Women in the Church // 1 Timothy 2:1-15

I remember having it with my dad. We were in the car. I was in fifth grade. It was probably too late to be having this conversation. And I just remember, I felt awkward. I think he felt even more awkward. What is the birds and bees event? It's exactly what you think it is. It's for parents of kids in fifth grade and younger. And basically, Mary Flo has been doing this for 30 years and she wants to come alongside parents to help them have the courageous conversations they need to have with their kids. Because I think all of us say, at the end of the day, we'd rather have the birds and bees conversation with our kids than have them have it with their friend or with the internet. So I hope that you will join us if you are a parent of a young child, Saturday, April 5th. And Mary Flo, who you just saw in that video, she's going to be here. So that's an event that we are going to have. But an event that we just had was our marriage conference. If you were there, make some noise. Yeah, guys. The room was packed and we had lots of couples that were newly married and married for decades and everything in between. And Ron and Jodi Zappia, basically, they walk through their book, The Marriage Knot. It's about seven choices that couples make to stay together. And here's what I want you to know. Many of you were here. Some of you just couldn't be here because it didn't work with your schedule. But you know what I was thinking? I think there are certain people that are in our church and didn't come to the marriage conference, not because they didn't work with their schedule, but because maybe they felt like their marriage was in such a place that even to go to something like that, the conflict that might happen even in just beginning to have some of those conversations. Here's what I want to say. I want to encourage you, if that's you, to grab the Zappia's book on the marriage knot, because look, I thought their teaching was great. It was very practical. It was very helpful. What is most powerful is the story of redemption and restoration in their marriage. And they tell that story at the very beginning of the book. So I hope you'll get that book if you weren't able to join us. Finally, as we're talking about marriage, I have to talk about premarital counseling. Next weekend, that's Sunday, March 9, after the 11 o'clock service, after this service, we're going to have an info meeting about how we do premarital counseling here. So this is for anybody who's just like, I'm interested in that. I'd like to learn about that. Maybe I'd like to help with that. I've always had questions about that. It's especially for people who are engaged or about to get engaged. And here's the big idea. We want to help you save your marriage before it starts. That's the best time to save your marriage. And what happens to young couples,

we've done a lot of weddings in this church, is that a lot of young couples, they are so planned and they are so excited and they are so ready for the wedding day, but they're not ready for the marriage. They know who's coming on the list and the guest list and the venue and whether they're doing buffet or sit down and all that. And we want, we just want to say, would you learn about premarital counseling? Because all the studies say that going to several sessions of premarital counseling helps the marriage and it primarily does that by giving us the right expectations. So with that said, let me pray for those things and then we're going to continue in our study of first Timothy. Let's pray. Lord, I want to pray for marriages right now, that we know anyone who's been married knows that marriage is a place of great pleasure but also can be a place of great pain. And we just pray for married couples. We pray that they would not lose hope that no matter where they are, they would believe that they could have a new marriage with the same spouse. I pray that you would give them renewed vision for their marriage if they need it. Lord, as the Zappiah said, whether people need just refreshment and refinement or if they need full restoration, we pray you do it. Lord, we pray for these couples that are getting married in our church. We're so excited for them. We pray that they would have the opportunity to build their marriage on the foundation. That is Jesus Christ. We pray this in your name. Amen. All right, why are you here? And I don't mean that like the deepest sense of the word, not like why are you on planet earth. I just mean like, why are you in church today? Some of you are here because somebody made you come. If somebody made you come to church today and you didn't want to, would you raise your hand? I'm scatting on that. I don't want to know. I don't want to know. I don't want to know. Every once in a while, by the way, when I'm preaching, I can tell somebody's not enjoying this and they're, you know, they're kind of zoned out and I'm like, that's it. I'm going to focus on him. You know, I'm going to, I'm going to try to get him. Some people come to church out of heavy, heavy habits. Some people come to church out of duty. Some people come to church, you know, because they want to sing certain songs or see certain people or hear maybe a certain message. If you'll turn to 1 Timothy 2, Paul's going to tell us what we should do when we gather as a church. So what's interesting is chapter 1 is about doctrine or teaching or theology. And Paul will often do this. He'll teach us something. This is what you should believe. And then in the next chapter, this is how you should behave and then maybe he'll go back to believing and then behaving. And so today what Paul is going to show us is how the church should act. Now, it's interesting. In first

Corinthians 14, you don't need to go there. There's a summary statement about the church and it said, "and orderly way." Okay, here's what that means. Yes, the church is an organism, but the church is also an organization. And there is leadership. And the church is a movement, but the church is an institution. And so maybe here's one of the big ideas for today. The church is full of messed up people, but the church shouldn't be a messed up place. So welcome, if you're a sinner, you're gonna fit in great here. Okay, we're all sinners, say by grace, we are a messed up people. But when you come to church, it shouldn't be a messed up place. There should be order. And so today what we're gonna see is we're gonna see how we should all act together. And then particularly how men should act and how women should act. We're gonna try to cover all that in Just a Chapter Two. Let's start together. I'm gonna read you the first seven verses. Here's what it says. First of all then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people. For kings and all who are in high positions

that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way, this is good and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is a testimony given at the proper time. For this, I was appointed a preacher and an apostle. I am telling the truth. I am not lying a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. Okay, so this is kind of the first part of chapter two. Here's what I want you to see. Paul starts with prayer and ends with proclamation. So if you look at verse one, he's like, all right, we need to be praying. And then at the very end, he goes and I'll be proclaiming. So he talks about the church as a worshiping and as a witnessing community. So basically, the first thing I wanna talk about is the priority of prayer and worship in the church. If you see, he says, first of all, there needs to be any mentions for different things, prayers and supplications and thanksgivings, right? And so here's an intercessions he mentions as well. The first thing the church should do is we should, we are primarily, what the church is is primarily

a worshiping and praying community. Okay, so here's a question. Is worshiping more important than witnessing? The biblical answer, I believe is yes. Is praying more important than proclaiming the gospel? I would have to say ultimately, yes, why am I saying that? Because the Bible teaches that there's an order and the order is always, we love God first and then we love other second. That the first commandment is to love God with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind, all of our strength. In fact, I saw this in an interview recently, there's this guy, I'm not endorsing his ministry 'cause I don't know anything about him, but there's a pastor in Washington state and his name is Russell Johnson. And I saw him, he was on a podcast and they were interviewing him. And the reason they were interviewing him is because his church was exploding in growth in Washington state and it mostly started to grow after COVID and so they had him on and they were like, what's happening? Like people wanna figure out like, what are you doing for your church to grow so much? It's such a hard part of the country, it's such a difficult time. And he said, well, here's the thing. He said, everybody's talking about ministering to people. They're like, we need to minister to the singles.

No, we need to minister to the young couples. No, we need to minister to the families. No, we need to minister to the teenagers. He said, in my church, we minister to God. And I don't know, it just hit me. What do you know about that is we worship and we see God. That's the number one person we are quote unquote, ministering to. And what he said is when you minister to God, you end up ministering to everybody else. Paul uses four words to talk about prayer. I don't wanna get too nuanced here, but do you see him? He uses prayers, supplications, intercession and thanksgiving. I don't wanna talk a lot about thanksgiving 'cause I did that all last week in the place of gratitude and gratefulness in the human heart. I wanna talk about the other three just briefly. So he says, prayers. Now that's general conversation with God, which is something that I had to learn when I became a Christian. If you don't know this about me, I grew up as a nominal Roman Catholic and we didn't really pray, we set our prayers. You know, here's the Hail Mary and here's the Our Father and we had prayers for everything. This is the prayer of confession and this is the prayer you pray before you eat your meal. And so when I became a Christian,

they're like, yeah, you can just walk and talk to God, I mean, be respectful, but you could talk to God casually at any time. That was a new idea to me. Prayers is the idea of conversation with God. Supplications is the idea of like urgent requests and those come up all the time. Someone's like, can you pray for me about this? Or you get sick or there's some kind of suffering or you see some tragedy out there and that's supplications. Here's the one that we don't talk about a lot. Intercession. When's the last time you use the word intercession? Even when I say it, doesn't it just sound like it's a lot of work? You know, I just say the word, I'm like, I don't know if I wanna do that. That sounds like going to the gym or something like that, right? Intercession means to appeal on behalf of another person. When John Tyson was here, I've told you a story before, but it's worth repeating. When John Tyson was here, in my opinion, he's a giant in the faith, a man of prayer. He spoke to our men at our men's night this last year. And he's a very godly man. Well, he was we booked him when he was here. We just had him do thing after thing after thing. He finally said to me, he uses the phrase a nappuccino. So not a cappuccino, but a nappuccino. He said, basically, I need to take a power nap.

Can you take me back to my hotel for just like an hour or two before the event? I said, great, no problem. I dropped him off. I pick him back up and I'm like, how was your nap? You know, I'm getting to know him, trying to make some conversation. And he said, it was great. And he said, I only slept for an hour and I interceded for my son for the last hour. And I had just never had anyone talk to me like that. He's like, oh, yeah, my son's getting married and I'm a great Christian girl, but I want him to start on a great foundation and I'm worried the devil is going to be attacking their marriage. And so I interceded for him for an hour. My old pastor, Andy Davis, he's a very godly man. I actually know personally. And he was very much a man of prayer. And he's the kind of guy that would often quote on if you have someone like this in your life, like he'd quote Bible passages that you're like, I've read the whole Bible and I didn't know that was in there. And then it's like super applicable. So let me show you this. He used to quote first Samuel 12. Look at this first Samuel 12, verse 23, moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord. How would I sin against the Lord? By ceasing to pray for you. Andy Davis, pastor Andy, as we call him, he taught that there are certain people in your life, that it is actually sinful and disobedient to God, not to be praying for them because of how close you are to them relationally or locationally. I'll let your conscience be led by who those people are. But what I want to focus more on is actually not all the different types of prayer.

And that's great. We need different tool belts of prayer and, you know, tools in our tool belt for prayer. What I want to focus on more than that is his emphasis on who to pray for. Look here, it's in verses one and two. First of all, then I urge its supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings. We talked about all those cable here. Here's the emphasis, not on how to pray, but on who to pray for made for all people. So not some people, all people. And then if it wasn't clear, look, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. OK, now, here's the interesting thing about the Bible. You probably know this. I'm going to get the dates slightly wrong. But I think the first time that we get chapters in the Bible is the 12th century. And the first time we get verses in the Bible was like the 15th century. It's something like that. And so when you first read the Bible, you just read it like this is a letter from Paul to Timothy. There's no chapter divisions. Why do I tell you that? Because we get this chapter division in chapter one to two and we think of it like a book. Oh, Paul's on to a totally new idea. Well, think about what Paul just, it's hard for me to remember my own sermons. But if you remember my sermon from last week, I talk about how at the end, Heimeneas and Alexander shipwreck their faith. That's how Paul ends. And then the next, the opening of the next passage of scripture, he says, pray for all people, including Heimeneas and Alexander. It's like pray for, you know, you can think about pray for your

prodigal sons, pray for your prodigal daughters, pray when he says all men and all people, he means every nation. I don't know if you've ever heard of Operation World. I can't believe this book exists. You can Google this sometime. Operation World is a book that a group of people put together and it goes through every unreached people group on earth based through 365 days. You can, whatever. So whatever day it is, you open it up, it tells you a people group. It tells you how to pray for them. It tells you how many people are Christian in that area. And it particularly tells you kind of their religious and demonic activity. And anyway, it's unbelievable. So he says, you need to pray for them. Here's what this means. Nobody is beyond prayer. He said, he mentions Heimeneas and Alexander, and then he says to pray. So here's the thing, when it comes to like trying to win people to Christ, right? Here's what can often happen. You can talk to certain people and, you know, maybe they don't talk to any more. They're not interested. Maybe you invite them to things and they don't come. Maybe they're not just nice or neutral about it. Maybe they're antagonistic and mean to you about your faith. Here's the great thing about this. People may not respond to our conversations. They may not come to church when we invite them, but they are defenseless against our prayers. I just want to encourage you, who have you stopped praying for? And who do you need to start praying for? Here's what's so interesting.

So I find it interesting, Paul goes, pray for all people. But then look what he says in verse two, he says, pray for all people. And then he gets real specific for kings. And then he gets, you know, a little more general, he says for kings and all who are in high position. So here's what he says, I need you to pray for all people, especially people in government. Isn't that interesting? growing in in the last year is my understanding of the relationship between the church and the state, which, you know, modern people think there needs to be a total separation of the church and state, and then you read verses like this that tell the church to pray for the state, and then you realize, wait a second, that was about keeping the state out of the church, not the church out of the state, because it's interesting. In good times, the temptation of the state is to wield the church for its own means. Intemptation in bad times, I'm talking for the church, is to persecute the church. And so what we're told is we're actually told to pray for leaders. Now, how do we, what do we pray about? That's an interesting, so you can pray for them for them to have wisdom, right? Of course, you can pray for them to act justly. We're going to see in a minute or two, we're supposed to pray for their salvation. I don't know if you saw this, and I don't know how legitimate all this stuff is, okay? But I saw this last week, you probably did too, depending on what you follow on social media, that RFK Jr.'s running, when he was running, she's also the ex-wife of one of the founders of Google, has said that she's come to faith in Christ out of Judaism, that she's now a Jew for Jesus, and she got baptized and celebrated on her social media account. And I thought, "Who's been praying for her?" Yeah, it's great, it's great. Yeah, we'll pray so well when it goes, yeah. And so I'm just like, okay, we need to pray for that. But what's interesting is what do they, what does Paul actually say to pray for here? Let me read it. I'll just, because you want to see this, with basically, okay. I'm going to pray for kings and all who are in high position. So that's government, but that could be your pastor, your professor, your parent, your coach, your boss. It's a whole junk drawer, people. But it says, and by the way, when you're not in leadership, well, how do you lead up? Well, part of it is you can influence and you can ask questions and you can pray. Okay, this is this. Here's the prayer. "That we may lead a peaceful and quiet life godly and dignified in every way." So when you pray for government officials and you pray for the government, what should you pray? Leave us alone. I'm dead serious. It was new to me. It's like, that's it.

Leave us alone. You don't pray for luxury. You pray for liberty. You don't pray, treat us super special and give us a bunch of benefits that nobody else has. You don't pray for that. You basically say, "Leave us alone and let us do what the church does. Let us preach the Bible, let us make disciples, let us witness to the world because the gospel, as a general rule, can go forward faster in peaceful times." This is why I'm oversimplifying, but two things the government should do is keep the peace and keep order. It's like, keep us out of wars and keep us from fighting with one another and let the gospel go forward. So that's what Paul prays for. But then let me show you why we should pray. So he says, "How to pray, who to pray for, and then why?" Look at verse 3. "This is good and pleasing in the sight of God our Savior." So look, there's a lot of reasons people pray, right? So here's a couple reasons I pray. It helps me process. I don't know if you're ever done. I'm a verbal processor, so it helps me process. It helps me gain perspective. It helps me transfer the burden and all that kind of stuff. It's about a close relation with God. But according to this verse, one of the reasons, one, I'll show you another reason, one of the reasons we should pray is it pleases God and it's a good thing. In other words, can we just, I don't think that we are, but can we just not be ashamed to prayer? Don't be ashamed to ask for prayer. Don't be ashamed to ask if you could pray for somebody. I mean, I have found that even the most secular people, if they're going through a rough time, are open to prayer. I mean, they're open to at least being prayed for. But then he says another thing in verse 4. In verse 4, he says, "Who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." So I don't have time to get into the God's sovereignty, man's responsibility, but here's, we're told to pray and we're told to pray because God wants to save people. Okay, so it just hurts your head as we'll hold this all together. But I know God can do what he wants. God has sovereign, but God has, for the most part, it appears from Scripture, voluntarily limited himself to working through the obedience and the prayers of his people. Okay, so what is God not doing because you've not been praying? And I'm not here to beat you up. I'm not here to make you feel super guilty, but I'm just, you've heard it before, like what would happen, right? If God right now answered every one of your prayers from this last week in this moment, what would happen? Would like 10 people become Christians? Or would you be like, "Well, I just prayed for traveling mercies from my uncle. That was what I was praying for this week." What if we, prayer is one of the main ways that we partner with God? Now,

look what he says here. After he says that in verse 5 and 6, he says this, "Well, I want you to in verse 5 he goes from the For there is one God, so one God wants all people. For there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. Okay, so we go from the one or all to the one, sorry, from the many to the one. Now, what's interesting is in verse five, the first thing Paul says is not controversial, but the second thing Paul says is very controversial. So the first thing Paul says is there is one God. Now that would have been controversial in certain times in human history. You know, humans have a long history of polytheism. And I actually still think the average American is practically and functionally a polytheist. The average American does not have one idol in which they worship. They have many idols. Many of the problems in people's homes, by the way, is that everybody in the home is worshiping a bunch of gods that don't get along. That's the problem in the average American home. Anyway, Paul says, Paul affirms monotheism. There's one God, but monotheism is not enough. The Jews believe in monotheism, Muslims believe in monotheism. And like kind of for generally secular Americans

will give some nod to one God, right? What he says is not that there's one God, but that there's one mediator. And this is what makes Christianity unique. So a mediator is a middleman. It's somebody who goes between rivals and bring rivals together so that they can have peace. It's interesting, in the book of Job, if your new Job is like this very sad book where all these horrible things happen to this guy named Job, and the whole time he's just like praying to God about it and he's processing. And I think it's in chapter 19 where he says to God. I mean, as you would too, he gets to some dark places. And one of the things he says to God at one point, he said God, I wish there was a mediator between us. I wish there was someone who could represent my side and represent your side. And we find out that in Jesus Christ that's exactly what happened. See what Paul's trying to answer the question of, well, why doesn't the one God save people many ways? And the answer is in verse six. Let me read it to you, it's the gospel. Because Jesus gave himself verse six as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. The reason there is only one mediator to the one God is because only Jesus paid the penalty for our sin, that's what he says.

So he goes in verses one through seven. He talks about prayer, worship, being a praying community. He ends with proclamation. But then for the rest of our time, we're gonna get into what he specifically says to men and what he specifically says to women. What's interesting, and I'll read this, men only get one verse, the women get I think five or six. And sometimes by the way, it's the opposite. So if you read Ephesians five, it's almost all to the men. I mean, the husbands have so much they're told to do and the wives get like one or two verses. Here's the opposite, the men get one thing, the women get a couple things, we'll see. Let me read this. I desire that verse eight in every place. Okay, let's do a full stop real quick. This will make more sense in about 10 or 15 minutes. But the reason I wanna focus on it, he says I want this to happen in every place. So what's gonna happen is when I read, especially verses 11 through 15, they're very controversial verses. And a lot of people wanna go, well, that's really unique for that time and that place and those people and there was something about those ladies and there was something about Ephesus and there was something about that church. And I just don't think we can do that for many reasons. One of the reasons is as Paul starts this section,

he goes, I want this to happen everywhere. It's not a local or limited command. Okay, we'll continue on. I desire that in every place, the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or crawling. So the men are listed first because they're supposed to lead. And here's the first thing they're supposed to lead in, prayer. Now we live in a culture that's been very confused about masculinity, femininity, manhood, womanhood. Some of that's being changed now, we're waking back up. But men are called to lead and some people are bothered by that, some women are bothered by that and some women are bothered by that in part because they've never had a positive experience with a man in their whole life. Okay. But I want to tell you, I think this would solve a lot of it. I think male leadership would be respected so much more if verse eight were true, which is when men started leading, they first led in prayer. Because think about this, if somebody's praying, what are you doing when you're praying? You're communicating a couple things. You're communicating, I'm not in control ultimately. Like, is this not about me, when you pray, you're basically saying, I may be in authority, but I'm also under authority. And we're told here that men, it's interesting. It's like, we're told men should do one thing specifically in church.

And it's like the one thing you never see men do in church. Pray, right? Women are always praying. and you know, women are praying all the time, and there's more women on the prayer team than men on the prayer team, although we've got a lot of men on our prayer team. But like, could you imagine if you walked in here, say you got here early today, and there was like 10 or 15 men and they're standing praying together, but what happened? Was there some tragedy in our church, what are you doing here, you know? It's like so shocking to us to see men pray. Well, it says that they should pray, lifting up their hands. Okay, now we're gonna talk about this, when you get to the women too, right? There's the principle and there's the practice. The principle is posture matters in prayer. Maybe we don't know this. Do you know why, and it's okay if you never do this, but do you know why people lift their hands in worship? It means two things, and you know this, if you think about it, when's the two times you lift your hands in life? You lift your hands when you have to surrender. That's what it means, I surrender. You know, you watch people who get taken out of,

I have surrender, I surrender. And the other time you do it, it's little kids do it. Pick me up. And that's why we do it. What's interesting is the way that we pray today, right? What's the average way that people pray? They pray like they fold their hands, and they close their eyes, and they bow their heads, which might be the absolute worst way to pray. It's probably the best way to fall asleep. Like that's the way I pray and the way I fall asleep, I do the same thing. Well, here's why it took me a while to learn this. That's what, you know, that's what Christians taught their young children when they were teaching young children how to pray. Because young children, they don't want to be distracted. So that, hey, close your eyes. That's full day, that's full day. That's how that started. Because if you ever, if you ever kids, I mean, little kids are crazy when it comes to prayer, right? You're like, let's pray for dinner. And then afterwards Joey's like, Johnny's eyes were open the whole time during the prayer. You're like, your eyes were open the whole time during the prayer. (congregation laughing) Men don't pray because men don't think prayer is masculine

and that's because they're not biblically informed by all of the praying that there's been done by godly men in the Bible. I would encourage you men to read Abraham arguing with God about saving Sodom if there was 10 righteous. Or Moses on the mountain asking God to take his life instead of the peoples. Or King David as he navigated bad leadership under Saul and then a sin that needed to be repented of with Beshi. But there's lots of examples of this. He says three things. He says, pray with holy hands. It's like, and it's probably the three reasons men don't pray. They don't feel, they just feel dirty and they feel sinful. It's probably why women don't pray some too. But it's like the great news is that you don't have to clean up your life before you come to God in prayer. You can come to God in prayer and let God clean up your life. And then it says, angering and whirling, right? And a lot of men don't even want to admit that they're angry. Someone was telling me a lot of anger is misdiagnosed as male depression. Men are angry and they don't know how to deal with it. And I wanna encourage you that part of what you can do if you're angry is you can take that to God in prayer. You don't have to suppress it. You don't have to express it to others. You can confess it to God. And then quarreling, instead of being competitive,

it's like, what's the best thing you could do for someone you don't like, pray for them, as painful as that is. In fact, this weekend at a marriage conference, they said, the final step of forgiveness is praying for God to bless the person who hurt you. Not just I forgive them, but God, I want you to be good to them. Okay, so that's what he says to men. Now, he says, "A longer passage to women "and we'll spend the rest of our time there." Let me show you this. Verses 9 through 15, likewise also, that women should adoring themselves in respectable apparel with modesty and self-control, not braided hair in gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness with good works. Part two, "Let a woman learn quietly "with all submissiveness, I do not permit a woman "to teach or to exercise authority over a man, "rather she is to remain quiet. "For Adam was formed first and Eve, "and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived "and became a transgressor. "Yet she will be saved through childbearing "if they continue in the faith, in love, "and holiness with self-control." You're like, "Now I know I've never heard this book talk." Okay, here's what I want to do.

Before I get to talk about the women, which I'm, I don't, I'm gonna say I'm looking forward to, but I'm gonna do. But I want to talk, this is actually really helpful. I want to talk about how to deal with difficult passages. Because you may not come to the same conclusion that I do, but I want to show you how I got there. what their pastor believes. I think every church should know what the church believes. I don't think there should be certain things that we don't talk about on Sundays. I don't think there should be certain part of scripture that we won't bring up and discuss. So when you have a difficult passage, and a passage is usually difficult for two reasons, right? I don't like it or I don't understand it. This passage has a little bit of both. And by the way, the I don't like passages changed depending on culture and all that. But for us in America today, this is a parts of this is I don't like and I don't understand. So let me just tell you what you do. And then you can see what conclusion you come to. These are just, these are biblical principles. They're called the principle of harmony in the principle of history. So here's the principle of harmony. This is like one of the first things, if you ever go to seminary,

one of the first things they teach you in like Bible exposition classes, is all right guys, if you're gonna learn the Bible, here's where we're one of the Bible. Scripture interprets scripture. Or the way I say it takes the whole Bible to make the whole Christian. Or another way to say it is if you're, you take unclear passages and you interpret them based on clear passages that talk about the exact same thing. And you put all those passages together. By the way, this is what you do in all your communication. You ever get like a weird email from your boss? You're like, what's he talking about? What do you do? You go back up the email chain. Like, oh, he's referencing three emails ago. It is really the document. That's what you're doing. This is what you do when your boyfriend or girlfriend texts you and you're like, what's up with that emoji, you know? You're trying to figure this out, you're going back up the text thread. Okay, so let me tell you what we know this can't mean. When it talks about the second part about women to be silent in churches and all this, it's like, well, we know this doesn't mean that women are supposed to be minds for Christ. You know, just showing up, you know, not saying anything.

And how do we know that? Well, let me show you a couple verses. First Corinthians 11.5, so I'm using the Bible. I'm using the principle of harmony. I'm letting the Bible interpret the Bible. But every wife who prays or prophesies, so that's speaking in church. Whatever you think about prophesying and all that. This is speaking in church. So when a woman speaks in church, with her head uncovered, I cannot get into head covering, say, okay, but we're just, this honors her head. You're like, it's getting more confusing. Since it is the same as if her head were shaven, basically, I will say this, head coverings were a time assigned in that culture of being under authority. So the principle is, as a woman speaks, she should do this so as in humble submission to authority, okay? But let me show you two other verses. In Acts, and there's many more. This is just what I had time for. Acts 18, 26 says this. He, this is Apollo's, he was a traveling evangelist. He began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla, that's a woman in Aquila, that's her husband, and they have names that rhyme, in Priscilla and Aquila, heard him. They took him aside and explained to him

the way of God more accurately. So there's a woman taking a man aside, well, with her husband as well, and correcting him. So we have an example of a woman, well, along with her husband, but correcting a man who needed to grow in some teaching, but she did so privately. It wasn't in the corporate worship. And then you'll know this one, Titus II. Older women likewise are to be reverent behavior, not slanders or slaves, so much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, be self-controlled, pure working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Great example of women teaching women, okay? So what you can say is you can go away in a second, this can't mean that women can't teach at all, because we have great examples of women teaching, praying and prophesying in church, we have women teaching other women, we have women correcting bad teaching in personal relationships, so there's that kind of teaching. So what does this mean? Well, then you have to go to the second principle. You go, okay, there's a principle of harmony, and once you've done that principle, then you go to the principle of history. And the principle of history is,

what has the church believed for 2,000 years? You know, like if I ever got up here on a Sunday, I'm like, guys, I have seen something in the Bible that no one has ever seen before. That's not gonna be a good thing. We have 2,000 years of history. We have people who are, you know, Jonathan Edwards studied the Bible 13 hours a day, six days a week. He would go on rides and he would pin notes to his coat, 'cause so he could think about the scriptures while he was on his horse. I mean, guys, people, they didn't have TikTok. They weren't on social media. They didn't watch streaming services. They thought about the Bible all the time. And so here's what happens. I will give you three options historically as you read this text. And these, this is what people believe. I'll give you, there's only one, as I understand it logically, you have three options. Option one, Paul is wrong. Okay, that's not the option our church takes, okay? But I want you to know, if you go to some university and you take religion 101 and you're like, this is great, I'm gonna grow my thing. epistles or something, and they're going to say, well, you know, the apostle Paul, he's a man of his time. And he said some good things, but right here, if you read these verses that I just read to you, Paul is a chauvinist, guys. In fact, he's an angry bachelor. These are what people say. In fact, he was afraid of women.

And he's part of the patriarchy. And his goal in letter writing is to oppress women, but I don't think you could, just from the life of Paul, he worked with women. He honored women. He thanked women. He called them fellow partners. But if you think Paul is wrong, then you could reject him, and people do that. Oh, you know, whatever. Option one, option two is not that Paul is wrong. This is, this is the, this is what a lot of people believe today. Paul's not wrong, but we've been reading Paul wrong because I can promise you for 2000 years, what I'm about to tell you our church believes about men and women in ministry is what the church believed everywhere for all times until about 1975. So it's like, were we reading it wrong for 2000 years? I think there's a lot of humility to go probably we're not reading it wrong. And I'll tell you this, what you, I don't have time to show you how this works, but you can imagine what you have to do to read a text that says women should not teach or exercise authority over a man. And I want this to happen everywhere. To go from that to it's okay to have women pastors. I'm just telling you what you have to do. I'm making fun of anybody. I'm not mad at anybody. What you have to do to make a text say the exact opposite of what it's saying every, not everybody, almost everybody who does it there ends up doing it in other places of scripture as well. This is why every mainline denomination that went theologically liberal did the same thing. They first had women pastors and then years later affirmed the LGBTQIA agenda. Well, of course, it's the exact same interpret, interpretive skill, what's called a hermeneutic. You look at it and go, that doesn't mean that. What says that? No, it doesn't mean that. It meant that. It doesn't mean that today. There's a cultural thing that's it's like not helpful, but that's what we would do. It's we've been reading it wrong. It's time to reinterpret it. The third is Paul was right and we need to receive it. But we need to and this is what we do all the time, but I just want to say it out loud. What you have to do is two things. You have to hold on to the eternal biblical truth that never changes. And then you need to figure out how it culturally applies today. Modesty looks a lot different in what you would call modest today than what you would call modest. I mean, when I went to Israel, I had to wear I wasn't allowed to wear shorts. It's immodest for a man to in that culture to wear shorts. So I wore pants all time. He feels like 85 degrees. So here's the thing. We need to hold on to the truth that the eternal truth, but we need to learn how to apply it. What we call this here in our church is complementarian. And I figured I'd give you a big word because if you can order a frappe mocha chocchino things,

you can remember your Starbucks order. You can remember that word complementarian, which means that listen carefully, this means that men and women are equal in value, dignity, significance, and worth, but are different in roles and responsibilities primarily in the home and the church. I'm a complementarian, but not with a chip on my shoulder. I'm a complementarian, but not with an agenda. I'm a complementarian, but I want to be unbelievably gracious in the grave. Okay, with that said, let's look at the two areas with our limited time left that he mentions with women. But I wanted to spend more time giving you the principle so you can wrestle with this yourself. By the way, if you disagree with me and you have any questions, I want you to email me directly at [email protected]. Okay. All right, likewise also in verse nine, that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel with modesty and self-control. I want you to take notes. You can write down eternal principle, biblical truth first, the first part. But then he gives a cultural application that isn't as relevant to us because braided hair doesn't mean the exact same thing it did back then, symbolically. Look at the end of verse nine, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire. So okay, Paul is doing something that no man should ever do, but he does it. He's talking talking about how a woman looks and how she should address. I wanna talk about what the word adorn means. Adorn means to be, to make something beautiful. So, before we focus on the negative, Paul goes, ladies, I want you to adorn yourselves. Every woman would like to be as beautiful as she possibly could be. The word adorn is the same word that's used as a temple to say, to decorate the temple. It's the word to mean enhance. Guys, we know every woman wants to adorn herself. This is why Sephora is so busy. So, I looked it up, and all this stuff's easy to do with AI today. I was just like, give me the top 10 women

who are influential on social media. I want all of them, you know, it takes three seconds. And I went and researched all of them. All of them are either in fitness, fashion, or cosmetics. It's like, what do women, who are they flocking to and following, people who are telling them how to be beautiful? This is how the Kardashians became billionaires. I mean, this is not something small. The word adorn is the Greek word cosmeo, where we get the word cosmetics from. So, he says, ladies, I know you want to be beautiful, but you got to be modest. Now, what is modesty? I know, it sounds like, people, you say modesty. Yeah, you can hear the modern woman, right? The modern woman, don't body shame me. Don't turn me into a sexual object. You can hear that. It's like, let me give you the Christian definition of modesty, humility expressed in dress. That's what it is. It's like, how do I be humble? How do I be humble? I'm not gonna talk about myself a lot. It's like, how about you be humble and how you dress? And I know, look, we tend to think about modesty. We tend to think about sexuality with modesty, right? We're like, okay, the necklines are getting too low and the shorts are getting too high

and the clothes are getting too tight, right? And men struggle with this, too. It's like, men, you and your five inch running shorts. Modesty, please. Okay, but here's what's interesting. This text, I believe in that type of modesty, okay? But this text is actually, if you read the text, this is what the Bible continually surprised you. This text is not about sexual modesty. I mean, by implication and application, you can get this, this is about status modesty. This is not about loss, this is about luxury. This says, how do I dress in such a way that I'm not trying to show off my status with my clothing all the time? Which I think to many of us who may say, yeah, yeah, I don't dress skimpy, we're gonna appropriate with my think. Here's the question, what do my clothes say about my heart? Modesty is primarily an issue of the heart, not a habit of the dress. And Paul basically says, women, I know you wanna adorn yourself and the number one way to do that is not with another trip to Sephora. But the number one way to do that is by being the godliest version of yourself and cultivating character and how many of us, men and women alike would say to me,

yeah, we probably spend a lot more time in front of the mirror and a lot more time in our external appearance than we do on our internal character. Last thing, Paul says this, he says in verse 11, let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. Now, if I can focus on the positive for a second, Paul says, I want women to learn. Now to us today, that seems so obvious. Of course, women need to learn, you know, more women go to college than men and women are, you know, more women go into law and medicine. It's like, well, I know that's modern and that's what people, but I'm just telling you back then, the idea that a woman should not just come to church but she should learn that she should be a student of scripture, that she has intellectual capacity. All of this was a great compliment. And by the way, when it says, learn quietly, it's the same word, it says when you should pray that your kings and high officials that you could live a quiet life, it doesn't mean a silent life. It means a respectable life. And so it says, with all submissiveness, you know, submission is a invitation for somebody else to lead. Then this is the verse, here it is.

I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. This is probably the most controversial verse. Rather, she has to remain silent. This verse is so controversial that I have a book in my office right now that's 300 pages long, that's just on this verse. I tried to read it. It's so technical. Basically, it comes down to this, is Paul talking about one thing or two things? And I don't want a man to, a man to, or a woman who exercises authority over a man or she's talking about one thing. Well, that's been debated. But with Don Carson, who's a New Testament scholar, he says it really doesn't matter because the only way you have authority in the church is through teaching. There is no other authority. We don't have, the only authority we have is not an inherent authority. We have a derivative authority. So let me just tell you how this works out in our church. And then we're almost done. Is, well, let me show you one of the verses. This will make more sense. First Timothy 5, 17, I have it on the screen. Says this, let the elders, that's another word for pastor.

I'll talk about this in a few weeks. Let the elders who rule literally exercise authority well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in teaching and preaching. So what is an elder to find us? Somebody who exercises authority and teaches. This is why for almost 2000 years, the office of pastor and the teaching and preaching ministry, especially on Sundays to a mixed crowd, has been limited to qualified men. And that's what we do here. What I want to focus on is not just what, well, let me say one last thing. I'm getting in the side tracks. And here's why. Let me just show you this last thing and then we'll move on. And you can talk about your community group and talk about your community group and see if you agree, disagree with what I said. But look at verse 13. This is why I thought this was important enough to give a time to because of Paul's why. Why does he give this, everybody agrees there's a limitation, something's being forbidden for women to do. And if this said, if verse 13 said, I don't permit a woman to teach or exercise story of a man. And then verse 13 said,

because these Ephesian women are crazy. I'd be like, well, okay, that was a unique thing given to the Ephesian women, you know? Because they said, because something's happening in this church and in this city, but he doesn't do that. He roots it all the way back in creation for Adam was formed first, right? He's actually appealing the idea of the firstborn, which we don't have that thinking anymore in our culture, right? That there's a special privilege that happens to the firstborn and there's a special responsibility that happens to the firstborn child. He's saying, Adam was created first as an order of priority, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. So he's saying there's something and he doesn't, I don't want to go beyond the scriptures. There's something about the way that God created us and sin has distorted us, both of us, that the way that God desires the church to be led is that the elders of the church be qualified men and this will make more sense in the week to come. But as I was reading that and as I was reading about women being deceived, I thought to myself, you know, I'm getting very much, some of you I think are too, is anybody getting real into AI right now, artificial intelligence, you better be getting into it.

It's going to be very interesting. Anyway, well, I was like, chat GPT is just getting so smart that I'm beginning to have a relationship with chat GPT, okay? And I was like, I'm just going to ask chat GPT something. So I literally just said, with no prompts, no leading, I just said, chat GPT, if you were the devil, how would you deceive women today? And this is what chat GPT wrote back. The first thing I would do is attack their identity. I would confuse women about who they are and I would distort their self-worth. I would make women think that their value is based on appearance, approval, and success, rather than a God-given identity. I would promote comparison and insecurity. I would use social media to fuel envy and unrealistic expectations, making sure women feel like they're never enough. I would redefine femininity. And I would push narratives that say femininity is weak and oppressive. And I would disconnect women from their God-designed role. Second thing I would do is attack purpose. I would distract women from their calling and I would make career-verse family a battleground. I would convince women that they have to choose between success and family rather than seeing both as valuable. I would turn motherhood into a burden and not a blessing. I would push the idea that children are a hindrance to their happiness.

And I would devalue Biblical man or Biblical womanhood, making Biblical teachings such as modesty, submission, and nurturing to seem outdated, oppressive, and even harmful. Third, I would attack her relationships. I would create division and chaos and destroy marriages by normalizing divorce. I would teach her to promote a feminism that rejects men and I would turn men into her enemies instead of her partners, Making women believe they may. Finally, I would attack the church. I would make all the godly women silent in the church. And I would pressure Christian women to stay quiet about their faith so that they will avoid being labeled judgmental. And finally, I would weaken female discipleship. I would keep the older women from mentoring the young. Let's pray. Would I pray that we would not be deceived? No, man or woman. And I particularly pray as we ended, just to talk about the women, that the women would be encouraged. We could not do anything in this church without the women. Whether it's our women's leads, coming alongside our community groups, whether it's women in kids classrooms, or women singing on this stage, or women leading at the highest levels, and all of our serving ministries,

or key women on our staff team, or there's women in our church who have entire ministries and discipleship curriculum for women. So, we just thank you for women. Lord, we pray for the women and the men that we would not be deceived. Eve was deceived in every generation of men and every generation of women have their own deception. Lord, we thank you that maybe. In a weird way, AI just cut through all that and told us exactly what the devil might just be trying to do Lord. I pray for you just a spirit of encouragement and a spirit of partnership between the men and women in our church. Lord, would we be a praying and proclaiming community. And pray this in Jesus name, amen. (gentle music) (gentle music) You You