Gifted Women

This morning, and our hope this morning is that we encourage women, women at large.

We understand a couple things about Mother's Day.

One is that we cannot work to reduce or dismiss the beautiful gift of motherhood that God has designed for it to be.

God has designed women to be mothers, to bear children, to have families, to nurture, to care for.

These are all things that God has designed women to do.

But we also, on the other hand, have to realize and be sensitive to the reality that for some people on Mother's Day, this is a time of grief.

Right?

This is a time of grief because you're a woman who's suffered for years infertility, or you've lost children through either a miscarriage or stillbirth, or you've had to bury a child, or you've recently lost your mother, or maybe even some of us have made decisions in the past that really jeopardizes our ability to be mothers this morning.

So we want to hold those two things in tension.

And what we want to see this morning is that the gospel actually redeems women at a greater rate than anything else in all of society and culture.

The gospel makes women gifted, powerful, indispensable members of the body of Christ.

And that's what we're gonna talk about this morning about gifted women.

And so I hope that you leave encouraged this morning.

I hope that you are built up and strengthened in your faith as we walk through this text.

Before we dive in, I just want to remind you guys of a few things.

Number one is if you are a woman and you didn't get your uh gift, make sure that you grab that on your way out.

We've got some cookies from Firecracker Bakery.

How many of y'all ever have Firecracker Bakery cookies?

Oh man, y'all sleeping.

I'm telling you, this is the I say I can I can kind of hyper hype things up a little too much.

This is the best sugar cookie I've ever ate in my life, okay?

So so you're welcome.

That then uh also family pictures out in the lobby.

Uh Ashley Weaver, uh, talk about someone using their gifts.

That is a beautiful backdrop uh there uh to be able to have family photos taken in front of.

So make sure you get those as well.

Uh and then if you want to follow along through the sermon this morning, uh open up the app.

You can click on the sermon tab at the bottom.

It looks like a little media player, and then you can follow along in the fill-in blank sermon notes uh this morning.

But let's dive in the text.

I've got a lot to say.

I'm gonna try and get through it fast, but but I wanted to be um sincere and purposeful in the words that I say this morning as we approach this subject.

Here's the first thing I want us to think through.

The body of Christ is in a time of uh conflict, right?

Uh we're in with culture around us, we see that uh it appears as though what we value, uh what we hold dear, what where our mission is, is under conflict, is in jeopardy, right?

Uh but I want us to think about something for a minute.

Is the body of Christ most jeopardized by outside forces or by internal tragedies?

Is the body of Christ most jeopardized by outside forces or internal tragedies?

You see, we have this ability to focus on these exterior, outside forces that are coming in to attack us, right?

They want to take everything that we hold dear, our values, all these different things they want to strip from us, and we get focused on that a lot.

But the reality is we knew that was coming.

It because it's always been coming.

This is nothing new.

What we're experiencing in culture and society today, we're experiencing just a new packaging of an old-time battle and confrontation that the body of Christ has experienced since its inception.

Where the body of Christ is going to suffer greatest is not by any attack of the world around us, but by internal tragedies of the body of Christ.

One, abandoning sound doctrine, and two, people not being active, using the gifts that God has given them to see the kingdom advance in society around us.

So we have an option, church.

We have an option to be defeated, to look at the outside forces alone and just realize, hey, they're coming for us, we might as well lay down and take it.

Or we can understand that God has gifted us uniquely inside of this body to combat those outside forces, and even though it may seem we lose, we win in Christ.

And so, what if a lack of the body using their God-given Holy Spirit-empowered gifts that they have been given are what lead to what most jeopardizes us as the church?

And then we have to ask ourselves, what happens when a culture is created inside the church, either intentionally or unintentionally, where half of the church is holding back.

Half of the church is women.

Women who have been gifted by the Holy Spirit, who have been uniquely placed inside of the body by God's sovereign plan, for the maturity of the church into the head, which is Christ, so that we might be strengthened in our faith, so that we might endure through tribulation and trials and suffering, so that we might be all that God has called us to be.

God has placed women in this body.

But what happens when we build a culture that teaches them to hold back?

Whether it's intentionally or incidentally, we cannot afford to have women hold back.

The Lord has given us his church, gifted women, to see his glory expand throughout his creation and for his redemptive power to be seen and experienced in individuals and in the culture at large.

So let's look at the text.

When we first come into this chapter in 1 Corinthians, Paul is writing about the diversity of spiritual gifts inside of the body.

And we're gonna see where this plays into empowering women to be able to be active participants using the gifts that the Holy Spirit has given them so that the kingdom might advance.

And so if we look at 14 through 20, that first half of this text, what we're gonna see is that a single gift would make a deformed body.

A single gift would make a deformed body.

Here's what we have to understand.

Usually when we talk about the church and we talk about gifts, if we're honest about ourselves, if it doesn't have you standing here or standing here, you think you don't have a gift.

If it doesn't give you a platform and a voice, if it doesn't give you a stage and some type of influence, we think we don't have a gift.

We think we're not gifted.

We're very singular in the way that we understand spiritual gifts with inside the body of Christ.

But fundamentally, a body cannot perform in its design function through one singular gift.

A singular gift would make a deformed body.

You see, each member of the body is a function and a gift uniquely designed to maximize the purpose of the body itself.

When we look at verses 15 and 16, it shows us this that a self-discrediting heart has no validity.

A self-discrediting heart has no validity.

When we look at 14 through 20, and then we look at 21 through 26, Paul helps us to understand and flips our perspective or the way that we might engage with gifts.

In 14 through 20, he says this: for the body does not consist of one, but of many.

If the foot should say, so if the specific member of the body should say, because I am not something else, I am useless.

That's self-discrediting.

Self-discrediting heart postures have no validity inside the church.

Just because your gift isn't the same as someone else's doesn't mean that it's no less vital to the function of the body.

You see, if we were comprised of a single gift, we'd be a deformed body.

The intricacies of the parts and functions of the body are what make it accomplish what it's designed to do.

But we tend to view the body singularly rather than diversely.

We see prominent out in front gifts as the only ones beneficial or needed.

Right?

That's what we always see.

We see the ones that are out in front as the ones that are beneficial and needed.

You ever heard the term you you can't see past your own nose, right?

Now that has a different connotation, but but if we look at the nose, this is a prominent thing, right?

When you see someone, you're like, wow, that that nose.

Maybe you're like tiny nose, big nose, whatever it is, right?

But we see the nose.

Here's something that you don't think about all the time.

Within your nose, there's over 400 scent receptors that allows you to be able to smell over a billion different odors.

You never think about that.

You never think about what lies behind your nose.

You never think about what lies behind that enables it to do all that it is supposed to do inside of the body.

We see the thing that's out in front.

We can't see past our own nose.

We fail to look underneath the depth of it of the unseen gifts, the unseen parts of the body that help it actually accomplish what it's intended to do.

We're very singular in our understanding of the gifts inside of the body.

This leads us to vie for a deformed body.

We champion it.

We want it, we crave it.

All the while, indispensable gifts lie dormant.

We'll get to this, what we mean by indispensable gifts.

Let's move on.

Verse 18 says that God arranged the members in the body, each one of them as he chose.

Here we get to see God's sovereign, powerful, providential purpose and plan in creating the body.

Imagine this that God took you, and when he saved you and brought you into Christ through faith and made you a part of his body, he then had predestined a purpose and place for you to exist within that body so that the body might not suffer, but be all that it was called to be into the fullness of the maturity of Christ.

To discredit your place in the body is to discredit God's design and purpose.

You have to wrestle with that reality.

And you also have to repent.

Because it's also saying this when we discredit God's design and purpose for our place within the body, it's a part of the body requesting its maker to repent because you made a mistake.

That's not a position that we want to take with God.

We don't want to look at the maker and say, you messed up.

I was supposed to be the one preaching.

I was supposed to be the one singing.

I was supposed to be the one out in front.

You didn't make me an out in front body part.

You made me one that's concealed, that is unseen, that sits in the background.

And God says, You know, I did that because I need you there.

Because there's power there that you don't even understand or can fathom at this point in time.

I purposely and sovereignly placed you there for a reason.

The body is God's design for the world to engage with and experience Christ, right?

The church is Jesus with skin on him.

We go out, and this and through this church, through this body is the way that the world around us experiences and engages with Christ Himself.

And here's what we tend to do: if we all sought to be the same gift, the world would engage with a deformity rather than their deity.

If we all vied for that same gift, and we were singular in our understanding of what the gifts should look like within the body, the world would not engage with their deity, they would engage with a deformity, something that doesn't make sense when they try to comprehend it, something that looks strange or off to them.

If we go down through 21 and 26, we would see this summary that no gift is unneeded.

No gift is unneeded, not a single one.

And I wrestled with this, right?

What about the person that just plays the tambourine really badly?

Right?

What about that person?

No, they're needed.

Maybe not in that position.

Maybe they need some help assessing where their gift really lies.

But they're needed.

So here Paul says this.

Not only do we have to contend against self-discredit uh discrediting, right?

Uh saying that just because I'm not something means that I'm unneeded.

But Paul also brings us into this reality.

You're not allowed to say to someone else that they're unneeded.

You're not allowed to look at another member of the body and dismiss them.

We have no right to tell any member of the body that their gift is unneeded.

We have a responsibility to discern and assess gifts in one another, but not for the end result of someone sitting on the sidelines just watching.

Here's what I mean by this.

Some of us think that we're gifted in a certain area, or this is a place that we should be in.

The beauty of the body is that we have an obligation to assess and discern if that's true.

Sometimes we're off.

Y'all ever watch American Idol, right?

Remember back in the day, the the best part of American Idol was everybody who thought they were singers, but they weren't, right?

And then you know where all those people go?

To churches to try and sing.

Uh no, I'm joking.

That's not true.

We have an amazing music team.

Amazing music team.

Y'all sounded like you should have gone straight to Hollywood.

But but some of that's true.

So, so here's what happens: we need the body of Christ to discern and assess if that's really your gifting.

I I love our eldership process because it puts that front and center.

Brother, you think you're called to the office of elder, then allow community to assess that and discern if that's true about you or not.

And if we discover that it's not, it's not that you aren't gifted, it's not that you are unneeded within the body of Christ, it's just that you haven't found the right place yet.

And that's okay.

But if our result in functioning that way, in discerning and assessing the gifts of one another, ends in someone just sitting on the sideline not doing anything, we fail.

Again, God has sovereignly designed the body to function perfectly for his end means.

That means every member, every part, every gift is mission critical.

Every part of it.

For God's glory to extend throughout this earth, for for his children to come home, to be reconciled to him, for his name to be exalted above all the nations.

Every gift within the body is mission critical.

Verse 22 says that the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.

This is what I was talking about.

We're gonna get to that, right?

The parts of the body that mean you think that are weaker or not as important, the Bible actually says are indispensable.

That tells me I'm dispensable, you're indispensable, right?

And so we have to look at this reality that the weaker parts, the seemingly weaker parts, are indispensable.

And this shows us a few things.

Number one, it shows us the intimate precision in which God has designed the body to function.

Look at your body.

There was this like um thing going around at the Natural History Museum.

They were doing tours of the history museum.

There was some weird stuff going on.

But anyway, part of it was that they had all these uh uh people, real people, that they had made into sculptures through their like vein system and nervous system and all that.

You got to see the inside of the body like uh like a statue.

And uh it grossed me out, so I didn't go.

But it showed all those parts that we don't usually think about.

That was one of the most amazing things, is all the parts of the body that's intimately designed.

When you go to medical school or some other university where the professor can say, Hey, I'm an atheist, I don't believe in God, but you'll watch him talk about the cardiovascular system and the way that it is designed to function, they can't help but out of their own very mouth state that there was a Maker who intentionally created every aspect of our existence.

And God mimics and replicates that within the body of Christ.

The parts we do not see are often considered the most vital.

How many times throughout your day do you think about parts of your body that you don't see, like your brain, right?

Right?

I there's a lot of days I don't think about my brain at all.

Um but it's super important.

Or my heart or sober, but then even down to even like your nervous system to be able to understand when you feel pain or when you've been injured, right?

Or or these other intricately designed systems, your digestive system.

I've I've told people a lot that the digestive system alone is enough evidence that God is a creator.

The fact that you eat food in one hole and then you have another hole, that's what happens, right?

There's a God, He designed that.

That's amazing to me.

Every part is vital.

Number two, our view of our personal gifts and the gifts of others are often wrong.

Our view of our personal gifts and the gifts of others are often wrong.

Because our gifts aren't ones that are seen or that bring us into the front, we have a tendency to discredit them.

We have a tendency to discredit them in ourselves and to discredit them in other people.

And then number three, the body needs its unseen gifts or it will suffer greatly.

This divinely inspired text.

Think about this.

Paul, moved by the Holy Spirit to write infallible, inerrant, inspired word of God to his church, states the unseen gifts are indispensable.

This divinely inspired text is making the argument that the unseen gifts are necessary, needed, and mission critical.

You see, the gifts of the body that we may view as unimportant, God declares them as invaluable, indispensable, deserving of greater honor.

We have a poorer view of our gifts and the gifts of others because we often view them through a sinful lens.

It's fascinating in culture and in our being.

If you look at the American Idol phenomenon that we just talked about, most of them want to be that person so bad that they're blinded to their inability to actually function in that role.

You see, sometimes we just want to be heard.

What do you think social media is all about?

Social media gave every person on this earth who did not need one a platform to make their voice heard so that other people have to listen to them.

And there's a lot of people you and I know shouldn't speak, like shouldn't, should not own a keyboard or be allowed on social media at all, right?

This is a reality that we face.

Why?

Because people think that they have a gift that they don't, that they want the position greater than the awareness of do they have the gift or not.

We do this through this sinful lens.

Verse 24, but God so composed.

I love this this kind of bringing it to summation that Paul does, but God has so composed the body.

God intimately shaped and formed the body of Christ so that it may be unified and cared for.

You see, we create the divisions that we see in the body because we have an unhealthy view of the gifts.

We create deficiencies and disparities in care for the body because we either have told ourselves that our gift does not matter, or we have been told sinfully by other people that your gift does not matter.

Our main idea this morning is this a diversity of gifts for a unified purpose.

This is God's plan.

God, the maker of all things, who intimately designed you as a person, also intimately designed the body of his son, the church, to function for a purpose.

And it's a diversity of gifts for a unified, singular purpose.

God has so designed the body of Christ that it is dependent upon the functioning of every member.

This is the beauty of diversity in gifts.

Not one part is without divine purpose.

It's a unified purpose to see the body of mature into the fullness of Christ its head.

So every party or every part of the body is intimately designed and gifted to this end.

And in this diversity, some of us have gifting that bring us to the front, and some of us have gifting that keeps us in the back.

Some of us have gifting that keeps us in the puts us in the front, and some of us have gifting that keeps us in the back.

But this is how we view it.

We view it as important and unimportant.

The Bible doesn't view it that way.

The Bible views it as seen and unseen.

And we get that mixed up.

We think unseen means unimportant.

God says unseen means indispensable.

It's not about important and unimportant.

It's about where does your gift place you.

For some of us, we're too unsatisfied that our gift causes us to be unseen.

We tend to only view the body by what can be seen.

What can be seen is only able to appear as important because of the indispensable unseen parts equipping it to function properly.

Think about some of the greatest athletes of our culture, right?

They are able to function and be seen because of the millions of unseen things going on inside of them.

Every part of their body is vital and indispensable.

Now, they work together to put out in front this person, this image, this one that we kind of idolize at times, right?

But if it wasn't for the unseen parts, they couldn't be that person.

So it is with the body of Christ.

Without the diverse gifts functioning in the body, the unified purpose will suffer.

We will suffer to become all that Jesus has called us to be without you, you stepping out to exercise your gifts.

But this is what this is also going to have to mean.

This also means that we will have to take risks and step out in faith with our gifts while being tethered to biblical restraint.

Yes, this is what I'm calling you to do, especially the women in our congregation.

Step out, take risks, but be tethered to biblical restraint.

Because it's safe for us.

It's good for us.

You see, restraint produces safety for the gifts to be exercised properly.

We don't see this just in gender.

We go on in just the next few chapters of 1 Corinthians, and he talks about spiritual gifts, spiritual gifts of speaking in tongues, of prophecy, and so forth, functioning in the church.

You know what Paul does?

Paul puts biblical restraint around the use of those gifts so that the gift might actually flourish in the way that it was intended to.

Without restraint, the gifts become damaging and reckless to the individual and the body at large.

But this is our heart posture often that we have tended to reject biblical restraint on gifts in the body, specifically when it comes to women, in one of two ways.

So we've looked at biblical restraint, we've looked at biblical restraint around gender, and then we've tended to reject it in one of two ways.

The first way is this: we reject it and we allow culture to inform gifted women.

We allow culture to inform gifted women.

We have believed the lie that restraint equals oppression.

Rather than believing God's truth, that restraint equals freedom.

We have categorized language like submission, headship, and complimentary as harmful or even violent.

We've bought into the mantra of the culture that true womanhood is without restraint and that ideologies of restraint are violence against them.

We've been convinced that such practices and adherences to restraint seek to devalue women, keep them quiet and in their place.

We've rejected godly, biblical restraint for worldly, self-informed chaos.

You see, in the church, this has created a position where womanhood and their giftedness are more informed by culture than the word.

We've rejected clear biblical restraints and in turn have put women and the church in places of unhealth and even in harm's way.

In our rejection of restraint, we have not liberated and empowered women.

No, we've placed them in positions and circumstances they were never intended to be in.

We see this in a couple ways.

We mistake gifting for office, responsibility, or duty.

We mistake gifting for office, responsibility, or even duty.

Here's what I mean by that.

Gifting can be present where office, responsibility, or duty aren't required or afforded.

We get this mixed up in a couple ways, and we'll get to the other way in a little bit, but here's what I mean by this.

There might be women in this congregation that are very gifted to teach.

And that doesn't intimidate us as your leaders, as your elders.

We we love that.

We're gonna celebrate that in just a little bit.

Women who are gifted at teaching and expounding God's word, at exegeting the text and looking to see where Christ is the center of every passage.

There's women gifted in that.

But here's not but but because of biblical restraint, too many bees there, what's not afforded to them is the office of elder, of being a pastor.

And we often get those things confused.

Because they're able and gifted in such a thing, that must mean they must also be in this office or bear this responsibility or have this duty.

No.

A single gift does not make the qualification of an office, especially where God has placed specific restraint, some in which encompass gender around it.

Often we're responsible or have a duty to things that we aren't actually extraordinarily gifted for.

Think about this.

Let's talk about the men for a second.

Men, you are responsible.

You are responsible to pastor, provide, and protect for your family, protect your family.

That's your biblical responsibility.

You might not be gifted in some of those areas.

That's okay, right?

When we talk about pastoring your family, maybe it's stewarding your finances and making sure that you guys are honoring God in the way that you spend your money, on the way that you give away your goods, on the way that you save for your future.

Maybe you're not gifted at that.

That doesn't dismiss the responsibility that you have to oversee it.

So what do you do?

You bring in gifted people to help you.

Maybe some of you aren't gifted in protecting your family.

So what do you do?

You outsource to ring to help you protect.

Right?

These are things that we do because we're not maybe gifted.

But what happens is this just because you're gifted does not dismiss the responsibility that you have to do it.

But often what we do is we align gifted with responsibility as inseparable from one another.

And that's not true.

You might be gifted in something that you have no office or responsibility or duty to see.

But you also may be responsible for, have a duty toward that you're not gifted in.

A presence or absence of gifting does not determine responsibility or duty.

Number two, we hyper-embrace equality while rejecting distinction.

We hyper-embrace equality while rejecting distinction.

It truly means something to be a woman and not a man.

We are equal in value, dignity, and worth.

We are made in the image of God, but we are distinct.

And it means something to be a woman.

And the culture is working tirelessly to convince you otherwise.

This new culture that we find ourselves in, and this liberal ideology that screams equality, that screams equity, that screams inclusivity, is working its hardest to strip women of everything that makes them women.

Because out of their own professing mouths, men and men can do everything that women can do.

Look at the way that it's engaging with our culture.

That we're allowing biological men to compete in women's sports, taking their titles from them, taking their records from them.

We're allowing men to be called, uh we're we're allowing the title, sorry, of mothers to be stripped into something called birthing people.

This is atrocious.

I'm sorry that we might find it funny to some measure, but it is atrocious.

The fact that we're doing everything we can to say that there is no distinction between man and woman is working to rob women of everything that they fought for for over the last 65 years.

You are a woman, and a man cannot do everything you can do.

And we can celebrate equality while still celebrating and upholding distinction.

You see, we have to strive to see the beauty in biblical restraint because it's placed on us by God to protect us.

Restraint, like, headship, and submission.

It can be intimidating or even terrifying for women because of sin, but not because they're wrong.

Let me try to expound on that.

What time do I got?

Okay.

Um there's a lot of women in this room that have experienced the hand of sinful men when it comes to words like submit, when it comes to words like headship, men who have abused that, who have sought to push down and oppress and devalue women because of their own sin.

But hear this: that doesn't make submission and headship bad.

It means that those things were put in the hands of bad men.

If God declared it, then it is good.

Right?

Just like marriage, sex, money, all these things are good things that God gave us as gifts.

Yet what happens?

When they're put in the hands of sinful men, we destroy them.

You see, a true man who seeks to have his wife submit to him should cultivate in her heart a joyful desire to do so because she knows and trusts intimately that he is for her total flourishing.

We are all called, each and every one of us, no matter our gender, to submit in different ways.

The Bible is not just focused on women when it comes to the language of submission, it calls men to submit as well.

Because ultimately, submission is good for us.

We cannot respond with rejection of good things because we have seen or experienced them used in sinful ways.

That's a rejection of God's good created order.

You see, we should work to create a culture of joyful submission.

You see, ultimately the Father calls us to submit to Him.

And why does the Father do that?

Why does the Father call us to trust in submitting to him?

Because He's also promised us that He is for our ultimate good.

Submission to Him brings about our ultimate good.

Men, church, elders.

Is that the culture of submission we're creating?

Is that what people believe about our motives?

Is that what our wives and daughters feel in our presence?

That our headship, that our authority, that the submission that we call them to is for their beauty?

They're good, they're flourishing, or are they timid?

Are they scared?

Because they don't trust you, because you've used that sinfully.

And maybe they'll do it because they love God.

But they don't do it in joy because they trust you.

Some of us, though, we don't allow culture to inform gifted women.

Some of us, we allow our sin to hold back gifted women.

We allow our sin to hold back gifted women.

Some of us have extended biblical restraint beyond its intended purposes.

This has happened from both men and women.

We're going to work to understand how it has in both ways.

Let's address the men for a moment.

Men have gotten in the way and have truly in ways oppressed women and their God-given gifts in the church.

This is something we need to be honest about.

Men, this is something that we need to take ownership of.

We need to take responsibility to see it changed.

We have overextended biblical restraint in certain areas of the church.

Let's look at our view of preaching.

And this is a reformed fault where we have so isolated preaching to the pulpit that we have said that women can't preach.

That's a biblical heresy.

Women can preach.

In fact, all of God's people are called to preach, to declare the good news of Jesus Christ, to herald that which will save those who are unbelieving.

This is the purpose and intention of every individual within the church.

You may not preach from here, but sister, you can preach.

And the fact is, when we've isolated it to this, standing behind here, then we've stripped preaching of everything that it was supposed to be intended for, which is for God's children to proclaim the goodness of his mercies to us.

This word needs redeemed in the church to joyfully include all saints, including women.

Biblical restraint might demand that you not preach from here, but it does not demand that you don't stay silent or that you can't preach anywhere and just stay silent.

Some men have fallen short to their responsibility to pastor their wives and daughters.

This is another way that we've gotten in the way.

We should pastor our families through the distinct ways that God has created them as women.

If you have a wife, if you have daughters, there is distinctness within each of them that God has gifted them, that God has placed them within the body, that you have a responsibility and a duty, whether you're gifted for it or not, to shepherd them into.

We should lead them in what it means to be a godly, biblical woman.

Men, listen.

You will be held accountable for how you pastor your wives and your daughters.

But it will not be just in their affections for Jesus, but also in their use of his gifts in them to advance his kingdom.

And men, some women are afraid to be strong.

Because our view of attractiveness and beauty is so sinfully perverted.

Some women in this congregation are afraid to be strong because they're afraid they'll be viewed as unattractive.

We need to stop being weak men.

We need to stop being weak men because our view of attractiveness is stained by sin.

God wants strong women.

Women who disciple, women who train, women who teach, who prophesy, who work miracles, who pray, and even valiantly die for the gospel.

God wants strong women.

He doesn't want women who unbiblically keep quiet and stay in their place.

How dare we desire women to become something opposed to what God has called them to be?

Because we have so lowered the standard of masculinity that we have to drag down the standard of women with it.

Let me say that again.

One of the reasons we do this as men is because we are weak.

Because we have so lowered what it means to be a man that we have to drag down what it means to be a woman with it.

Shame on us.

Shame that our inability or unwillingness to step up and be the men that God has called us to be has caused women inside of our congregation to hold back.

Yet women have played their fair part in this challenge as well.

Some women have too often heard the restraints of the Bible and overextended them onto themselves over their entire lives.

Some women need to hear this.

This is what's happened within the church.

No one has told you you couldn't.

You just believed that you shouldn't.

You have allowed any restraint, any restraint to be interpreted into total restraint.

God given restraint and discipline will not be an excuse for why you don't use your gift.

Where the Bible says, no, we have overextended that upon ourselves, women, as a totality.

That we just have to care for our families, that we have to kind of stay in our place, that we have to be the ones who don't speak out or do any of these things.

We've allowed this constant um uh culture to be developed where we hear restraint in one place and we overextend it to the totality of our being.

And God given restraint and discipline.

Places where the Bible actually says no will not be an excuse for why you don't use your gifts.

Because it has not said no in the totality of who you are and what your place is in this body as a woman.

You can't allow the don'ts of Scripture to keep you from the yes that God has waiting for you.

But also, some women have also mistaken duty and responsibility for gifting.

And this is how I hear this a lot within the church, especially within the Reformed Church.

There's a great difference for what God has called us to have duty in and take responsibility for and what he has gifted us to do in the kingdom.

Your role as a mother, your role as a wife, that's duty.

That's responsibility, that's universal.

If you're a woman and you find yourself in the place of being a wife, if you're a woman and you find yourself in the place of being a mother, there is a universal responsibility and duty placed upon every woman according to the scriptures of how they have to take.

Responsibility for their family.

But we've turned that into gift.

Oh, you this is how you're going to serve the church.

This is how you're going to serve the kingdom by doing duty, but we call it gifting.

You see, there's a universal duty and responsibility to women who are wives and mothers, but there is not a universal gifting to women who are in the church.

Some of you, where God has called you to have responsibility and duty for in your homes, you might not be super gifted at.

I've tasted some of your meals.

But I love you.

We have to stop confusing these two things: gifting and responsibility.

Responsibility is universal, gifting is not.

And there's a lot of women in this church who are gifted in areas that have no informing of their responsibility and duty as women who are wives and mothers that they're not using within this church to see us come to our maturity in Christ that He's called us to.

What's our gospel hope this morning?

It's that Jesus' body is made up of gifted women.

Amen.

Amen.

Jesus' body is made up of gifted women.

Jesus died, was buried, and then rose again to bring gifted women into his body, the church.

And the gospel empowers women to play indispensable parts in seeing his kingdom advance on earth.

Jesus' gospel is for a whole body, not a deformed one, to be his presence in the world.

And the mission that he's called us to as his church to participate in is too big for a single gender or a single gift.

Let me say that again.

What Jesus has called us to do in this world, it is cosmically too big for a single gender or a single gift.

We need the whole body.

We need each and every one of you, seen and unseen, to play the role in which God has called you to so that his glory and kingdom advance.

You've been gifted by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Think about that.

Think about that.

God has gifted you by the power of the Holy Spirit to play a vital role in the health of Jesus' body.

And if you fail to function, if you fail to use those gifts, this body will suffer.

As the end of this text says, for if one suffers, we all suffer.

The body cannot be what it's supposed to be if you're not functioning the way you're supposed to function within it.

So how do we live this out?

Number one for gospel vision is that you need to believe you are an indispensable part of the church.

You have to believe that.

Many of you think that you're very dispensable, right?

That we can just get rid of you, you can move on, that you don't really play any vital role.

You just kind of show up and do your thing.

And look, that's a lie that you're believing.

You're not believing what the Bible says about you.

You're not believing what the gospel has done in and through you so that you might be a part of this body, the church.

You need to believe you are an indispensable part of the church.

For too long you believe what the Bible doesn't say about you.

You have to fight to believe what the Bible actually does say.

Jesus has not just saved you to belong to the body, but he has made you into an indispensable part of it.

We think about this with our salvation, right?

We think Jesus just saves us so that we can go to heaven.

No, that's not why Jesus saved you.

Jesus saved you so you can get to work.

We're indispensable to his body.

We're not just practicing escapism where we don't have to go to hell anymore, so we just get to go to heaven.

No, what Jesus said is I'm gonna save you, I'm gonna redeem you, I'm gonna reconcile you, I'm gonna gift you, I'm gonna place you in the body where I predetermined you would be so that you might function to your full estate, so that who I am to this world might be seen in its wholeness, not in some deformed case.

I made you indispensable.

Number two, we need to embrace the church and work to find our place in it.

We need to embrace the church and work to find our place in it.

Some of you are dating the church.

You've been brought into her as a part of the body.

You don't get to be disconnected.

You ever seen severed body parts?

It's not super attractive.

You can't just be a hand cut off and left in a field somewhere.

You're united and connected to him.

And one of the best ways we discover our gifts is in community.

You may have a few no's on the road to your yes.

But if we love each other and we're for each other and we want to see one another flourish in the body of Christ, a yes is inevitable if we keep pressing in.

And not every gift is going to bring us to the front.

Some take us to the back, and that's good.

That's more than good.

That's great.

And part of God's holy design.

There's no place that you could discover your part in gifting in this body that would ever be labeled as useless.

The only way that you'll remain useless is because you believed a lie.

Women, I understand it's hard.

I don't want to take this lightly.

I being a wife, a mother, right?

Seeing seeing my own wife be my wife.

That's tiring.

That's super tiring.

Your day is filled with all kinds of reckless chaos and noise and difficulties and troubles.

And I get where you wonder, where in the world am I ever going to find time to be an active part of the body of Christ?

But you can invite other women into that mess.

You can partner with women in relationship.

You can do small incremental gains to see dramatic change.

You see, all of us want to get skinny quick.

That's what we want to do, right?

We want the solution.

Bam, make a big change.

That's not how this works.

That's not how God made the kingdom work.

It's not going to be through one moment, right?

Jesus would have done that 2,000 years ago.

Boom, earth is over, I'm back, throne's installed, this is all said and done.

No, we've been living through over 2,000 years of incremental small victories to see the coming of the kingdom in its fruition.

And so what can you do?

You can mentor spiritually younger women.

We have a lot of young women in this church who are not mothers yet, who are not wives yet.

You can bring them under your care to mentor them, to help them be a part, an active part in the mess of what you do, but more so to point them to Christ, to help them see their gifting in the body of Christ, to champion them where Jesus has placed them inside of his body.

You can lead a DNA group.

That's a space inside of Sacred Mission where a few women get together and they're able to really build into one another.

They're able to confess sin to one another.

They're able to care for one another in more intimate ways.

And in DNA groups, is where some of us just are feel that confidence and ability to just really open up and be vulnerable about the things that we're suffering under and the things that we're struggling with.

And guess what?

Maybe your spiritual gift is just to listen and care.

Maybe your spiritual gift is just to apply that healing ointment of God's word through prayer, through reciting of scripture, through pointing them to the text where Jesus is king.

You could teach another woman how to read her Bible.

I've said this before.

I want this church filled with theological beasts when it comes to women.

I want men to be intimidated when they step into this room.

If you're gonna date my daughter, you're gonna know your stuff because she's gonna whoop your rear end if you don't.

We want to train women on how to read their Bible, how to see Jesus, how to exposite the text, how to be able to work through a passage of scripture for understanding, for application.

You could lead the Bible study at mission group.

This is a place where you have maybe assumed a shouldn't that was never there.

Women, lead the Bible study at mission group.

I feel confident in a lot of you to be able to ask those questions, to engage, to try and help work through.

You're not instructing authoritatively, you're not teaching in a place of authority.

You're working with the body to see people come to maturity of the gospel and of his word.

You could take the theology class.

You could even facilitate leading one.

Is that okay?

Green light?

That's a green light.

Elder over mission school.

Women, there's small incremental things that you can do to see dramatic, big change within the kingdom of God.

And some of you, some of you are gonna start a new ministry that has far-reaching local or even global impact.

Look, don't let what we have determined as ministries within this church limit what God has called you to do.

I'm not worried about a lot of things.

I got like five things that I'm trying to be worried about within this church, right?

Mission groups, uh, clean bathrooms, and good music.

Those are three.

There's at least two more.

Water fountain, I'm trying to do.

Y'all like that?

I saw you using it, thank you.

Um I'm not trying to be concerned about a lot.

And you know what we're not gonna do as an elder team?

We're not gonna have this smorgasbord of ministries that you all can be a part of.

One of the reasons is this we believe it's in your heart, in the way that God has gifted you, and the vision that He's gonna birth inside of you to see ministries we never even thought about developed within these walls.

And I believe women are gonna lead some of those.

I believe they're gonna make great change to our culture and to the lives of the individuals that they come in contact with.

If you're waiting on us to start a ministry that you can participate in or one that you believe is God has put on your heart, you're gonna be waiting a long, long time.

One area I can think about is fostering adoption.

We have people who want to be actively mentored and trained up in fostering adoption, to be able to bring children into their homes and be able to raise them up under a Christian family.

I'm not gonna do that.

It's not because I don't value it.

I love it.

I want to champion it, I want to see it succeed.

I can't be responsible for it.

But you can.

You can step up and see something developed here and now to see children be brought into the homes of these families represented here so that they can be raised up in a Christian uh atmosphere under the teaching of God's word.

How amazing would that be?

If you're waiting for me to start it, you're gonna keep waiting.

God hasn't gifted me that way, and that's okay.

I believe there's even women in this church that God has gifted for that.

And I can't wait to champion it and see it flourish inside these walls.

Lastly, you have to realize that your gifts affect the Jesus the world sees and experiences.

Your personal gifts, who you are as an individual, member of this body, affect the Jesus the world sees and experiences.

For too long, we have presented to deform Jesus to the world around us.

We've been called to be the body of Jesus for the world to see and experience.

Where Christ has placed us in his body and how he has gifted us through the Holy Spirit impacts how the world and the culture around us sees Jesus.

Are we truly a dysfunctional church?

Are we truly what they say we are?

If so, maybe it's because we have too many non functioning gifted women.