Tana City Church Preaching
Kim Midgley | Questions Series - Is God male?
OK, I want to make much of the Lord this morning, I'm starting what could be a new series of questions, and the question that I'm going to ask today is, "Is God male?" Is God male as opposed to female, so Martin is God's fan or that kind of male, but male as given. I believe that if we have to understand who we are and how the world should work, we need some kind of a clarity in our minds about these things, so this is definitely a topic I love and I'm going to share with you passionately because I believe that God is good and already made, he made well. And so when it comes to understanding sexuality or it comes to understanding life in general, it is good to go back to our Creator and ask from his word and inquire, "How did you make things?" So I'm going to pray and then share this message with you. Heavenly Father, as we spend a bit of time around your word, I ask that you would speak to us through your word this morning, instruct our hearts Lord and bring us peace and joy on the insights that we may know you, stand firm in your truth and bring glory to you in Jesus' Name. Amen. So these days kind of work, gender ideologies proliferate. It's just everywhere in media and more and more Christians are coming under pressure to have some kind of a sense of what they believe within that arena of sexuality, gender and roles and so on. And what you believe, what you believe about these things actually has a big impact on marriage-friendly church government and even society as a whole. One of the arenas in which these modern ideas are being tested is the arena of sports. It's kind of the final bastion of objectivity in a field that's become highly contentious and subject, meaning people have said, "I believe what I believe, you can just believe what you want to believe. I see myself as this, you can see yourself as whatever you want to see yourself as." But when it comes to the sports, it's a little bit more complicated than that and sports actually is for centuries being divided between male and female events for very specific reasons, which over the coming weeks we might look into. Don't worry, it won't take that long to make sense of it, but there's a lot to the subject. But one of those arenas now, right now in the news, is the arena of sport because the Paris Olympics are on. And I don't really care that much about the opening ceremony, it was very good taste. That's really my big objection there, not that I feel that it was necessarily just to try and target Christians. I don't think that was the point. I think the point is that artistic creativity is just ugly, anyway. That's just my opinion. I also choose my clothes that I wear if you think they're ugly. That's also European. It's okay to have an opinion. But within the arena of sports right now, the question is like, what happened with this Algerian boxer and an Italian boxer in the women's boxing? And what we see is that there are some biological women competing in men's sports. There are some biological women competing as if they were men in men's sports, but they don't seem to be winning in a big way, so they don't really get into the press match. But when biological men compete in women's sports, it becomes a huge issue of contention because like it or not, the men are usually physically stronger and more powerful than the women. So when a man calls himself a woman and then competes in a woman's event, he usually does better than we think is fair. That's true. So this concerted push for inclusion temporarily blindsided many people who felt helpless in the face of political correctness and the fear of cancel culture. People in authority in sports allowed many things before they realized just that it's not going to work. So they said, "Let's be inclusive," and then they realized later on that inclusivity might actually mean violence against women when somebody biologically beats up somebody who's biologically female. So more recently common sense and reason are slowly waking up to the irreconcilable nature of both protecting women and allowing transgender competitors in women's sports. And now multiple international sports governing bodies are moving to protect women by banning people with XY chromosomes from competing against people with XX chromosomes. You have to choose our words carefully to be understood at this age. I don't just say women or men because people are trying to confuse those subjects. But you can't go back to biological differences and you can nail it down and say, somebody who has been born with XY chromosomes will go through a time of puberty if it's allowed naturally and they will become physically stronger because of the amount of testosterone that their body will produce after that. And their muscles will get bigger and they will become more of a man. And that means that they will probably be stronger than most women. Of course, they are weak men. They're maybe women in pretty beat up a weak man. I'm not, you know, I'm just I'm speaking in general terms that sanity is coming back in some circles. But the battle to hold a right view on these matters is far from over because as Christians, we need to be both well informed and compassionate. So considering the woman's boxing issue that's in the media at the moment, you have to actually be compassionate on the Algerian XY chromosome carrion boxer who was born with a very rare condition just the same as Custer Cimenia in South Africa who was born with female body parts on the outside, but male body parts on the inside. And that's very rare. And that kind of person is actually sometimes not even chromosomally completely normal. The end result is they don't even know that they carry masculinity in terms of their hormonal system. They don't know that they're hominally male when they're born. And so this Algerian boxer was born and issued with a birth certificate as a female and grew up as a female and entered sports as a female and now later on has found out actually you have XY chromosomes. You've got male hormones moving through your system. This makes the fight unfair. Can you as a Christian see that that is not somebody who has necessarily got some kind of a mental problem who's gone out to try and find victory by meeting up women. That is somebody who is born different from the average man or the average woman. It's a particular case. Now you have to make a very big distinction between that and let's say what is now mainstream trying gender ideology which is a guy who is born as a guy in some cases and then later decides he feels like being a woman and then while he's who the guy he dresses like a woman and then beats woman up. Metaphorically maybe he just runs a hundred meters raised faster. And so the US schools have capitulated to the pressure to let males compete against females and that's a completely different storyline from what's happened between these two boxes in the Olympics. And we need to be able to make those distinctions because we need to be able to be compassionate where compassion is the right response and we need to stand up for truth and be argumentative where that is the right response. And so when somebody because of their own desire for attention or recognition or whether they have some kind of dysphoria they say I'm in the wrong body and then they say but I'm going to use that as a license to compete and beat women in sport and get prizes for my fragile ego. I say that's wrong that's totally unfair. And so you can see that nuances are involved in this discussion. We need to become informed, not just bigots of judgmental, write them all offers, you know, this isn't. Not godly. But where is god in this picture? See many voices exist with many agendas and the impact on the church and the family can be great and so we need to have a clear understanding how to become passionate but also where are the lines actually drawn. Where do you go then in a confusing confused world with so many voices? Two Timothy three verse 16. Two Timothy three verse 16 says all scripture is breathed out by god and profitable for teaching or approved for correction and for training in righteousness. So scripture, the Bible, the word of God, is from God. The word in the Greek is thee of new spots. It's god breathed. Now I don't know how close you have to be to feel someone's breath. When someone speaks there's air coming out from the land to make their vocal chords vibrate. God spoke. His word is his word. In other words, the Bible is not a collection of man's thoughts or philosophies. It is god breathed. All scripture is god breathed and profitable for teaching for approved for correction and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete equipped for every good work. So as a church we believe that the 66 books of the Bible are the inspired word of god, inerrant and sufficient in that the Bible is the final authority in matters of church doctrine and practice and it's all that we need to understand life and godliness. Isn't all you need in order to qualify as a medical doctor or as a rocket scientist? So understand the Bible speaks to issues that are coming to mankind his state, his condition, his need for salvation and what the Bible speaks into it is sufficient to give you the truth that you need. This word of god will not change. Matthew 24 verse 35 said heaven and earth will pass away but my words will not pass away. That's Jesus speaking. Heaven and earth will pass away but my words will not pass away. God himself, his word, is rooted in who he is. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. These are ways in which you can understand we should honor the word of god. As I have 40 verse 8 says the grass withers with flower fates but the word of our god will stand forever. John 17 verse 17 says sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. So if we want to be made clean, to be made pure, to be said right we need God's word. Malachi 3 verse 6 says for either Lord do you like change? God's not going to change his perspectives, his position, his opinion, if there's an opinion in God, his desire is not going to change. Isaiah 5 verse 20 says woe to those who call evil good and good evil who put darkness for light and light for darkness who put better for sweet and sweet for better. In other words there's a word to someone who contradicts what God says. If you contradict it literally means against speak. Contradicts speak against what God says. If you contradict God's word you are actually contradicting his nature. On it goes. The basis for unity in the church is that we build our agreement on something absolute unchanging and external to ourselves. That's the word of God. Without the word of God we have no hope of being united in agreement. We need the truth to set us free, to join us together, to make us whole. Interestingly the word of God is also the basis for our disunity when we interpret it differently. A lot of the churches divided on how they interpret the word of God and I mention that because it's not just good enough to say well this is what I think this means. You read the scriptures and I think this is what it means. No we have to be able to say this is what God is saying, this is what the author intended, this is what God meant when he said this. So we take this idea of scripture and we have to acknowledge it is necessary to do diligence to scripture, not simply grab all the verses that are at our ideas. A lot of people in this day and age grab lots of verses selectively to pull an argument for their own opinion. This is not how you submit to the word of God, that's how you manipulate the word of God. The way as a church we want to also submit to the word of God by doing diligence to what it says. So take for example this question is God male. This is a very good question. When I was younger I would have said it's obvious God is a he all throughout the Bible. I mean he did this, he did that. It's obvious isn't it? It starts right at the beginning Genesis 1 verse 5, God called the light day and the darkness he called night. It is he he called it night and there was evening there was morning the first day, this is true. And this is not a patriarchal right at choosing God's pronouns for him. Scripture is God breathed. If you study scripture you will find there's many stuff in many scriptures, there's a lot of stuff in the Bible that contradicted the cultures of the day. So God was able to set people right where they were wrong by bringing messages to us his word in such a way that he could explain, don't do this, this isn't appropriate, do that. So if you say he could get all that inspiration right but he couldn't get the patriarchal writer of his word to get the pronouns right, it's impossible. God super intended over his word and so he is his word. This is how he reveals himself to us. In addition scripture contains as many as 170 references to God as the father, the father. So throughout the word of God scripture God himself speaks and he is the father and Jesus whose God made flesh incarnated as a male and he is the exact representation of God's being additional to the scriptural references to God as father and the use of male pronouns. Jesus himself referred to God as father and called him father about 160 times in fact from Jesus in the New Testament. You might say well that's it God is male and you'd be wrong. Did you expect me to say you'd be wrong? God is not male the way we think of male. We think of male from a biological perspective but God is not biological. God is spirit. God doesn't have hands and feet and arms or a face or physical eyes but he's watching you and he doesn't have xy chromosomes. He doesn't have a biological body. He is in corporeal which means he hasn't got a physical body before. That's God in his essential being. I'm not talking about Jesus in the incarnation right now we'll get there. However despite God not having hands and feet and arms or a face we'd find reference to all of these things in the word of God which we should seek his face you know we sing he's got the whole world in his hands. True that is not physical. We often relate to God through these ideas. They help us to understand the personal nature of God. When we assign human attributes to God who is spirit it's called anthropomorphism. The morph means to change to put so we're shaping God like a man. Anthropomorphism is to cast upon God characteristics that we see in ourselves and that helps us to understand and relate to God in a personal way and for sure that is healthy and for sure that is scriptural but there's a limit to where you can be speaking about things in anthropomorphological terms. God is a personal being. He has intellect, he has will, he has emotions and nature and character and moral capacity. They have all of those things in God so we know he's compassionate and so at times when God's presence is so real around you and you're weeping and in some situation where you'd feeling God comfort you by his Holy Spirit you could say it felt like God gave me a hug. You're not saying God literally came there and gave you a hug but certainly he gave you the same comfort that a hug would have brought you. So that's why this is healthy. God is one God. He exists in three persons father, son and Holy Spirit and to say God is male is not anthropomorphism. It's not it's not just putting a human characteristic on God but neither is he simply like a father. He's not like a father he is a father and in fact he is the ultimate and final father as he Ephesians says he is the God and father of us all and of all. So God is a father he is not like a father. So when it comes to the idea of anthropomorphism and talking about God as male and father it is not actually anthropomorphism. We're not costing an ungod attribute that he doesn't really have. In this case he really has masculine characteristics and he really is a father. So this is not man considering human characteristics on God it is who he is as he has revealed himself in his word but if we stop there and say God is male this is how he's revealed himself we would be making a mistake. The mistake is in stopping short of what God has revealed of himself. The danger is if you stop at that point with the idea of God is male you may think of God the father or the Holy Spirit as men. That would be a bit of a mistake because you're diminishing God at that point. So think of God as a man when you talk to him he is a deep voice angry guy just a fraction away from smiting you with his lightning bolts. You can immediately start to think you know maybe God is a man he's just like father but he's a distant father like my father was. He would be falling so far short of understanding God. So God has male characteristics but to say he is male and stopped there you could be making a mistake of thinking of God the father or the Holy Spirit as men. Numbers 23 verse 19 says God is not man that he should lie or a son of man that he should change his mind. So there numbers 23 verse 19 is a statement God is not a man God is not man that he should lie. Actually using that text to cause light on God's internal gender stuff is not a good use of that text because what that text really is about is about whether God would lie or not. So in that text it's a weak text to use to make that point because it's really God saying he doesn't lie like people do. God doesn't lie people lie. God is not a man that he would lie. It's not God is not a man. It's not your whole verse for the theology now you know. Some people who want to construe God as a woman use that verse is wonderful but the point is God is not simply a man. He's not the same as us. He doesn't lie. Once Daniel 15 verse 29 says and also the glory of Israel will not lie or have regret for he is not a man that he should have regret. So now in terms of his emotions he doesn't feel some of the emotions we feel because he can't make a mistake because he's perfect he couldn't feel regret. So even when he looked at the world before the flight and he says I regret all that I've made he wasn't talking about that kind of regret that he had made a mistake. He was just saying what a mess this is but he knew it all along when he created that he would have to send Jesus as a Savior. He knew some would enter the world and he created still he created perfectly. Hosea 11 verse 9 I will not execute my burning anger I will not again destroy Ephraim for I am God and not a man. This is perhaps the best text I am God and not a man the only one in your midst and I will not come in wrath he says through Hosea in that situation he is not coming in wrath but he says I'm God and not a man and I would like to draw this to your attention as we speak about is God male you can never stop at the idea that God is a man because he would be wrong he would be diminishing God. God is in every respect greater than a human being male or female there isn't a human being who in a sense can even come close to representing the awesome greatness of our God. So in his being don't just stop at the point of thinking God the Father is a man God the Holy Spirit is a man you know Jesus came as a man this whole religion thing is just taken over by men. It seems like that when you look at church history sometimes but God in every respect is greater than a human being male or female and Jesus when he took on flesh as a male he wasn't trying to represent God's masculinity simply not it's just not the argument for him being born male taking on human flesh as a male it doesn't it isn't about representing God though he is the fullness of the representation of God the deity in bodily form you have to think further Jesus came as a new representative of Adam he came and was born male because he came to be the new Adam the last Adam the perfect Adam the beginning of a new human race so as our priest who would be one of us he came in the likeness of in the likeness of simple flesh but not sinful he came to represent Adam huh so Jesus is male partly because he's showing us who God is yes but also because he had to be male to represent or stand in the place of Adam and thus of course after incarnating Jesus took on flesh he never surrendered to that human human divine joining trying to think of the word for it is his sense of theological words but the point is Jesus is now our man in glory he's not our woman in glory he's ascended that he's got he's been glorified so he's done what we will do in terms of one day when we have resurrected bodies he's been glorified and he's seated at the right hand of God and we speak of him as the the God man our man in glory the representative that took the place of Adam who failed but Jesus succeeded and we never say he's the God woman or our woman in glory John Papper states this we should not think of God the Father or the Holy Spirit as men they are spirit not biological now why does this matter well the first reason it matters is because it's true the second reason it matters is because thinking of God as male and thus biological would be diminishing to God God is infinitely above these creature distinctions the third reason it matters is because it guides us against drawing wrong conclusions from these facts God is revealed as father not mother God is revealed as a king not a queen I don't mean that there aren't motherly metaphors for him I'm just saying mainly father not mother mainly king not queen mainly lord not lady in the marriage with the church Christ is the husband and the church is the bride and interestingly in that sense all male Christians are ultimately the bride of Christ in eternity as part of the body of Christ but we want to become woman so this is the separation of biological and spiritual ideas he is not the bride and she the husband he installed priests in the Old Testament all of them were men Jesus comes into the world as a man and not as a woman he invests his unique apostolic authority in 12 men not 12 women so we must hold all these God breathed revelations these ideas of God as true while not thinking of God the Father or the Holy Spirit as men to say God is male and stop it that point would be to diminish God and it would be disingenuous to women John Piper makes this point strongly that saying God is not male the way we understand male is important because it prevents us from coming to wrong conclusions about his fatherliness or his kingliness or his lordliness you see the exercise of his fatherliness is not in the image of me as an earthly father he's not patent or for man this is where things get more interesting see because of things like toxic masculinity people want to reject masculinity and in so doing they look at God and say see you part of a patriarchal system and we reject you too that's part of the whole agenda of the world and secular feminism though God is our father in heaven and not our mother in heaven God nevertheless has in his word made reference to feminine qualities many times God is he refers to feminine qualities in himself but we need to be diligent to what scripture says the Bible uses feminine or material maternal sorry maternal images for God in Isaiah 42 verse 14 he says he's like a woman in labor giving birth in Isaiah 49 verse 15 he uses a picture of a nursing mother and he says I'm like you know what would like the nursing mother would the mother forget the baby but I would not forget the baby so he doesn't shrink back he's a comforting mother in Isaiah 66 verse 13 in Isaiah 13 verse 8 a mother bear angry defensive of the cubs these are God breathed images pictures God uses about how he feels and they were feminine but in none of them does he say I'm a woman he says I'm like this I'm like that so while he says I am your father and he uses male pronouns throughout his word yet he uses metaphors and imagery that reflects the feminine that is also part of his nature and character like an eagle that stirs up its nest that flutters over its young spreading out its wings catching them bearing them on its opinions the Lord alone guided him no foreign god was with him that's in Deuteronomy so God is showing that the nurturing protecting caring carrying sheltering but he also says you were unmindful of the rock that bore you and you forgot the god who gave you birth the female imagery used in the above passages cannot be used to conclude that god is female for example when he's described as a rock is the rock his work is perfect but no one would suggest that god is a piece of granite so it's pictures that god's trying to use to help us to understand who he is because otherwise we wouldn't know that and if you thought of god as god is a man then you would not understand just how motherly and nurturing and compassionate and tender he is and so I want you to know that he calls himself male he reveals himself through being a father not a mother and there's no indication that any part of god is put forward as a woman yet everything about the feminine and the woman finds its origin in god and this is the glory I want you to know about god today because it will lead us to be to find the right foundation for every other idea when it comes to sex and gender the female imagery used in these passages cannot be used to conclude god is female the comparison of god to a rock expresses power and dependability this is from some commentator god's trying to communicate to us however some people when they look at the feminine attributes characteristics nature of god they would go a step further and try to produce a theology that says god is also a woman not just a he or a father and that they gravitate towards the mystery of the holy spirit who by the way is also addressed with male grammar but they look at the feminine nouns like ruach the word for spirit or wisdom haqma the word used in proverbs but the fact feminine nouns in though i mean that the spirit is a feminine person the equivalent term in greek the spirit new man is new to it has no gender and more over spirit is modified by the masculine noun god hello him just as in the new testament there are times when the spirit of the lord is messed is masculinized by the conjunction of the grammar so if you look at the grammar very carefully you will find out that even the spirit cannot be turned into a woman even if he descends jenkin like a dove there is no indication in scripture that you could relate to god as your mother or as a woman and that's important because that's what god reveals of himself so now i'm not arguing for a more masculine god than as opposed to a more feminine god i'm just arguing for relating to god on the terms that he said for so how should we relate to god not as a man he's not a man how should you relate to god he is your father he's not your mother but how should you know god he is nurturing like a woman like a mother cares he cares so we can go and say god describes himself using masculine terms yet uses feminine metaphors to describe certain of his characteristics we cannot say god is male if that is all he is for that is to diminish him we cannot say god is female as if he hasn't made it clear what pronouns he uses for himself that would be to disregard his self revelation this isn't the end of the biblical picture in creation we see that god made human beings in his image male and female everything created in woman this is what john purpose is everything created in woman that sets her off that makes her different from man comes from god and reflects something of his image did you hear that woman and men you need to hear this everything created in woman that makes her different from man comes from god and reflects something of his image woman was not modeled of some other god there's no other god she was modeled of god when the babble says that both woman and men were created in the image of god it means she is who she is based on the model of her creator i think this is absolutely vital women and men must understand they are equally but differently patent or god and we should be slow to try to claim that god is our representative god doesn't represent or reflect me as a man and god doesn't represent or reflect you as a woman and some christians have gone too far into that idea of wanting to be able to identify with god so they are feminizing god so god can be a better representation of them when he's already the perfect representation of them as he is but they're getting the cart before the horse to say god must look like us is try to make god in our image god doesn't represent or reflect me as a man god doesn't represent or reflect you as a woman to want a female god would be absolutely making an idol to insist god is only male would be absolutely making an idol to simplify god to being a combination of male and female characteristics would be to suggest he's patent or human beings that's not how he reveals himself he's far greater than any combination of human characteristics so god is greater than masculinity femininity male and female he is great but he reveals himself he uses male pronouns it is the patent of which every male and female human being is created the bible goes into more detail god's word is important it's not mental fiction it is instruction adam was created first he was made before eve and i tell you adam was different after eve was created adam was made before eve and eve was taken out of adam something was separated like light from dark water from land not good from evil no good from good something was separated when eve was taken out of adam when the bible tells us god said let us make man in our image after our likeness in the image of god he created him male and female he created them when god created adam i think adam was completely in the image of god and when he took eve out of adam i think she was made in the image of god because that's how god made mankind but femur and adam male don't ask me the mechanics don't ask me the biology don't ask me the physical attributes i'm talking about the spiritual ideas about who god is and how man is made in his image mankind the end idea that you have to understand is that male and female are made in the image of god but god is beyond simply being a coalescence of male and female so the golden is later to understand why to understand why and how does it reflect god it is important to say that god is an essential divine being not referring to his incarnate union with humanity but it is essential divine essence is not male and god is not female maleness and femaleness are god's creation as biological bearers of masculinity and femininity both of which are rooted in god that's how john papa concludes his status this forms the starting point for our understanding of human beings remember that the baba is god breathed and therefore the words that are used to describe god are his own his own words describing him we cannot call god our parent who art in heaven or more rebellious still our mother who art in heaven jesus taught us to pray our father who art in heaven don't disobey jesus we hold this that is truth while at the same time we hold that everything on which female is patent by god is created is patent of god female in the image of god and masculinity and femininity both have their roots in god but biological male and female are creations of god god is not biologically male or biologically female he's not even just male or female he is not a male he is not a female but within him you're going to find masculinity and femininity and he has made us to represent him male and female and then we need to understand how should the male be masculine and how should the female be feminine in the image of god the band can come up that's like an introduction message because it helps you to understand a little bit more about how great our god is and we mustn't think of him as a man and when you relate to god he is your father he's your husband he's your protector your provider he cares with the compassion he nurtures and he shelters us with all those mothering qualities as well why don't you stand please i'm going to pray for us heavenly father we stand in awe of you because you are god and you are not a man you are greater than any of these ideas of sexuality and gender you got your greater and anything we can even conceive understand with our minds like you are greater and may your word guide us and shape us and teach us and help us to know you god so that we may worship you for who you are amen