Sermon Central
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What To Wear To Church Series
Contributed by C. Philip Green on Sep 2, 2022 (message contributor)
Summary: If you’re involved in public ministry within the church, dress to honor your head; dress to honor yourself; dress to honor your gender; dress to honor each other; and dress to honor proper custom.
Dr. Laura Schlessinger, in her book The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, talks about the difference between men and women. She says they are different physically, psychologically, motivationally, and temperamentally. Anyone who has had exposure to babies and children can tell you that boys and girls respond differently to the world right from the start.
Give both a doll and the girl will cuddle it, while the boy will more likely use it as a projectile or weapon. Give them two dolls and the girl will have the dolls talking to each other, while the boy will have them engaged in combat (Dr. Laura Schlessinger, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, HarperCollins, 2003, p. 161; www.PreachingToday.com).
How very true, but our culture has become so gender confused that Twitter and Facebook would censure Laura Schlessinger’s comments as “hate speech” today.
Just this last June (2022), Reuters published a study, which estimates that nearly 1.64 million people over the age of 13 in the United States identify themselves as transgender. That is, they identify as a different gender than their biological gender.
The sad thing is that on “Transgender Day of Visibility” in March, two Biden administration agencies released guidance promoting “gender-affirming” health care for minors. This includes puberty blockers, hormone therapy treatments, and sex reassignment surgery (Jonathan Allen, “New study estimates 1.6 million in U.S. identify as transgender,” Reuters, 6-10-22; Jody Herman, Andrew Flores, Kathryn O’Neill, How Many Adults and Youth Identify as Transgender in the United States? UCLA School of Law, Williams Institute, July, 2022; www.PreachingToday.com).
Such therapies are child abuse, since they irreparably damage children, most of whom would eventually affirm their biological sex as they become adults.
Instead, children and adults who change their sexual identity experience significantly higher rates of suicide and depression. In fact, one study out of Sweden, which affirms transgendered people, found that 10 to 15 years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to 20 times that of comparable peers (Cecilia Dhejne, Paul Lichtenstein, Marcus Boman, Anna L. V. Johansson, Niklas Långström, Mikael Landén, “Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden,” Plos One Journal, February 22, 2011, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885; Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D., “Sex Reassignment Doesn’t Work. Here Is the Evidence,” The Heritage Foundation, March 9, 2018, www.heritage.org/ gender/commentary/sex-reassignment-doesnt-work-here-the-evidence).
The gender confusion in our culture is literally killing people! So what do you do to minister to people in such a culture? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians 11, 1 Corinthians 11, which addresses the church in a gender confused culture in the First Century.
1 Corinthians 11:2-3 Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God (ESV).
While Paul commends the church for listening to a lot of the teaching he passed on to them, he offers some correction to their theology, especially when it comes to gender. Specifically, he describes a hierarchy in creation the way God designed it: God is the head of Christ; Christ is the head of man; man is the head of woman.
Just as the head of the body gives direction to the rest of the body, so God gives direction to Christ; Christ gives direction to men; and men give direction to women. Now, in the case of men and women, they don’t always follow those directions, but Christ always followed His Father’s direction (John 5:30; 6:38; 7:28; 8:28, 42; 12:49; 14:10, 31).
In fact, Philippians 2 says that even “though He was in the form of God… [He] emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8).
Jesus obeyed His Father to the point of death on a cross. Now, Jesus is in no way inferior to God. He IS God! Rather, Jesus chose to follow His Father’s direction, which brought about our redemption!
In the same way, women are in no way inferior to men. They bear the image of God just like men do! However, when a wife chooses to follow her husband’s direction, as he follows Christ’s direction, wonderful things happen!
It’s the order God established in creation, which our culture and the 1st Century Corinthian culture tried to ignore to their own hurt. Gender confusion creates a real mess, so the church must speak clearly and compassionately on this issue. Specifically, the church should affirm male and female differences, especially in their public gatherings.
