1153. Conclusion

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. The school was founded in 1927 for the evangelist Dr. Bob Jones Senior's intent was to make a school where Christ would be the center of everything, so he established daily chapel services today.

That tradition continues with fervent biblical preaching from the University travel platform today on The Daily Platform work, including a study series entitled divine design which is a study of Biblical manhood and biblical womanhood. Today's message will be preached by Dr. Sam Horn well I like to ask you take your Bible this morning and turned to the hundred and 39 Saul will be spending a limited time in that passage and then also in Romans chapter 12 I have. I have to say this is been one of the most engaging and interesting series that we've had on our Monday series since I've been here, and I have been blessed as I have listen to the messages I have been helped and sharpened as we have engaged together in conversation about some of those messages. I know the Monday at 6 o'clock question and answer time is been a special opportunity of engaging with you and and sharpening for me and for others who have been a part of that is so let me just make a quick announcement tonight because of all of the activities that are going on we are going to have that Monday evening Q&A time in Levinson Chapel. We will have one next Monday at the same time, Levinson Chapel, 6 o'clock and it'll it will serve as the final Q&A over everything that we talked about in the series and really we have had a phenomenal time this semester as we have taken a very careful look at what God has to say about divine design and our identity as image bearers who are called to do two things to display the glory of God and to proclaim the gospel of Christ by means of that identity as men and women who, by the gracious working of the Holy Spirit have come to know God love God and follow God and so it's it's been just an amazing time and I have come at the end of the series to remind myself that it is not what I have learned or what I know about this topic because of our time together. It's actually what I remember when I needed in the days that come this past summer, an event took place in our home that sort of change the dynamic for me. My son who graduated from Bob Jones University last May got married and left our home and that left me in a house with two women and two dogs hopelessly outnumbered, I've come to learn that the proper answer to any question that comes my way is yes dear, of course, near and I have also assumed a new ministry and responsibility in our home and that is the ministry of killing any insect or bug or animal. It comes in, usually at spiders. I had a massive opportunity to kill a huge spider on Saturday and evolve the ladder and a broom and it was it was a glorious moment when that occurred one night we came home and I don't know how this happened, but there was actually a bird flying around all through her house and it was about 11 o'clock at night and I was thinking how do I get this bird out of here.

Short of killing because I would absolutely destroy my marriage so we got the doors open and and that bird was just flying. We eventually got the bird out. But the thing the animal that I despise the most is actually a biblical animal that were supposed to look at and learn from, and it's the end you know we we sang a moment ago all creatures of our God and King I'm I'm curious about the anti-actually despise ants I hate them with.

As the Bible says a perfect hatred when I was a kid in the third grade on a dare growing up in Texas on the playground. Somebody dared me to eat a fire ant in a moment of stupidity. I ate one and I decided I didn't want to crunch down on it because I didn't know what was going to happen. So I swallowed it live and it stung me all the way down and it involved a trip to the emergency room and it involved a lengthy discussion with my dad afterwards so I have I have a very deep animosity to enhance those on a mission trip to the Dominican Republic went way back when I was serving as a youth pastor in a local church and we took this trip and we had the guys were staying in one place and the girls were saying you know you've all been on the strips and I was I was laying down in the bunk where I had my sleeping bag and I looked over on the wall and there was a trail of ants just marching along glorifying God in their way and I thought what am I going to do and I took out a can of hairspray. Have you ever done this.

It's an amazing thing. Actually when you spray hairspray on and it freezes it can't go anywhere. So I spent a glorious half hour delightfully freezing this column of ants as was making its way up the and so yesterday or Saturday. Rather, I walked out of my house and there were all the little ants had made a little anthill in our driveway and my wife handed me a can of raid and I had one of those moments where you have total power over a creature and use. I just stood there and all these little lancer scurrying around and I I just loaded up and up with this rate in the next day and I scraped off the you know the ant pile in the next day they had come back and they had rebuilt it so I did it again and the reason I tell you that story is that I think sometimes it happens that we hear a sermon like this or we hear a series like this and we understand it and it passes through us.

Just like those ants probably understood that something really bad was happening to them and then we go our way and we forget it and we have it somewhere in our memory banks. But when we actually need it most. In our marriage in our home in the world in which we live. We are called to live out her hope as image bearers by the power the gospel when we most need it. We forget, and so what I want to do this morning.

In our last session is I want to give you three simple observations and I want to try to answer three basic questions that I hope will allow you to retain what we have done this semester in our series so that it isn't just something that you heard while you were staying at Bob's University, it actually becomes a part of who you are as an image bear so here will what are the three observations observation number one divine design is one of the most important topics you will hear during your four years at Bob Jones University because it will help you find your place in life. This is exactly what David was talking about in the hundred and 39 saw my ask you to turn there. Let me let me just put verses 13 through 17 up on the screen and you let your eyes sort of walk through them but but David expresses his understanding of God as as a supreme divine designer of his life and out of David's recognition of God's divine design we draw the idea that God establishes, through divine design.

The person that he intends for you to be in life. David talks about God forming him and fashioning him while he was yet in his mother's womb, God determined who you would be in who I would be and what body would be joined to our soul. It's an interesting thing that as we think theologically about being human. There is an embodiment to that the only time that you will be separated from your body is after you die and before God raises up that body, you will have a disembodied existence for a brief period of time, but for all eternity. God intends for you to inhabit a body and your body is joining your soul and that is who you are is God wants you to know that if you think about the heater analogy of that that he has carefully designed and skillfully crafted the body that he intended for you to have your physical frame my physical frame was not hidden from God. While we were being made in fashion in the hidden places of the womb. It was according to God's design and God's plan. My gender my personality, my physical makeup. All of it designed by God according to his plan. So, so divine design establishes the person that God intends for you to be in life. And then it explains the plan that God has for your life. David's is your I did see my substance, yet being imperfect before was formed in your book all of my members. All of my physical traits, all of the parts of my body were designed by God, which in continuance were fashioned, in other words, the days that you plan for me were formed when as yet there was none of them. Then David says God not only designed my person and the pathway that I'm to take God design my personality, my thoughts and my ways. In verses one through six of the same song overlord that was search me and known me without Noah's my down sitting and mine uprising they'll understand my thought afar off the can pass my path and my lying down or not acquainted with all my ways.

For there is not a word in my tongue below Lord them noticed it altogether. Thou hast sent me behind it before and laid thine hand upon me and then here's David's conclusion about all of this. This knowledge is true-when David thinks about divine design in Psalm 139 here's what he says.

Wonderful are your works, and my soul know if it right well verse 14 in verse 17 how precious also are thy thoughts and me. Oh God, how great is the sum of them and then in verse 14. Again, I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

So as we wrap up our series on divine design. Here's a question, do you feel that way about yourself when you think about your body when you think about your gender when you think about the fact that God made you as an image bear and he made you a male and and you think about what biblical masculinity looks like after we've learned from the Scriptures what it looks like this semester for God made you female in and in the beauty of femininity.

God intends for you to live out your life. Have you ever stopped to think God to say, God, this is to to great for me.

How precious is the thought that you designed me with the body that I have and that brings us to the second observation is not just one of most important topics because it will help you find your place in life is actually one of the most controversial topics that you will face throughout your life and here's why divine design. As you've heard it this semester stands in total contradiction to the prevailing cultural trends that surround your life as you live in today's world and the reason that is so is that divine design proclaims an authoritative truth that is grounded in the Scripture over and against worldviews that are marked by relativism, which denies the idea of absolute truth pluralism which grants validity and equality to competing truth claims and cynicism.

The doubting of any truth claim and you are going to live in that environment fleshing out what it means to be a big biblical manner. Biblical woman and as you live by these realities.

Actually, it will be very costly for some of it may cost you a promotion. It may actually hinder your ability and your career path.

It may perhaps even reduce your ability to live peaceably with all men, but these beliefs that you hold about gender and marriage are not just increasingly becoming unpopular in the eyes of many in the world.

They are actually immoral and you are existing in a world where where the divine design that you have heard this semester and that you are are living out in your life as you go out and live it will actually be thought of in many eyes as an immoral way to live because it is intolerant of things that deviate from the established truth in Scripture that brings us to the third observation and that is this is actually one of the most powerful truths you will hear during your time here because it enables you to live a significant life in the world and in the midst of people broken by sin cursed by death filled with people who are slaves to sin held captive by the fear of death. God has called equipped and energize the group of people who, as they live out the divine design of their life show a better way to a better mission with a better and from a God who actually loves and cares and sustains and provides to people who desperately need to know the truth and there's a room full of people like that here this morning who have been called to that mission. And so as you embrace divine design and as you live it out in your life, it becomes moment one of the most important ways to fill out and to live out the vocation that God is called you to live in that brings us to this. So how do we go about doing this we take everything we've heard.

How do we go about and actually bring it about them that brings us to three questions that we want to ask an attempt to answer briefly in our time together this morning so what of the questions number one why why should I embrace divine design when it is so counter to the world in which I live in 2019. And that's actually a really fair question. That's actually a really good question because as you think about living out a life that is attractive and authentic for the gospel to people who need to know the truth about God when you embrace divine design and it is so countercultural to your mission to what you perceive you are attempting to do. It is a fair question asking why. Why do I need to embrace divine design when it is so countercultural and we give you three very quick reasons. Number one because it is the ultimate display of the wisdom of God. God is described in Jeremiah chapter 10 verse 12 in getting Jeremiah 51 verse 15 is the person who made the earth by his power, he established the world by his wisdom and he stretched out the heavens by his discretion. Proverbs chapter 8 verses 22 to 31.

It's too long of a passage to read this morning but but wisdom is embodied.

It's personified as being with God in the creative moments when she called the universe into existence and David reminds us in the 19th Psalm that original creation. The spectacular world in which you and I live actually is a continual expression of the presence and the power and the skill and the ability of God, which is what wisdom but as you read the New Testament, you discover very quickly that it goes back to Genesis 1, Psalm eight and it reminds you that is wonderful is that first creation is there is actually a second creation that is the image of God that actually reveals who God is and what he is actually like and that is you and in the design that God had for your life male and female required both genders to image chili really is and what he is like you become the supreme example of the skill, ability, wisdom of God. You also become the supreme expression of the moral authority of God. And that's exactly what divine design does remember the very first sermon that Dr. Pettit preached he took us to Matthew 19 were Jesus was answering a difficult question of his day and we know that Jesus had authority greater than those thoughts, and he used that time, but in answering this particular question. He went back to the Scriptures, and he went back to the original design of God and that is where he established authority. And so the original design that God had for men and women is not just the ultimate display of his wisdom is the supreme expression of his moral authority and then it is the highest experience of the goodness of God you will ever experience in your life, your body, your gender, your sexuality are gifts from God and so here's a question that I think you and I have the answer is I think about my body and as I think about my sexuality.

My gender my gifts in my abilities.

Do I actually think about them as a gift from God in every Christmas you get gifts and sometimes you get a gift and you open up that gift and it's not what you expected you, you don't really know quite how to say it because the person who gave it to you is right there you're like you know this is really nice. This is really interesting, but it's it's it's evident that you really don't think that gift is very valuable to me asking this to you feel that way about your body and about your gender and about your gifts and your abilities. Because if you do.

James has a reminder for you and James chapter 1, every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. God is the all wise designer and he only gives good gifts. So whatever it is that you're struggling with with relationship to who you are as a person you gender your body, your physical abilities. Remember what James is saying this is a good gift coming down from a good father. So that's the first question, why should I embrace divine design because it ultimate display of the wisdom of God. It is the Preet supreme expression of the moral authority of God, and it is the highest example of the goodness question number two how should divine design actually shape my life and that's where I want you to go to Romans chapter 12 and and think through the verses that are so familiar.

At the start of that passage of Scripture that portion of Scripture and there a lot of ways that we can answer the question, how should divine design actually shape my life over time. Say let me go to the primary way that Paul talks about Paul says you are to use your body in a certain way. You are to use your body to render acceptable worship authentic true worship to God. This spiritual service that you are to render is based on the gracious activity of God in your life looking chapter 12 verse 1000. I beseech you, by the mercies plural of God and in the first 12 chapters are 11 chapters of Romans. He has laid out incredible activity of God in your life and in my life that literally sums up what these mercies are justification before peace with God permanent access standing in the grace of God confident assurance of reaching future glory. We are told that that all sinners have fallen short of the glory of God and all of a sudden we are reminded that there is a future confidence that we have of actually achieving the glory of God through the mercies of God, and then the personal enablement by the spirit of God. So based on the gracious activity of God, you are to use your life as a living. That's ongoing daily devoted as opposed to once and done. It's an ongoing way of life a living holy. That's the idea, set apart in consecration to God dedicated to God as opposed to profane and regular describing a lifelong sacrifice that is acceptable, morally and spiritually bright.

And here's the point. All of this is done through the body God gave you and that he design for you. It's really astonishing because in Romans chapter 1, you lead a group of people who are using their bodies in Romans chapter 1 verse 24 through 32. They are using their bodies for sexual pleasure and sexual immorality, and by the time you get to Romans chapter 12 God is taking those people and their bodies and he is cleansed them. He has purified them. He has forgiven them and now they are to take those bodies that God designed and they are to use them to do the acceptable perfect will of God.

This requires a totally new way of thinking. This is why Paul talks about the idea that that you have to renew your mind through the word of God and that new way of thinking results in a completely new way of living that that you stop being conformed to the world around you.

The way they think about their body the way they think about their sexuality the way they think about their gender and instead you think a completely new way because your mind has been renewed and the renewing of that my results in a completely new way of living that brings us to the final question that is is what will all of this requires me so I'm actually going to do a Paul says in actually to take this body that frustrates me at times that I met a hard time being content, said and I'm really going to think about it and went with a new mind that is renewed by the word of God. How how and what will be required of me and here are three versatile things as we closed you must believe that God is telling you the about your body about your life. Titus chapter 1 verse two reminds us that God can lie, she must believe that God is telling the truth about life. And then here's the next thing you must trust that God is going to do good and not evil in your life so meeting for 11 no good thing does he withhold from them who walk up rightly and finally, you must obey God for all of the days throughout all the ways of your life with the body and the gender and the role that God is giving you. First Peter 419. Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will and trust their soul to a faithful Creator while doing good. Psalm 23, six, is this.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. So believe God trust God and obey God in all of your life with your body, rendering him acceptable worship father, thank you for series. Thank you for what we've learned. Thank you for the way your spirit is taken your word and applied it to our life Lord as we go out living in a world desperately needs to see the transforming power of the gospel at work in a person. Lord help us to be that person. Using our gender, sexuality, and our role in ways that glorify you in Jesus name, amen. You been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Sam Horn. This concludes our study series about Biblical manhood and biblical womanhood.

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