Womanhood, Cultural Stereotypes & Slaying Dragons (Genesis 2:18)

If we haven't met, I'm Cole, I'm the lead pastor, and I'm the guy

that you're stuck with for the next 40 minutes.

So if you've got a Bible, go ahead and get that out.

If you don't, that's OK. We've got words on the screen

for you. We are in the midst of our slow

track through the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis.

And this morning we bump up against a beautiful but hotly

contested singular verse. And that singular verse is

Genesis chapter 2, verse 18. It would be important for me to

Genesis 2:18

note that last week I preached on biblical manhood, and that

sermon was kind of the correspondent to the sermon.

And the reason why I say that is because if you didn't hear it,

it's just important for me that, you know, that last week the men

took their licks and got their bruises.

And so this week, what we're going to do is we're going to

turn the page, go to the next verse, and we will say, hey,

women, it's time for you to jump into the ring and explore what

the Bible says about womanhood. But this comes with a surgeon

general's warning. OK, here's my surgeon general's

warning. I'm going to have some bits from

men. I'm going to have some bits for

unmarried women. I'm going to try and spread the

love around as much as I can this morning.

But a lot of my sermon will necessarily revolve around

wifehood. Biblical masculinity or biblical

femininity is much bigger than wifehood.

It sometimes includes that. For some people it's much bigger

than that. But in, in my, in, in, in my

defense, we meet Eve here in verse 18.

And Eve is she's only single for like 5 minutes.

OK. It's like the shortest season of

singleness ever. She don't even have time to

change her relationship status on Facebook.

And so because of that, the chief description that's given

to her in the verse we're looking at this morning is

marital in nature. But if you can hang with me and

and trust me, I've got something in the sermon for you,

regardless of what station of life you're in.

And we also have more sermons on manhood and womanhood locked and

loaded for the future in Genesis.

Does that sound good? Good.

Speaking of gender, it's become pretty commonplace in the modern

world for modern people to criticize, whether they have a

good understanding of it or not. It's become pretty commonplace

for modern people to criticize the Bible's vision for gender as

overly restrictive. And so in light of that, we're

going to start this morning with a Riddle.

Imagine two people jump off an airplane.

Both of these people experience the exhilarating freedom of

falling through the sky for hundreds of feet.

But there's a crucial difference between these two people.

And the crucial difference is this person #1 And I need you to

be able to visualize this. Person number one is wearing a

parachute. Person number 2 is not wearing a

parachute. The Riddle, the question I would

have you consider this morning is who of these two people is

freer now? The person without the

parachute, she might have an argument that she feels more

free. She's not encumbered by

anything. There's no harness around her

shoulders. And the other person wearing the

parachute might feel like she's less free.

The parachute might restrict her shoulders.

Can you guys visualize us? And so the big question is, who

actually is more free? And are you willing to consider

the possibility that what God says about gender, that what the

Bible says about gender, is less about restrictions and more like

a parachute? Who's freer with or without the

parachute? And only God can answer that

question. So if you're able, let's go

ahead and stand for the reading of God's Word.

It's only one verse. It's a doozy.

This is your first Sunday. I'll catch you up quickly.

Chapter 2, verse 18. Then the Lord God, Yahweh said

it's not good. It's not good, not it's not good

that the man should be alone. So I will make a helper.

Can I hear your beautiful voices?

Everybody say helper. Helper fit for him.

A rich, deep, beautiful word that deserves all of our

attention. Heavenly Father, would you just

illuminate your scriptures, keep us glued to the word, focused on

the word, trusting your word. If there's any, anything foolish

and unhelpful that I have the propensity to say, would you

just strike that from my lips this morning?

And if there is anything life giving, if there's anything

edifying, if there's anything encouraging, if there's anything

that builds up, would you just take your heavenly hammer and

strike those things deep into our hearts so that we all

virtually just float out of this room with the encouragement of

Jesus Christ? That can only happen if the Holy

Spirit is working and working powerfully this morning.

So it's in the precious name of Jesus that all God's people

prayed. Amen.

Again, a seat I've got a lot to say about this one verse before

I even start to unpack it. I'm just going to make a massive

theological claim, foundational theological claim on gender.

And and it's this like all things, whether it's the heavens

or the earth, whatever God creates in Genesis, whether it's

the heavens or the earth or the sun or the stars or the moon or

the sky or the land, all things exist for the glory of God.

The glory of God is the chief of why things exist, and that means

that gender too exists for the glory of God.

Period. Which means that womanhood

exists to display the glory of God in a way that is unique and

distinct or different from manhood in some ways.

And so at the end of the day, the woman who is pursuing

biblical womanhood, the woman who's pursuing biblical

femininity as hard as she can possibly chase after it, it

ultimately has less to do with a personality type.

It has less to do with being a wife or being single, being a

homemaker or being a boss babe, or having a small personality or

having a big personality. That has less to do with

personality. And it has everything to do with

loving, worshipping, and delighting in God.

And so biblical womanhood, at the end of the day, is whatever

it looks like for the feminine spirits.

Be in love with God. I need to make this point

because as I preach, your mind is filled with cultural

stereotypes. Some may be helpful, some may be

unhelpful, and what you need to do is need to get those out of

your head. OK, so if I'm not being clear

here, what I'm saying is something akin to making the

claim that you could take 1,000,000 trad wives with

Instagram accounts on being a trad wife who don't know Jesus

and they would count for nothing in comparison to a singular

single woman extroverted with a loud personality who does love

Jesus. It's about love of God, love of

Jesus, not costumes. That means if you're a woman,

being single is awesome, being a wife is awesome, being a mom is

awesome. You know why?

Because being in Christ is awesome.

Amen. So that's what we need to start

now in come back down, come back down to the book of Genesis.

OK, so here's what's going on in chapter 2, verse 18, there's

paragraphs leading up to this verse and the previous two

paragraphs. What God does is he creates

Adam, and then he places Adam in the garden and tells him to work

it and keep the garden. I need all of the world to look

like the Garden of Eden right here.

It's a big job. It's a big job.

And so after God gives him this job, God points something

extraordinary out. It's right there in verse 18.

It's the first time we see anything like it in Scripture

because so far, here's the pattern of Genesis.

God creates something and he says it's good.

God creates something that says it's good, that's good, it's

good, that's good. Now all of a sudden we see

something different. After this massive literary

pattern of that's good, that's good, that's good, that's good,

we see something different, something that stands out.

For the first time in all of Scripture, we see something

that's not good. Whoa.

In paradise it is Genesis 2. There's no sin, there's no

suffering. Adam has a relationship with

God. Adam has a mission.

What could not be good? What could be not good in

paradise? The answer is right there in

verse 18. Read your Bible here.

It's not good for man to be alone.

In out of this statement springs forth a beautiful vision and

idea, God's idea of womanhood. It's not good for this jabroni

to to be alone. One of the guys that I coach

wrestling with, he said to me, I can't remember how I elicited

this response. You can use your imagination.

If you know me, I think I was maybe messing around or I was

just going full coal and never go full coal.

I was, I think I maybe I was throwing dodge balls at kids or

whatever it was and whatever it was that elicited the response

from one of my coaches. And he said, dyke without, he

said without Chloe, you would be dead in a ditch somewhere.

That's what he said. That's what he said that I

heard. What he meant, what he meant to

say was call. I think you're really funny and

I like being around you and I love you.

That's what he meant to say. But what he literally said was

call. Without Chloe, you'd be dead in

a ditch somewhere. It's what he said.

Now if we if we looked at that statement literally and tried to

ascertain the original audience and the original speakers

intent, we would ask the question, did he actually mean

that literally? Like does he literally think

that without Chloe I'd be dead in a ditch somewhere?

Literally. Yeah, probably.

That's probably. That's probably true.

Is that God's idea for womanhood?

Did God create Eve for the purpose making sure that Adam

isn't laying dead in a ditch somewhere?

Maybe, like partly, but that is not the whole of what we see

when we see the word helper. The bigger idea behind the

massive claim that it's not good for man to be alone is that men

do not, will not, and cannot fully image God by themselves.

Without Eve, Adam can't get the job done.

So the world needs women. God's mission needs women, the

church needs women. And it's only together, men and

women, in their equalities and in their distinctions, come

together to form a fuller, richer picture of what God is

like. God's mission is not a it's not

a, it's not a boy's game. The church is not a boy's club.

Christianity is not a boy's religion.

I've got a six year old daughter.

I want the church to be a place for her where it is awesome to

be a woman. Church needs women, and

fortunately for us, God gives us an awesome word for Eve.

He calls her A helper. So we got to dig deep on this

word again. Right now the temptation you're

experiencing is to is to unpack cultural stereotypes.

And instead we need to sweep those out of the way and

actually get to what the Bible says about the word helper.

So we're going to go deep here. And if we go too deep, just plug

your nose and breathe out like a scuba diver and I swear your

ears will pop. And so the first thing we need

to do before I give a definition of the word helper, words also

have, they have weight and they have textures and they have

feelings. And so the first thing we need

to get right is how the word helper originally felt.

OK, so here's probably the most important observation that any

Christian theologian makes when they unpack the word helper from

chapter 2, verse 18. And the observation is this.

The word helper into 18 is used many more times in the Old

Testament. Do you know who it's most

frequently attributed to? God.

Not women, not Eve, although it is attributed to Eve right here.

But it is most frequently attributed to God himself.

I'll give you 2 examples, though there are many in Psalm 54 verse

Psalms 54:4

4. Behold, God is my helper.

Hebrew word is is that EZER? It's the exact same word as 218

Psalm 118. Seven.

The Lord is on my side as a helper, the exact same word as

chapter 2 verse 18. The reason why you need to feel

it before I define it is to make sure that this never becomes the

type of church where the word helper is used, like in a

derogatory or undercutting way. I don't care what your favorite

podcaster says, if your podcaster is like, well, you

know, she's just a helper. Never treat the word helper that

way. It's a word imbued, infused with

ultimate worth, value and dignity because it's ultimately

A tribute to the one who has ultimate worth, value and

dignity. God.

And so it's a massive, way rich, beautiful word that in chapter

2, verse 18, yes, is attributed to Eve uniquely.

And if you can feel that, then what we can also do is define

it. There's some distinction on the

spectrum of theologians, but ultimately the vast majority of

theologians, and I think they're right, ultimately end up defying

the word helper as literally meaning one who encourages and

one who brings out strength. So we'll take these one by one.

They're both beautiful. We'll start with one who

encourages, helper as encourager.

Ephesians 5 in the New Testament maps this out beautifully in

Ephesians 5, if you read it in a toll, and I think you should.

What Ephesians 5 maps out is Paul exhorts men to love their

wives, and he exhorts wives to respect their husbands.

Now why is that exhortation there?

It's not there because men don't need love and women don't need

respect. Of course we all need those

elements, right? I've got a six year old son.

I want people to love that little booger. 8 year old son

and I love him. You know, it happens sometimes.

I'm a words guy, not numbers. Give me a break.

Right. We both need both of of those

things. So why is the exhortation there?

The exhortation is there to correct errors.

It's corrective. Men tend to value honor, so

their tendency is to give respect.

Women tend to value love more, so their tendency is to give

love more. And So what results is a little

bit of a disparity. Men tend to want people to

validate their skills, their abilities and their

achievements. Women tend to want their

personhood validated in love. And so there's tendency, there's

a deficiency and a disparity in the relationship so that the

Bible says women respect your husband's husbands, love your

wives. And so one of the best things

that a wife can do if she's seeking to live out and embody

that title of helper is to correct that of disparity by

strategically and genuinely emphasis on genuinely is to

strategically and genuinely aim to be the most encouraging

person in her husband's life. Now, if you bristle against

that, if that rubs you the wrong way, I can probably tell you why

that is. Maybe what you just heard me say

is you got to be the person to just blow smoke up your

husband's rear end all the time. And that's not what I'm saying.

So there's two errors that people tend to make when it

comes to encouragement. I'll outline them both.

Error #1 is flattery. I am not.

When the Bible says, when the Bible says wives honor your

husband's, it's not saying flatter.

Your kisses ring all the time. Publicly flattery is on helpful.

That's not what's going on. You, Kristen, should never say

things that aren't true. So you should not say things

that aren't true. And so you shouldn't flatter

your husband and encourage him for doing nothing.

And that's not what I want to advocate for.

That's brown nosing. You can also, though, error on

the opposite side of the spectrum of error #1 is

flattery, Then error #2 there at the bottom is perfectionism.

If flattery is just saying things that aren't true, then

perfectionism is withholding encouragement intentionally from

your husband because the standards you have for him are

standards that can only be met by God.

That's also on unhelpful. You won't be doing any helping

if your husband has to be God in order to receive encouragement.

So of course, of course, the key somewhere in the middle, but

being a helper at the very least means verbally out loud,

encouraging your husband when you see him exhibit traits that

are honorable, even if they are imperfect.

I I read, I was reading in a Christian author.

I can't remember who said this. So I can't, I can't attribute

this to anybody, but it wasn't my original thought.

And he made the point he, it was really interesting.

He he made the point that modern churches.

Tend to love calling out masculine sense and they tend to

be deeply afraid to even touch feminine sense.

And I read that and I was like, that's interesting.

And I immediately my heart turned inward and I was like, is

that true of me as a preacher and a leader?

And the answer I think is totally, it absolutely is.

I'm deathly afraid of doing that right?

Because like, if if a preacher gets up in front of a church and

it's like, hey, and rips into man by man, you know what I

mean, Leaders, sacrificers and rips into them for being lazy or

distant. The church is like, Hooray, you

are so brave. Here's a golden star.

But if a guy gets up and it's like, hey, women, let's talk

about being unnecessarily harsh and overly critical, I think the

church has a tendency to be like, and I don't like being

boot, but I'm afraid of that. But I'm going to take a step, I

think, in the direction of growth and faithfulness this

morning and just dig in a little, a little bit.

I was listening to a podcast with Allison Armstrong, having

you guys listened to her. She was new to me.

You're laughing. I thought it was great.

Fantastic. OK.

Is she a Christian? I couldn't tell.

So not a Christian. So take this with the grain

salt. She ended up drawing a lot of

conclusions that I thought were absolutely profound.

Of all the things that she said that I thought were profound in

the podcast, what she said, what she said is that in marriages,

wives have the tendency to attack their husbands when their

husbands are happy. That was really interesting.

And so she substantiated the argument in a couple different

ways, but the main way she abstained substantiated the

argument was with this statement.

I wrote it down. She said, look, if he's happy

about something that isn't me or I didn't do, I experienced that

happiness as power. And so my gut reaction, my

impulse is to feel threatened by his happiness.

And I feel like I have to attack and tear down that happiness.

I don't know if you identify with that.

She she goes on to actually talk about this story where she was

talking in a marriage conference and she was talking publicly

about the tender care that women tend to show their dogs.

And she pauses in the middle of the speech and she reads the men

in the room. She leans in and she says, men,

I'm sorry if your wives treat your dogs better than you.

She said all, not all. She said the majority.

The majority of the faces of the men in the audience just melt.

So is your pastor if you are married and you identify with

that impulse or temptation to attack your husband when he's

happy. If I were you, I would treat

that like potential cancer. I would treat it like cancer.

I would bomb it with spiritual chemo right away.

I would, I would treat that like it like, almost like it's a

demon that needs to be casted out.

I would find my closest women friends, a couple of them who

love Jesus, who I trust. I would confess that impulse and

I would ask them to lay hands on me and cast it out like a demon.

Because if you don't adequately deal with that, your marriage

becomes characterized by constant criticism and you end

up building a ticking time bomb. And so this is this is key.

This is this is not a trick. This is just reality.

Let me say this. Let me qualify it first.

Christian husband should be loyal to their wives no matter

what, unconditionally. Amen.

But if you're married and you want your husband to be gladly,

happily, just over the moon gladly loyal to you, the key is

actually simple. Honor him and encourage him.

It doesn't mean nothing that Paul exhorts wives to honor

their husbands. And so that aspect of being a

helper as encourager, I think is absolutely beautiful and I think

it's absolutely valid. But it's more than that.

That's just a small chunk of it. The second interesting thing

about the word helper is that it also literally means one who

brings out strength. So we're going to dig deep into

this one as well because this one is gorgeous.

The word helper it it has it literally has military

connotations to it. It's most frequently used of God

in military environments. Right.

So at a literal level, the word helper means Co conqueror or

Paul in the New Testament says Co heir.

It means war body, a war buddy that you're on mission with

that's an equal to you. It means that Eve was designed

to meaningfully participate in the mission that God gives Adam

in a million different ways, chiefly by bringing out uniquely

his strength. You are a strength bringer.

I'm really, I'm really passionate about this and I'm

really passionate about this because I have been the

beneficiary of it and the recipient of it in, in my own

marriage. Like I've just experienced this

deeply from from my wife. I'm not saying she's Jesus.

I'm just saying she's second best thing.

I can't do this. I can't do anything without her.

Like literally no Chloe Dickey, no Frontier Church period.

I, Chloe and I, we were engaged when we were engaged, I was AI

was a high school English teacher.

And then I started to feel or sense in me that God might be

calling me to to plan a church. And we were engaged in that

time. And so I remember feeling that

burden to have that conversation with Chloe, especially at that

point in our relationship and be like, Hey, I think God might be

calling me to plan a church. What do you think?

I was really nervous about that conversation because I really

liked Chloe. And also I was under the

assumption that she felt like she was marrying a guy with

like, you know, like a dependable job and like a

predictable paycheck Slirk. So I was really I was really

nervous about that. And I was fully, I was fully

prepared to hear Chloe say, I don't think, I don't think so.

Or maybe not in the season. If that was the case, I would

have spent my life happily married to her as a high school

English teacher for sure. Like, I don't need, I don't need

this. I like it.

I like, I like this. Hope I get to do it for the rest

of my life. But I don't.

I don't need this, OK? I need, I need Chloe.

I don't need you like you, but I'm good without you.

I'm good without preaching. I'm good without church plants.

I'm not good, not OK without Chloe.

So I was fully prepared to have that conversation with Chloe and

for her to be like, no, I don't think so, at least not, you

know, in the season. And so I I'm trying to describe

to you, does this get so close to strength bringer?

I'm trying to describe to you what it felt like to have that

conversation with Chloe and be like, I didn't gonna let me go

on me to be a church planner. Am I crazy expecting to hear no

and instead having her go pick up a journal and turn it to one

of the front pages of her prayer journal and to read a prayer

that she wrote after one of our first dates and the prayer said,

thank you, God, I'm going to marry a pastor.

And I was like this. That makes this conversation a

lot easier. She saw something in me before I

saw it in me and the effect that that had on me was to draw more

strength out of me. Like I think about that moment

and I think to myself, I want to be the man that Chloe thought

she saw in me in that moment. And that brings strength.

It that is what has but by the calling of God kept me doing

this. And on mission as a church

planter and a pastor, One of the hardest things I ever said no

to, I remember telling my principal that I was resigning

and that was hard. He was like, what can I do to

keep you? And I really value that

relationship. That was not the hardest thing

I've ever said no to. The hardest thing I've ever said

no to is when my parents, who are my heroes and we're just

being good parents. This is not a criticism.

There's being good parents. When I told them I resigned from

being a high school English teacher, they called me the next

day with tears in their eyes because they're good parents and

begged me to crawl back and beg for my teaching job.

I'd never said no to my parents before in a meaningful way.

Do you know what gave me strength to do that?

I remember thinking, if Chloe thinks I can do this, then we

can do this. And so it brought strength out

of me. Like that's it dude, that that's

it, that's it. That moment that help.

To me, even 10 years later, it feels like an Oasis in the

desert. It feels like a voice calling

out to me. It feels like strength when I

don't have any. Nothing apart from the Spirit of

God, nothing can draw more strength out of a man than a

woman who sees his potential and believes in him.

And God knows that only Eve can draw that strength out of Adam.

It's not good for Adam to be alone.

And so this is going to make you nervous.

But I guess maybe that's just what I'm doing this morning is

making you nervous. So I'll throw another.

I'll throw my hat in the ring again.

This is why I make you nervous. The word helper in 218 also has

salvific connotations as well. It's used in situations in the

Bible where there is salvation on the line interchangeably,

synonymously with salvation. Here's Psalm 121.

Just listen to this. I'm not going to put it up on

the screen. Psalm 121 I lift my eyes up to

the hills. From where does my help is

there? Where does my help come from?

My help is there. Same word as 2/18.

My help, Some translations. My salvation comes from the

Lord. Does that make you nervous?

All right, let me make you nervous.

OK. Eve is salvific to Adam.

Wives are salvific for their husbands.

Now I'm a Jesus alone guy, so you can unclench your butt

cheeks and relax here. Let me.

No, she does not save Adam from the penalty of his sin.

Only Jesus can do that. But she does say that only wives

are salvific in the way that their feminine presence saves

men not from the penalty of their sins, but from their

stupidity and bad decisions and aimlessness and nihilism and

lower selves. I've been reading this book of

dragon stories from my kids called Highly recommended

Dragons and Dragon Slayers and my kids won't let me stop

reading it. They ask for as many as I'll

read to them and I and they all have the same plot.

And so we were like 5 or 6 stories in when Della was like

hey, yeah, question. I was like, yes, you in the

back. And she says, why is it always a

Princess? And shame, I was like, that's a

good question. And it's not because the

Princess is helpless or incompetent.

You can look at, I mean, in the modern world, in virtually every

realm and area, women are outperforming men.

It's not about competency. That's not the design of the

story. It's not because women are are

helpless. It's because the stone it's the

only thing that makes the story work.

Because the only thing in the world that makes men want to

fight Dragons is women. It's the only thing that gives

them the strength to do that. And an awesome conversation with

the church member this week about what it was like listening

to last week's sermon about men being the primary sacrificers

and being willing to take the bite from the serpent and fight

the serpent. He said something super

interesting. He was like, I was in that

sermon and I thought, I thought, I want to get bit.

What would make a man want to do that?

Why do why do men Daydream about getting into bar fights where

they protect their wives honor? This right here.

It's because the only thing in the world that makes men want to

fight Dragons is women. So Eve as Adam's helper, she's

Adam's help in that her presence will strengthen Adam and make

him actually want to fight the dragon or the serpent for him.

Without Eve, Adam would. Without Eve, Adam would just

watch porn and eat Doritos on his couch all day long.

It's all he would do. He would descend into his lower

self. Don't misunderstand those

ancient dragon stories. They're not just about the

Prince saving the Princess from the dragon.

They're also about the Princess saving the Prince from his lower

self. Without Eve, Adam's prone to

aimlessness and directionlessness and nihilism

and self destruction. It's true.

Without women, men descend. Descend into meaninglessness and

savagery and brutality. I spend a lot of time in male

only spaces. Promise you men will descend

into savagery without the presence of women.

Presence of women draws out the best, the godliest of men.

And so I'm, I'm skipping a little bit ahead here and I'll

have a sermon for this in a couple of weeks.

But have you ever noticed this is so profound?

You ever noticed what the first thing Eve draws out of Adam when

Adam sees Eve for the first time?

It's a poem. I like what I'm about to say too

much. Oh, this is good.

Without women, there would be no poetry.

There would be no poetry in the world.

Women and men collaborate together to, yes, fill the earth

with purpose and mission and achievements, but also to fill

the world with poetry and relational warmth and comfort.

The Word I love here that theologians will use for the

word helper is collaborative. I love that word.

God's designed men and women to be collaborative, to work

together. That's why Genesis 218 uses the

word fit. Did you notice that I'll make a

helper fit, fit for him? God.

The idea is that God carved out and molded and designed the

woman to fit with the man collaboratively so they would

collaborate together as equals. And when they do, women should

flourish because of men, and men should be strengthened because

of women. And the church only flourishes

when men are strengthened and women flourish.

I'm not. I'm just not saying this out

loud doesn't make me nervous at all.

We just have to be able to talk on this level together.

So this just doesn't make me nervous.

Estrogen is awesome. Estrogen is God's idea.

It's how he hardwires women. So if you're a woman, you should

ask yourself why? Why did he do that?

Why did God sovereignly decide to pump, depending on the

academic, 5 to 10 times more estrogen in my body than He puts

in the average male body? Have you ever wondered that?

Why would he do that? It's because estrogen is the

hormone that encourages relational connection and

nurturing and empathy. And the world needs that.

The world needs estrogen. It draws the best out of people.

It ensures that people receive nurture and care, which are not

secondary things that are less important than food.

Without those things, human beings don't develop or grow.

They don't, they need it more than they need food.

And so femininity is it's just, it's magical.

I just, it's magical the way you see it, like work out sometimes,

like in the Daike household, if a kid these things are magnetic,

like if one of our kids bumps her head or gets his feelings

hurt, Chloe's like a magnet, right?

If Chloe's there and I'm there, like if it's just me, they'll

come to me. But if Chloe's there and I'm

there, they will stiff arm me, run through me to get to Chloe.

It's like a tractor beam. It's amazing.

Now, if the kids want to have fun, I like, I, I tend to be the

magnet there, right there. They're drawn to me and like

this guy is one of us. Let's go play with them.

So there's like a trap. They're mean.

That sucks them into me. But then what?

You're that's what that's one small way where you see God's

utter brilliance on display. The world, the church, the

family needs estrogen and testosterone, women and men.

Estrogen images more fully, more richly, the nurturing and caring

aspects of God's character and displays it to the world.

Here's the way. Oh my goodness, this is poetry.

Ed Stein, in her tremendous essay, says the feminine soul is

fashioned to be a shelter in which other souls may unfold.

It's beautiful, This is not. Again, I can't be more clear

about this. This is not a personality rights

of responsibility. This is not a personality type.

A woman can be a godly woman. She can be a shelter if she is

quiet or exuberant, introverted or extroverted, shy or driven,

emotional or intellectual. Women can be faithful women of

God if they are an Enneagram. 12345678 or 9.

It's not a type, it's not a personality, it's not a costume.

It's not about fulfilling cultural stereotypes.

So let's spread the love out here a little bit because I

think I, I think I still have time.

I'm going to spread the love out a little bit.

All right, we'll, we'll start with married woman, then we'll

go to unmarried women. Married women.

You as a helper are worthy of being cultivated and guarded and

treasured, and you should be. And unfortunately, the

statistics are very damning for the USA.

They're a little bit better for Christians, but depending on the

statistician you read, the odds of American women being an

abusive marriages is absurdly high.

It's roughly like one in four. And so not enough churches say

this. We're going to say it.

That's you and you are in an emotionally, spiritually or

physically abusive marriage. This is a safe place for you to

get help. This is not.

This is not a safe place for abusers, husbands who are

physically, spiritually, emotionally abusive.

We will find you. We will.

We always do. It happens, and that will be

God's mercy to you because you might be able to run and hide

from us, but you can't run and hide from the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it would be much better for you to get caught or come out to

elders than to stand before Him on Judgement Day.

So this is not a place where way too often the games that

religious men play is they use religious words as a facade to

baptize abusive behavior. That's not going to fly here.

We know the words, we know the interpretations.

I don't care how many Bible verses you can memorize one.

I mean, one of the probably one of the best compliments I've

ever gotten as a pastor is one of my college buddies was

visiting and she dropped in one Sunday and afterwards she said

this. I thought this was so cool.

She said cool. A lot of times in churches, I

actually don't feel comfortable around the men in the church.

For whatever reason, and I don't know what it is, but I actually

felt really comfortable around the men in your church.

Oh, that was awesome. So let's keep building the

church like that. Amen.

Unmarried women, the mission of God is not waiting for you in

the future. It's now the mission of God

needs you on married women. Paul tells the Corinthian church

in first Corinthians 11. Listen to this, he says quote.

Nevertheless, in the Lord, woman is not independent of man nor

man of woman. For as the woman was made from

man, Eve from Adam, so now man is born of woman and so all

things are from God. Man and women are not

independent upon one another. What does that mean?

That means that Christian men need your presence in the church

and not just as a potential husband, right?

That's not, that's not even a description in the Bible.

You know what the Bible calls women in the church that you're

not married to? They're called sisters in the

Lord, not potential stumbling blocks.

Sisters in the Lord. You can.

Let me say it this way. Single women are so needed in

the church because men, you can learn things from the women in

our church that you can't learn from men because they image God

in a unique way that men usually don't.

And no, I'm not suggesting that you need to be BFFS with all the

women in our church. But you do need to be in

community with godly women so that you can be discipled by

their presence. You can gain things.

You can gain things in the Lord from Aubrey Harbaugh and Lauren

Kerr and Sheila Young and Alex Pasker that cannot be gained or

learned from Andrew Self, Noah Holthouse, or even John Piper.

The church needs women, their voices, their personalities,

their spirituality, their presence.

God help us if this church ever descends into being a locker

room space where men roll their eyes at the voices and presences

of women in the church. God will destroy that church.

He won't build a house where his daughters are dishonored.

We need the presence of women. So at the risk of

oversimplifying, here's maybe a thesis statement to consider.

A church without masculinity would descend into

sentimentality and be consumed by wolves.

But a church without femininity would descend and do a

brutalized, cold locker room without shelter, where nothing

grows. And so it's only when women and

men come together, little atoms and little Eve's, in all their

equalities and their distinctions, that we can

honestly say to the world here, this is what God's like.

We together are what God's like. It's only them.

And yeah, maybe I just want to poke maybe at one more thing.

Maybe the biblical description of Adam as a guard and Eve as a

helper, as a single woman, makes you feel like you're missing out

on something. And if that's you, you just need

to know that you have a guard. It's the Lord Jesus Christ.

He's the perfect guard. He's the perfect cultivator.

And your ultimate purpose in life is not to be the helper of

some future man, because in Christ there are no Eves without

an Adam. If you're a Christian, there are

no Eve's without an Adam, because the ultimate fulfillment

of Adam is the second and last Adam, Jesus Christ.

And so your goal, the purpose of your life is to be Jesus

Christ's helper. That's the goal.

The goal of every Christian woman is not to get married.

The goal of every Christian woman is to be a disciple of

Jesus and treasure him above everything else.

Yes, marriage is awesome. But like the Gospel of Jesus

teaches over and over and over again, your worth does not come

from your works, does not come from your station in life.

It does not come from your season of life.

It comes from Jesus. So the highest aim of womanhood,

the ultimate goal of femininity, is to glorify Jesus, to worship

him, to treasure him, to love him, to throw yourself entirely

on the gospel of Jesus, to believe with your whole heart

that Christ was crucified for sins, to cover us in his

righteousness, to grant us eternal life, and then to tell

the world about him. God created womanhood.

You know why? Because he wants to be glorified

by women. There's just this beautiful

story in the New Testament, Martha and Mary, a lot of people

are familiar with it in the church.

It's a really interesting story because Jesus is in the home and

Martha and Mary are doing two different things.

Martha is doing, she's doing the dishes, she's doing the meal,

she's doing all of that, which which is an awesome

responsibility. I'm not demeaning that in any

way, but that's what that's what she's doing.

She's busying herself with that. She's doing what the 1st century

IT Israelite would have interpreted as that is the

cultural stereotype for women. And what's Mary doing?

She's sitting at Jesus's feet. Do you know who didn't do that?

In the ancient world? Women discipleship was for men

only. Men sat at the feet of their

disciples and other men. And so for sure with the

original audience is thinking is, oh, Jesus is going to come

down on Mar on on Mary for doing the for doing that thing.

And who's he come down on right. Martha's like, you want to help

me out here, bro? And he goes, Hey, what you're

doing, I think it's great. This is a rough interpretation.

What I think you're doing is great, but Mary has chosen the

greater portion. What does that tell you?

That tells you that the ultimate aim and purpose of a woman isn't

any singular thing you can do inside the house or outside the

house. It's to sit at Jesus feet like

wives. If if I I don't even doesn't

matter to me. If you divvy out the

responsibilities differently, it doesn't bother me at all.

And and Chloe and I's marriage. Chloe tends to make the majority

of the meals. I, I like grilling, you know,

because cultural stereotypes. If that's you, if you make the

majority of the meals, you know, and you're in the middle of a

really busy day, you don't have any time to be with the Lord

because you're just busy at work or busy with the kids or

whatever. And you don't have 5 minutes to

yourself. You finally got 30 minutes.

Should you make the meal or get in the Bible?

Let your husband starve, He's fine.

Get in the word of God. That's the most important thing

for you to do. If you have kids, maybe send

your husband in the van with the kids to McDonald's or something.

Or sorry, you got to know your audience to Chick-fil-A.

But the singular, most valuable, important thing a woman should

be doing is exalting him and loving Jesus.

Because then, and only then, when you treasure Jesus more

than anything, can you truly see the Bible's vision for gender as

freeing and not restrictive. I can't say this more beautiful

than Elizabeth Elliott. She says when it comes to

gender, the world looks for happiness through self

assertion. But the Christian knows that joy

is found in self abandonment. And so a Christian woman's true

freedom lies on the other side of a very small gate, humble

obedience to Jesus. But that gate leads out into a

largeness of life on dreamed of by the postmoderns of the world,

to a place where the God-given, Oh my gosh, what a writer, she

says, to a place for the God-given.

Differentiation between the sexes is not obfuscated but

celebrated, where our differences are seen as

essential to the image of God. For it is in male and female, in

male as male and female as female, not as two identical and

interchangeable halves, that the image of God is manifested.

To gloss over these profundities, profundities, is

to deprive women of the central answer to the cry of their

hearts. Who am I, who am I?

And no one but the author of the story can answer that cry.

He says we are women. And my plea is let me be a woman

wholly through and through, asking for nothing but what God

wants to give me, and receiving with both hands and with all my

heart, whatever that is. The Bible has a lot to say about

gender and you just need to know that everything that God has for

his daughters is good and freeing.

Freeing the person who says no to the parachute or mocks the

parachute, they can claim that they feel freer for a short

time. That freedom isn't real because

it ends with a splat. Only the person who wears the

parachute is truly free, because they'll land safe and sound for

eternity in the glorious freedom of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Heavenly Father, I pray that we would believe your Word and

beyond believing in Your Word, believe that all that you have

for us is good. It's not an easy thing to live

out last week's sermon. It's not an easy thing for men

to envision themselves as the primary sacrificers, the first

to die so that others can flourish.

And it's and it's also not easy for a lot of women to envision

themselves as strength bringers and encouragers and helpers.

And so I just pray that you would stir in our heart even

just a flicker a lot if possible, but even just a

flicker of trust that you are not calling us to anything that

is not for our ultimate good. And when we believe that, when

we really believe that, we experience the freedom to be who

you have called us to be. Not stereotypes, not cultural

stereotypes, although we may embody some of those to certain

or lesser degrees, but to be who you have called us to be, that's

the goal. So it's in the name of the Lord

Jesus Christ that all God's people prayed.

Amen. Let's stand and let's worship.