Redeemer Fellowship Johnson County

The rising anxiety, hostility, and confusion that characterize our current cultural climate makes navigating the ever-changing dynamics of the gender conversation challenging.

The primary task for our church in this moment is not to consider whether the ways in which our culture are processing issues of gender and gender identity are right or wrong. Rather, our primary task it to submit ourselves to the Word of God and consider what is required from us in our pursuit of loving the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength — and loving our neighbors as ourselves.

As we submit ourselves to God’s Word, we must consider how our beliefs, our postures, and our practices enable us to struggle personally with all manners of gender brokenness and minister the love of God to people experiencing the pains of living as gendered beings in a broken world.

To this end, we consider three maps: (1) Where are We?; (2) What is the Blueprint of God’s Design for Humanity?; (3) Where Are We Going?

Many today want the fruits of the Kingdom without submitting to the rule of the King. Another way to say this is that we often want justice around us without needing to pursue righteousness. However, righteousness and justice are concepts that are inseparably linked together in the OT. God, who sits on a throne whose foundation is righteousness and justice (Psalm 89:14), executes righteousness and justice in the world AND calls his people to lives marked by righteousness and justice.

God isn’t simply authoritative in a place-holding, power-holding sense. God’s authority is performative in nature. To a people surrounded by the empty promises of idolatry, he asks, “To whom will you liken me and make me equal, and compare me, that we may be alike?” (Isaiah 46:5) Idols can only hold a symbolic power that makes you carry them--they are images of our disoriented desire that we project on them and carry out in their name. The God of Israel, however, has real authority that he exerts on behalf of his people for his own glory.

As we talk about power and authority, one of the fundamental questions we have to wrestle with is, “can I trust God enough to actually follow him?” The book of Job contains the epic struggle of a man who struggled to make sense of the suffering he experienced and where God was in the middle of it. Job doesn’t questions God’s power or sovereignty, but he does question whether God is good and can be trusted. Job 41 contains the words of God to Job, as he invites Job to step out beyond his limited perspective to see the wildness of the world as it really is.

Can anyone restrain or stop Leviathan? Job can’t, you and I can’t, but we see with Job that ultimately Leviathan is on a leash. God has a firm hold on him, and promises to one day destroy him. He is a God who sees and cares. He is a God we can trust.

Truth and freedom - two things we desperately want and two things we have a complicated relationship with. In this passage, Jesus offers them to his followers and says that he is their source. As we watch his original hearers wrestle with what he teaches, we’re invited to consider our own resistance and misconceptions about truth and freedom. This text is both relevant and hopeful as we are reminded that truth actually is a person who gave his life for us so that we might be free.

In a world where we pursue power due to selfish ambition, or reject authority and power because we only see its abuse, Jesus shows us that properly stewarded power leads to flourishing. Power used wrongly always produces exploitation by those who grasp for power. And the result is always suffering for the people on the other end of it. But the way of the way of Christ--the way of the lamb--is willing self-sacrifice and service for the sake of others.

If your were to poll people and ask what they hope we cover in a series on Life in the Spirit my guess is that the topic of perseverance in suffering would not make the top 5. In fact we may not even seen a connection between the two, yet Jesus talks about perseverance multiple times in John 14-16 and it is a major theme of his prayer in chapter 17. Jesus says he is addressing this with them so that when they face persecution they will not fall away. The Spirit’s presence has a preserving impact on the life of the believer. There is a bigger danger than persecution and it is apostasy, which is why Jesus said he is telling them these things and why we need the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives.