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My God and My Neighbor is a “Bible talk show” that looks at religious issues, Christian living and world events in light of the Word of God to give hope. This podcast is a ministry of Tennessee Bible College. TBC offers a bachelor's in Bible studies, a master of theology, and a doctorate of theology in apologetics and Christian evidences. TBC also provides Christian books, audio recordings on the Bible, and free Bible courses in English and Spanish. Tune in to My God and My Neighbor to experience the educational content that TBC has been delivering for nearly five decades!
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Kerry Duke: Hi, I’m Kerry Duke, host of My God and My Neighbor podcast from Tennessee Bible College, where we see the Bible as not just another book, but the Book. Join us in a study of the inspired Word to strengthen your faith and to share what you've learned with others.
Let's go back to the beginning, the real beginning, in the Book of Genesis 1:26-27. The Bible says, "And God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.' So God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him. Male and female created he them."
In Mark chapter 10, the Pharisees asked Jesus about divorce, and here's part of His answer. Mark 10:6-7: "But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife."
In the Book of Romans chapter one, Paul talks about people who worshiped idols, and here's what he says about those people in Romans 1:25-27. "They changed the truth of God into a lie." Some translations will say that they exchanged the truth of God for a lie. "And worshiped and served the creature," that is the creation, "more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections. For even their women did change or exchange the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.”
Now let's think about this subject on a really common sense and foundational level. Where did the idea of male and female come from? I'm not talking about looking this up in a Webster's dictionary. I'm not talking about looking in books of history that talk about males and females. I'm not talking about what different societies and cultures say about the roles of men and women.
I'm talking about how it all got started. Where did the very concept of male and female come from? And what we find in Genesis chapter one and what nature teaches us is that it all came from God Almighty. The fact of male and female and the profound psychological and physical differences between men and women and the roles of men and women and boys and girls in society is not some kind of freak biological accident of evolution. The presence of males and females is not some kind of accident in the evolutionary cycle. It's not just some kind of tradition. It may be a tradition, and I'm glad that it is in many cultures, perhaps most cultures, but it's not just a tradition. We don't base our argument for the fact of males and females on tradition.
We base it on the creation of God, and it goes all the way back to the very beginning, which is what the book of Genesis is about. In Genesis chapter two, verse seven, the Bible says, "And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."
In Genesis two verse eighteen: "And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him." It doesn't say that God made a helpmate for Adam. It says that he made a help, that is, a helper, who would be meet or suitable or fitting for him. So God made Adam. He was the first man.
God made the body, the physical body, of Adam. He made the mind of Adam. He created him as a man, a male. Now then, we find that God is going to prepare a special helper for him. In verse twenty-one of Genesis chapter two, the Bible says, "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, he made a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, 'This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.' Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh."
So now God has created the first woman, Eve. He created her body. He created her mind. He made her physically, psychologically, emotionally, and in every other way. God gave the first woman a certain nature, and that nature was different from the nature of the male. God made Adam and Eve different. He made them different to help each other, to complement each other.
He made them different so that they could marry and then bring children into the world. He made them different because God had a plan for the home. The plan that God had for the home is the same plan that he has today, and that is that there would be a father and a mother who would bring up those children.
And since God is the one that came up with the idea of the sexes, and since he created the sexes and gave the human race this thing called sex, which is to be enjoyed in marriage, not outside of it and not before it, then that means that this is holy. This is good. There is nothing wrong with a man's body or a woman's body.
There's nothing wrong with the natural feelings that God gave to men and to women. So a young man shouldn't think there's something wrong with him because he has an attraction to young women. And a young woman shouldn't think that there's something bad about her because she's attracted to young men.
God gave that attraction, and he gave that attraction so that a man and a woman would be brought together in marriage and form that family unit. That is God's plan. That is God's order in his creation. As long as people recognize that God is the one who created males and females, not the government, not tradition, not custom, not the imagination, but God Himself is the one who gave this order to mankind, then there won't be any gender confusion.
Young and older people alike get confused on this issue because they forget God. They forget the facts of His creation. They forget that He's the one in charge. He's the one that has authority and the right to tell us how to live our lives. He's the one that created male and female for specific purposes on this earth.
People get mixed up when they fail to curb their imagination, and they let their feelings run wild. They get mixed up on this topic because somebody's put some kind of idea in their head, usually because of the Internet, and then they act on it. And when they do, that is a choice. Yes, it is a choice as to what we do with our bodies.
It's a choice as to how we behave in this life. It is not a choice as to whether a man is born a woman or born a man. That's just the way of nature. That's just how life operates. Now, people can complain and whine and cry all they want to about things not being fair. “It's just not fair that I can't be a man.” “It's just not fair that I can't be a woman. Why did God make me this way?” Well, you could say the same thing about your very being here. Sometimes people think that it's unfair that God even put us on this earth. There are things that we can't figure out, folks, and we don't have the right, and we certainly don't have the wisdom to challenge God and act like that we're wiser than Him.
To say that God should have made us this way, or God should have made us that way, or to say that God should not have made us at all—all that is foolish reasoning because it goes against the facts. And the facts are that the nature we see around us every day shows us that God exists. And I'm talking about the true and the living God.
I'm not talking about some kind of imaginary God. Romans one verse twenty says that, "The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse." Paul says that people are without excuse.
There is no excuse for a man turning away from God. There's no excuse for a man being an atheist, and there is no excuse for a man saying, "I want some other kind of God." But that is exactly what these people in Romans chapter one did. That's why I keep going back to this chapter. Romans chapter one explains the root of the problem of so-called gender confusion.
You see, if you take Genesis chapter one, you find that God created male and female. Genesis chapter one gives us the ideal. Genesis chapter one gives us God's perspective. Romans chapter one shows what man does with God's creation. If he doesn't like it, he tries to change it. And so what Paul says in the very beginning of this section in Romans chapter one verse 20 is that there is no excuse for men doing this because they can clearly see the evidence for the existence of God by nature itself.
And if they can see that God is the Creator and that we are His creation, then it is morally wrong for anyone to try to change God's created order, and that includes His plan for male and female. And yet in Romans chapter one, Paul says that is exactly what many of these Gentiles did. He says in verse 21, "Because that when they knew God..."
Now think about that. These people were not atheists. It's not because they didn't have evidence of God. They couldn't stand back and say, "Well, I'm not sure that there is a God. I'm not sure that there's a Creator that gave us this whole concept of male and female, and so we'll try to change that." They knew better.
The Bible says in Romans one verse 21 they knew God, but they chose not to glorify Him. “Neither were they thankful, but they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened." You see, God gave man free will. And even though we see the evidence, we can go against it. Even though we see the truth right before us, we can lie to ourselves about it.
And that's exactly what Paul is talking about here in Romans Chapter 1. Again, in verse 21, these people turned away from God. They became vain or empty in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. Now, that was written 2,000 years ago, and it's being repeated before our very eyes today.
There are people that are supposedly and professedly very intelligent and highly educated who are trying to tell us that our traditional idea about males and females is outdated and is wrong. And so you have psychologists, you have scientists, and let's not forget the politicians, who are telling people you can be what you want to be.
And when they talk, they come across like these people in Romans Chapter 1. They profess themselves to be wise. But Paul says in verse 22 that they were actually fools. Now, I want you to notice this digression, this departure from God. Notice the steps. In verse 20, they could clearly see that God existed from creation.
There was no excuse for them turning away, but they did by choice. In verse 21, the Bible says they became vain or empty in their imaginations or their reasonings. In verse 22, they profess themselves to be wise, but they became fools. In other words, they acted like that they were more intelligent and more educated than everybody else, and in fact, they were foolish.
Then in verse 23, you have the key as to how they reasoned this out in their mind. You see, when people are gender-confused, they have to rationalize some of the simplest and clearest parts of nature itself. They have to look at life in a completely different way. In other words, they have to lie to themselves and create some kind of image of God and image of life that's not true.
And that's exactly what these people did. In verse 23, here's how they did it. Now, I'm not trying to say that everybody that claims to be gender-confused becomes an idolater, but in a sense, they make exactly the same mistake. Let me explain. In verse 23, the Bible says these people, because they didn't want to do what God said, because they didn't want to live like God said, the Bible says in verse 23 that they changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man and to birds and to four-footed beasts and creeping things.
In other words, they became idolaters. Now, what is idolatry? Idolatry is imagining a god that doesn't exist. It's creating in one's own mind a deity that's not real. In other words, it's inventing a lie. Now, why do people do that? It's not because they just pulled it out of the air. It's because they don't like the rules of the true God who's the Creator.
They don't like the regulations that God has placed upon them as mankind. And so if they're going to get rid of the rules of the Creator, then they're going to have to get rid of the concept of the Creator. They have to come up with a lesser god. They have to invent a kind of god that will tolerate and go along with their lifestyle. And so that's what they did.
They served these idols and they salved their conscience by creating some kind of imaginary deity. In verse 24, Paul goes on to say, "Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves." Now, I think you know what this dishonoring of their own bodies between themselves means.
That's explained just a few verses later, and we're going to look at that again. But what I want you to see right now is the connection between verse 23 and 24. So let's start with verse 24 and work our way back to verse 23. In verse 24, the Bible says that these people had these lusts and uncleanness.
They dishonored their own bodies between themselves. Now, how did they reach that point in their mind? Because usually, a person is going to have to rationalize. He's going to have to change this image of God giving the rules as the Creator. He's going to have to change his concept of God before he can change his concept of right and wrong.
So that's what these people did. In verse 23, they changed or exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God into an image. That means an idol. So why did they leave the true God? Because they didn't like His rules. They didn't like His moral laws, especially about the roles of men and women, and especially the idea of sex.
You see, when these people invented their own gods, they invented them out of their own imagination. And since they invented this god, who was a lie, out of their own imagination, then they could invent their own rules about right and wrong and about sex. And that's why when you read in the Bible about idolatry, you find that the more widespread idolatry was, the more common sexual immorality was, everything from fornication to prostitution to homosexuality and all kinds of perversion.
If you go back and read about the Canaanites in Leviticus 18, 19, and 20, you find that idolatry was widespread, and you find all kinds of perversion. Go back and read Numbers chapter 25. Read the book of 1 Corinthians again, because you will see this same pattern for thousands of years. And here we are, thousands of years after the Bible was written, and mankind has not learned a thing.
We find that people are doing exactly what they did in Bible times. They're changing the image of God, and they're changing the rules as they do it. In verse 25, notice what he says again, that these people changed or exchanged the truth of God into a lie. The truth of God in Romans 1:25 is the truth about God.
He is the one true God. He is the Creator. But they exchanged that for a lie, the lie being the idols, the lie being some imaginary god. And remember, the reason for that exchange was that these people were looking for some kind of justification for their lifestyle. And that's where you see the connection to verses 26 and 27.
Let's read it again. "For this cause," what cause? The cause being what he just said in verses 21 through 25, that these people changed the nature of God in their minds because they wanted to live a certain way. And so in verse 26, the Bible says, for that reason or for that cause, "God gave them up unto vile affections," that is, vile feelings or passions.
"For even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature." And who made that nature? Who created that creation? Well, the Creator, the true God made all that. And because the evidence of that Creator was all around them, they had to make a choice in their mind to create some imaginary god who would let them live the way that they wanted to live.
They had to dethrone God. They had to eject God from their minds. The Bible says in verse 27, "Likewise also the men leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet."
Now, notice verse 28. This is absolutely key to understanding this whole thought of gender confusion, as people call it. Verse 28 says, "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient." Now, who are the people that he's talking about here in verse 28?
He says, "They did not like to retain God in their knowledge." The word they refers to these homosexual men and these homosexual women in verses 26 and 27. What was their problem? How did they reach that point in their life? Or better, how did they rationalize in their minds that what they were doing was all right?
They had to get rid of God. They didn't like the idea of God. They didn't want the concept of the true God, because that God said you have to live a certain way. The true God said, "There's male and female, and you're not to change that." They understood that and so because they couldn't change the physical creation around them, they decided to change the very idea of God, and then that freed them up in their minds to do what they wanted to do.
Now, that's the idea of verse 28. When the King James says they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, that comes from a Greek word which means to test or to try something out and then to reject it. That's exactly what these people did with the concept of God. They tried it out. They tested that idea.
They could see that God created. They knew from the creation itself that God was the true God. But instead of submitting to the facts, they rejected the true God. They didn't like that God. They didn't like God's moral law. And so to change the rules, they changed their idea of God. And that is exactly what many people are doing today.
Have you noticed how many people who are homosexuals oftentimes talk about God? And when they do, they say something like this, "God made me this way," or, "Why would God hold this against me?" So what they do is exactly what these people in Romans chapter 1 did. They don't become atheists. Now, some of them do, but I'm talking about the ones that still retain some kind of belief in what they call God.
It's not the God of the Bible because the God of the Bible didn't make them that way. It's not the God of the Bible because God condemns that sin. It's not the God of the Bible because the Bible itself says that it's a sin, that it's wrong. So what they do is what these people in Romans 1 did, which is to create an imaginary God.
They take the idea of God as they see it in nature and as they read about it in the Bible, and they change it. Because in their minds, if they can change the concept of God, if they can change the nature of God, then they can change the moral law of God, which would free them up to live the way that they want to live.
There's a play on words in verse twenty-eight. You won't see this in a translation. The idea in the original of the words, "They did not like to retain God in their knowledge," is that they tested God and rejected him. Because of their rejection, God gave them over to a reprobate mind. The New King James says he gave them up to a debased mind.
Now, the word for reprobate or debased means something that is rejected because it did not stand up to the test. God is the one doing the testing this time. He gave these people time. He gave them free will. He gave them the moral law of nature. That opportunity or experience tested them, but they failed the test.
They rebelled. They tested God and rejected him, so God tested them, and they failed the test, so he rejected them. That's the idea of this word. They ended up with a rejected mind, a worthless sense of morality, a debased view of God and nature, and a conscience that was, as Ephesians four, verse nineteen says, past feeling.
That is, a conscience that couldn't feel anything. Their heart was so hardened by sin they couldn't feel guilt anymore. Again, we're talking about people who knew better. They knew God, and they knew right from wrong when it came to gender. But they had to lie to themselves to live with themselves so that they could worship idols and live as homosexuals.
And the longer they lied to themselves, the harder their heart became. Their conscience reached the point Paul talked about in First Timothy, chapter four, verse two. Their conscience was seared with a hot iron. They cauterized their conscience with lies. That's what lying does to the soul. Now, notice what happened to these people, and think about what happens today when people get caught up in this so-called gender confusion.
They knew God, but they turned away from God and created their own gods. Then they turned away from the way that God made them, as males and females. But the change didn't stop there. It progressed. That's the nature of sin. 2 Timothy 3 verse 13 says that evil men and deceivers shall become worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.
So Paul says that the Gentile world, as a people in general, almost completely lost any sense of right and wrong. When people turn away from God, when they pervert something as basic to morality as the roles of men and women, then anything goes. The whole moral structure of society collapses. That's what we see in verses twenty-nine through thirty-two right after Paul shows how it all started.
When these people left God, they lost their moral bearings. That's why they served idols. That's why they became homosexuals. But if they're going to serve idols and become homosexuals, then what about other sins? That's why what he says in the last part of this chapter fits with that whole mindset.
Because when people can rationalize those sins, if they can find an excuse or a rationalization for those sins, then they can rationalize just about anything. And that's what we find in the last part of the chapter, beginning in verse twenty-nine. As they were departing from God, they were “filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful, who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them." So when people change their view of the nature of God and they change their view of the roles of men and women, it will affect everything in their lives. It will affect their moral decisions in everything else, and it won't stop there. It will affect the people that are around them.
And if it spreads enough, it's going to affect the whole society, and that civilization will crumble. There's no way that it can stand. Proverbs fourteen, verse thirty-four says that "Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." And listen to Psalm nine, verse seventeen, "The wicked shall be turned into hell and all the nations that forget God."
That's what these people did. They forgot God. Look at what happened to that society. And where did it begin? It began when these people left God. And it really took hold when they tried to erase the line that God had drawn between men and women, which is the very thing that people are doing today when they talk about so-called gender confusion.
So we see two things God gives us to teach us about gender. Number one, nature or creation, which shows us that God created the world. You can't have a creation without a Creator. And that means that God created male and female. That is His will for mankind. That's why the book of Romans says in Romans chapter one, verse twenty-six, that the women did change the natural use into that which is against nature.
That's also why the book of Romans says in chapter two, verse 14 and 15, "For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law are a law to themselves, which show the work of the law written in their hearts; their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean, while accusing or else excusing one another.” So God gives us nature to prevent any kind of gender confusion.
Number two, God gives us the Bible, and the Bible has been clear from the very beginning about this subject. Genesis 1:27 again says, "So God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him. Male and female created he them." In Deuteronomy 22:5, listen to what the Bible says. "The woman shall not wear that which pertains to a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment. For all that do so are an abomination unto the Lord your God." Listen also to Deuteronomy 23:17-18. "There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel. Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the Lord your God for any vow. For even both these are abomination unto the Lord your God."
In the book of 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, here's what the Bible says about this sin and many others. "Do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you're washed, but you're sanctified, but you're justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God." Now, what can we do to teach people who say they're confused on this issue? Teach them. Teach them from nature. Teach them from the Bible. Show them there are rules.
Help them to establish biblical boundaries that they must not go beyond. Warn them that there are lines that they must not cross. Teach them that feelings don't decide what is right or wrong. God does. Show them that you love them and care for them. Show them that God does forgive when we repent. Show them that some gender-confused people in the Bible, like the saints in the church at Corinth, left the homosexual lifestyle behind and became Christians.
If you are tempted with feelings you know are not right, then be honest. Recognize that God didn't give you those feelings. You may have created them with your own imagination. You may have watched a movie with some bad scenes in it. You may have listened to someone on social media that encouraged you to have those feelings.
You may have had some traumatic experiences in life that left a bad impression and some deep feelings of anger and hurt. But regardless of how those feelings started or where you followed them, you can change. Don't listen to what people tell you. Go with what God says. The world uses all kinds of expressions to make sin sound acceptable.
They call the person they sleep with their partner. They call indecision about sin gender confusion. They call pedophilia minor-attracted persons. But is it really possible to deny those feelings? The Bible says this in First Corinthians chapter 10 verse 13, "There has no temptation taken you but such as is common to man. But God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that you may be able to bear it." The Bible also says in James chapter one verse 13, "Let no man say when he is tempted, 'I am tempted of God,' for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither does He tempt any man. But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. Then when lust has conceived, it brings forth sin, and sin when it is finished, brings forth death."
Thank you for listening to My God and My Neighbor. Stay connected with our podcast on our website and on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever fine podcasts are distributed. Tennessee Bible College, providing Christian education since 1975 in Cookeville, Tennessee, offers undergraduate and graduate programs. Study at your level. Aim higher and get in touch with us today.