever known. God says, a man needs work. You may surely eat of the tree, any tree of the garden, but in the tee of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. There we go, We've got the law of God. Then the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. That may be my favorite verse in the whole Bible. It is not good for man to be alone. I just I love that number one because it is absolutely true. Amen, Praise Jesus. Not good for a man to be alone. You don't like that one, you're on your own. I like that one. It's not good for a man to be alone. I can amen that all day, every day period, not good for a man to be alone. Here's the other one reason that I love that versus scripture. There's a pattern that's occurred for six days. Let there be, then there was, it was good. Let there be, then there was, it was good. Day three, Let there be, then there was, it was good. Everyday, same pattern. This is the first time God says something's not good, the first time. What's that something? It's not good for man to be alone. I shall have this picture in my mind of God looking at it Adam and looking at all the creation. God just sitting there saying, it is very good. It's awesome in the true sense of the word. The stars, the sun, the moon, the earth. Look at this, it is good. Look at those animals that I made. And then he looks at Adam and he just says, in the version in my mind, he ain't gonna make it. I got to help him, and he does causes a great sleep to fall on Adam so that Adam won't mess it up or take credit for it, you know who we are. And he brings forth the woman, and he makes this statement. For this cause, man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave or be united to his wife. Interestingly, Adam has no father and mother, and yet God makes this statement. Why don't get ahead of me? God honoring work work before the fall? The fall only made his work laborious. Recognize that the fall didn't introduce work to man. The fall just made man's work laborious. Here's the third thing. Though Eve was his suitable helper or his help meet, there is no record of her laboring with him in the garden or being responsible for the garden. Let me say that again. Eve is given to him as his suitable helper, we have no record of her laboring with him in the garden or being responsible in the garden. Does that mean that Eve never went to help Adam in the garden. No, it doesn't mean that. It means that it was Adam's responsibility. What does that have to do with anything. You've heard this, You've heard many of us say this before. Here's what it has to do it after the fall, here's what men have decided to do. And here's what feminists have basically done. Feminists have basically said, women, it must be our goal to take on man's part of the curse, even though he can't possibly take on ours. Amen, some of you looking at me like I don't get that, Well, let me help you get that. After the fall, God looks at the man, and what does he say to the man? Thorns, sweat, labor, that's what you're gonna get. You're gonna work by the sweat of your brow. You're gonna eat your bread by the sweat of your brow. That's yours, Adam. He looks at Eve and says, yours is gonna be in Childbury. Here's what the feminist says. Men can't come over and get in on our part of the curse. In child bear it there should have been a whole lot of low base. Amen's out there right then. I'm very pleased with that. However, we need to jump in on their part of the curse. We need to be both an kind of women, take Eve's part of the curse and take Adam as part of the curse. The law of God. God gave Adam a law of universal obedience written in his heart and a particular precept of not eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, by which he bound him and all his posterity to personal, entire, exact and perpetual obedience, promise life upon the fulfilling, and threatened death upon the breaking of it, and endued him with power and ability to keep it. The London Pat's confession. Love God before there's a ten commandments. Love God. The family. Adam has a commitment first to his family of origin and secondly to his family of choice. Now understand this. Remember what I said about the statement that God makes for this cause, a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave or be joined to his wife. God is speaking in general terms about the creation order. God is not saying, Adam, it's time for you to leave home now. Adam's got no home to leave. He's forming the first home that someone will be called to leave. So God is making a universal statement about the created order here. So when we understand biblical manhood in this context, here's what we see. Before the fall, a man ought to work, and it ought to be God honoring work. By the way the purposes for this work, it's beautiful. I'm about out of my time, but let me just give you this. The purposes of this work are magnificent. In Genesis chapter two, Adam is working in the garden so that he can provide for himself and for his family. We see that, we understand that Adam is also, however, working in this garden as an exercise of dominion, taking dominion over everything that he finds. It was his hands to do, and as part of that, God says he gave him things that were good to eat but also pleasing to the eye. Part of the purpose of man's work is the praise and glory of God through the esthetic beauty that he creates. Let me say that again, a very important important part of man's work is the glory that he brings to God in the esthetic beauty of what he creates. By the way, how does man determine the esthetic beauty of what he creates? And I know Doug's going to get into some of this, but what is Adam's measuring point for esthetic beauty? His measuring point is the aesthetic beauty that God put in creation. So how do you define something as beautiful? I don't. God does. So I look at the order and the beauty and the majesty in creation, and I compare what I create to the order and beauty and majesty of creation, and to that degree something is esthetically pleasing or esthetically beautiful. Not only is God honoring work, but the law of God right there on his heart and verbally from God in the form of a command. Do we still not have that today? Yes we do, Yes we do. We see that in Romans chapter one. And thirdly, a commitment to the family, a commitment to his family of origin, and then following from that, a commitment to his family of choice. For this cause, a man shall leave his father and mother. That's a beautiful phrase there, But I want you to understand what's implied in that phrase. What's implied in that phrase is that a young man ought to grow up with a commitment to his family of origin. A young man ought to grow up committing himself to his father's house, to his father's vision. You know, such a time as God gives him a family of his own and a vision of his own, and then for that cause a man leaves in pleas. By the way, this is also a word for the over zealous patriarch who wants to run his house and his son's house read your Bible and repent. Amen, somebody, your son establishes his own home and you don't govern it. If you don't think your son is ready to govern his own home, he's not ready for you to give him his blessing. You're a blessing to get married. If you give your son the blessing to get married, he's going to run his own home. Prayerly, you've laid a foundation of relationship with your son so that you can still be a mentor for your son. But there's no more putting your foot down. It's his house, not yours, it's his family, not yours. And again, where does all this come from? Genesis two, last night, Genesis three, this morning, Genesis two. Now I've gone through about half of my slides here, but my time is gone. But sufficing to say, all of these areas of attack by radical feminism are addressed clearly than the scriptures, which means two things. Number one, we know what has caused us to slip from our moorings. What has caused us to slip from our moorings is a lack of commitment to the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture. And we began to trust in and look to something other than the scriptures. Here's the second thing we know how to get back. How do we get back? We get back to the book. We defy manhood, define womanhood, and define marriage based upon what the scriptures clearly teach. We do not ask psychologists, sociologists, We do not ask anthropologists. We do not ask you know. And again, that's been a recurring theme for those of you who have been here from the leadership luncheon on, it's been a recurring theme. All of those individuals and all of those disciplines are subordinate to God's word and God's authority. So we get back again to the sufficiency of scripture. Are these issues important? They most assuredly are. Are there myriad other smaller issues that sort of, you know, branch off from these issues. Yes, there are hundreds, if not thousands of other issues that we could address if we had the time. But here's the beauty. We have the scripture, which means we have all we need to address this issue of radical feminism in ourselves as we repent of it and in our culture, as we confront it with the word of God. But we don't do that unless and until we commit ourselves to the doctrine of the sufficiency of the scriptures. And here's the beauty of the doctor's sufficiency descriptures. As I take my seat. The beauty is I can stand up here and talk about all these things and know that there are people out there who are listening, either live now or later on tape, who are seething mad, seething mad, probably more on tape later than there are in the room today who will be seething mad. They will take this and they will say, you just need to listen to what he said about just you know, seething mad. And yes, as you listen to this later on, I'm talking to you right now, even though you're not here. But here's the beauty of the doctrine of the sufficienshift Christure. I don't write the mail, I just deliver it. If you got a problem, take it up with the author. For more messages, articles, and videos on the subject of conforming the church and the family to the Word of God, and for more information about the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, where you can search our online network to find family integrated churches in your area. Log onto our website n c f C dot co Argie