We have been going through the book of 1 Timothy. It’s our propensity to go right through books of the Bible and as we’ve been going through 1 Timothy, we’ve hit Chapter 2 and Chapter 2 deals with the issue of women in ministry. So, last week, we talked about Mars Hill girls gone wild. This week it’s ministers in skirts. So, it is not the series I would have normally chosen, but it’s in the book, so we’ll just go through the book as it is. This week, as I get into the issue of women in ministry, I will deal primarily in 1 Timothy 2, but I’m gonna need to back up and go to Genesis. The reason being that in 1 Timothy, Chapter 2, Paul refers back to the creation account and this is very important because it is common for us to look at the culture that we live in, assume that that is normative and then judge the Bible in light of our culture and say, “Well, that’s not right. That’s not right, because that’s not how we do things.” In fact, it should be the opposite. We should open our Bibles and go, not to culture, but all the way back to creation and say, “Well, when God made the earth, before sin and folly and death came into the equation, how were we made to exist and coexist and to function?” That is normative. Everything else in culture is varying degrees of what happens because sinners entered the world and we should then repent and then, by God’s grace, go back to those foundational reasons for which we were created. So, that’s the way that Paul works in 1 Timothy 2. Curiously enough, the Lord Jesus Christ, Paul, on a number of occasions and in 1 Peter 3, Peter – when it comes to issues of male and female relationships, when it comes to men’s and women’s roles, all of them continually go back to the book of Genesis. All but Peter go back to the first three chapters. Peter goes back, basically, to Chapters 12 and 15 in the Book of Genesis. And so the pattern of the New Testament is, anytime there is a debate about the role of men and women in the home or in the church, then they defer back to Genesis and creation and so we will do the same, and in so doing, we’re just following the pattern of Jesus, Paul, Peter, the pattern that we’ll see in 1 Timothy 2 and we’re just – we’re just making a precedent of not picking a section out of our Bible, but starting where the Bible does and then walking through to see the thread of truth that exists, continually, from the beginning.

And so we’ll deal, overarchingly then, as well, with male and female roles in general. There are three governments in the Bible. There is the state, there is the home, and there is the church. The foundational governmental structure is the home. On top of that is built the church and on top of that is built the state. And so we’re talking about women in ministry, we’re talking about leadership, government in the church. And to get there, we need to start with leadership and government in the home, because that’s the foundation. So that’s enough sort of setting it up. We’ll start in Genesis, Chapter 1, Verses 27 and 28. That’s where we’ll start. I can’t do all of Genesis, obviously, I can but you couldn’t endure it. So we’ll just do a few verses. We see in Genesis, Chapter 1, Verse 1 that in the beginning God made, God created everything that is. And God goes through in a succession of days and he says that he made this and he made that and it was good and it was good and it was good and it was good and then in Genesis, Chapter 1:27 and 28, we’re told that “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

God made us male and female. Now, this is a very simple but very important distinction to make. There are men and there are women and it’s not just plumbing that makes them different. It’s creation that makes them different. It was popular in the 60s and 70s with sort of a radical avant garde feminism to teach that gender is nothing more than socially conditioned behavior. That you’re born just as a blank slate and then culture makes you play with Barbies or whack people with sticks. That boys and girls are not genetically predisposed. It’s interesting because even the more progressive and modern-day feminism has recanted that and it’s basically teaching that, well the way we got social norms and mores and customs is because men and women made them. It’s a chicken and egg argument. “Culture made us male and female.” Well who made culture? “Male and females.” Where does male and femaleness come from? Creation. And so, what they have found is that boys and girls and men and women are different. The ladies agree with that? Yes, and they’re glad they’re not men. I don’t know any woman that wants back hair and – you know, it’s – there’s differences, right? there’s differences. There’s differences. And to be male and female is not to be good or bad. A lot of you will say that and you’ll say, “Oh, no – well, which one’s good, which one’s bad?” That’s it. It’s the left hand, right hand. Both good. Both necessary. Different, sure. Men and women are different, not good or bad. Both. Good. Indeed, we’ll see in a moment, very good.

And so gender is given at creation. Now, based on this verse, are men and women equal? Yes. This whole argument that women need to be just like men in order to be equal to men is not true. Women are equal to men and men are equal to women because God made them in his image and likeness. Women have nothing to prove. Men have nothing to prove. God made you. You’re his image-bearer. That means you have reason and skill and intellect and intelligence and humor and the ability to communicate. That you’re an image-bearer of God and by virtue of that, you have dignity, value, worth, equality. That’s why even unborn people, elderly people, handicapped people, people with mental disability, we still value because they bear the image of God. They have nothing to prove. In the same way, men and women have nothing to prove. They’re image-bearers of God. That gives them dignity and equality.

And so, “God then blessed them and said to them both,” and here’s their job description: “’Be fruitful,” have kids, “increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’” God tells the man and the woman, here’s your job. Multiply – that’s have a lot of kids. Amen. And be fruitful, which means raise those kids to love the Lord. It’s not enough just to have 12 kids if they’re all midget demons. You gotta raise them, okay? A lot of Christians say, “We’re godly. We have 12 kids.” You have 12 felons. That’s not fruitful multiplication. Multiplication is have a lot of kids. Fruitful is the kind of child you raise. Children that love the Lord and serve the Lord and do good things on the earth. And so the man and the woman, from this point forward, are to go forth and build a culture. This is called a cultural mandate. They’re gonna have kids. They’re gonna expand over the earth. They’re gonna rule the earth. They’re gonna shape and have dominion and they’re gonna build a culture that is intended to glorify God.

Then we see over in Chapter 1, Verse 31, at the end of the first chapter, that we are told that God looked at all of this and he said that it was –

Response: Good.

- very good. Everything was good. When he made the man and the woman? Very good. Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of Genesis, both deal with the creation account. Some people say, “Well, Chapter 1’s saying the same thing as Chapter 2.” It does, but in a little different fashion. This is because Hebrews don’t tell a story as Greeks do – beginning, middle and end – they tell a story beginning, middle, beginning. You’ll see this in the Book of Judges. You’ll see this in the Song of Solomon. You’ll see this in Ecclesiastes. You’ll see this in Genesis 1. The beginning and then the beginning again, Chapters 1 and 2. And Chapter 2 of Genesis, it goes back to the creation account and it fills in a couple details for us. Here’s what we find in Genesis, Chapter 2:18, before this goes back and looks at before God made the woman. It’s just the man in the garden, by himself. The place is probably a total mess. Here’s what God said. “”It is not good for the man to be alone.’” Now, has sin entered the world at this point in human history?

Response: No.

No. Okay. God made everything. Said it was good. Now he says there’s something that’s not good. Not good. You say, “Well how could something not be good if there’s no sin?” Well, it’s still not complete. If the man is the image-bearer of God – God is a Trinity. There is one God who exists as father, son and spirit – one God, equal. The man is all by himself. He’s got God above him and creation beneath him but he doesn’t have an equal. Doesn’t have a partner. It’s not good for him to be alone. We need each other. In the same way that God has a relationship between a father, son and spirit, we need relationships with those who love us and are equal to us. And so, “The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone.’” So God has a plan. It’s not an Internet chat room or a website. It’s not a book about friendship. It’s not a television show called Friends, it’s a woman, which is wonderful and we praise God for that. He says, “’I will make a helper suitable for him.’”

A lot of ladies read that and they say, “That’s a denigration.” Is it a denigration to be helpful? It’s not a denigration to be helpful. What you will see in the Book of Psalms on more than one occasion, and in the Book of Hebrews, is that God is our helper. One of the songs we sing is Mars Hill is that God is an ever-present help in trouble. God helps us. We see in the New Testament that one of the titles that the Lord Jesus gives for the Holy Spirit, in the Greek, it’s the paraclete, it’s is the helper. The Holy Spirit helps us. That’s what Romans 8 says. Even when we don’t know how to pray, the spirit helps us pray, okay? So, men are created to lead. Women are created to help them glorify and honor God. Now for the married women, this makes sense. For the single women, this may not, depending upon your father. That’s the truth. God created the man first; gave him a job description. Created the woman to be helpful and work with him. It says then, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” For you single men, this is your goal. The Bible never tells us that women should leave their father and mother. It says throughout the Bible that men take a wife and that women are given in marriage, okay?

What that means is, if a guy wants to be married, he needs to leave his mom and dad’s house, go get a job, go get a place to live and then he has to convince a father that he is worthy of a wonderful daughter. In that way, just to illustrate it for you, the young man is here, the young woman is here and between them is a father with a gun. That’s Biblical, okay? And the boy doesn’t get to the girl unless he goes through the father and if she’s doubly blessed, she has brothers and uncles and Christian friends. It’s like a gang initiation in some ways. He has to run the gauntlet. A man has to leave his mother and father and go set up his own home so then he could be married and Paul and Jesus in the New Testament quote this verse frequently. This is the pattern. Men leave, become independent men, women then marry them; and we have it all backwards, right? A woman leaves, gets a place and then her deadbeat boyfriend stays at her house. That’s what the world does. We’re Christians, we don’t do that.

And it says that the goal is that they will become one flesh. One flesh, okay? The word there for one, it’s a Hebrew word, it – it’s the word echad. It’s used in Deuteronomy, Chapter 6, Verse 4. That’s called the shema. If any of you have a Jewish background, you know what the shema is. Three times a day, the Jews would say, “Here, O Israel, the Lord, our God, he is echad.” That’s what they would say. “He is one.” Three times a day. That was their declaration that there was only one God and that word is interesting. It means that many that are one. That the father, son and spirit are one God. In the same way that the man and the woman are one. See, he’d told us previously, that the woman was taken out of the side of the man. The man was made out of the dust of the earth and it’s interesting because God made everything else out of his breath. Out of his word. He made the man and the woman with – the Bible says, basically – his own hands. It’s a metaphor. That God hand-crafted us and that he took the woman out of the side of the man. Not in, she doesn’t belong in front of him. She doesn’t belong behind him. She belongs alongside of him. That’s why you ladies that are married and your husband puts his arm around you, and you snuggle up to his side, it feels good. That’s where you came from, welcome home, right?

And so the woman comes out of the man and when they have intimacy and they consummate their relationship, the two become one flesh. They become echad. They become echad. It is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. That’s why sex is such a sacred thing. It’s showing that two have become one in the same way that the father, son and spirit are one. It tells us that the man and his wife were both naked. We vote yes and they felt no shame. Okay, this is how gender relationships are to work before sin and the fall and the curse. This is the way it’s supposed to be. Man, made first. Responsible, honoring the Lord. Woman, created to be an equal and a partner. It’s not good for him to be alone, he knows that. He then meets her, he loves her, they consummate, they are one. This is how it is supposed to be. No division, no fighting, no problem.

Something happens, though in Genesis, Chapter 3. This changes all of human history. I’ll cover this quickly but I’ll cover the whole chapter. Now the serpent. Now we’ve gotta deal with this. The serpent shows up. There’s a new character that enters into your Bible. In Revelation, Chapter 12, Verse 9 and Revelation, Chapter 20, Verse 2, this is Satan. It is the dragon. This is an angel that was made by God, rebelled against God – according to Isaiah and Ezekiel – was kicked out of Heaven, took with him – according to Matthew and according to Revelation – a third of the angels – they are now demons and he is on the earth, still declaring war against God. The serpent was more crafty than any of the animals the Lord God had made. Very crafty, very cunning. Some of you don’t believe in Satan. Well that just goes to show how crafty he is. So crafty, he’s gotten you to disbelieve in his existence. There’s a cause and effect for everything. The effects of sin and death in this world come out of the cause of the serpent declaring war on God and us participating with him.

He comes to whom? The woman. It’s interesting. Adam was made first. Adam was established as the leader in creation. The woman was to help him. Satan circumvents Adam, goes right to Eve. That’s one of the crafty moves that he still does to this day. And he asks a rhetorical question, “’Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?’” Is that, indeed, what the Lord God had said? No. God didn’t say they couldn’t eat from any tree. He said they could eat of any tree they wanted, except for one, the Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil. So he takes God’s word and subtly twists it. Now, this is important because it’s the same tactic he’ll use in Matthew 4 on the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s the same tactic he uses throughout the history of the world. He will take the Scriptures, add or subtract from their true meaning to change what the Scriptures mean. We read in Hebrews 4, we read in Ephesians 6, that the Scriptures are metaphorically compared to a sword. Here what you have is a dragon who walks up to a lady and takes a sword out of her hand and then he is going to run her through with her own sword. That is exactly what happens to those people that do not know the Scriptures very well. That is exactly what hap- that’s why it’s so important, even as we launch into this study of the role of men and women, that we hold our sword well, otherwise, the dragon will take it from us and we will find ourselves run through with our own sword.

He takes the sword and he adds to what God had said. The woman responds to him. She didn’t need to, but she did. “’We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’’” Did God add that piece, “you must not touch it?” God never said that. We don’t know where Eve got this. Maybe she made it up in the moment or maybe her husband, like some of your husbands, is a very poor Bible teacher. That God instructed Adam, created Eve and then he was to instruct Eve. Here’s what God said, and perhaps Adam is a very bad Bible teacher, or perhaps Eve just went off and decided that the Bible had some gaps and that she would fill them in. Either way, she adds to the Scriptures, which is a dangerous thing to do.

Satan says, “’You will not surely die,’ the serpent said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” Here’s what he says. God’s trying to hold you back, woman. It’s time for liberation. Be free. You got your husband. You got your God. They’re just – they’re holding you back. Be liberated. It’s the first invitation to an independent feminism. “’For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” Eve, you can be like God. God’s got his opinion, you’ve got yours. It’s the first post-modern hermeneutic. God has his perspective, you have yours. God has his interpretation, you have yours. God’s just using the text to exercise power against you and hold you down. Be liberated, Eve. Think your own thoughts. Lead your own life.

“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom,” what 1 John 2, verse 16, says is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life. She gets all three in one fell swoop, “and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was,” where? “with her.” This is the first exercising of a woman’s role in leadership in the home and in the church in the history of the world. It does not go well. It has not gone well since. Eve sins. She hands some to Adam, who is there doing what? Nothing. There’s an old puritan proverb that says that when Adam was away, Eve fell astray. That’s not true. Adam was not away; he was there, doing nothing. Now some of you men think this is noble because you’re sons of Adam. You think that if you let a woman do as she pleases, you love her. You don’t. Some of you allow your wife to believe things that she should not believe. Some of you allow your sisters to do things they should not do. Some of you allow your daughters to wear things they should not wear. You do so thinking, “Well, she has her own opinion. She has her own freedom.” Adam should have spoken. He should have intervened. He should have involved himself – because he is a male chauvinist? No, because he loves his wife. She’s being led astray by Satan to rebel against God and he does nothing. I would say more than anything, this is the typical man in the Western World in our present day. Men who do nothing and think that they’re holy. These are the good, nice church boys that don’t fight. They don’t argue. They don’t debate. They don’t lead. They don’t conquer. They don’t do anything. They do nothing and they’re encouraged to do so. Because of his silence, his wife tried to fill in the gap. Many of you wives, this is your life. Your husband is weak, he is a coward. He will not lead. He will not teach. He does not handle his Bible very well. There are huge gaps and needs and the enemy is coming to your home and you are trying to make up the difference. I would submit to you that that’s where we got women pastors. Men failed. Someone needed to do something and well-intentioned women like Eve stepped up, trying to help.

Here’s what happens. “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” Mistrust. Separation. Previously, there’s no distance between the man and the woman. Now, there is. They can’t trust each other. There’s separation. There’s division. Today, this works itself out with prenuptial agreements and birth control. It’s all just different kinds of fig leaves. I can’t trust you. I can’t be close to you. It’s not safe. We’ll live together but not get married. All varying sorts of fig leaves.

“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God.” It’s interesting that God comes looking for them. This is the pattern of human history. People don’t go looking for God. It says that, in Romans, that no one seeks after God, that God comes looking for us. Like Jesus says in John 4 that the father is seeking worshipers. God comes looking for them and he has a rhetorical question. "But they hide from God.” Some of you know this. You hide from God. You’ll see this with a child. If you have a child and the child sins, oftentimes they what? They hide. They run to their room. They crawl under a bed. They won’t look you in the eye. They’re hiding. It’s shame that comes over them. When repentance should be their response. They hide from God. Some of you hide from God. You hide from God in your theology. You create a theology that does not allow God to tell you what to do. Some of you hide from God in that you come to church only when it’s convenient or occasional. Some of you are selective listeners and you only embrace that which you wanted to hear. There’s all kinds of ways that we hide from God. Some of you won’t read your Bible because you know what it says. We hide from God.

And God has a question. “[T]he Lord God called to,” whom? Verse 9. “the man,” who sinned first? The woman. Who’s responsible? The man. Men, you need to know this. This is the essence of Biblical masculinity. To be a man means this: you are responsible for things that are not your fault. That is the essence of Biblical masculinity. That’s what we teach at this church. We teach that men are responsible. Even if they’re not at fault. That’s what – in Colossians and Ephesians when it says that men are the head, it doesn’t mean that they’re to dominate, it means that they are to be like Jesus Christ, taking responsibility for things that are not their fault. Now in this case, I would say that Adam is at fault. But he’s not the one who ate first, she was. She’s still responsible for her own sin but he’s responsible for the condition of his family and his home. And so God comes and he asks, “Adam, where are you?” It’s a rhetorical question. Romans 5 tells us that because of whose sin, the whole race fell? Adam’s sin. Romans 5:12 through 21. Because of one man’s sin, the whole race fell. You and I are conceived, Psalms tells us, with a sin nature. We are conceived, sinful, from our mother’s womb. Why? Not because of Eve’s sin, because of Adam’s sin. You say, “Well, that doesn’t make sense. She sinned first.” That’s right. But he’s responsible. God holds him responsible. Same thing is said in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 15, Verses 20 through 22 that because of Adam’s sin, sin entered the human race. God holds the man responsible. That’s why when it came time for the Lord Jesus to be born, he was born as a man, the second Adam, to take back all that the first Adam had lost. Adam is held responsible. “Where are you?” God doesn’t come and say, “Eve, what were you thinking? What were you doing?” He’ll get to her in a minute.

In the same way, gentlemen, if you are married or you aspire to be married and things go completely astray in your home and your wife is out at the end of her tether or your children are wild and disobedient, who will we call for? We will pick up the phone and you will hear this same question. “Knucklehead? Where are you?” That is the question that we will ask. We place an extraordinary responsibility upon the shoulders of the men because God does. Some of you are saying, “Well that uh uh.” Do you think I like this? You think about this. Do you know what kind of pressure this puts upon me? Do you know how much harder this makes my job? It means I have to live exemplary. Not perfect, but I’m under a microscope and everyone would like to see me, you know, Charlie Brown it and then they could say, “Well, hey, we all have freedom here to do like Adam. This other Jesus stuff is really hard.”

He answered, “He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’” Adam starts arguing with God. Some of you men are very good at this. You call it theology. “So I hid.” And here’s God qu- I love God. God asks a lot of questions here. Jesus does the same thing. God’s really good at questions. “And he said, ‘Who told you that you were naked?’” Doh! Doh! Good question. “’Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?’ The man said, ‘The woman’” The woman. The woman, right? Every standup comic, every talk men’s show, every Tom Leykis episode, every, you know, every Howard Stern interview, it’s this. “Oh it’s the women. The women. The women are ruining the world. We got the wrong women.” And not just the woman, Adam says, “’the woman you put here’” that’s a set of nuggets right there, telling God “The woman you put me here with.” Now a lot of guys have done this. A lot of guys have woken up and looked at their wife and said, “Lord God, this is the wrong one. This one’s defective. She’s not – there’s something wrong with this one.” And so guys go from wife to wife to wife or girlfriend to girlfriend to girlfriend and keep saying, “I just can’t find the right one. I can’t find the right one. I can’t find the right one.” Well, maybe you’re wrong. Maybe you’re the wrong one. You get these daughters of God and you keep messing them up.

It goes on. “Have you eaten from the tree.” And the man said, “The woman you put here with me,” doesn’t repent. He blames it on the woman. Blames it – “oh, it’s the woman. Everything was fine. I was naked, naming things, eating fruit, the woman shows up. Been crazy ever since then. I’ll be over here, sipping mai tais and trying to, you know, deal with my feelings. You go take care of her, she’s really out at the end of her limb. See if you can make another one. That one’s beta. Not working.” “’she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.’” Total victim. “She gave me fruit, I ate it. You know, what? She cooks. You know, I just eat what’s on my plate. It’s not my fault.” Coward.

“Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’” He goes to the woman and the woman, does she blame it on her husband? No. Isn’t this true, ladies? Even if your husband’s a jerk, a coward, women still defend their men. That weird? They still defend their men. They wanna see their husband as honorable and they pretend. If they don’t have any reality to deal with, they pretend. So she blames it on Satan. Lot of women do that. That’s why a lot of women are into charismatic theology and they just blame everything on Satan. “Oh, it’s not my husband, it’s Satan. He’s hitting me again.” No, it’s your husband. It’s him. He’s broken. He’s not working. You can’t blame it all on Satan. “Oh, my husband, he just can’t stop drinking because of Satan. He can’t stop smacking me around because of Satan. My husband, he just can’t get a job because of Satan.” No. He’s just like Adam. He’s just not very effective. “The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’” That’s actually true. Paul will say that in 1 Timothy 2 and 2 Corinthians 11.

Here’s what happens. It gets worse. God then pronounces a series of curses upon them. There is consequence.

“So the Lord God said to the serpent,” here’s the curse on the serpent. Here’s the consequence. “’Because you have done this, ‘Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’” What he says is this. Satan, you’re gonna lose. This man, Adam, lost. He went down with no glory. He didn’t obey Paul’s command to fight the good fight. He didn’t fight at all. He never even drew his weapon. Adam lost but there is another man coming, through the seed of the woman. Galatians tells us that that seed is Christ. That Jesus Christ will be born. A promise is made. He will be a male, born to a woman but there will be conflict between Satan and Jesus that Satan will injure Jesus but that Jesus will crush his head, will defeat him.

The theologians call this the protoevangelion and this is the first Gospel. The answer is Jesus. Adam can’t fix what he has made crooked. He can’t straighten out the mess that he has made so Jesus is coming, the second Adam, to redeem what the first Adam had lost. It’s interesting, this issue of the serpent. It ancient Near-Eastern and Babylonian literature, the serpent is always symbolic of chaos. This is a real serpent, but when he comes, he brings chaos. When there’s chaos in your life, look for the serpent. He says that Jesus will come, though, and he will crush the serpent. The chaos and the sin and the folly will be no more. There’s other consequences as well.

The next section talks about the woman’s responsibility and the curse that God lays upon her. “To the woman he said, ‘I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;’” is that true?

Response: Yes.

Yeah. That’s why we have – I’ve always said – we have legalized drug dealers in the operating room for the birth. We call them anesthesiologists. They’re drug dealers because a woman needs one when she gives birth. It is amazing to watch a woman give birth. I watched my wife give birth to our four kids. Wow. I’m still on meds, just trying to deal with that. It is unbelievable. “With pain you will give birth to children.” Here’s the other point, “’Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.’ There’s a big debate over this text. What it says is this. Ladies, you will have an innate desire to be a wife and to be a mother. Is that true? Most women want to be a wife and a mother? Yeah. Wanna be a wife and a mother, but those will be the sources of your most distressing pain. Your children. Infertility. Birth. Sickness. Raising. Breast feeding. Diaper changing. It is going to be hard and your husband will be difficult. That’s why if you go to a rack in a magazine store and you pick up the women’s magazines, generally, the majority of the topics are about the kids and the husband that are driving the woman crazy. True story. Watch most women’s television shows, like Oprah. They bring out a woman, she tells some terrible story about her children or her husband and all the other women cry because they can fully identify with what she’s going through. This is still the way that it is.

It says that her desire will be for her husband but he will rule over her. There’s a big debate as to what this means. In Chapter 4, Verse 7 of the Book of Genesis, the next chapter, there is another occasion where this exact same phraseology in the Hebrew text shows up. There we are told – God says that Sin is crouching at the door of a man named Cain, actually Eve’s son, and that it desires to rule over him. It’s the exact same language. What God is saying is, “Cain, your sin wants to rule you.” He’s saying here, “Women, you will want to rule men.” That’s part of your curse. You will do so because you will see your husband as being incompetent. As sinful, as imperfect, as making mistakes. You will see your husband doing the kind of things that Adam did. Not making any decision and then blaming the failure of the family on you. Your desire will then be to rule over your husband, to boss him around and nag him. To write him lists and charts and graphs. To threaten him. To do anything you can to manipulate him. To trade sex for taking out the garbage. Anything to get your stuff done, you will manipulate your husband. Ladies say, “Oh no, I would never.” Ask him. Ask him. Right, just eliminate the fog of self-deception. Just ask your husband, “Do I do anything to try and control you?” And then sit down because it might be a while, okay?

The desire is for her to rule over him but he must lead, the Scripture says. “To the woman he said, ‘I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, but he will rule over you.’” He must lead his family. He has to lead his family. Otherwise, this cul-de-sac of Adam and Eve where men do nothing and women step up to fill in the gap, it looks like America today. Where one-third of children born have no father named on the birth certificate, 40 percent go to bed with no father, and a bunch of men throw their hands in the air and say, “Well, it’s not my fault. We’re in this 50/50. I don’t have any responsibility.” Yes you do. You do. You’re responsible to lead, like Christ and to redeem, like Christ.

To the man, the man gets it as well. “To Adam, ‘Because you,” Rawr! You just – they don’t like this verse, but “Because you listened to your wife,” does this mean that a man should never listen to his wife? No, it says in Proverbs 19:14 that a prudent wife is from the Lord. Right, so, so it’s not a bad idea to consult your wife, but when she tells you something that’s in accordance with Satan and not Scripture, you shouldn’t listen. He listened to his wife when he should’ve been listening to God. “You listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ ‘Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.’” He goes on – He says, “painful toil you will eat of all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.’”

What he says is this, Adam, your job’s gonna stink. Is that true?

Response: Amen.

Every man here has a bad job. There’s only varying degrees, right? The reason they pay you to go to work is because they know that it’s terrible. Like when you go to Krispy Kreme, they don’t give you money and donuts. They know that you will give them money for the donuts. When you go to work, they give you money because they know that otherwise, you wouldn’t do it. They have to compensate you. Any man had a hard job, left it to go get another job to find that that one was hard, too? And then they quit that job to go get another job. I see this all the time with guys in their early 20’s – “That job was hard. I got another job. This one’s hard, too. I’m seeing a pattern.” Yeah, there is a pattern. Jobs are hard. It’s hard to make money. Anybody found that? Everybody “needs” ten percent more than they have and when they get it, they need another ten percent. Jobs are hard. Making money’s hard. Making a living is hard. The ground is cursed under Adam, right? It’s not that God hates Adam but Adam has dominion over the ground. The ground is supposed to be where he works in an agricultural society, to bring forth food to feed his family. He’s got a responsibility – here’s a novel idea, guys. Feed your family.

1 Timothy, we’ll deal with it later, he says that if a man does not provide for the needs of his family, he’s denied the faith, he’s worse than a non-believer. It’s not enough to just love the Lord, you also gotta feed the kids. Adam’s supposed to take the ground, cultivate it, shape it, so that he can bring forth a harvest that feeds his family. That’s what a man’s supposed to do. He says you know what Adam, it’s gonna kill you. That dirt’s gonna win. They’re gonna bury you in the dirt. The dirt’s gonna win. You’re gonna work the dirt, work the dirt, work the dirt, work the dirt and then get buried in the dirt and be mulch for some other guy’s farm? That’s the way it goes. The ground is cursed. Thorns and thistles. Any of you tried to keep your lawn green without weeds? You’re cursed. You’re cursed. It’ll never happen. It’ll never happen. The point is this. God wants Adam to feel how frustrating it is to have things under his dominion disobey him so that Adam looks up to the sky and says, “God, why’d you do this?” And God says, “Now you know what I feel like. Now you know what it’s like for me. Adam, you’re my dirt. You are wild and disobedient and filled with thorny sins and wicked thistles. Adam, you think you got it bad, how would you like to be me?” And what it does, it builds in the man a humility and a dependence on God and it prepares and cultivates his heart for the Gospel. If he had all success, he would have no need for God, so God makes it hard.

To this day, women want to be married and have kids and when they get a husband and children, they drive them crazy, it’s painful. And men need to work and when they go to work, it’s really hard and no matter what they do, no matter how organized they get, no matter how many charts and graphs they blow out on Excel, things never come together. It’s always falling apart. This is life on the earth.

“Adam,” then “named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.” He names her. This is an act of authority. She doesn’t name him and from them, the rest of us come. These – this is our mother and father. “God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’ So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim,” angels “and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.”

They were kicked out of this wonderful garden, out into the world. They were not allowed to come back. The Tree of Life is what we would’ve eaten of to live forever. The reason God did not enable them to eat forever from the tree of life is because they would’ve lived forever as sinners, separated from God, doing terrible things to one another. The wage for sin is death, Romans tells us. Death comes into the human equation so that God can resurrect us, make new Heaven, new earth, new Jerusalem, whereby new creations in Christ occupy and God starts over, back to where he intended. That’s God’s whole plan of redemption through Jesus and at the end, we see in Revelation the final chapters, that the Tree of Life shows up again and we’ll eat of it again in the Kingdom.

From this point forward, sin just runs at breakneck speed. Cain kills his brother Abel, Chapter 4. But the decree that men should lead remains intact. In Chapter 5, Verses 1 and 2, it tells us that God named the race man. The word there is Adam. That’s why we are part of mankind. That men are called to lead. From that point forward, the whole Old Testament is patriarchal. Frankly patriarchal. We worship the God of Abram, Isaac and Jacob. We trace the lineage of all of God’s people in the Old Testament through the male line, not through the female line. That someone is known by their father. As well, every single book in your Bible is written by a man. The highest position of spiritual leadership in the Old Testament is the office of priest. It is reserved exclusively for qualified men. There are women that lead in the Old Testament . Godly women, prophetesses, judges, military leader – all kinds of people that are godly, godly women, but that highest office of leadership, the priesthood, is exclusively reserved for the qualified men. There is no record or indication that in the times of the Old Testament or any time in the history of the world that there has ever been any society of any significance, perhaps a small nomadic tribe of a handful of people that we haven’t discovered yet, but there is no such thing as a matriarchal society. There is no occasion where women led a society and were its heads and the men complied and followed them. It does not exist. The feminist scholars will tell you it’s because of widespread, however many years of, incredible discrimination. I would say it is simply a pattern of creation.

This continues through the Old Testament to the time of the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus comes in fulfillment of the protoevangelion in Genesis 3:15. He’s born of a woman. He lives his life. Jesus, during the course of his three short years of ministry – did he teach women? He did. That was very controversial in his day. He taught women theology. That was very controversial. Did Jesus have women who were very close to him, as friends? Some of his dearest friends were women, like Mary and Martha. He was in their home, he loved them. Did he allow women to touch him, which other rabbis did not? They did not. Yes, he did; he was anointed, even by a sinful woman. Did the Lord Jesus have women funding his ministry so that much of what he did was paid for by the kind gifts of godly women? Yes. Luke tells us that. Even at the point of his resurrection, who were the first people to know that Jesus had risen from death? The women. The women. Did women receive healings from Jesus? Many did. Many did. Jesus Christ treated women with dignity and respect. He treated them better than the culture of their day. He invested in them, theologically. He healed them, physically. He befriended them. He embraced them. One of the big problems that people had with Jesus, quite frankly, was that he hung out, like the woman at the well in Samaria, in Sychar, he’s hanging out with women that are loose and sinful and wicked but he still loves them as sisters.

The Lord Jesus Christ, I would submit to you – more than anyone else in the history of the world – has elevated, has elevated the dignity of women and to prove my point, I would simply ask you this. Go to any culture that does not yet have the witness of Jesus Christ and look at how the women are treated. See, we live in a society that has a widespread Christian influence for a few hundred years and so we think this is normative. This is not normative. This is the implications of Jesus loving women. Go to a society where they haven’t heard about Jesus and they don’t have a Bible. You’ll see women with veils on their heads that are uneducated, can’t vote, can’t hold property, are considered, oftentimes, property, they undergo mutilation of their own genitals in many societies. They are mistreated. Sometimes they are polygamists and so the women have to put up with a man who does not love them but simply took them to bear legitimate children. Because of Jesus Christ and wherever his influence has gone, the care and concern for women has been extremely liberated, extremely liberated. There’s one thing that’s curious, though, about the Lord Jesus that he did not do. This will bother some of you. Others of you it will not. In the Old Testament, the highest office of leadership was the priest. In the time of Jesus, what was the highest office of leadership in Jesus’ ministry? The Apostles, the Apostles. He spent, we are told in the Gospel, a whole night in prayer, asking the father, exactly whom he should choose and he chose 12 Apostles and they were all men. They were all men. Senior leadership Old Testament, men. Senior leadership, time of Jesus, men. You’ll see it, senior leadership, office of elder in the New Testament, men.

Some will say, well Jesus didn’t choose women because you know, that wasn’t the cultural norm of the day. Jesus broke all the cultural norms. He touched dead bodies. He befriended sinners. He went through Samaria. He let a sinful woman anoint him. He healed on the Sabbath. One of the reasons they murdered him is because he wouldn’t play by the cultural rules. Don’t think that God doesn’t have the courage to offend Miss Manners. Right? It’s not like Jesus read Miss Manners’ column and says, “Well, I would love to select women disciples but Miss Manners says,” Jesus doesn’t give a rip about Miss Manners. Jesus is God, he does what he wants to do and that’s what’s right.

Jesus selects his 12 Apostles. They lead. They write the Bible. They are the selected eyewitnesses. Jesus dies, rises, returns into Heaven. He sends out the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit begins to organize the early church in the Book of Acts. One of the men that is selected for the organization of the new church, more than any other, is a man named Paul. He’s the author of our book of 1 Timothy. Go all the way to 1 Timothy. That’s where we’re going. Here’s the story of Paul. Paul gets saved. He hated Jesus, then he fell in love with Jesus. He went from murdering Christians to being their pastor. Paul is appointed by God to take the Gospel, the good news of the story of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus for sin out into all the nations of the earth. He travels. He’s a missionary. He gets brutally beaten and mistreated on a number of occasions. He shows up in Acts, Chapter 19 in a City of Ephesus, preaches the Gospel, a church gets planted. In Acts, Chapter 20, he gathers the leaders of the church. He tells them, “I’m leaving town. When I leave, heretics, nutjobs, false teachers, they’re gonna rise up from your own number, distort the truth, lead many astray, so be on guard.” That’s his words.

Paul leaves. Just as he promised, this healthy church of Ephesus has leaders that rise up from within the church. They are teaching false doctrine. They’re leading the church astray. They’re doing the same thing that Satan did in the garden with Eve. “Did God really say?” “Couldn’t we add this word?” “Couldn’t we just change this a little bit?” “Couldn’t we make a few modifications?” They’re doing the same thing that the dragon did. Paul tells us in 1 Timothy that these are demonic doctrines. They are inspired by the same serpent, Paul says, that led Eve astray. Paul then sends a young man named Timothy. He says, “You go there. You fight the good fight of the faith and you command those men not to teach false doctrines anymore.” The whole sum total of 1 and 2 Timothy is on how the church is to be organized, who is to lead it, and what doctrines are not to be tolerated. Now let me tell you what those doctrines were. We’ll get them right out of 1 Timothy.

In 1 Timothy, Chapter 5, what we find is that the people that were most commonly following the false teachers were the young, single women, just like Eve. They were being encouraged to not get married. In Chapter 2, Verse 15, they were being told not to have children and in Chapter 2, Verses 9 and 10, they were being told to wear less clothes. This is what the false teachers said: you women are Christians, you’re liberated now. Don’t get married. Don’t have kids. Wear less clothes and go be a pastor. Some people say, “Oh, America, we’re so progressive. We’re so enlightened. We’re so Ephesian.” Lot of you women, you’ve been told that. “Don’t settle for wife, mother, Christian, be liberated. Go be a pastor.” This is the heresy that’s being taught. Paul’s there sending Timothy with this letter to fight against it. Why does he bring up the issue of women in leadership and the role of women? Because the false teachers had convinced the young women that they shouldn’t obey the Scriptures. And to do this – this is what they were doing – this is what’s so funny – for those of you that have had any theological training – they’re, the false teachers, are saying, “Well you ladies don’t need to get married. You don’t need to be mothers. You can wear less clothes and be pastors because Paul says it’s okay.” Same thing that they’re doing today. Paul writes and he says, “It is not okay. I didn’t say that.” Now today, if you hear a scholar argue that women should be pastors, elders in the church – it’s the same thing – they will say, “Well over here, Paul says in Galatians 3:28, and over here, Paul says,” and Paul’s asking – he’s answering the question here, I never said that. That’s a false doctrine. He clears it up right here.

1 Timothy 2. When it comes to the issue of women in ministry, there are three positions. There’s the egalitarian position. That is the leftist position. Your left. Okay, that’s over here. This is the liberal position. It means that they hold that women can be partners together in every area of ministry. There’s no gender distinctions for any office. Gender is not a relevant distinction. This is the classic feminist position. It’s the most popular position in Seattle. It’s the reason why I get my inbox filled up all the time. The egalitarian position. What it means is women can be pastors. They can be elders. They can preach, whatever.

On the far right is the hierarchical position. This is a far more strict, extremely conservative position. Man and women have different spheres. That women should not be elders or deacons. They shouldn’t teach Bible studies or classes. They should lead no ministry. They shouldn’t read Scripture in church. They shouldn’t testify in church. They shouldn’t lead worship. That women solely should teach other women and they should teach children. That’s it. Basically, they should be quiet and bake cookies for church events. That’s it. Some of you came out of that background.

Now, in Seattle, that seems crazy. That’s because Seattle is nuts. Seattle is nuts. I got in an argument with somebody recently. They said, “Well at least now, we’re not like those stupid churches where the women wear head covering.” I said, “Well, I don’t think women need to wear head coverings but at least it shows they were reading verses.” I at least appreciate that. That’s more than half the churches in Seattle could say in our great, pathetic, fair-weathered city.

Leftist, rightist. The middle, that’s us. This is basically the position of Mars Hill. We are complementation. We are moderate. Now some of you think we’re extreme because we’re in Seattle, which is like being a tall jockey, okay? “Oh, he’s tall.” No, it’s just all jockeys. He’s really not that tall. In a normal room, he’s just regular. We’re pretty middle-of-the-road. We’re pretty moderate, I would tell you. It means that women and men are partners together in every area of ministry; that only men can occupy the office of elder. In the Old Testament, priests, men. Time of Jesus, Apostles, men. New Testament church, elder or pastor, same thing, men. We would say that everything else is open to women. Women could be deacons, full-time staff, teach Bible studies, lead worship, they could serve communion, they could speak at church. The elders and the pulpit being an elder function, according to 1 Timothy 5, is male. We have seven elders at this church that lead the church. If a woman wants to serve, everything but that is open. Everything else is open.

And we get it from 1 Timothy 2. So here we go. We will do 1 Timothy 2 and we will look at Paul’s words. He starts off – “A woman should learn,” some of you say, “Well that sounds patronizing.” Well it didn’t to those women. In Jewish society, congregation, men would go be trained, women were segregated. Women should learn. Should women go to Bible College? Should women go to seminary? Should women know the Greek text? Should women be able to parse the New Testament in its original language? Should a woman learn theology, apologetics, church history, should she learn? Yes. Yes, of course. We don’t want our ladies here to be like Eve. We want them to be informed, well informed. We don’t want them to fall for any stupid teacher or crafty, demonic doctrine. We want our women to learn so that they’re good theologians. Of course. If you have any debate or doubt about that, this is a church that believes that women should learn. We’re running seminary level classes right now and men and women take them. Women should learn. Women should learn. They should learn their Bible. They should learn theology. Some of you women are a little lazy at this and you say, “Well, my husband loves the Lord and he knows the Bible, so I don’t really need to.” No, you need to learn. Sometimes a woman with a really, you know well-read husband can get a little lazy. She shouldn’t. She should learn. But she should learn “in quietness,” this does not mean that she should be utterly silent. It means that she should have a peaceable spirit.

And the same word is used in Titus, Chapter 2, Verse 2 about men. That men should have a peaceable spirit. This is not just discrimination against women but apparently the women in this church weren’t quiet during church. They were arguing, debating, disagreeing. Paul says you gotta have a respectful attitude if you’re gonna learn, “and full submission.” This is the same word that’s used in Ephesians 5, Colossians 3:18. It’s the same thing that’s described in Titus 2, that older women are supposed to teach younger women that they should be subject or submissive to their husbands. What it means is this, ladies. If you aspire to learn anything, you need to have the right attitude. He permits that. What he does not permit is “a woman to teach or to have authority over a man;” Woo! All Scripture is God-breathed profitable. I know that’s your memory verse. I know for you, lotta ladies, that’s your life text, that’s your most favorite verse. You never see that one in the end zone at the Superbowl do you? You never see that one. Never gonna see that one.

Let’s talk about this. There’s three ways to interpret this verse. The first would be the leftist egalitarian. The leftist egalitarian says what Paul means to say is that a woman should teach and have authority over a man. Which, that’s a funny way to say it, really. I’d hate to see what they do with the Old Testament text that tells us not to have sex with animals. Be really curious to see what they do with that. You got – you’re gonna have a really hard time getting that to mean Paul wants women – if you take that position, you’re a false teacher. You’re doing the same thing that the false teachers that he’s arguing against did. Now, what he means – and you know what, if a guy’s got more degrees than Fahrenheit, knows the Greek text, writes – it doesn’t matter, “I. Do. Not. Permit. Women. Teach.” I think I can figure this out. I think what he’s getting at is that a woman shouldn’t teach or have authority over a man. And I know that’s a crazy interpretation that I just gave you, because I read it, but that’s what it means.

Now, the hyper strong conservative side says, “Okay a woman should never speak in church. She must be silent. She can’t lead worship. She can’t read Scripture. She can’t pray. She can’t lead a ministry. She can’t teach a class or in a community group. Maybe even in a Bible study, she should just shut up. That she can’t serve communion. That she shouldn’t be visible. Shouldn’t be present. Shouldn’t be on the stage. That a woman should just let men teach. Let men lead. Let men have authority and she should be quiet.”

We hold a moderate position. First of all, that word authority – a lot of angst’s been spilled over that. The scholars will tell you that when a word appears one time, they call it a hapax legomenon. Manama. Ba ba manamana. It’s a hapax le- it appears once. What that means is, because the word only shows up here, there’s a debate as to what it means because we can’t reference it with other verses to see how it’s used. Because of that, it’s not talking about a general authority. It’s a special word, talking about a special authority. I would submit to you that the authority he’s speaking of is the elders. Because in the next section of verses, in Chapter 3 – and the chapters and verses didn’t come into your Bible until a few hundred years ago. So, what would happen is, the thoughts just rolled together. I think he’s talking about the elders. He’s talking about the qualifications of the elders in the next verses. I think the authority is the highest office of authority, elder. So he doesn’t permit a woman to have the authority as an elder and he does not permit a woman to teach. Now, we have to define, okay, what kind of teaching is forbidden. Well we know from Titus 2 that older women should teach younger women, so it can’t be a declaration that women can’t teach. We know that Priscilla and Aquila discipled a guy named Apollos, like in Acts 18, so can a husband and a wife have people over and disciple them? Well, sure, yeah. They need to do that. Husbands and wives should do ministry together as a family. So, what does it mean not to teach? You know you should teach your children. Proverbs says that repeatedly. I believe the teaching here refers to teaching as an elder. Setting doctrine, this would include the pulpit. The teaching here – every time the word teach is used in the rest of 1 Timothy, Chapter 4, Verse 11 – I think over in Chapter 5 around Verse 17 – everywhere else that it’s used, it refers to the elders teaching. Now elders teach, but were not the only teachers in the church. There’s seven elders. There’s 2,000 people. We can’t teach all of you. We need a lot of other teachers.

Our position is this. The teaching is teaching as an elder, setting final doctrine in the church, and this would include the pulpit. 1 Timothy 5 says the elders who labor in preaching and teaching are worthy of double honor. ______ _______ that they are worthy of double honor. And so the issue there is that the elders are supposed to be doing the preaching and the teaching. The setting of the doctrine in the church. Our position is this. A woman could teach anything she likes in this church, if she’s qualified, except for setting doctrine as an elder and filling the pulpit. Teach a Bible study, teach a class, teach a community group, teach a seminar, men, women, children, teach away, as long as she’s a, you know, good Bible student. One thing only, office of elder. That’s all we see this as a restriction on because of context.

He goes on. “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over man; she must be silent.” He continues, not with a cultural argument. Some people say, “Well that’s just cultural. That was old school.” He goes really old school. He goes all the way back to Adam. He roots this, not in culture. Some people will say, “Well, that was their culture, this is ours. Things are different now, because we’re in a different culture,” and again, culture’s not authority, creation is. This is a matter of creation. Because it’s creation, it’s binding and enduring over all cultures. That’s why women in all cultures still have painful childbirths. It’s cross-culturally binding. “For Adam was formed first, then Eve.” When we read that, we say, “What does that mean? He was made first.” It’s important. With the culture that the concept of the first born was a huge issue, it’s even a title given to the Lord Jesus. The first born had responsibility for the rest of the family. They had primary responsibility. God made Adam first, established him as head, as leader, as first, and then after him came Eve and he was responsible for creation, he was responsible for the woman. So that society – if any of you from an eastern, a far eastern culture, the oldest child has responsibility for the rest of the children. Here, Adam was made first. He’s got responsibility for the rest of his family. He was made first. God made him first for a reason.

And “Adam was not the one deceived.” He went into it eyes wide open. “It was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.” Now this verse – if the other one didn’t get you, this one will. We won’t have near the parking troubles we had this week next week. We’ll have all kinds of space. Next week, we’ll be meeting in a phone booth at the 7-Eleven around the corner. This verse says that Eve was duped. She was deceived. 2 Corinthians 11, Paul says, my fear is that just as Satan, through his craftiness, deceived Eve, he’s gonna deceive you too. Now through the history of the church, this – the theologians have always taken this to mean that women are more gullible. A lot of you women say, “I’m not!” Well how would you know? Just think about it. Chrysostom, Erasmus, Gill, Knox, Luther, Wesley, Calvin – they all believed – they all taught – Aquinas – they all taught that this verse was teaching that women, when it comes to the highest authority of leadership in the church, that they will be more gullible. Meditate on it.

I ask you a few questions, though. Next time you’re at the store, go to the women’s magazine rack and look at all the articles telling women to have sex with men they’re not married to. Look at all the articles that are telling women to make a lot of money so that they don’t have to put any responsibility on their husband. Consider the fact that a woman spends three-quarters of her childbearing years trying not to have children. That this year in this country, one out of three babies in the womb will be murdered by their own mother. And ask yourself if the words liberation or gullible fit most appropriately. Something to think about.

At Mars Hill, our goal is not to treat women as equals. It’s to treat them better than that. It’s to treat them as ladies.

Response: Amen.

God help any culture where the men treat the women as they treat other men. 1 Peter 3 tells me to treat my wife as a lady. My brothers, we’re thermoses. We can bang into each other, we’re fine. Ladies, crystal goblet. You say, “What, are you saying that’s worse?” No. This is good for coffee. That is good for cabernet. A woman is a lovely gift of God. To be adored and treasured. And men who love women occasionally have to save those women from themselves. Adam never did. Some of you ladies, your dad should have saved you from yourself. Some of you wives, your husbands should’ve saved you from yourself. And God saves us all from ourselves. It’s the pattern of redemption.

Response: Amen.

It says, you know what? Ladies who aspire to help think they’re helping. Every woman who’s cohabitating with her boyfriend and paying his rent thinks she’s helping. Every woman who uses birth control because she doesn’t want to burden the man with the responsibility of becoming a father – I’m not saying all birth control is wrong – she means well. Every woman who sees that her church is a mess and stands up and tries to fix it means well. I would submit to you that the vast majority of Christian women that are feminist in nature are well-intentioned. I don’t think they hate God. I think they’re looking around, saying “nobody’s doing anything. I’m gonna do something.” It’s the same thing that Eve did. And it’s a gullibility. It’s like saying, “Well that’s a forest fire. I’m gonna put it out. I’ll just throw this bucket on it.” It was gas. When men fail and women step in to fix it, it makes the problem worse and it’s a gullibility that thinks that that’ll fix it. The whole feminist critique is this. Men stink. I, I – yes. As a man, I have first-hand knowledge that yeah, that’s indeed true. So we agree on the problem but what is the solution? Is the solution to treat women like men, force them to live like men and tell them to follow the pattern of Eve? Or to tell the men to step up?

Response: Amen.

It’s a gullibility that thinks that there is any other way. “But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.” Now, some of you read that and you go, “What, if I have a baby, I get to go to Heaven?” No, it’s not quite that easy. Takes a little more than that. You become a Christian through faith. Trusting in the Lord Jesus, his death, burial, resurrection for your sin. Your faith works itself out with love. You love God and your neighbor. Holiness, you hate sin and change your life. Propriety, you live your life for Christ. That’s how your saved. Justified. Brought into relationship with God. Your sanctification, ladies, your process of growing in your relationship with God is in large part done through childbearing. Accepting that God has created you to be a mother. It’s interesting, there’s one thing that men can do that women can’t do. That’s be an elder. There’s one thing that women can do that men can’t do and that’s to bear children. Each of us has something that is unique and special that God has given us and in our culture we hear that and we go, “What kind of gift is having children?” That’s our sick culture. That’s our deceived, gullible, daughters of Eve. That’s what it is. The Bible says that children are a blessing from the Lord. The Bible says that it is an honor to be a parent. The Bible says that those women who couldn’t have children thought that they were cursed of God for their barrenness.

We at this church hold motherhood in high esteem and value. Much higher than the culture we’re in. Ladies, don’t be gullible and think that if you don’t get married and don’t have kids and you go succeed at something else that that makes you equal to a man because you’ve proven it. It’s gullibility. You’re equal because you’re an image-bearer of God. This February issue of Fast Company Magazine a non-Christian business magazine, cover story, “Where are the women?” What they’ve discovered is, despite all the feminist attempts, corporations are led by men, not women. Why? You read it? The women say, “We wanna get married and have kids and we can’t work 100 hours a week and be a wife and a mother.” The old feminism has lost, praise God. Maybe we’re coming back to our senses. The new feminism says women can be smart and educated and intelligent and love God and study but being a wife and a mother is not a denigration, it’s an honor and that a woman who accepts the fact that being a wife and mother is a high honor will be sanctified, matured and grow in her faith with Christ through that experience. She needs her husband. She needs her God. She’s not out there with her clothes off, abandoning all of her femininity to go prove that she’s as tough and as crude and as sick as any guy.

“Women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.” You ladies that are mothers, you are great theologians. You ladies that raise children that are fruitful, you are wonderful teachers. We’re not saying the only thing a woman can do is to be a mother but we’re saying that it is a high honor. It’s a high honor. It’s as equally as high as the office of elder. Not in Seattle but it is at Mars Hill.

Response: Amen.

Last thing he says, he gets into the office of elder, pastor, senior leadership in the church. “Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task. Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife,” he goes on to say, “ He must manage his” household “well.” We’ll get into this next week. Senior leadership in the church is men. Men. All other leadership in the church, open to qualified men and women. At this church, women could be a deacon, come on full-time staff, go to Bible College, go to seminary, teach a class, teach a community group, start a ministry, lead, lead worship, serve communion, everything else.

My final word – long sermon – 2 Peter, Chapter 3, here’s Peter. Some of you don’t like Paul. “Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul,” the man we just read, “also wrote you,” we just read what he wrote, “with the wisdom that God gave him.” If you disagree, you are a fool. You say, “Well, that’s terrible.” That’s right. That’s why I told you that so you could change your mind. “He writes the same way in all his letters speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand,” did you just experience that? Yes. Hard to understand, “which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures,” – books of the Bible – “to their own destruction.” What he says is this. Paul’s gonna hit you hard. You’re not gonna really like him. You’re gonna wanna fight him. You’re gonna wanna argue. You’re gonna wanna debate but don’t do that. Don’t do that. You’ll destroy yourself. You’ll destroy yourself. You may not agree with everything that I’ve said, but you cannot disagree with the words of Paul. They’re emphatically clear and only a theologian, educated beyond their intelligence, could make it unclear.

I will close with two stories from women pastors. Because I can. My first – one of our elders, when we founded this church – we were meeting at night, we were only 100 people, we’re not the 2,000 that we are now, things were just getting started. We were looking for a building for a night service. We went and met with a woman pastor. She was willing to rent us the building ‘til she found out we didn’t have women elders. It’s a pastor here in the Seattle area. She asked him why, he said because we believe the teachings of Paul. We don’t want to debate about women elders. It’s a secondary issue. You could still be a Christian, tried to be as nice as he could. She just simply said this. “Paul’s a sexist. He’s a chauvinist. He’s a homophobe. He should’ve been kicked out of the Bible a long time ago.” You know what I love about that woman? She read the text correctly. She just hated it. That’s the truth.

My second story, this was a few months ago. Evening service. Young woman comes up to me. She’s an associate pastor at a local church. Nice lady, sister in Christ. I will see her in Heaven, she will apologize for her thinking. But we’re talking, having a good time and she says, “You know, I love your church and I come all the time but I just hate your position on women in ministry.” I said, “Well, if you hate our position on women in ministry, why do you keep coming to my church? You go to your church in the morning, you come to my church in the evening.” She says – she blushed. True story. And I said, “Don’t lie to me. You’re gonna come up, argue with me, fight with me. My theology says I need to be kind to a lady, so I gotta sit here and kinda take it, you know, I mean, this works out well for you.” And she says, “I don’t wanna talk about it.” I said, “Tell me the truth. Why do you come here?” Here’s her answer. She said, “I’m single. I wanna get married and have kids. There’s no decent guys at my church.” I said, “you know?” True story. I said, “We got a thousand good guys.” They’re all like, “I wanna take responsibility, make money, love my wife, raise kids, be responsible, not be like Adam, be like Jesus.” She’s like, “I’d like, you know,” she wants a – she hates what I believe but she really likes the fruit. Hate the tree, love the fruit. And it’s like, well, I said, “That’s funny because you marry one of our guys, he’s gonna make you quit your job before he marries you, so you’re on the horns of this painful dilemma, really. You’re single or unemployed. Those are your Plan A, Plan B.”

And I’ll say this. You can disagree with me and you can be in this church, even as a member. Peaceable, quiet, submissive. Don’t debate. Don’t fight. We’re not – this is not up for debate. This is where we are. You’re welcome here if you disagree. This is a secondary matter. You could be a Christian and disagree, but my simple point is this. We’re a church that loves ladies very much and we believe one of the kindest things that we can do for them is to cause the men to step up.

Response: Amen.

So that they have husbands and fathers and brothers that are like Christ and not like Adam and that’s what Mars Hill does. That’s why we’re here.