Godly Women and the Health of the Church

Amen.

Good morning, everyone.

How are you guys doing?

Good, good.

My name is Justin.

I'm one of the pastors here at Missio, and it's my privilege to welcome you and to bring God's word to you this morning.

We are in a sermon series called Broken Vessels, where we're going verse by verse through the book of First Timothy.

So if you have a Bible or an app, go ahead and get that open to 1 Timothy chapter 2.

1 Timothy 2 · chapter mention

It's in the New Testament, which is kind of the second half of the Bible, kind of further into the New Testament.

So find it there.

If you don't have a Bible, we'd love to provide one for you.

We have free Bibles back at our welcome desk that we'd love to give to you so that you can have a Bible at home to read and study with yourself or with your family, with friends and loved ones.

So make sure to grab hold of that.

But as you're turning there, we're starting to add something into the top of our sermon time and into what we call our liturgy.

Liturgy is just a fancy word for order of worship, right?

How do we worship when we come together as a church body that that really uh pushes us to see Christ more beautifully?

And so uh we're adding something called pastoral prayer time.

And our hope is that this allows a broadening of our scope of prayer as we start to pray for different aspects of our city, of our nation, of the globe.

And so this morning we wanted to pray for um uh churches around the nation that are biblically faithful.

Because what we're seeing in today's day and time is something actually quite fascinating.

No matter what you hear uh on the media or the kind of loud minority that seems to be screaming at us, uh biblically faithful churches are growing.

And biblically unfaithful churches are declining rapidly.

Praise God.

Praise God.

We love the Bible and we believe that this is life for us who believe, and so we want to continue, we want to pray this morning for the churches around America who are submitting themselves to the Word of God, not compromising to the culture, and who are reaching people with true salvation, life, and power in our um nation this morning.

So let's pray this morning.

Father, we thank you uh first and foremost for the Bible.

You are a God who has not concealed yourself, leaving us in speculation and wonder, but you are a God who has chosen to reveal Himself that we might rightly know you.

And so, Lord, we thank you for your truth.

We thank you that out of darkness you have brought light through your word.

And that light is perfectly embodied in your Son Jesus, who came and lived the life that we could have never lived, died the death all of us should have, was buried and raised victoriously over the grave.

And so for the churches who submit to your truth, for the churches who boldly proclaim your truth, and who serve the culture with the power of the gospel, we pray that you continue to cause them to grow.

Continue to bless their work, continue to send workers into the field of your harvest, that we might draw people not to some show, not to some rock star personality, not to some bait and switch tactic, but we preach and reach them with the unchanging, faithful gospel of your son Jesus.

Father, we thank you for your promises that you are good, that you are faithful, and in the end of days, no matter what, you will have the glory.

We thank you for this in Jesus' strong name.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, we're in 1 Timothy chapter 2, and we're gonna be talking about women in the church.

1 Timothy 2 · chapter mention

This is uh the subject matter at hand as we come through this uh book of the scriptures.

And so here's some things that I uh want to do.

First, I just let's just read the passage together, and then we're gonna start working through some of the aspects of it.

So 1 Timothy chapter 2, verses 8 through 15 declare this.

1 Timothy 2:8–15

I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.

Likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair in gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness with good works.

Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.

I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, rather she is to remain quiet.

For Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

Yet she will be saved through childbearing, if they continue in faith, love, and holiness with self-control.

This is the word of the Lord.

May God bless the reading and proclamation of his promises.

Now I'm gonna let you know on the front end of this.

So we're gonna see if we can accomplish those things together.

But we've got a lot of ground to cover this morning.

Here's what I want to start.

Today we're gonna be covering what can be often seen as a difficult or even a divisive topic.

For some of us in the room, these topics are offensive because they are viewed as culturally irrelevant, inferior to modern progress, something we should be and already have moved well beyond.

For some of us, these topics are hurtful because we've been receivers of the abuse of them in unhealthy spiritual contexts.

Our voices and our identities have been oppressed.

And for some of us, these topics are painful.

They're painful and they bring fear because we have been the victims of sinful, wicked men.

We have worked hard to protect ourselves from ever letting this violence happen to us again.

My aim today is to simply do what we do every single Sunday.

Open the Bible and work to both faithfully preach it and to faithfully submit to it.

This is a major reason we preach verse by verse through books of the Bible.

Because it causes us to wrestle with and review and go over subjects that we would probably have a tendency to completely avoid.

You see, if we seek to submit ourselves to a God that we never struggle to fully agree with, or a God that never in tears do we have to repent of what we used to think or how we used to live.

You see, we don't serve the true and living God.

We simply serve the dead God of self.

While I want to be sensitive and empathetic to the subject matter at hand, I have no desire to serve you a feast of apologies, or to appear as timid, to boldly declare to you the truth.

Because if we are here today and we believe these things, right?

That God is real, that he has given us his infallible, revealed truth, authoritative word, and that he promises to work all things for good for those who love him.

If we believe those things, then we can conclude this.

What I'm about to preach and unpack for you is ultimate joy and life for the power and beauty of women.

This is God not restricting you, but emboldening you to walk in what he has created you to walk in and to fully demonstrate the distinct power and beauty that he has ultimately woven into your very being.

You see, modern society is working relentlessly to convince you that they are driving you into the open fields of all that femininity could be.

But I would argue that they're driving women into a deep-seated place of oppression and identity stripping that women have possibly never experienced before.

One have been told for decades that if you want to make anything of yourself, then you must strive to do what men do.

You have been told that true feminine power is seen and experienced in competing with men to do what they can do, but better.

This has had some victorious results in the workplace and professional realms, but has by and large cultivated blurred lines between men and women.

Men have become increasingly more feminine, while women grow increasingly more masculine, not in a caricatured stereotype, but in a dysphoria of the roles and responsibilities we should distinctly carry in our genders.

I saw a cover of a magazine recently that says it's the time of the beta male, celebrating those men who abandon and lay aside their responsibilities, their headship, their roles that they should carry within their gender that has been designed by God for them to hold.

They have unfaithfully and ashamedly placed them aside, and our culture is celebrating them.

It's not time for the beta male.

It's time to restore the alpha male.

The one who leads, who takes responsibility, who cares for, who lays his life down, who will seek to protect and provide and to pastor the ones that he loves.

You see, the terror now surfaces in a complete role reversal.

It is not that women should become more like men to prove themselves, but now it is that there is no more woman.

Men can be women too.

Men can enter into the sphere of the female and compete for affirming ground.

Our culture's battle for the female has lost all femininity completely.

Let's look at some cultural highlights over the last few years.

There's a trans MMA fighter, Fallon Fox, who broke his opponent's skull in 2014.

His opponent was quoted saying, I've fought a lot of women and have never felt the strength that I felt in a fight as I did last night.

Another commentator quoted, 20 years ago, if a man hit a woman so hard he sent her to the hospital, he'd go to prison, but today he gets paid for it.

Trans high school track athletes Terry Miller and Andrea Yearwood dominated the competition at Connecticut's girls' track and field state competition championship last June.

Miller took first place in both the 100 and 200 meter dash, while Yearwood finished second in the 100.

Trans woman Thomas Beattie is best known as the Pregnant Man.

She made her TV debut on Oprah in 2008, being celebrated as the first man to have a child.

And we all know trans man Caitlin Jenner won Glamour's Woman of the Year Award in 2015.

Is society really pursuing the liberation of the female, or is it ultimately working to eradicate it?

You see, the narrative is no longer anything you can do, I can do better from a female perspective.

The narrative has slowly become anything you thought you could do, we will take away from you.

You see, God is not a wicked man.

God is working to restore women back to the power and glory that He created them to be.

So let us as a church work to see that the portrait of biblical womanhood should look like in glory.

Verse 8.

You see, this speaks to the holistic nature of our spirituality, not compartmentalized spirituality, that we should be in every place a praying people.

You see, in the Old Testament, God was a God who inhabited the praises of his people.

It took a geographic location, a certain time and space for God's Spirit to manifest and fall on his people.

But in the New Testament, we no longer serve a God who inhabits the praises of his people, but he inhabits the people of his praise.

See, we are carriers of the Spirit, and we can worship God, and we can submit ourselves in prayer in any time, in any place.

We should be a praying people.

But here we also see that men should be the leaders and the charge to pray.

Men should be the spiritual leaders of the church, and they should set the tone for zealous worship.

As we see this charge that they should lift up holy hands, we also see that not only women are called to submission.

You see, both men and women are called to submit themselves in both unique and overlapping ways.

We see that men submit to the other members of the church, as seen in Ephesians 5.

Men submit to the elders of the church in Hebrews 13.

Men submit to authority and people of power, 1 Peter 2.

Men submit to God, James 4, and even Christ, a man, submits to the Father.

1 Corinthians 15, Philippians 2, and Hebrews 5.

We are called to submission.

In fact, every time that the Bible speaks of submission as a command, it's always in a positive sense.

It's never in the negative, it's never in a rebuking posture, it's always in this positive affirmation of how we should live our lives.

You see, what men should do in their posture of prayer is work to foster a focus on God rather than on self.

The men of the church should worship in such a way that people's focus is not on them as a personality, but on God as a holy king.

While their temptation is to be argumentative, combative, they need to not be concerned with winning the debate, but with living holy lives and leading in holy worship.

Verse 9 and 10 says, This likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness with good works.

Notice here that Paul starts this next section of Scripture with this word, likewise.

What's he doing?

He's comparing the instructions for men in prayer and the instructions for women of their dress and their posture as it affects the congregational aspect of worship.

This is an important transition to help us understand that this passage is just as much to do with congregational worship as the one that precedes it.

You see, here we see a juxtaposition of inner beauty versus outer beauty.

Godly women are women with godly character of whose whose beauty never ceases to grow.

But women who focus their efforts on outer beauty scrape and strive to uphold that which is only fleeting them.

I love to celebrate and see mature older women in the church who have served Jesus faithfully because you see this character, this godliness that never ceases to grow, that always creates them to be more and more beautiful, more and more lovely, more and more powerful.

And then you see the reverse of this old woman who has scraped and strived to keep this outer beauty.

And you just see it, you see it from a mile away.

You see, we should be people who work on the inner beauty of the workings of God in our lives rather than focusing on the outer shell.

Now, why does Paul call out such distinct aspects of fashion, right?

He talks about braided hair, gold, pearls.

Why does he do that?

Well, he's speaking directly to the context of the Ephesian church.

See, there's this aspect of scripture as we seek to study it and we seek to proclaim it, we seek to apply it, we have to realize while this is all truth, authoritative truth for us, there are aspects of the scripture that are written in a cultural context.

What that means is he's speaking to the day, time, and place of his audience, just as I'm commanded to do as a preacher today.

You see, the Ephesian woman would spend countless hours and money on their hair and clothing.

Ornate and luxurious braided hairstyles were common signs of wealth and prestige.

They would take the pearls, the jewels, and the gold, and they would interweave them into their actual hairstyle, and they would dress in costly attire because it would communicate their wealth, it would communicate their place in society.

In a church context where both the wealthy and the poor were expected to be in communion with one another, we could imagine the relational tension and distraction of worship that could be created.

You have some women who are scraping by to feed their family, and you have other women who spent countless hours and money on the way that they look, and then they're supposed to come together and offer holy worship before living God.

Can you imagine the tension and the frustration that that could create?

In a sense, Paul's telling women to not be a stumbling block to the poorer women of the church with gaudy fashion that shoves their wealth in the faces of others.

You see, he's charging women to put on the eternal beauty that is from the Father, adorned in the glory of his redemptive work in us.

This type of beauty is a beauty that all women can actively participate in, no matter their socioeconomic status.

You see, to reflect the beauty of God and his spirit working in you, to refine you, to apply to yourself this godly character, no matter if you're poor or rich, you can actively participate and celebrate in that beauty.

Where some of these women were causing the others to stumble, to fall to sin and greed and jealousy and envy and shame.

You see, this charge also, though, is a call to separation.

So we have the first part, it's a charge to humble themselves and to act how uh to kind of reflect on how it's affecting the other women in the congregation, but it's also a call to separation.

You see, the city of Ephesus was home to the temple Artemis, who's the goddess of the hunt, but it was also home to many, many temple prostitutes.

And this particular ornate dress and hair held a heavy resemblance to the prostitutes who would linger and loiter outside of the temple.

So the charge here comes as a call to make yourself distinct from the culture, ultimately distinct from iniquity.

We have to pause and understand something, though.

As we seek to go further into this text, the charge being made here is not simply uh practice, but it's to establish principle.

So the difference between principle and practice, we get this wrong in the church all the time.

There's principle that drives practice, but we try to preach practice as if it was principle.

What I mean by that is we could look at this text and see, okay, no braided hair, no gold, no pearls.

If we don't understand the cultural read-in to this text, then we're gonna try and establish practice for women that the Bible never intended to do, where there's actually a principle that's trying to be made.

The principle here being established is modesty.

Modesty.

Modesty that both removes distraction in the midst of worship and removes women from being counted among the unrighteous.

We as a church will fail women if we try to implement distinct practice here.

While all principle expresses itself in distinct practice, we can't extract from this passage a practice to live by.

This passage is contextual.

Like I said, it's contextual in both time and place.

So our practice of this principle will be unique in the midst of those two factors of well, of time and of place.

You see, at the Ramosome, we have a we have practice for the principle of modesty with our daughters.

All principle will flesh itself out in practice, right?

But what drives our practice must be principle.

So for us, we've talked to our girls a lot about modesty and how they dress.

We talk to them about the way that they present themselves.

In fact, one of the best statements I love is from uh uh boxer Muhammad Ali.

And he told his daughter one day, he said, Do you know why I Diamonds are so valuable.

And she said, No.

He said, because they're so hard to get to.

And he was talking about the way that she presented herself, the way, the value that she adorned herself with, and the value that she communicated to the world around her.

And I tell my daughters about that.

So we have distinct practice on the length of shorts, on the length of skirts.

We have distinct practice on the length of our shirts and what kind of straps they have and all these different things.

And so we put practice into place because we want to carry the principle of modesty where I don't want my daughters counted among the culture unrighteousness.

And as my daughters grow in godliness, as my daughters grow to become women in the church, I desire that they also don't become a distraction to their peers, to the other women in the church.

But instead of focusing their efforts on their outer beauty, they focus their efforts on shaping and building into the other women of the church to be adorned with the beauty of God.

You see, what are some factors we should take into consideration when developing our practice of modesty?

As outside of both time and place, our cultural context, I have two things that I want us to consider.

Number one, women, ask yourself this question: How will my dress affect my sisters and the body?

Their ability to worship God without jealousy, greed, envy, or shame for their inability to express a faux prestigious beauty?

Does my dress get in the way of raising up women to worship God rightly and to walk in bold godliness?

So, how will my dress affect my sisters in the body?

Number two question I want you to ask.

How will my dress affect the way the culture views me?

Does my dress create a visible separation from the faux beauty of the world?

Does my dress promote purity and integrity?

Does my dress allow others to see the powerful work of God in me?

You see, the charge here is not that women can't be fashionable or culturally relevant in their dressing.

No, we're not asking you to put on a bonnet and some uh uh, what were those short skirt things?

Um a hair bonnet and some culottes.

What we're saying is this to build a principle of modesty that has distinct practice.

The charge is for modesty that shows off the work of God in your life more than the work of self.

Verses 11 and 12, he says this let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.

I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, rather, she is to remain quiet.

You see, we have to pursue and see first, before we dive further into this passage, we have to see the power of this first part of this statement.

To let a woman learn, to encourage and spur on the church, to make space for women to learn, is revolutionary to the time of this letter.

You see, according to the Jewish Talmud, it states this it would be better for the words of the Torah to be burned than that they should be entrusted to a woman.

Now, Paul, a self-proclaimed Jew of Jews and rabbi of rabbis, would have once held tightly to this posture.

So for him to make this statement, for him to exalt women to a place of learning theology among the church, speaks directly to the radical change the Spirit was creating in his own life as he submitted to the true Word of God.

You see, it's not too much to say that a burden of Paul's ministry was to ensure that the gifts of women were used to their fullest extent.

And so, as we approach this section, let's ask ourselves a few clarifying questions in a pursuit to gain understanding.

What does it mean to learn quietly?

This doesn't mean to learn in silence or that a woman is not able to ask questions or engage in dialogue over theology.

You see, this silence, this quietly, it's the same type of quiet as used in the previous passage that we just went over last week, describing how God desired the whole church to live among the culture.

Not silence, but respectful reverence.

Not stirring up or creating unnecessary attention, but leading a life of learning that communicates honor and respect to the church.

A beautiful portrait of this posture of learning is seen in the Gospel of Luke in the story of Mary and Martha.

There were these two sisters who Jesus had come to visit, and Martha was busy with work.

She was distracted.

She was making sure that the house was clean, that things were in order, that the food was well, and Mary is found sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening.

And Martha gets upset.

Martha gets upset, and she says, Jesus, are you not gonna, he's, Jesus, are you not gonna do anything about this?

I'm over here working my rear end off, trying to make sure that everything's in order, and my sister is just sitting there doing nothing.

And Jesus encourages the posture of Mary over the posture of Martha.

He points out her posture of reverence, of silence, of learning and humility.

You see, the church is not supposed to be full of silent women.

The church is to be full of women who are reverent and respectful of the church as a whole.

Whom are women called and expected to submit to?

Number two.

Well, those in offices of authoritative teaching.

This would be the elders.

It's not calling women to submit to every man of the church, it's not calling women to uh to crew make themselves vulnerable to any man who is a part of this congregation.

No, it's directly speaking to the office of elders.

The submissive posture of a woman is directly connected to her learning in the midst of the congregation.

This is not an isolated charge to women.

As I said before, men are called to submit to the elders of the church as well.

But this charge and its proceeding instructions are distinctly toward women.

They're distinctly toward women and they work to set up the understanding that men alone can hold the office of elder.

Elder, pastor, overseer, shepherd is not an office or position that women can hold among the church.

Pastor Casey dealt with this well a couple weeks ago when he walked through the qualifications of an elder.

So who are women supposed to submit to?

Who's the charge coming to?

The charge is coming to the office of elder.

Those who hold authority in teaching and preaching.

So then, third question: can women teach at all?

Well, this part of the charge is directly speaking to authoritative teaching.

Again, directly linked to the office of elder.

It's again working to support the biblical truth that the office of elder is an authoritative office in regard to ruling and teaching, and is only able to be held by men.

This is not saying that women cannot teach at all.

In fact, let's look at the scriptures for examples of powerful women using their gift of knowledge and teaching in the church and to other men.

In Acts 18, we see Priscilla teaching the truths of God to Apollos.

Now, in the narrative of Acts 18, Apollos was held as a man with deep knowledge of the Word of God, yet still we see himself subjecting himself to the wisdom and knowledge of Priscilla that she had as she expounded upon the depths and beauties of the gospel to him.

We see Lois and Eunice, the grandmother and mother of Timothy himself, who this letter is written to, who discipled him in the wisdom and knowledge of God.

2 Timothy chapter 1.

2 Timothy 1 · chapter mention

In Acts, and both in Acts through Peter's sermon at Pentecost and through the prophet Joel of the Old Testament, we see a promise and fulfillment of God who declared that he would pour out his spirit on sons and daughters, and that they would prophesy.

In 1 Corinthians 11, we even see the inclusion of women prophesying in the midst of the Corinthian church.

Nowhere, nowhere does the Bible seek to silence the powerful voice of women.

It only brings restriction to the place of authoritative teaching.

This doesn't mean unintelligent, blind submission to the elders of the church.

This means deeply educated, reverent submission to the office of elder.

You see, Paul even encourages and builds up the Berean church who were hailed as honorable for their ability to search the scriptures to ensure that what was being taught was true.

You see, we talk and miss you all the time.

We want a church full of powerful women who are so deeply knowledged in theology that they make weak men timid.

Women in this church should have the knowledge and power to be able to even call us on our junk.

But with respect, honor, and reverence.

Beyond this one restriction, women are encouraged to use their gifts to the fullest extent for the health of the church.

I love this statement by the Women of Renewal.

They published a statement in 1997.

And it's it, I really encourage you to search Woman of Renewal statement and read this document.

There's some things where I was a little questioning on, but altogether, this was a powerful declaration of womanhood.

But I want to extract this one section for us to see.

It says this because the Bible is the most effective force in history for lifting women to higher levels of respect, dignity, and freedom, we join a historic succession of women whose Christian faith is formed, forged from biblical truth, and whose lives are shaped into Christ's image on the anvil of obedience.

Amen.

Amen.

That was powerful.

When I read that, I thought, man, these women are powerful, bold, strong.

These are the kind of women we want in our church.

Now, Paul starts to explain why he's drawing these statements, why he's uh pointing us to these truths of the posture, the character, and the behavior of women in the church.

And he says this, for Adam was formed first, then Eve.

And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

Notice here that the reason for this posture of women in the church is taken directly from creation order.

At the end of the day, this is a matter of headship.

You see, it means something cosmic and transcendent to be a man and not a woman.

And vice versa.

Men out of the creative order represent and embody the head and authority.

Adam's position in creation established himself as head and authority over his helper, Eve, for he was formed first.

Then we see that Eve was deceived and became a transgressor.

What does this mean?

Well, see, Eve was led astray by the serpent.

She was led by lies and false promises.

In part because Adam wasn't faithfully leading.

You see, all women, all women desire to be led.

All women built into the fabric of their very being have an intrinsic desire to be led.

It's built into their creative purpose.

Eve, your mother, was created as a helper.

And for her to operate well in that position, she would need to be led.

Now, while Eve was deceived, while she believed the lies of the serpent and became a transgressor, the full responsibility of sin fell on Adam and was passed down to us.

You see, the story of the Bible says that Eve listened to the words of the serpent.

As she was deceived, she took the fruit and ate it.

But then there's this interesting aspect of that story.

It says immediately following, she turned to her husband who was with her, and he ate also.

Adam was present.

Adam was near at the time of deception, but Adam failed to lead.

And so the full responsibility of sin fell on him as the authoritative head.

Adam should have led well and protected Eve.

At the end of it, he should have crushed the head of the serpent.

And so what did we need?

We needed a second Adam, who would be the true head crusher to deliver us from our sin.

It took a second man where the first man fell.

It means something that God, in his sovereign power and omniscience, created man first.

And it means something that he had to send another man to clean up the mess.

Gender is established sovereignly by God, and it is established to reflect distinct roles in his creative purpose.

You see, we affirm and believe at Missio Day that men and women are created equally in the image of God, equally in dignity, value, and worth, yet distinct in roles and responsibilities.

When we look at the narrative of Genesis and we start to break down the original language of what's happening, when Adam was created, we have this kind of gender-neutral phrasing to describe his being.

But as he was called to work and to foster the cultivation of Eden, God saw that he needed a helper for the mission that he called him to.

And so as he put Adam to sleep and pulled out his rib to create Eve, we see the first appearance of male and female, the Esh and the Esha.

You see, Adam holistically bared the image of God fully in himself.

But when he was torn apart to make male and female, it was then distinctly these two beings reflected aspects of God in his image.

And then we see the beauty of this fulfillment in marriage covenant.

Because what happens when a husband and a wife, two, become one, the Ish and the Isha are rejoined.

And together they can again become one flesh and fully reflect the image of God they were created to.

Men cannot fully reflect the image of God in and of themselves, and neither can women.

We are distinct, yet equal in value, dignity, and worth.

Verse 15, yet she will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith and love and holiness with self-control.

Here is what I would submit this passage to mean, because this can be kind of this curveball thrown in there.

And Paul has a reputation for this.

But as I would submit what this passage means, I would draw our attention to two things.

Number one, the singular aspect of the first part of that verse.

Yet she.

He just started kind of dissecting for us why this headship, why this authoritative posture of men is established because of the created order.

And then he talks about her being deceived in transgression, becoming a transgressor.

And he says, yet she will be saved.

And then he switches in the second part of the verse to plural.

They will.

What I would submit is happening in this passage, is that Paul is seeking to bring honor and glory back to Eve.

While she was deceived and demonstrated herself to be the weaker vessel, she also would use her God-given strength as a woman to bring forth the seed of our salvation.

Jesus, born of a woman, born from the power of the female to bring salvation to his people.

What power, what honor, what glory would be restored to the woman?

The fruit of godly woman is faith, love, and holiness with self-control.

If you walk in the God-given purpose of your womanhood, you will express these virtues to the world around you.

Here's our main idea this morning.

The church exists for the benefit of both those in it and those who are yet to be added.

And men and women play distinct roles in her health and maturity.

This is the beauty of the church.

We all play unique roles in building the church.

It isn't just limited to gender, but it isn't absent of the distinctness of gender either.

Without women operating in the church with how God has ordained them, the church couldn't be all that God has called her to be.

We need the gifts of women, not to be seen and understood through their restrictions, but radically celebrated through their diverse beauty.

We should be a place where the Spirit of God is reflected powerfully through women, demonstrating the gifts that He has empowered them with.

But see, we don't believe this, most of us.

You see, some of us reject the Scripture's portrait of femininity as oppressive.

We reject this portrait of Scripture as oppressive.

Some of us will look at this passage, we'll hear this sermon, and still believe the Bible is archaic and unable to speak relevantly to our culture.

We will dismiss this powerful truth.

We will dismiss this power to restore to women what God had created them to be.

Because we will see this as irrelevant, as archaic, as unable to provide the power we're looking for.

But then some of us reject the scripture's portrait of femininity and we oppress women.

You see, we have a history of not fully understanding what the scriptures are calling women to, and restrictions that aren't there.

You see, we add restriction, we add practice as authoritative truth.

And you see this throughout church history.

You see this in churches today, where you go and they say, and you have to dress this way, you have to appear this way, and they have this kind of like dress code that stopped in 1972, and somehow the peak of holy living was right there.

And then and then we we can't move on from that.

It's like you kind of want to look at them and say, if you really want to be biblically faithful, men should wear dresses as well.

If you really want to operate in biblical modesty and the way that they dress, then no one should wear pants.

We should all wear long tunics.

It's interesting to me the things that we place on top of women because we can't exegete the text faithfully, because that we can't submit to the true portrait of femininity that is seen in the scriptures, and so we add things on.

And it doesn't just happen in the church, it also influences our homes.

You see, we have a history of not fully understanding what the scripture is calling women to, and we add restriction where there aren't any.

We reject the power and gifts that the Spirit has given to them, and we don't create spaces for those gifts to be cultivated and demonstrated.

The Bible tells us that the yoke of Jesus is light.

Yet we as the church often add weight and weight and weight upon it.

Unnecessary restrictions, unnecessary practices that have No relevant truth to what the scriptures are trying to communicate to us about who we are and what Jesus has done for us.

But this is the beauty of the gospel.

Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection is for the restoration of women to all that He has created them to be.

You see, Jesus didn't suffer on the cross so that women could continue to be torn down by the effects of their sin and the sin of others.

No, he hung on the cross because he sought to liberate women from these detrimental effects and what they have caused to their identity.

It is in Christ, in submission to his word, that both women and men are able to find eternal joy in their blood-bought identity.

Jesus restores womanhood.

And so not only do we find our identity in the person and work of Jesus, but we also seek to shape our identity and practice that through the submission to his word.

It is both and, as we saw in the Great Commission, that Christ commanded his disciples to teach them all that he commanded and to be obedient to those things.

If we really want to know what womanhood is, if we really want to know what masculinity looks like, it's found here.

And it's found in our submission to it.

So how do we live this out?

I have two things.

Number one, live in submission to the scriptures that you might live in the fullness of your womanhood.

Live in submission to the scriptures that you might live in the fullness of your womanhood.

If it scares you, if it worries you, this language of submit to other men, that's not the call this morning.

That's that's the charge of the scriptures, but that's not the call this morning.

The call I have for you is challenge your own posture and heart.

Are you even able to submit to the word of God?

Not to me, not to Pastor Casey.

Are you able to submit to this?

Because at the end of the day, if we can't submit to this, how will we ever be able to be found faithful as disciples of Jesus?

Here in Jesus and in his revelation, will you find the fullness of your identity as a woman?

We need to strive to submit to the scriptures in all things.

The culture is not able to fulfill your identity.

Only Jesus in living in submission to his word can do that.

Number two, Missio Day should seek to create spaces to demonstrate and celebrate the gifts of women.

This is a charge to us as elders, pastors, leaders.

Our charge this morning is that we would seek to create these spaces.

And I praise God.

Before we started our gathering this morning, I talked about, man, for some pastors to try and preach the sermon or write in regards to these things would be laborious, would be at times terrifying.

But I was so thankful as I thought and reflected on the women of our church of how much more I have to celebrate, of how much more I have to lift up before our young girls who are becoming women to say, look to them.

They embody modesty, they embody pursuit of godliness, they embody reverence, humility.

Girls, look to our women.

And now for us, how do we create spaces to celebrate that?

How do we create spaces to demonstrate that?

We have women leaders already.

We're an eight-week-old church plant, and we have more women leaders than we do men.

Now, let me say something, men.

Amen.

You know what I mean?

I don't even have to say you ever discipline your kids, you just don't even have to say what you're doing.

They know.

You just give them that look.

Men, you need to step up.

But I praise God for the women who have.

I praise God for the women who are dedicated to the discipleship of other women.

I praise God for the women who are dedicated to the discipleship of our children.

I praise God for the women who are stepping up to express their gifts.

And I think that we need to create more spaces.

The posture that Missio holds is complementarianism.

At the end of the day, what that means is we believe that gender means something.

And each gender has distinct roles and responsibilities in life and in the kingdom of God.

The way that that predominantly expresses itself is that we believe men only can hold the office of elder.

That's the only restriction.

We believe that women should and could take this pulpit on Sunday morning to exhort the congregation in the word of God.

If we would allow a man who is not an elder to come and exhort the congregation from here, then why would we not allow a woman to?

Not stepping into a place of authoritative teaching, but stepping into a place of using her gift to exhort and encourage the body of Christ.

I tell you something, I know that there's women in this congregation that can preach better than most of the men.

I know that there's women in this congregation that would put to shame other men when it came to a debate in theology.

Why should we let that just sit in the chair silent?

How do we create spaces for women to use their gifts in classes, in missions work, in evangelism, in city outreach, in all these fears?

By no means do we want to create a cage of limitations for the women in our church.

We want to pursue exhorting women to these extreme extents of the use of their gifts that God has gifted them with through his spirit.

But we want to, as a church and as your elders, submit to the word of God.

At the end of the day, every church has to wrestle with this question.

Will you be faithful and submit, or will you compromise to the pressure of the culture?

I don't believe that you are led by men who are anewhat afraid of this world.

I believe that you are led by men who are wholly terrified of the living God.

We desire to submit.

Not to false perceptions that aren't there, but to the true exposition of God's revelation to us.

Amen.

I want to lead us in a time of response this morning.

I got done early.

Sorry if that was like a lot more note reading instead of good, you know, Justin preaching.

I don't even know what that means or looks like.

It's probably dumb, but I just think you like that for some reason.

Uh but I wanted to make sure that I my words were chosen carefully, and I wanted to make sure that I stuck to the text well.

And so I hope that it was beneficial for you and encouraging for you this morning.

Uh, but as we transition to a time of response, I want to lead us in three different ways that you can respond.

Because what what all of us, all of us have this morning this kind of um position that we have to wrestle with?

We have to wrestle with uh this text.

How are we gonna submit our lives to this word, this revelation?

Um, not just from a position of women, but men, we do as well.

How has our misconceptions and our misunderstandings um shaped our home?

How has it shaped our relationship with our wives, with our daughters?

How has it shaped the relationship with women in the church?

We all have to wrestle with how are we going to respond to this word?

And so we're gonna sing through the gospel.

We're gonna sing about our need for forgiveness.

We're gonna sing about the finished work of Jesus on the cross, and we're gonna sing about the victorious resurrection of the power that He has given to us because He no longer is dead, but He is alive.

And so as we sing through this response time, I pray that it encourages us and draws us closer to the cross rather than farther away from it in continued rebellion and disbelief.