Genesis 1:26-31 – Him Her

Welcome to you.

If you joined us while we were singing, my name is Mark.

I'm one of the leaders here at the church.

It's wonderful to have you here, especially if you're new or visiting with us.

We uh we start a uh a new series this morning, uh much much talked about um over the next eight weeks.

It's not our normal practice to do topical series.

Uh we normally pick books of the Bible.

We did 47 sermons uh on the Gospel of John.

Um so if you are new, you missed those.

They were great.

Uh let's see how these ones go.

Uh and now we begin an eight-week run thinking about uh the completely uh you know uncontroversial topics of uh identity, sex, sexuality, marriage, singleness, uh, gender.

So you're all gonna be yawning and just thinking, yeah, no, that's all that's all fine.

Let's just move on with with that.

Um let me uh let me begin by by saying by way of a kind of a preface what this series is not, uh what this series is not designed to do.

First of all, this series is not the final word on any of these issues.

Uh it is set forth uh as a as a primer, or if you're American, a primer.

Uh okay, uh a primer, uh a start uh to a conversation.

Uh I'll be mentioning resources you might want to dip into that would uh fuel your your thinking.

After the service, there will be a QA.

And so rather than like throwing rotten vegetables or questions at me, uh, we can talk about them after the service.

No one sermon is going to completely deal with all of the, particularly the pastoral uh uh nuances and particularities.

So I want to say that uh going in, that I just can't possibly uh hit all of that.

The second thing that this series is not is this series is not designed to single out any individual or any groups of individuals uh for particular scrutiny.

It begins rather with the premise that Jesus dignifies our humanity and uh that where there may be even disagreement, there is never hatred.

And I hope that actually by the end of uh today's talk you'd see why that is.

But it begins with that premise that Jesus, in his uh his broad welcome to all human beings, dignifies our your humanity.

Uh the third thing that this series is not is it is not designed to court controversy.

Uh, but it is, it comes from a place to want to lovingly equip all of us as we seek to live.

Uh, many of you, as followers of the Lord Jesus, though some of you here, I'm sure, are just looking in on that, working out what it is that the Christians believe.

I guess we kind of come to the heart of some of the thornier topics over the next eight weeks.

But it's a design not to court controversy, but to equip.

We live in a messy world.

It's complicated, people are complicated, there's lots of gray, uh, and we we need to work out how do we how do we navigate through all of that?

And so I want to to approach this with uh with thoughtfulness and with care uh and with a confidence in the scriptures as not only being true, but being good for for human flourishing.

I think that this series is both necessary and timely, necessary in part because, well, questions of identity are fundamental to each of us, each of us has a sense of self, and we're trying to work out who it is we are and how we fit into the world around us.

It's necessary also because each one of us has a tendency, everyone here has a tendency to take an aspect of who we are and absolutize it over our entire life.

In part, that's because our internal life is messy and complicated, right?

So we take one aspect and we say this is who we are.

Each one of us also feels that uh internal conflict, that internal uh complicatedness.

We all from time to time feel alienated from our sense of self, feel alienated from our own flesh, even, whether that is the person who is experiencing uh gender dysphoria, or whether it is the postpartum mother, or it's the uh the guy who uh is in the gym four times a week and who uh to everybody on the outside has an incredible physique.

But when he stands in front of the mirror, what he sees are all the things that are wrong and all the things that he needs to change.

All of this taken together is leading, I think, to an increasing identity crisis, particularly amongst young people in the demographic that City Church normally seeks to uh normally engage with.

In Ireland, if you are between the ages of 18 and 25, 26% have reported experiencing feelings of severe anxiety and depression.

Self-esteem has dropped, young people are less positive, certainly less positive about the future, and less satisfied with life generally.

And so I think it's important that we have these conversations over the next eight weeks, these different the different topics that we will address will speak to different aspects of this identity crisis.

But this morning, I just want to do two things.

You really need to come to all eight, right?

Uh, because even if you come you come to the Q ⁇ A, I suspect that what will happen is I'll get asked questions that I'm gonna be addressing in weeks two, three, four, five, right?

So they're all gonna build on one of them.

This is the this is the lay and the foundation, right?

And the first thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna ask the question, how did we get here?

So a little bit of a history lesson, you're welcome.

Um, over uh over the first kind of let's say 15 minutes or so.

And then the second half is gonna be okay, what does what does Christianity have to say about who we are?

Uh how did we get here?

Let's begin there.

The things that we are seeing and experiencing today did not spring out of nowhere, nor was it always this way.

We speak about things like authenticity, individualism, sexuality, gender identity, and those have become part of our normal societal discourse.

They're becoming increasingly part of the vocabulary that we use to describe ourselves and other people.

But 200 years ago, those ideas were brand new and were not at all obvious to anyone.

Indeed, it's actually over the only over the last uh 50 or 60 years that this language has really begun to uh to seep into our society.

Until then, it was kind of kept in the academy.

And you might sit here and you think, well, 200 years ago, well, that's ages ago.

Like it's been here for like ever then.

But really, in terms of the course of humans, human civilization, uh, it's actually very, very new.

That most human beings that have lived on the planet didn't think about ourselves in the terms that we now do.

So what happened?

Well, our identity crisis begins with a divorce, not of our parents, but a divorce between who I am as a physical being and who I perceive myself to be internally.

And so we welcome to the stage uh René Descartes and the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

These are two important figures, and there'll be a number of little figures uh along the way, but these are the granddaddies of why we think the way we think.

So Descartes' famous dictum, Cogido Ergo sum, I think, therefore I am.

What does he mean by that?

Well, what he means is that all that he can know for certain is that he exists.

And that our psychological self is the only thing that we can be absolutely certain of.

And what that does is it begins to uh to place our internal sense of self at the center of our world as we perceive it.

Nothing else outside, though it may be objectively uh uh visible and you can touch it.

No, no, all of those things are to be doubted.

But what can we can be sure about is our internal sense of who we are.

And Jean-Jacques Rousseau uh took this idea and uh and implanted it into us even further.

And he was making the claim that actually uh the only thing that we know is what we sense inside of ourselves, and that the the best way that he could describe who he was wasn't in terms of anything external to himself, but that all he had to do was look inside himself in order to give an account of who he is.

And so he what happened was that these men, the these thinkers, took our identity and what it means to be who we are, and said that it was a psychological phenomenon.

It was who you thought, perceived, sensed, felt yourself to be.

The other thing that Rousseau did was he not only implanted our sense of self internally, he began to see the things outside as curtailing our freedom, society and institutions, and particularly the church, as being those things which limit human beings, close them down, take away their freedom.

And so we have his uh his famous phrase, man and woman, man is born free and everywhere is in chains, that our state of nature is one of is one of liberty, and then society and church and institution, they close us down.

And so what we need to do is we need to go back to that uh to that kind of earlier state of freedom.

How do we do that?

By expressing our most authentic inner self.

Taken together, these ideas begin to drive a wedge between the physical reality of our bodies and the internal person that we perceive ourselves to be.

The visible, while objective, is of less value than your personal subjective sense of who you are.

That sounds very modern, doesn't it?

And yet uh it started 200 years ago.

Incidentally, just by way of sidebar, as you can call this a sidebar, uh this uh this is actually why uh those on either sides of the abortion debate speak past one another.

This is why we cannot seem to understand where the other person is coming from.

Why?

Because in the whole debate, the fundamental issue is the matter of personhood.

Is the unborn a person or not?

And for some people, like Christians, personhood is linked to biology.

Well, yes, they are a distinct genetic human being.

But do you imagine if you're coming from this philosophical um uh kind of school where you're thinking, no, no, personhood is it's an eternal sense of yourself, it comes from having agency in the world.

You think, well, no, obviously not the unborn is not a person in that sense.

That's one of the reasons why we end up talking past ourselves or past one another in this debate.

So if Descartes and Rousseau said that our inner self was your real self, then there's another group that took it a step further.

Enter, please, the romantics.

Uh so who have we got here?

So we've got uh Percy Shelley, uh married to Mary Shelley of Frankenstein fame, uh Lord Byron here in the middle, uh looking rather suave and debonair.

Uh, and then uh and then the guy who should have got his fringe uh cut.

Anybody know who this guy is?

Any English students in?

Shut it out?

No, come on.

William Wordsworth.

Uh so I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high over vales and hills until all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils.

These guys have come down to us as the stuffy dead guys of our English literature classes, and you think, oh my goodness, we're gonna like read more William Wordsworth.

But one of the things that you need to see is that these were the Playboys of their time.

Like they were like Lord Byron here was basically like Sam Smith of his day, right?

Uh like totally transgressive, totally essentially controversial and wanting to break every taboo.

And what they said was that if you're gonna look inside to find your true self, then who is the most real you?

Well, the most real you is the sexual you because that's the strongest drive and desire that a human being has.

It's the most potent thing about you.

And so to be unrestrained sexually, to be authentic in terms of your sexual drives and desires, was the very apex of human flourishing for the romantics.

Not only that, it was not even so much that the romantics said that it was a uh a good option for you to do, the best thing that you can do.

What they were saying, it was morally right that you express your inner authentic sexual self.

That if you repress that, you're sinning against your own being.

So Percy Shelley writes a poem called Queen Mab.

And in Queen Mab, he has this vision of uh of men and women return to Eden.

And as they are returned to that Edenic innocence, one of the things that marks that is by is sexual freedom.

And so he talks, this so there's a quote from him in Queen Mab, he says that human beings, unchecked by dull and selfish chastity, that is uh not sleeping with everything that moves, unchecked by dull and selfish chastity, that virtue of the cheaply virtuous who pride themselves in senselessness and frost.

That if you uh if you are chaste, if you are sexually self-controlled, you are cheaply virtuous.

You are cold, you're frigid.

That if you are truly free, then you will throw off the shackles of chastity.

And here again, like Rousseau, the romantics hold in contempt those social structures, particularly the church, particularly religious structures.

And so that's why he's reimagining Eden, right?

Because these religious structures, they repress, as they saw it, sexual desire, and so they leave men and women miserable and in chins.

Now, the final personality in our uh in our history lesson uh for this week uh is uh it won't be like this every week.

We'll we'll talk a little bit about Darwin next week.

Um, but uh the final one for today uh is this guy, Sigmund Freud's Baby I Was Born This Way, uh, kind of.

If the philosophers made our identity psychological, our internal sense of self, and the romantics, the poets, came along and made it sexual, then what Freud did is he said that it was all innate, it's all from birth, and it was all natural.

Freud.

And the thing is, Freud in psychological circles, if you've if you've ever studied psychology or psychotherapy, Freud has been uh well and truly debunked in lots of ways.

And yet, the popularization of his thinking still seeps into a lot of our common thought.

So Freud claimed that children were were innately naturally sexual beings, so free to express themselves in uh in sexual childish ways, and that that was not just normal, but right and good.

Now we'll we'll come back to both sex and sexuality in a few weeks, but for now, all of these players have served to shape our culture.

And what is culture?

Well, culture is a it's a story that we tell ourselves.

It's a story that is agreed on by many people that we that we tell ourselves.

So, what is our our current cultural story?

Is that the true you is the inner you, the you that you perceive yourself to be, that your desire is is innate and it's good and it's morally right that you should express it.

You are morally obliged to express your your most authentic self.

And who embodies all of this?

Who sums up all of these ideas?

It's Elsa.

No right, no wrong, no rules for me.

I'm free.

The inner you is the real you, the you are, and what is that what Elsa Elsa has been she her freedom has been curtailed by her parents.

Don't feel just let uh you know, to to repress her inner self, her inner magic.

She finally lets it all go.

Now, this leaves us with some challenges, some opportunities as well, but some profound challenges.

The challenge is that we now instinctively live in a world where belief in God, belief in something outside of ourselves that is of value, the belief in God is a complete and utter turn off.

Like looking around and seeing this room full of like weird unicorns.

And the idea that there would be uh what 130 or so folks here this morning who want to learn about these things, that's unusual.

Have you noticed that in the places where you work?

Because normally the idea of looking outward to God uh is a uh is a complete turn off.

In fact, you know, but and even just instinctively we can understand, well, no, like looking in at ourselves and expressing uh who we are sexually and being free there, well, that actually sounds a lot more fun than being here and learning about Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Christianity encouraged people to look out and up.

But we need to be honest.

So many people in our world are in crisis because they have been hurt, abused, mistreated by others outside of themselves, and so to look out can be a very painful thing.

And as for looking up, people of every identity, but especially those of queer identities, assume that God hates them unreserved.

And is against them irrevocably.

It is little wonder then that looking in feels much more appealing and much safer.

These are some of the challenges that we must address.

Despite these challenges, there are, I think, some important opportunities.

You see, the message of Christianity, I believe, is so much better than people assume or have experienced before.

Jesus, in his earthly life, invited weary people to come and to find rest in him.

To find that their truest self is a new self, gifted by him, made in his image.

I think that we all need to hear this because there's an increasing level of hopelessness in our world and amongst people our age.

People are wearied by the world, its hostility, its tribalism, wearied by the disconnection, loneliness, and isolation that they often feel and that they sense within themselves.

Like I said at the start, people are more and more struggling with things like anxiety and depression.

And here's one of the things to note about that there is an increase in anxiety and depression, even though the West, our country, is becoming more inclusive, more diverse, more concerned with things like equity.

And yet the anxiety and depression continues to rise.

In the past, the argument could have been made that parts of our society, individuals within it, were experiencing anxiety and depression because the society itself was unaccepting and alienating to those with identities different to the norm.

If that was true, what we should expect to see is as our society becomes more welcoming, the rates of anxiety and depression decrease.

And yet, in terms of governmental legislation and uh and things within your workplaces, policies that have been put out, there is such a there's such a move towards inclusivity.

And yet people are still feeling alienated and alone.

I wonder why that is.

I think it is in part because expressive individualism leads to a kind of isolation.

If the best thing that you can do is express your true self, then that expression must take precedent over and against other connections, like friends, like family, like community.

They are the ones who need to change in order to accept us.

It also paradoxically uh it leads to a kind of conformity.

Right?

Why?

Well, because when we go inward to discover our true self, it needs to be performed, right?

So you read somebody like Judith Butler, who talks, she talks about uh how uh how can a gender is a gender and sex are all a performance.

Our identities, when we find them inside, need to be revealed on the outside, right?

That makes sense.

And then when they're revealed on the outside, what needs to happen?

Well, it is that the the community around us, the people around us, need to uh affirm and validate and celebrate that in order to uh to firm up that sense of self.

And so what ends up happening is that we uh we perform our identities in culturally acceptable ways in order to have that validation.

And so individualism actually leads paradoxically to an increased kind of conformity.

And all of this is just a little bit exhausting.

If you're constantly having to reinvent yourself, or if freedom is fighting against constraint, then there are always new enemies to fight against, always new wars to be waged.

And what's exhilarating in your 20s becomes a bit wearying in your 30s and utterly exhausting in your 40s.

So, what does Christianity have to say about all of this?

Here we move to the second and final part.

Oh, I'll put them all up at once.

Don't read them, just read the first one.

If we looked for a moment outside of ourselves to what God says about who we are, what would we see?

The governing idea in Christianity, and this is why we read from Genesis, the governing idea in Christianity is that human beings are all imagi.

That is, made in the image of God.

Do you remember why I said right at the start that one of the foundations that I wanted to lay is that Jesus dignifies your humanity?

Dignifies it because you're made in his image.

You're made in the image of God.

That's the very starting point for any conversation with any human being, that they have a dignity and a value and a worth that comes not from how they identify, not from who they perceive themselves to be, but because they are made in the image of God.

That does not just mean that our spirits or our eternal sense of self is made in the image of God, but our bodies also.

The Bible doesn't begin with a divorce like Descartes and Rousseau, but with a union.

God makes.

We don't need to get into the mechanics of that, but God makes, he makes a physical world, not just a spiritual one, not just a world that has an internal sense, but a physical reality.

What that means is that matter matters.

God beautifies the creation, he dignifies it, he calls it good.

We are not spirits who simply happen to inhabit a particular meat machine.

We are embodied spirits, the two are intertwined.

To be the image of God is both body and soul.

And what that means is that human beings are both sexed and sacred.

That as sexed, as physical beings, we have been dignified as image-bearers of God.

One of the things that we'll see when we come to look at men and women, particularly, because I really hate myself and I'm gonna grasp all of the nettles.

Uh, and so I'll say it now and I'll say it again, is that you may remember from your Sunday school class this idea that um that Eve is made from Adam's rib, from Adam's side, right?

Uh, and so she's made out of that.

The word for rib, everywhere else in the Old Testament, is never translated rib.

It doesn't mean rib.

So what does it mean?

It is the word it's a word that describes a sacred piece of architecture in the tabernacle, saying that human beings are made from something sacred, that there's a sacred part that is taken from Adam that women are made out of.

Human beings are sexed and sacred.

And unlike the Romantics, the Bible joins our spirit together.

And so, Psalm 63, just to give you an idea of this joining of these two things, the psalmist writes, O God, you are my God.

Earnestly I seek you.

Now listen to the to the parallels.

My soul, internal self, thirsts for you.

My flesh feints for you.

The Bible joins these two things together.

This idea of body and soul, that's a Greek idea, it's not a Hebrew idea.

Hebrew joins uh joins uh body and soul together in one entity that is blessed and bears the image of God.

This idea of human beings being a Mago Dei was amazingly countercultural in the ancient world.

Because in the ancient world, only the king was said to be the image of the deity.

So in Babylonian mythology, only the king was the image or the incarnation of Marduk, the great uh uh leader of the Babylonian pantheon.

But listen, do you see what God's saying?

God's saying that every human being, not just leaders, not just those of a higher social class, not just those who are powerful, not just men, but all, male and female, are made in his image.

We all possess that divine dignity.

However, the Bible doesn't end there.

Uh the Genesis 3 gives us an account of what Christians call the fall, that is humanity's first turning from God.

And it was a desire for uh for autonomy, for individualism, for self-realization.

And as a result, everything that was good that we experienced has become corrupted.

Good desires have had uh have been corrupted, and so, for example, the desire for sexual pleasure, which is a good thing, God made sex, sex is good.

You don't need to put that on a quote on Twitter or anything.

But it's become corrupted.

So, how does it become corrupted?

It becomes corrupted with things like pornography and the exploitation of human beings.

Because of Genesis 3 and our turning away from God, we look for satisfaction and love in places that end up leaving us isolated.

It's confused our internal life.

And so that's what's led us to take that one thing that we feel about ourselves and absolutize it over us, whether it's our uh whether it's our sexuality or it's our relationship status or it's our career.

You know, those people who uh they just they they love their uh their degree and their education, they start every sentence with, well, uh as a sociologist, or could you imagine that if I got up all the time and said, well, as a theologian, you'd say, what?

But what are you doing there?

You're taking one aspect of yourself, you say, This is who I am.

We all have a tendency to do that because of Genesis 3.

Because we have turned away from that, uh, that being that puts human beings in the right context.

We continue to do that, and and it never quite fits, it never quite covers all of who we are.

And so we again feel this disconnection.

But despite the fall, despite the turning away from God, the message of Christianity is that God Himself took the human body.

That in the incarnation of Jesus, even the word incarnation means to be made meat, incarnate, like chili concarne, right?

Incarnation, the making meat of the Son of God, that Jesus takes a body and dignifies the physical, he dignifies human existence.

He doesn't just come to redeem and to restore our souls, but our bodies and this creation also.

And in his life, Jesus welcomed those marginalized and isolated, those craving acceptance, those broken and in need of rest, those weary and exhausted.

He loves people as they are, but loves them too much to leave them that way.

And so his death means, his death is the means, rather, by which God restores that distorted image.

Human beings we're like we're like myrrhs that have been cracked.

You can kind of see something of a reflection, but it it's all mangled, it doesn't reflect quite right.

That's what the fall did.

God didn't graciously, he didn't remove his image from us, but it has been distorted by sin, by the fall.

Jesus, in coming and stepping onto the stage of human history, in dignifying our humanity, begins to restore the image of God in each of us.

And he himself perfectly reflects it.

And Jesus' resurrection from the dead is a physical event.

What that means is that each person, each one of us who turns to Jesus and says, I want to find my rest in you, who turns to Jesus and asks to be to be made new, to have that image of God restored in their life, that each person who turns and trusts in Jesus, we will all experience a transition.

Our fallen and frustrated and disoriented bodies will one day in the end be renewed and transformed as we ourselves are raised physically with him.

Jesus' resurrection was a physical resurrection.

He looked like himself, but there was something profoundly different about him.

You could still see the scars on his hands, his feet, and his side, and yet he was glorified.

The resurrection at the end of the age is patterned on that.

Your resurrection, you will look like you, but be profoundly different.

That is the promise, that's the hope that Christianity has for the future.

And so the resurrection dignifies our bodies eternally.

This is the better story.

The Christians get to tell an anxious world.

The Christians must tell an anxious world.

It's not simplistic, it's messy and it's complicated because people are messy and complicated.

So, how should we respond as a church?

Three final ideas before we finish this morning.

First, we cultivate community for the isolated.

If the song of your life is let it go, then you will end up living in a palace of ice.

If the song of your life is let it go, you will end up living in a palace of ice.

Cut off from others, guarded by a massive snow monster.

Maybe not that last bit.

But you'll cut yourself off from the world.

You'll find, yes, here's the thing.

You'll be free, utterly free, and alone.

Just like Elsa was.

Come and find the who you are.

Come and find the answer to that question that sets you in right context, that makes sense of your place in the world.

We need as a church to be a place of welcome, a community for those in need, especially one for those with whom we disagree because we love them.

Cultivate a community for the isolated.

Secondly, we must be a place that stands out in a world of fitting in.

In the West today, to be transgressive.

Who's the counterculture in the world?

Who's the really transgressive people?

It's not actually little Nasdax at the Met Gala.

I was thinking I'd look great in that.

Some of you saw it.

To be transgressive is not to be like little Nas X at the Met Gala or Sam Smith at the Grammys.

Do you know what's really transgressive?

Do you know what's really countercultural?

To be a Christian.

To be a Christian is how you're really going to stand out.

How you're really going to swim against the tide.

Expressive individualism has become the mainstream.

You're pursuing expressive individualism.

It's like you're following the band that was famous ten years ago, but now everybody knows it.

It's the cold play of worldviews.

Christians are the counterculture.

We must be a people who no longer crave the affirmation or celebration of the world, but who focus on who God says we are.

And what is God's affirmation of us?

God's affirmation of us is full and complete.

It is for every person who admits their need.

And it is graciously and abundantly given in forgiveness and restoration.

Because of Jesus, God speaks words of grace and love and kindness over us and says, You are my beloved son, my beloved daughter, in whom I am well pleased.

This is true freedom.

And it frees us to speak about who has made us free.

And then finally, we're to be a place of rest for the weary.

We sing a song from time to time that quotes Saint Augustine says, Our hearts are restless until they find rest in you, O Lord.

And so we sing, Our hearts are restless until they find rest in you.

Christianity has cool waters for parched souls.

If you're a parched soul here this morning, we have cool waters for you.

Something that can quench your thirst.

We have rest for weary hearts.

Christianity says to the exhausted that your salvation is not found in a constant cycle of creating who you are and then trying your hardest to make your mark on the world.

No, it is found in the joyful rest that Jesus offers.

In seeing that you are ready marked by his image, and that by grace you receive the mark of his forgiveness, the spirit of reconciliation and the hope of a world made new.

That I think is the better story that Christianity has to offer our world as we seek to discover who it is we are.

For Christians, our identity.

Is not so much created, but received, lived into, enjoyed.

Thank you for listening to this week's sermon.

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