So, 1st Timothy chapter 2, and tonight we're
going to be looking at verses 9 through
15.
One of the most often asked questions that
I get is, what does the Bible say
about the role of women in the church?
Frequently asked question.
You know, we do the live call-in
radio program every week, Monday through Friday, and
inevitably, I think, at least every other day,
that question comes in.
And we've answered it numerous times in, you
know, 30 seconds or 2 minutes or whatever
that it takes to do it over the
air.
But tonight we're going to address that issue
specifically and answer it in a bit more
detail.
But that is the right question to ask,
because the Bible is the only place that
we can get an authoritative answer on the
subject.
We need to ask the question really to
the scriptures, not, you know, what does the
church teach about it?
What does the church think about it?
That's not the issue.
The issue is, what does the Bible say?
Well, to begin, the Bible has many references
to women in ministry.
Many, many references.
The idea that women have no role or
no part to play in the church, that
is not founded in biblical teaching.
That's just the invention of people who are
hostile to the church.
The Bible has many references to women in
ministry.
Let me give you a handful of those
references.
Luke chapter 8, verses 2 and 3.
Listen to this.
It says certain women who had been healed
of evil spirits and infirmities.
Mary called Magdalene and Joanna, the wife of
Chusa, Herod, Stuart and Susanna, and many others
provided for him, speaking of Jesus, from their
substance.
So there were many women that helped in
a very practical way in the public ministry
of Jesus.
In Acts chapter 18, verse 26, we read
about a married couple who ministered together.
Their names were Aquila and Priscilla.
And there we read when Aquila and Priscilla
heard Apollos, they took him aside and explained
to him the way of God more accurately.
Notice that they took him aside and they
explained to him the way of God more
accurately.
It indicates that Priscilla made a contribution in
helping Apollos come to a deeper understanding of
the faith.
In Romans chapter 16, verses 1 through 2,
Paul writes and he says, I commend to
you Phoebe, our sister, who is a servant
of the church in Centuria, for indeed she
has been a helper of many and of
myself also.
So Paul speaks of this woman who was
a servant of the church in Centuria.
Then in Philippians chapter 4, verses 2 and
3, Paul refers to two women, Euodia and
Syntyche.
And he says that these women labored with
me in the gospel.
They labored together with the apostle Paul in
the gospel.
And then Paul tells the older women to
teach the younger women.
And that's found in Titus chapter 2, verses
3 and 4.
So these are just a few examples from
the New Testament.
We could draw more from the New Testament.
And of course, we could draw many examples
from the Old Testament.
But right up front, I want you to
see that the New Testament writers, including Paul,
acknowledge that women have a role to play
in the ministry of the church.
Now let's look at verse 9.
Paul is instructing Timothy, you remember, just to
give you once again a little bit of
background.
He's he's instructing Timothy on how things are
to run in the church.
And he had been talking to Timothy about
his need to exhort the men to pray.
Men should pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands
without wrath and without disputes.
And then in verse 9, he said in
like manner also that the women adorn themselves
in modest apparel with propriety and moderation, not
with braided hair or gold or pearls or
costly clothing, but which is proper for women
professing godliness with good works.
Let a woman learn in silence with all
submission.
Now here, Paul, he gives us some general
instruction for women in the church.
He says that women are to dress modestly.
Now, when we think of modest dressing, we
normally think of dressing in a way that
is not seductive in any way.
And of course, that would obviously be included.
But that's not really what Paul's talking about
here.
When he says that a woman is to
dress modestly, he's he's referring to the fact
that she's she's not to be ostentatious in
her dress.
She's not to come into the fellowship as
though she was going to a fashion show.
She's not to get dressed to kill to
come to church.
That's what Paul is saying here.
Now, ostentatious dress in the ancient world sometimes
could signal a woman's loose morals and independence
from her husband.
So what Paul is really wanting with the
women is that they're they're not conforming to
the world.
But there there would be a simplicity about
them.
Now, Paul, excuse me, Peter, when he wrote
his first epistle in the third chapter, Peter
said something very similar.
If you want to just turn over there
real quickly with me, First Peter, Chapter three.
Peter says concerning the women, he says in
verse three of chapter three, he says, Do
not let your adornment be merely outward arranging
the hair, wearing gold or putting on fine
apparel.
Rather, let it be the hidden person of
the heart with the incorruptible beauty of a
gentle and a quiet spirit, which is very
precious in the sight of God.
Now, this doesn't mean at all that.
A woman cannot dress nicely at church.
It just means, again, simply that she wasn't
to dress in such a way that she
would become the center of attraction, because you
could imagine how that would easily happen.
The fellowships in those days were fairly small
fellowships, for the most part, I would imagine
maybe a few hundred people gathered together.
And if a woman walked in dressed ostentatiously,
she would immediately draw attention to herself.
And so Paul is letting them know what
is proper for women as they come into
the church.
Then he says that they are to be
silent and submissive.
Now, we have to remember this as we
study all of the epistles, but this one
in particular.
Paul didn't write these things in a vacuum.
He didn't just simply sit down and say,
you know, I'm going to write a letter
to Timothy and let me think, what should
I talk about?
I'll talk about women in the church.
Well, let me think, what would I say
about women in the church?
OK, I'll talk about how they address and
how they ought to behave.
That's not how Paul wrote these epistles.
He wrote them in response to things that
were happening in the churches.
They were written for the express purpose, generally
speaking, of educating the believers and correcting them
in many cases.
So it would seem that some of the
things that Paul says in regard to women
that seem sort of outlandish, maybe to us
today, it would seem that Paul was saying
these things based on certain activity that was
going on in those churches.
So when Paul says that a woman is
to be silent and submissive, it's possible, highly
possible that women were expressing their liberation from
their husbands or from other men in the
church by criticizing and speaking out against male
leaders.
Now, remember, most of the time when Paul
wrote to churches in a corrective manner, it
was because false teachers had come in and
they were influencing the believers in the wrong
direction.
And it could very well be that one
of the things that they were doing was
sort of influencing the women to throw off
this whole idea of male leadership.
They might have even said things like we
hear today that all submission to male leadership
or submission to their husband.
They might have said that was all a
result of the curse, the curse that came
upon man because of sin.
But Christ redeemed us from the curse, ladies.
So you're no longer under that kind of
bondage and you can just disregard all of
that sort of stuff.
It seems like those kind of things might
have been going around amongst the women.
So Paul says that the women are to
be silent and submissive.
Now, this does not mean.
That a woman could not speak at all
in church because First Corinthians 11 and five
says that women prayed and prophesied in church.
It's actually referring to a woman being disruptive
in the service.
Now, the church services in those days were
different than what we have here tonight, for
example, in that the church services were oftentimes
modeled after the synagogue.
Of course, Christianity grew out of Judaism, and
the synagogue was the place where the local
Jewish congregations met.
And in the synagogue, they would have the
women and the men separated from one another.
And apparently that was emulated by some of
the early fellowships.
And so what you would have sometimes is
women speaking out in First Corinthians chapter 14.
Paul sort of paints a picture of women
speaking out disruptively, calling out in the service
to their husbands across the room and asking
them like, hey, what's he talking about up
there?
What do you mean by that?
And so Paul said, let the women keep
silent in the church.
Let them ask their own husbands at home
if they have a question, not because Paul
was saying women can't speak in church, but
because to speak in that manner, of course,
would be disruptive to the service.
And so we have to understand what he
does mean by these things and what he
does not mean.
And as I said, based on First Corinthians
eleven five, he clearly does not prohibit women
from speaking at all in the church because
he refers to the fact that they were
praying and prophesying.
Now, when we come to verse 12, this
is the loaded verse.
I do not permit a woman to teach
or to have authority over a man.
This verse has sparked much debate and controversy
over the past several years.
On the surface, it seems to be so
Neanderthal ish.
You know what I mean?
It just it just seems to be so
outdated and old fashioned, so contrary to the
egalitarian spirit of the day, the idea that
there's an equality among all.
It seems so.
Right wing, to put it in another way,
that women are not to teach or to
usurp exercise or have authority over a man.
So.
What is this all about?
That's the question now.
Some.
Have denied.
Paul's authorship here.
Some have just flat out said Paul did
not write the pastoral epistles.
And therefore, Paul cannot be attributed with this
statement.
Uh, they say no.
What Paul said about the subject of women
in the church is that in Christ there
is neither June or Greek bond or free
male nor female.
That's what Paul said.
And therefore, there's an absolute and total equality
across the board.
There's no distinctions.
There's no difference whatsoever.
So Paul couldn't have possibly written this.
Others acknowledge the authorship of Paul, but they
say that Paul compromised at this point.
His true conviction was Galatians 328, that in
Christ there is neither male nor female, but
under pressure, they say he compromised here and
he.
You know, he kind of reverted back to
the pressures of Judaism or maybe pressure from
the Greek culture around him.
Some say this statement only had a limited
application.
Some say you can't take this verse and
apply it to today.
It had application only to the local situation
in Ephesus, or it might have gone a
little bit beyond Ephesus and had application to
the cultural setting in which the apostle found
himself.
Others say that this verse is fundamentalist bigotry
at its worst.
This just shows how out to lunch Christians
are and, uh, the Bible is in regard
to its attitudes toward women and toward equality
and things like that.
So those are the things that have been
said by people, particularly those who have written
on the subject about Paul's statement.
I do not permit a woman to teach
or to have authority over a man.
So what do we say?
Do we agree with any of them?
I personally don't think we ought to.
I believe that although it might seem a
bit Neanderthal ish, we're not into being politically
correct.
And if we ever become politically correct, we
might as well just give it up.
I believe that the verse has application to
today, but I believe that it's saying something
very specific.
And I think when we understand what it
is saying specifically, I think it will help
us to embrace it without any difficulty.
So what does he say?
First of all, Paul says a woman is
not to teach.
Now, of course, it's not.
She's not to teach in a general sense
because we've already seen that he admonished the
older women to teach the younger women in
his epistle to Titus.
So a woman is not to teach a
man specifically.
That's what's being spoken of here.
But it's not that a woman is not
to teach a man anything.
A woman is not to teach a man
something specific.
The word here for teach is the Greek
word didasko.
And there are many related words to it.
And it many times in Paul's epistles refers
to teaching Christian doctrine in the pastoral epistles,
which we are studying here.
It always refers to Christian doctrine.
It's never used in any other way in
the pastorals.
It's always used in reference to Christian doctrine.
So what Paul is saying here is that
a woman is to not teach men Christian
doctrine.
A woman is not to be the Bible
teacher in the church.
That's what Paul is saying.
Now, secondly, he says that a woman is
not to have authority over a man.
Now, what does he mean by that?
Well, Paul seems to be describing the activity
of elders.
In First Thessalonians, chapter five, verse 12, Paul
said, Recognize those who have authority over you
in the Lord and be submissive to them.
In First Timothy 517, Paul made reference to
the elders who rule well or the welders,
the welders, the elders who the welders who
weld well, the elders who have authority over
you.
He referred to them.
And then in Hebrews 1317, he said, Obey
those who rule over you and be submissive.
So Paul, over and over again, he makes
reference to certain people who had authority over
the believers.
And in the context, you find that he's
always talking about the elders.
So what Paul seems to be saying to
me is that a woman is not to
hold the office of the teacher or the
elder in the church.
In other words, a woman is not to
be what we commonly call the pastor of
the church.
Now, this is in complete harmony with the
requirements that are laid down for elders, for
pastors, for the overseers.
And as you carry on here into the
next chapter of this epistle, which we will
do next week.
You find Paul giving instruction regarding the elders,
regarding the the overseers here in this context,
chapter three, verse one.
This is a faithful saying if a man
desires a position of a bishop, he desires
a good work.
A bishop.
The word bishop comes from the Greek word
Episcopal.
And that word means to oversee.
So.
He's talking about the overseer of the church,
the overseer and the elder.
Those are synonyms.
The elders were the overseers of the church.
So elder, bishop, pastor, those terms are basically
referring to the same position.
And when Paul gives instruction to Timothy here
and then to Titus, which is another one
of the pastoral epistles, when he gives instruction
regarding the elders, the bishops, the pastors, the
overseers, however you want to describe it.
He always refers to that position being reserved
for a man.
If a man desires the office of the
overseer, he desires a good work.
So there's nowhere in scripture where we have
any indication whatsoever that a woman ever held
that office.
Now, there are some who say, oh, no,
no, no, no, that's not true.
There are some who say women held the
office of deacon, women held the office of
elder.
Some say that women were actually apostles.
But when you look more closely at the
verses that they try to support that with,
you find that, you know, that you really
got to stretch it.
For example, Phoebe is referred to as we
read earlier in Romans chapter 16.
She's referred to as a servant of the
church and centuria.
Well, that word servant is the word that's
translated deacon.
And so some people say, well, look, Phoebe,
she held the office of deacon in the
church or a deaconess.
But that word is translated a lot of
different ways.
It's translated servant.
It's translated minister.
It's applied to Jesus Christ himself.
So Jesus Christ was a deacon to the
circumcision.
See, you have to be careful how you
apply and interpret a word, and just because
it refers to a group of deacons in
a certain place, it doesn't always mean the
same thing, because the word also is used
by Paul in Romans 13 to describe the
role of the government.
For governmental powers are God's minister.
The word is God's deacons.
So we see that we can't really build
a strong case from that word that Phoebe
was actually a deaconess in an official sense.
She was a servant in the church.
That's the primary meaning of the word.
Now, again, they try to build a case
some do for female apostleship.
And in Romans chapter 16, Paul mentions two
people, Andronicus and Junia, who were of note
among the apostles.
They are Paul's countrymen, and they were in
Christ before him, it says.
And they say, well, the name Junia is
feminine, and therefore, look what it says.
It says that Junia was noteworthy among the
apostles.
In other words, she was an apostle.
But first of all, there's no guarantee that
that is the name of a woman.
Paul could have clearly specified that had he
chosen to do so, but it's not clearly
specified.
It's just speculative that that's a woman's name.
And it doesn't say that she was necessarily
among the apostles.
It just says that she was recognized by
them, if indeed it was a she.
Of course, Jesus is the one who chose
apostles.
He didn't choose women.
We don't have any record whatsoever of any
apostolic person being a woman.
And and regarding elders as well, we don't
have any biblical case of a woman being
in that position.
Now, there's a lot of pressure that comes
upon the church today to conform to, you
know, cultural standards that change all the time.
But our task is to stick with what
the scriptures say.
And I think the position of the scripture
is a completely reasonable position.
A woman has many, many, many opportunities for
ministry.
But the one position that is close to
a woman is the office of the teaching
elder of the church.
Now.
Why is that the case?
What are Paul's reasons?
He tells us here, he says, first of
all.
For Adam was formed first, then Eve.
And secondly, and Adam was not deceived, but
the woman being deceived fell into transgression.
So what are Paul's reasons?
Notice, first of all, they're not local or
cultural.
See, that's the way people try to get
around this.
They say, oh, no, this doesn't apply to
today.
This was just a local situation or it
was just because of the culture.
Paul didn't want to rock the boat.
He didn't want to go against the culture.
So he he compromised here.
But this was never intended to be a
permanent a statute within the church.
But Paul doesn't reason from culture.
He reasons from scripture.
And he says that a woman is not
to teach or to have authority over a
man because Adam was formed first and then
Eve.
You see, Paul goes back to creation itself.
You see, the idea that a woman would
be in submission to a man, not because
she's inferior, of course, as Paul said in
Galatians 328.
In Christ, there is neither June or Greek,
bond or free, male or female.
But that is speaking of our position in
Christ.
It doesn't address the issue of different roles
that we play.
And God has set things in a certain
order.
There's an order laid out in creation.
And so in creation, we know the story.
Adam was created first and the woman was
created to be the man's helper.
She was created as a helper suitable to
the man.
So the woman was actually created to come
alongside in a supportive role with the man.
And that's what Paul goes back to here.
He reminds them that this idea of wives
submitting to husbands and male leadership and all
of that, he reminds him again, this isn't
a result of the curse.
This isn't because of sin.
This was established before sin ever entered into
the world.
This is the order that God has established
in creation.
Now, what we have going on today in
our world and especially in our Western world
is a total and absolute revolt against God's
order.
That's what you see happening across the board
today.
It's it's an upheaval.
It's a it's a cultural and a societal
upheaval.
It's an absolute revolt and rebellion against God's
order.
That's what's happening.
That's the explanation for feminism.
That's the explanation for the emphasis on homosexuality
and the desire to see gay marriage come
into the culture as a totally accepted alternative.
That's what's going on in so many different
areas.
It's it's a revolt against God's order.
And you can revolt against God's order all
you want, but you're never going to change
the facts.
This is the way it is.
You can get all the legislation passed in
the world, but that's not going to do
anything as far as changing God's mind toward
it.
You know, it's amazing.
I was reading an article the other night
where an individual was going from church to
church, sort of an itinerant preacher going from
church to church, holding prayer meetings for the
election.
And he contacted the IRS, I think, to
clear it with them or something, and they
they wrote back that it was a violation
of church and state for him to pray
because he wanted to pray specifically that the
president would win the election.
They told him that was illegal to pray
that the president would win the election.
You know, I mean, the point is, look
what people are trying to do right now.
They take the Ten Commandments, they move it
out of public and they put it in
a, you know, a basement and cover it
up because, boy, that's going to do it
right there.
We just put this blanket over it and
it's like they never existed.
We tell people you can't pray to God.
God can't do anything because we don't allow
people to pray to him.
God's going to do whatever he wants to
do.
And none of these things mean anything.
And all of this attempt to alter everything
and change it all and, you know, turn
it every which way, you know, all it
will do is bring misery upon.
Society, but it won't do anything to change
God's order, God's order is established, and that's
what Paul refers to here.
Adam was created first and then Eve.
And so the woman was never meant to
be in a position to have authority over
the man.
Now, let me address this real quickly.
Does this apply across the board in every
area of life?
Does this mean that in the area of
business or in the area of politics or
wherever else you might want to apply it?
Does this mean that in no situation under
any circumstances should a woman be in a
place where she usurps authority over a man
or has authority over a man?
Absolutely not.
This has application strictly to the church.
It's not a mandate across the board that
women can ever hold positions of authority.
And some have misinterpreted the Bible and twisted
it to sort of get their own way
through it and at times have used it
as a means of oppression for others.
But you can't apply it in that area.
Paul is talking strictly about the church.
That's what he's writing Timothy about.
He's not writing to him about the government.
He's not writing to him about business.
He's not writing to him about any other
area of life.
He's writing to him about the church.
So these things have application in the church.
So Paul's first reason is because of the
order of creation.
His second reason is that Adam was not
deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into
transgression.
Now, this is a hard one, perhaps to
swallow.
But nevertheless, I don't think there's any way
to get around it.
What Paul is saying here is that a
woman is more vulnerable to deception.
Now, there might be some ladies that would
protest that and.
But again, we're talking about spiritually, and I
think that if you just look at things
honestly, you know, women are generally speaking, more
spiritually sensitive than men are.
Do you know that most Christian literature is
purchased by women, not by men?
Did you know that most churches have a
larger female attendance than they do a male
attendance?
And I would venture to say there are
probably more Christian women in the world than
there are Christian men in the world.
And I think that just, you know, in
a sense, is indicative of the fact that
women tend to be spiritually more sensitive than
men.
But that spiritual sensitivity also evidently gives them.
An element of vulnerability.
And so Paul points that out that it
wasn't Adam who was deceived.
Now, Adam becomes the one who is responsible
for sin.
Ultimately, in Romans chapter five and in other
places, it's the sin of Adam that's always
referred to.
This is the only place where Paul addresses
Eve and her culpability in the matter.
But he shows us that Eve was deceived.
Adam was not deceived, in other words.
Adam knew full well what he was doing,
and he made a decision to do what
he did with a full knowledge that he
was going to disobey God.
He was under this delusion of the devil,
and she wasn't really aware.
Of the fact that she was being duped,
but nevertheless, that was the case.
And so because of that, Paul says a
woman is forbidden from holding that position within
the church.
Now, I've said all of that about the
vulnerability of the woman and so forth, and
that might indeed be true.
But, you know, it might also simply be
the case that sort of as a consequence
of what Eve did, it just eliminates women
from that position.
It might be that because, of course, Adam
did things or Adam's sin has various consequences
that come down to us.
Even though I didn't participate in what he
did, I inherited the consequences of what he
did.
So it might refer to that as well.
So these are the reasons that Paul says,
because of the order of creation, because God
has established an order and that is that
men are to lead men are to lead
in the family and men are to lead
in the church.
That's God's established order.
And because of the situation with being deceived
now.
In verse 15, he says something that is
notoriously difficult to understand.
Listen to what he says.
Nevertheless, she will be saved in childbearing if
they continue in faith, love and holiness with
self-control.
There are so many different interpretations of this.
I didn't have time to write them all
down, but this is a notoriously difficult passage
to try to interpret.
It's just it's very, very challenging.
So how do we understand this?
Because he connects it all together.
Notice, he says, I do not permit a
woman to teach her to have authority over
the man over a man, but to be
in silence for Adam was formed first, then
Eve.
Adam was not deceived, but the woman being
deceived fell into transgression.
Nevertheless, she will be saved in childbearing if
they continue in faith, love and holiness with
self-control.
What in the world does that mean?
Does that mean that women get saved by
having babies?
Is that the means for women to be
saved?
It sounds like it might mean that.
But of course, it can't mean that.
Some have said, because the definite article precedes
childbirth, it actually says literally, it says, nevertheless,
she will be saved in the childbirth or
bearing.
Some say that's a reference to the childbirth,
the birth of the child, the birth of
the Messiah, Jesus.
That's how the woman is going to be
saved.
And so even though Eve sinned, it was
through women that salvation came.
And that's what Paul is talking about there.
But that seems awfully obscure to me.
I think the best way to understand what
Paul is saying is, first of all, to
understand that the word saved here does not
refer to saved in the sense of this
is how you get saved.
Because remember, Paul's writing to people already.
So he's not laying out another way for
women to be saved through childbearing and continuing
in faith, love and holiness and self-control.
That would be a salvation based on works.
But I think what he's talking about.
Is that a woman is going to experience
salvation in its fullest sense through fulfilling the
role that God has ordained for her.
Now, the word in childbearing here can also
be translated child rearing, and it probably should
be translated child rearing or raising children.
The idea is simply this, that a woman
will find her greatest satisfaction and meaning in
life, not in seeking the male role, but
in fulfilling God's design for her as a
wife and a mother.
That, I think, is what Paul is saying,
because remember the background that we talked about
earlier, it appears that the women were trying
to move into the role of the men.
They were not content to be in the
position that God placed them in.
They wanted to come in and take over.
They wanted to lead the ministry and so
forth.
Paul says you're not going to experience.
What God wants you to experience the fullness
of your salvation, you're not going to experience
it by by doing that, you're going to
experience the fullness of God's salvation for you
by abiding in the designated role that God
has had for you.
Boy, think of how many women today have
been duped by this over-the-top feminist
agenda.
And, you know, once in a while you'll
find that somebody in that camp becomes disenchanted
with the whole thing and then it's a
time of true confession and they'll, you know,
some magazine article or something somewhere will appear
where somebody, you know, in now or some
other organization will just come out and say,
you know what, this is all just a
big hoax.
It doesn't bring fulfillment, it doesn't it doesn't
do any of the things that we thought
it was going to do, man, I'm going
to go find a guy and get married
and hopefully have some kids.
Because that's the order of creation, not to
say that everybody has to be married or
everybody has to have children, but, you know,
generally speaking, that's been the way it's been
done here on planet Earth.
So that's what Paul is saying here.
That you're going to find fulfillment not in
trying to make your own.
Way.
Not in breaking all tradition and.
You know, pioneering a new path, you're not
going to find fulfillment in that, oh, you
might think you are, but in the end,
you're not going to be fulfilled in the
end, you're going to be disappointed to some
extent, because God has set things up for
a reason and he knows how things are
supposed to work.
And the smartest thing any of us could
do is to do things God's way.
Because that's when they work best and when
we try to go against that, it just
doesn't work.
Now, what is then the role of women
in the church?
Well, if we look at the negative side
of it again.
There's only one thing that a woman is
really prohibited from.
So basically, apart from that one thing, the
sky's the limit, so to speak.
Women can do all kinds of things and
need to do all kinds of things, and
their contribution to the church.
Has always been.
A very wonderful contribution, and quite frankly, the
church, just like man himself, would have never
been what it should be without the contribution
of women.
Those are the facts.
So what is the role of women in
the church?
Well, let me just give you a few
suggestions, ladies.
You can certainly pray.
And again, quite often, women are sort of
sometimes the backbone of the church when it
comes to prayer.
The ladies don't seem to have any problem
getting together for prayer.
It's the guys who oftentimes can't make it
too busy, too tired, whatever the case, that
the gals get together to pray a wonderful
ministry for women, discipling one another, as Paul
said to Titus, the older women teaching the
younger women.
And of course, we have a wonderful women's
ministry here and my lovely wife is involved
in that.
And there's great things that are happening as
the word of God is being ministered to
the ladies and they're being built up in
the faith, and that's wonderful and perfectly legitimate.
There's children's ministry.
And what a great opportunity to serve the
Lord, children's ministry.
And you know, ladies seem to do really
well with children's ministry.
When we were living in London, Cheryl was
the.
She was the one who ran the children's
ministry, and actually my my oldest daughter and
her serve the Lord together in that ministry,
and it was such a great thing.
And so often that's been the case, God
has used women very mightily and powerfully with
children.
As a matter of fact, it was a
woman who developed what we know today is
Sunday school.
Sunday school wasn't always around.
As a matter of fact, when she first
introduced Sunday school, a lot of people thought
it was heretical.
You know, what is this?
This lady's crazy trying to get these kids
over and teach them on their own.
They need to just sit right here in
the church with us and sure they can
fall asleep or crawl under the pew or
whatever.
You know, that's where they need to be,
because that's the way we've always done it.
And no regard for the kids.
No, no thought for them to be, you
know, getting blessed or ministered to.
And then this lady comes along.
What's her name?
Do you remember?
I forgot.
I'll find out.
And and she comes up with this idea.
But truly, initially, they just thought, oh, no,
we can't do this.
But then, of course, somebody was open and
said, well, let's try it.
And how many young people's lives have been
impacted through Sunday school ministry?
And then, of course, women can serve administratively.
There's a ton of administrative things to do.
And when you read that passage that we
read initially in Luke there, it seems that
that is probably part of what they were
doing with Jesus in the ministry with him.
They were ministering to him out of their
substance.
So they were there was some administrative role.
They were probably cooking for them and things
like that, having to, you know, purchase food
and make the meals and things.
And then.
Women can, of course, serve the Lord in
the area of evangelism, sharing the gospel with
people, whoever.
Men, women, boys and girls, there have been
a lot of great women evangelist in the
sense that, you know, God has used women
in many ways to minister to other people.
I think of some of the the girls
today in the Christian music realm and just
how God uses their music and how impactful
their music can be and how through that
platform of music God uses them to bring
the gospel to people and they're serving the
Lord as evangelist.
And then, of course, there's the mission field
and many, many great stories of women on
the mission field.
And on the mission field, women did primarily
evangelize and teach children and minister to other
women.
But sometimes they would end up discipling men
as well.
They weren't starting churches, per se, and then
becoming the pastor of the church that they
were they were ministering the gospel.
They were discipling people, women like Lillias Trotter,
Patricia St. John, Mary Schleser, Gladys Alward, Amy
Carmichael.
These are all names that you might be
somewhat familiar with, but they were women who
had a tremendous impact on the lives of
many, many people, a tremendous impact on cultures
and nations in some cases.
And so, ladies.
There's plenty to do.
And there's no reason to be upset about
the fact that, well, I want to do
that one thing and they said I couldn't.
So I'm going to go off and find
a church that'll let me be the pastor.
Don't.
Don't bother.
Don't waste your time.
It won't fulfill you.
It's not what God has designed.
He's got the perfect plan and the perfect
place.
And as we seek to be in that
which he created us for, that's where we
function best and that's where we glorify him
most effectively.
But one final thing.
What about those ladies who do pastor churches
and who seem to do a fairly good
job at it?
Who really do honor the Lord and teach
the word and evangelize and things like that?
Now, you know, they're a large part of
the church that has fully embraced the idea
of women in ministry, like the Anglican Church
and United Church of Christ, Methodist churches and
things like that.
Now, they have they have brought women in,
but they've done so in in a manner
in which they reject what Paul has said.
They reject the authority of scripture and they
bring in women.
They ordain them as priests and pastors and
ministers and so forth.
And they don't come in and glorify God
and teach the Bible because they're liberal already
anyway.
They don't even believe the Bible.
So they just do whatever people who go
to church and don't believe the Bible do.
I don't know why anybody would do that,
but some people do.
But then there are denominations that are not
liberal in that sense, but they still allow
women to be in the position of pastor.
Many of the Pentecostal denominations allow women pastors.
So when you look at that and occasionally
you will find that, you know, a lady
will be in that position and she'll be
doing a fairly good job at what she's
doing.
What do you do with that?
How do you how do you understand that
or how do you address that or what
what should you do about it?
Well, this is my opinion.
And that's all I can give you.
God has a rule and we've just been
studying the rule.
A woman is not to teach or to
have authority over a man.
But quite honestly, there are sometimes exceptions to
the rule.
Now, I don't think we should ever intentionally
violate the rule.
But sometimes.
Perhaps there isn't a man around.
And there's a woman who's willing.
And sometimes God will use a woman.
And we do see in the scriptures, we
do see occasionally where God makes exceptions to
his rule.
Now, of course, not in anything that is
genuinely an issue of godliness or morality or
holiness, purity, things like that.
Not not in those areas.
God doesn't make exceptions in those areas, but
he does make exceptions in other areas.
And I think that that's how we have
to understand those things.
My wife's aunt, my mother-in-law, Kay,
her sister, was a pastor of a church
in Phoenix, Arizona.
And she was a godly woman and she
loved the Lord.
No question about it.
Loved the Lord, loved the word of God,
taught the word, exhorted the people, blessed and
ministered to many people.
And, you know, she went to that place.
In the days when they could not find
a man to go, no men were available,
no men were willing, no men were wanting
to go.
And she stood up and said, I'll go
and she went and God blessed it.
And so those kinds of things occasionally, I
think we have to be careful not to
just write something off, say, oh, that's, you
know, sometimes people could just go completely over
the top.
Oh, that's up the devil.
That woman did that.
That's up the devil.
No way, man, you know.
And, you know, people are getting saved and
God's doing well, that's up the devil, because
look right here, it says that a woman
can't do that.
There are exceptions.
And God is the one who makes those
exceptions.
Like I said, I don't think we should
ever intentionally go against the rule.
But if that if we do see that
occasionally, then just have to let God do
what he wants.
He's going to do it anyway, whether we
let him or not.
But I think that's the best way to
to understand those kinds of things.
They are exceptions.
But this is the rule.
And so we continue on next week and
we will look at the qualifications for those
who hold the position of the overseer, the
pastor of the church.