If the Foundations Be Destroyed

(Genesis 2:21–25) So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

If you were charged with the task of toppling a tall office building, would you attempt to do so by shooting out the topmost windows with a BB gun, or by blowing up the foundation upon which the building rested?

This is what we call “a rhetorical question.” Of course, you would topple the building by demolishing its foundation.

The first three chapters of the Bible lay the foundation for everything that follows, including, and especially God’s triune nature and the meaning and import of salvation. The enemy of our souls knows this to be true. And so, it is no coincidence that he has devoted much energy to attacking the Biblical principles concerning gender and marriage.

A plain reading of Genesis indicates that God created his image bearers “male and female” accompanied by a charge to multiply their numbers within the protective covenant of a monogamous and heterosexual marriage.

Recently, a large number of faithful, Jesus-loving, Bible-believing, Christian theologians, leaders and pastors signed their names to a document entitled, “The Nashville Statement” upholding what the Scriptures clearly teach about gender and marriage.

This document, along with the Christians who authored and signed it, were almost immediately denounced, deplored and abhorred by people without, and sadly within the Church. And all in the name of love, tolerance and exegetical superiority (i.e. the assertion that their newly-minted interpretations of Scripture overrule what the vast majority of God’s people have believed and taught for millennia.)

But make no mistake here: The issues of gender and marriage, coupled together with the issue of abortion; specifically, who gets to define gender and marriage, and who gets to determine who lives and who dies, are foundational issues. And they are foundational because everyone involved in the debate understands (at least at some level) that whoever decides and determines these issues is God.

This recent ruckus is simply a repeat of Genesis 3, where our first parents succumbed to the temptation to "be like God" (Gen. 3:5) and attempted to elevate their own notions of “good and evil” over and above what God had clearly revealed, and as we all know, with disastrous results for them and for their posterity.

So, we gather each Sunday morning to lean hard against this rebellious tendency within us to elevate ourselves and our thoughts over the person and revelations of our Sovereign Lord. We gather to faithfully hear and then cheerfully submit ourselves to God’s “fixed givens”, i.e. His divine definitions and determinations, thanking Him, and acknowledging together in song and in prayer that all of His counsels and commandments; His purposes and prescriptions, are not only for His glory, but also for our good.

Note: I would also encourage you to read Rosaria Butterfield's excellent, "Why I signed the Nashville Statement."