we're going to talk about women's roles for the next couple weeks we're going to start back in Genesis Genesis chapter 2 and um today I'm going to talk about the distinct differences between men and women because in our culture today we are trying to be convinced that we aren't different we're trying to be convinced that we aren't different and I'm going to make a case today that we are dramatically different in every way um and I'm thankful for that so Genesis chapter 2 let's stand to our feet one more time honor the reading of the word Genesis chapter 2 starting verse one th thus the heavens and the Earth were finished and all of all the hosts of them and on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done so God bless the seventh day had made it holy because on God rested from all his work that he had done in creation these are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord made the earth and the heavens when no Bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field yet sprung up for the Lord God had not caused it to rain in the land and there was no man to work the ground and a Mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground then the Lord God formed formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the Man became a living creature and the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the East and there he put the man whom he had formed and out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that has Pleasant the sight and good for food the tree of life was in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil and a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden and there it divided and became Four Rivers the name of the first is the pishon and it the one that flowed around the whole land of hiala where there is gold and the gold of that land is good bellium and onx stone are there the name of the second river is the Gian and it is the one flowed around the land of kush and the name of the third river is The Tigress which flows east of Assyria and the fourth rivers of the Euphrates then God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it and the Lord God commanded the man saying you may surely eat of every tree of the garden but out of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die then the Lord God said is not good that the man should be alone I will make him a helper fit for him now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them or whatever the man called every living creature that was its name the man gave names to all livestock the the birds of the heavens and every beast of the field but for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him so the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and while he slept he took one of his ribs 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 unashamed so father we thank you for the way you created us Lord we thank you that we're created complimentary for each other that means the way we think is complimentary the way we're shaped is complimentary the way we behave is compliment and that was by desire time and Lord we we ask that today as we look into your word that you would help us solidify that in our minds that one is not less and the other is not greater but we were designed like this by your Divine will and we pray that you'd allow us to operate in it according to your will let us become the men and women that you've called us to be and in Christ's name we pray and everyone said amen you may be seated I want you to know that women were a part of God's design from the beginning we've we've talked about this uh about a month ago that God did not create Adam and then go oh man messed up at least I don't think he said that he not create Adam and say and I messed up I only made one so when you read that God said it's not good for man to be alone that was not God admitting that he that he had messed up at that point that was him recognizing and allowing Adam to know that it wasn't good for Adam to be alone it wasn't part of his plan and so he causes Adam he allows Adam to discover that by himself by the way as he as he walks all the animals in front of Adam Adam starts to realize what God already knew I need somebody to help me I can't do this by myself you almost it almost feels like Adam was being was jealous of the animals so God puts him to sleep pulls a rib out and you can go into some deep deep deep studies about that there's all kinds of different um ideas about what God took and what he did in that I don't know I wasn't there but out of Adam what we need to understand is out of Adam he created Eve and there was no part of Eve that Adam was disappointed in when he laid eyes on her the first time he was pretty excited he said at last somebody like me but different I know we keep going back back to the 1960s but it was a pivotal moment in our nation's culture where we threw off the constraints of biblical definition of sexuality and gender and we started running down a road with no guard rails the late 60s with a sexual Revolution that really took hold we ended up um ripping down all barriers all biblically and God Place barriers to sex and how how it should be carried out to gender how we should think about it uh and we ripped them all down and said we're going to make up our own constraints and uh if you've ever tried to navigate it here in the last 10 years it's difficult we uh raise young women telling them they could do anything a man could do and you could do it better amen just checking and uh in a misguided effort to give young ladyes confidence we told them they needed to act like men we told them to stuff their emotions and stuff the empathy and that you need to become physically stronger and you needed to be able to carry out any role a man could carry out and that's what our culture told young ladies and when they became distressed about it we couldn't figure out why when when they became uh confused about it we couldn't figure out why so instead of us going no this is the way God created you as a culture we said the way God created you isn't enough you need to act like someone else and in order to be promoted in society you need to act more like a man to be promot oted and so I want to make the case today ladies that you need to be women it's starting off well just kind of you know it's like getting on a boat the first time and you're kind of like this at the beginning and then after a couple hours you're like n I'm I'm good I'm not saying we'll be here a couple hours but Genesis 2:8 then the Lord God said is not good for man to be alone I will make him a helper fit for him God had created Eve dramatically different than Adam on purpose for a purpose there were obvious physical differences there Eve's muscle tone wasn't the same as Adams Eve's physical appearance wasn't the same as Adams now all these years later thankful to science to actually tell us that we're different we're finally coming around to it I read you a very boring uh synopsis of a study from NIH in 2021 now we're still doing studies on muscle density and mass between men and women because we just don't believe it women athletes are known to be less strong and powerful than equally trained men muscle strength of women indeed is typically reported in the range of 40 to 75% of that of men women are also known to be less powerful and equally TR than equally trained men gender differences are still evident when power per kilogram of body mass is considered and the difference in absolute strength between genders appears more evident in the upper body compared to the lower body on the contrary did you hear that it says men are dramatically stronger in the upper body than the lower body complimentary that's why you don't want your wife kicking you there's a little pardon here several studies have reported that strength per unit of cross-sectional area or lean body mass do not substantially differ between Sexes so what you find out of these studies is there's always somebody trying to find the caveat to prove that we're the same so there's some studies out there that are say well once you take the total muscle apart then the strength is still there men just have more muscle mass but other studies confirm that gender differences in strength may be accounted to lbm but reported that the differences in power performances were still apparent regardless of body composition and muscle mass men's M this report this study is just simply saying men's muscles are different than female muscles no matter how dense they are you were created different that's good amen settle down men let's some of the men out there are like yeah we have diminished a woman's physical ability to create another life to the point that our modernday demented Society is trying as hard as they possibly can to figure out how men can do that the single most miraculous thing a woman can do apart from a man is carry a baby to this day we have no clue and we just look over it like it's not a big deal woman's ability to give birth to a child is the single greatest difference between a male and a female you are giving life and when God said he would fix our sin he said he' do it through you the seed of the woman would crush his head the serpent he didn't say it would become it would be through the work of a man he said it would be through the miraculous birth of a woman and Jesus coming to Earth God so loving the world he chose a young woman named Mary to do a miraculous thing that the world had yet to see and will never see again but it was through the pain of childbirth in the miraculous thing that only a woman can do that God saved the world you're different women your brains are different I don't know if you realize that this is where it goes downhill in 2000 a man named kahill scanned the brains of men and women viewing either highly aversive films or emotionally neutral ones the Aversa films were expected to trip off strong negative emotions and uh imprinting in the amydala part of their brains that's an almond-shaped structure found in each brain hemisphere actively in the amydala during the viewing experience as expected predicted subject's later ability to recall the viewed Clips but in women this relationship was was observed only in the left Amy amydala in men it was only in the right amydala kahill and others have since confirmed these results discoveries like this this one should ring researchers alarm buzzers women it's known retain stronger more Vivid memories of emotional events than men do they recall emotional memories more quickly and the ones they recall are richer and more intense if as is likely the amydala figures into depression or anxiety any failure to separate separately analyze men and women's Brains to understand their different susceptibilities to either syndrome would be as self-defeating as not knowing left from right he's saying in the in the idea of depression or and and things like that anxiety if you don't separate men from women when we're talking about anxiety and depression you're in a pointless Endeavor we're experiencing it from different parts of our brain so remember complimentary in a 2014 study University of Pennsylvania researchers imagined the brains of 428 imaged the brains of 428 male and 521 female use an uncharacteristically huge sample and found that female brains consistently showed more strongly coordinated activity between hemispheres while the Mal's brains actively was more tightly coordinated within local brain regions this finding a confirmation of results in smaller studies published earlier tracks closely with others observations that the corpus callosum the white matter cable that crosses and connects the hemispheres is bigger in women than in men and that women's Brains tend to be more bilaterally bilaterally symmetrical than men so that here's how this plays out it makes women better reading at reading comprehension listen guys come on do you remember being in school and it was always a girl sitting beside you that got agreed on the book report wasn't it they're better at reading comprehension and they're dramatically better recalling emotions and details if you ask a man hey how did that affect you and they go I'm good no listen I'm not diminishing men we're listen but a man is going to go I'm good why because why God wired us to wake up the next morning go back to work and so I can't get emotionally tangled up because God like I got to do go do something physical tomorrow I got to do traditionally through the course of human history men got up and worked with their hands now you have to remember just in the last hundred years did this change just in the last 100 let's call the last 50 years in the last 5 years we got to work from home in the scope of human history what we experience now has never been true and so what how did God wired us God wired us I am not going to be as emotionally attached for our survival yeah because if I came home and went there's four Lions out there baby and I'm scared probably won't be around next week you know what I'm saying but if I come home and say I don't care how the kids feel today it's probably not acceptable so what he created us as men to be able to to be able to withstand emotions in a different way and women able to embrace emotions in a critical way look at your neighbor say complimentary complimentary I'm going to put a um an image up there can you put that slide up there now this this is not a shotgun Target um okay this was a study done about men and women's brain activity at rest let me read you so this is what Stanford study that tracked the way men's Brains were operating at rest and women's Brains were operating at rest and then it charted it and what what science has been trying to do is trying to say this gender or or sex has no effect on the brain that's what they been trying to save for decades now that it has no effect on the brain and so we're just all our brains are the same and then because of cultural things because because they told you you were female and your parents treated you a different way than they treated your brother then that accounts for the different way you think what they're finding out now is that is all bull they're finding out because you are female your brain is different because you are male your brain is different and at rest when they did this study at Stanford they found out there was Zero overlap in the way our brains work at rest some of you are like if i' had known this 30 years ago what are you thinking about nothing I'm going get in trouble hey baby why don't you sit down and rest a little bit I am resting anybody else I'm over here relaxing and I can't relax while you're resting because there are no similarities in the way we think listen to this from Psychology today this piece of article there's been very little coverage of this report in the mainstream media this is you can leave it I I want everybody to see it leave it up there there's very little coverage of this in the main the this report is telling us that we are just different and it goes against the last 50 years of everybody telling us we're not there's been very little coverage of this report in the mainstream media you will no find no mention of this study from Stanford in the New York Times The Wall Street Journal National Public Radio I suspect that's because most mainstream media are cautious of anything having to do with brain-based differences between men and women many of us are understandably wary that any claim of difference will lead to the claims regarding ability remember we've been taught that we are the same that we we can do everything the same that we are equally capable and now they're afraid that if we say our brains are different then our abilities are different if men's Brains are different from women's Brains doesn't that imply that men will be better at some things and women will be better at other things especially when there is no overlap in the finding this is shocking people in science what do you mean they don't overlap at all there's not one dot even close to each other but different doesn't necessarily imply better he says as I stress in the second edition of my book why gender matters apples and oranges are different that doesn't mean apples are better than oranges men and women are turning out to be different more different than we ever imagined that doesn't mean that women are better than men or vice versa but it does suggest that if we ignore the differences we may disadvantage both women and men Leonard Sachs MD in Psychology today listen God created us to think differently to accomplish his purpose he created us to think differently to accomplish his purpose so the objective of a woman is not to get the man to think like her and the objective of a man is not to get the woman to think like her the objective for both of us is to encourage each other to think like we were created to think and to appreciate that but the difference is much deeper than what we've been told there's old ancient commentary that puts this way evees being made after Adam and out of him puts an honor upon that sex as the glory of man if man is the head she is the crown the man was dust refined but the woman was dust double refined one removed further from the earth isn't that beautiful if the man was dust refined once than a woman is dust refined twice men being primarily visual in their form of Attraction notice the obvious and least refined parts of a woman we even find this in scripture in the Song of Solomon he wasn't writing I love the way you think he was saying things like this your lips are like Scarlet thread and your mouth is lovely your cheeks are like halves of pomegranate I don't I don't recommend that you use this nowadays do nothing going to work your neck is like the Tower of David built in rows of stone on it hang a thousand Shields and all of them Shields of Warriors read The Song of Solomon listen to the way the woman talks listen to the way the man talks to Simply look on the exterior of a woman for her worth is to diminish the Unseen beauty that God uniquely placed in a woman a woman's ability to think different is a benefit not a detriment the complicated way and I don't say this in a negative like the complicated way a woman's brain works works for us it's a benefit the nature of a woman to care for and nurture a child is as necessary in our culture as the ability to breath breathe and while we talk about men leaving the household and and and the state that it's left the family imagine imagine if it was all men taking care of infants he's up like now I need to let you I need to let you know a little bit of something about the way God wired men in order to help compensate uh right after a child is born did you know that in a man right after their child is born God does this crazy thing with our with our with our chemistry we produce less to less testosterone and more estrogen in us so that for a bit we could be more empathetic go look it up the beauty is is that he wired women to be that way from the start God didn't have to do a chemical change in you to get you to think caringly to be empathetic it's the way he wired you but listen to me when I when I when where I'm going with this you were created to be able to care and take care to give life and to sustain that life you were created to be able to do that you were created to nurture you were created to to understand you were created to have emotions that men have never even felt towards others and without it Humanity suffers Isaiah 66:13 now I need you to understand these are men writing about this so it's not going to be as emotional but it says as one whom his mother Comforts so I will comfort you you shall be comfort in Jerusalem anytime God talked about comforting he used the analogy of a woman comforting their child 1 Thessalonians 2:7 but we were gentle among you this is Paul now like a nursing mother taking care of her own children do you notice he didn't say we were gentle to you like a raging lunatic man no what he's saying is he didn't even say we're gentle to you like a nice man when he wanted to make a picture of someone who could care for somebody he took a picture of a woman nursing their child this is what it looks like he said if you want to care for somebody this is the epitome of it and our culture has distorted those differences since the sexual Revolution there's been a redefining or reim reimagining of the role of women the idea of a woman being different than a man not less but different was quickly dismissed and we were left with women who can do anything a man can do but in order to do that you were asked to shut off parts of you that God intended you to embrace you had to reduce the value of motherhood you had to increase value on being less emotional and less empathetic now it's become so warped that women are being forced to compete with biological men in sports because we're because now for 50 years we've told you're equal and you can do anything a man can do and now we're going to prove it and now you're now women across the country are being forced into circumstances that are actually dangerous we have raised up a culture as a blatant disregard for physical differences and abilities and all of these distortions led to a break in God's original design that men and women were to be complimentary and our culture has capitalized on the results of sin and exploited the differences and desires now I need you to listen to this Genesis 316 says something very very very important to the woman he said I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing in pain you shall bring forth children your desire shall be contrary to your husband contrary to your husband but he shall rule over you do you see what sin did there there was no mention of this before sin God made him a Helper and now since sin entered into the picture he said you'll have pain and child birth and your desires will be contrary to your husband and your husband will rule over you do you know what you know what that started started the the marital fight it started I have these desires you have these desires and what our culture did was say okay wait a second well if we just make everyone equal and the same maybe we could get along better come on will you will you walk down this with me for a little bit so what we have to do is we have to understand that because of sin now the differences are out now now it's oh I don't know if I like all this I don't know if I like you thinking differently it would be so much easier if you thought like me and then the wife is sitting over there going it'd be so much easier if that thought like me it'd be so much easier it'd be so much easier it'd be so much easier and we were sin caused just as Sin caused humans to be separated from God sin caused the marriage relationship to be difficult now the woman's desire is contrary to the man and the man thinks well I've got to rule over it so society's response to that is let's just make everybody the same then we'll think the same way then we'll act the same way way and we'll get along better and then we realize now it's not working either now it's not now what do we do now we need to spend all this money on science to tell us we're different so what we ended up with is men not appreciating the differences as women and women seeking to erase the differences to gain a foothold and now the irony of the whole thing is that we live in a culture that elevates the least important of the differences ladies I'm going to get serious here for a second our culture is encouraging young women women of any age really to sell the least important differences to sell it and now our culture has embraced it where it's there's not even a stigma to it anymore we can take photos and post them online and make money on it and nobody even blinks and here's the LIE from Satan every lady listen to me especially young ones here's the LIE from Satan that it won't emotionally harm you when God wired you to be em more emotionally susceptible to everything that happens it was something he wanted you to embrace and Satan came along and said no no no no you you take you take you take the least important differences of you and you you sell it a and and so we are so confused as a culture where we're saying we're all the same but there's this little difference that we can make money on and our culture has embraced it and men are buying it okay I got three minutes to get through the no amens here we go and what I'm telling you ladies is there's more to you than that there's more to you than that if you're watching online there's more to you you than that you're more valuable than the than the differences that look appear on the surface and we are luring our youngest most cherished possessions into a life of regret and emotional damage we just read that women are more susceptible that the way our brains are different that women process pain and emotions differently and they can vividly recall them and yet as a culture we are asking them to hurt themselves over and over and over and over again stuff it act like a man then turn around and sell it to a man and then turn around and compete with a man and we wonder why we're confused and we wonder why young women have no confidence because we've cheapened everything about him and we've let it happen and churches are ignoring the issue because they're afraid that if we call a spade a spade if we say listen this is the reality that's going on we've told them they were the same forever and then we told them to exploit the difference but because we told them the same they were the same we expected them to respond to the exploitation like a man would but it's not happening and then for the last 50 years we told them if you have an abortion it won't hurt and last year was 3.8 million babies born in the United States and recorded over a million abortions one fifth of all pregnancies according to what was recorded were terminated an abortion most of them being by a pill taken at your house and our society says well if you think like a man about it it won't bother you but I'm telling you ladies God didn't wire you that way he wired you on purpose you feel more because you were designed to feel more you care deeper because you were designed to care deeper you think different because you were designed to and you love different because you were designed to and from my perspective and I think from God's perspective to act like anything else but what you were designed to act like is not fulfilling the role God put you in I want to encourage you this morning listen this has been an awfully bad experiment in our culture and it is not getting better and all I'm asking as a pastor is that we that we get our head screwed on straight we've been we've been trying to Define what a what a real man looks like and now we're going to dive into what a a real woman looks like because our culture is so confused and for one I I had somebody the other day say hey um thanks for thanks for this church being a great place to grow up and for the rest of my career here I'm praying that every young man and especially every young woman that comes through here and spends their formative years adolescence teen years in this church turns around and says the same thing thanks for this being a great place to grow up but more importantly than that thanks for providing an image of what a woman looks like you're worth more than what our culture says you're worth you're worth more than what they're giving you right now I'm not asking you to stand up and scream from the rooftop I'm I'm just asking you to embrace your own worth and tomorrow when you're crying over your breakfast don't let anybody talk you out of [Music] it and when your heart hurts for your kid embrace it and when you're emotional about other things embrace it when you have to call somebody else to help you pick up something don't be ashamed of it and when your husband asked you to comfort him embrace the role you were wired for it when our culture ask you to do anything else but what God created you to do just tell them no be the woman God created you to be we're going to get into work I think you should work I think you should do all that stuff but I think you should work as a woman not an impostor of a man and our culture needs you to do that so can we stand to our feet [Music] I um I you know I'm the way I'm wired is just not to I I don't know why I'm just wired not to avoid these things and so we're going to lean into not just Chris's opinion of it but we're going to lean into scripture roles moving forward and I'm fully aware that that not everybody watching online not not everybody here probably agrees with some of the stuff that's going on but I want you over these next over this next month to really lean into to God men and women so God we need to have a clear definition of what you've called us to be our kids are depending on it for us as parents to be able to give them a Clear Vision of who we are as men and women and it will matter it will matter so that's going to be my prayer for you this week as you embrace the person that God called you to be the sex that God called you to be and I believe at the end of the day we'll bring glory to him for doing that father we thank you Lord these are tough conversations in this day and age but we will not ignore them we will lean into them whatever the cost because fulfilling the role that you created us to fulfill understanding that is so important for us and the ones coming behind us so Lord we pray that we'd hear from you we pray that you'd reinforce it we pray that we'd be in your word we pray that we'd be able to teach and correct and encourage and Lord we pray that our kids would be better off for it and we thank you for these moments Lord I Thank You For Every Woman in the house every woman listening and I pray that you'd give them a confidence in their hearts about the way you made them and that they don't trade it for anything and we thank you for that in jesus' name we pray come on can you give him thanks this morning amen Hey listen contemplate on this this week and we'll see you back here next Sunday