Gendered Language
Exodus 35:22a, 25, 29
So they came, both men and women. … And every skillful woman spun with her hands, and they all
brought what they had spun in blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen. … All the men
and women, the people of Israel, whose heart moved them to bring anything for the work that the LORD
had commanded by Moses to be done brought it as a freewill offering to the LORD.
What I’m about to say would’ve been obvious to people reading this a hundred years ago, and I pray it will be just as obvious to people reading it a hundred years from now (not that there will be any of those), but such is the insanity of our present age that the fact needs repeating: “God made man in His image, male and female He made them.” To comprehend God’s image in mankind is to first recognize the distinction between masculinity and femininity, and then to behold what comes uniquely from the marriage of the two. Think of it like this: a man grows in manliness by becoming more masculine, not by becoming more feminine; and a woman grows in her womanliness by becoming more feminine, not by becoming more masculine; and each provide what the other lacks in loving unity. That’s how strong families and strong churches and strong nations are built, buttressed by the golden pillars of masculine strength, and draped in the purple and scarlet threads of feminine grace.
When men come to God as men, bringing their best in that broad, reflective range of masculinity, and women come to God as women, bringing their best in that broad, reflective range of femininity, tabernacles from the imperious mind of God are born. Which is why the symbol of a man and woman holding hands, working side by side, one effectively wielding the hammer and one spinning the wheel, fulfilling God’s vision from their own freewill, is as superior to modern progressivist visions of ‘equity’ as a temple filled with the cloud of God’s presence is to an empty pile of rubble!
‘Gender isn’t binary!’, screamed a scribbled line on a bathroom wall at the coffee shop down the road—with a few expletives to show for it. ‘So they came, both men and women,’ whispers Exodus 35:22 in gentle reply—with a tabernacle to show for it.