Jesus & Women

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Hey, before we dive in this morning, I just wanted to uh like take a moment to thank you, Awakening Church.

You know this, you get this.

Um, everything we do, from student ministries to college students to uh people experiencing new life in Jesus, uh, everything that we do to be able to create a space for people to have a life-changing encounter with God happens because of your faithful generosity, giving of your time and your talent and your treasure.

And I just wanted to say uh we were talking about as we're coming to our fiscal year end, um, that May, this last May, uh, was the most significant giving month of May we ever had in the history of our church.

Yeah, thank you.

So amazing because of you and your generosity.

Uh, heaven, the landscape of heaven is literally being reshaped, and we're seeing a generation awakening to new life in Jesus.

What a joy to partner with you.

Now, today we're continuing in our series Unfollow, uh, and as we do, we're wrestling with one of the most uh really personal, debated within the church, uh, also within culture.

It's all over if you're on TikTok or YouTube, uh, Reddit, all these conversations.

And if you're on TikTok, it's it goes something like this: this is the question Is Christianity anti-women?

Actually, when we um we sent out the newsletter, somebody responded to it and they just responded back, yes.

And it was like, we didn't know what, I'm like, I'm not sure what it was.

Like, are you saying yes, it is anti-women, or are you excited about that?

We're talking about this?

I'm not really sure.

But if you're here, I'm so glad that you're here.

But is the Bible fundamentally a patriarchal book written by men for men?

And what does the scripture actually teach?

And how does following Jesus reshape the way we see women, leadership, dignity, um, and understand the very heart of God.

Now, when this new movement of Jesus followers uh began, it wasn't originally called Christians.

That came later.

Uh they're originally called followers of anybody know?

The way the way, yeah, yeah, really good.

They're followers of the way.

This new movement was called the way, and it was because they followed the way of Jesus.

They didn't just believe things about Jesus, they were followers trying to live in the way that Jesus lived.

It wasn't until uh as the gospel was spreading across the Roman Empire and it especially exploded in this uh city called Antioch, it's one of the first, it was the first great multicultural church, it was beautiful, unheard of in the ancient day.

Uh, as you see, uh multiple ethnicities and socioeconomic class all joining together in unity under the lordship of Jesus, that the Antiochians are looking at this, don't know what's going on or how to even understand it.

And and they started calling these followers of the way Christians, which means little Christ.

It wasn't uh, you know, a positive thing.

They were actually uh, you know, putting them down.

It was a derogatory term.

Little Christ, because these followers of Jesus look so much like the one that they followed.

They loved the way Jesus loved, they forgave the way Jesus forgave, they led the way Jesus would have led, they served the way Jesus served.

And so as we wrestle with this question and asking what does Christianity have to say about women, we must first look at how Christ Jesus treated women.

Today's sermon title is Jesus and Women.

Would you say that with me?

Very good.

One of the challenges with this conversation is we all come with some assumptions, and I want to invite you to one idea of unfollowing right at the outset.

It's simply this unfollow the assumption that Jesus agrees with everything you already think.

If your version of Jesus agrees with everything you already think, believe or prefer, there's a good chance you've created Jesus in your image rather than allowing him to remake you in his.

Following Jesus means allowing him to challenge our assumptions, confront our biases, and reshape our thinking.

The goal isn't to get Jesus on our side, it's for us to get more of him.

And the reality is Jesus doesn't fit neatly in our political category, cultural assumptions, or ideological tribes.

He consistently surprises people on both sides.

And to begin our conversation, I want to take you to what's probably a pretty familiar passage for some.

It's about Mary and Martha.

And I want to show you something that uh maybe you know, but maybe you don't.

Maybe it's it's what the first followers would have gone like, oh, it was a bit surprising to them, but we don't always see it.

If you got your Bibles, open up to Luke chapter 10, verse 38.

Luke 10:38

It's in your notes if you want to follow along there.

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.

She had a sister called Mary who sat at the feet, at the Lord's feet listening to what he said.

But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.

Oh, Martha, busy Martha.

She came to him and said, Lord, don't you care that my sisters left me to do all the work by myself?

Look at me.

I'm like doing all this stuff, and she's just sitting here doing nothing.

Tell her to help me.

Jesus, you command her to get out and help me.

Jesus says, Martha, Martha.

By the way, that repeating of her name was a turn of endearment, of love.

Martha, Martha, the Lord answered.

You are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed.

Or indeed, only one.

Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken from her.

Martha thought Jesus was going to agree with her.

She felt justified in a request.

And she wanted Jesus to make Mary do what she wanted.

And oh, how we often do this.

Unfollow the assumption that Jesus agrees with everything you already think.

Now, most of us, when we read this story, we think about the juxtaposition of busy Martha and Mary being present.

And that'll preach in the Silicon Valley, won't it?

I mean, we're the culture of hustle, grind, you know, achievement culture, and we need that actually.

We need that, and there is true of this text of like, oh man, being still at the feet of Jesus.

But this is not what have been shocking to the first hearers.

Jesus is actually doing something deeply subversive.

You see, there is that line, I had it bolded so you could see it, sitting at the feet.

We just read over it, but that's actually a technical first century expression in Judaism for formal discipleship.

The Apostle Paul would use this in Acts, defending his case, uh saying that he sat at the feet of Gemimel.

Like this, I was under his tutelage.

Jesus is doing something completely subversive.

Mary simply wasn't just listening to Jesus, she had taken the posture of a disciple, the place of a student, the role of someone being formed by a rabbi.

Martha assumes Mary should be helping with the preparation, and Jesus says Mary has chosen what is better, and it won't be taken away.

Jesus doesn't send Mary back to the kitchen.

No, he affirms her place as a at the feet, at his feet as a disciple.

And here's what we consistently find with Jesus.

Jesus elevated women, affirming their dignity, value, and calling in the kingdom of God.

He consistently upended cultural norms and expectations that caught both his disciples and the religious leaders off guard.

Jesus, this was not common in that day, he traveled with women.

They were part of the discipleship group that traveled with them.

Women supported and funded his ministry.

Women learned from him as a disciple.

Women were entrusted with the news of the resurrection.

They were last at the cross, first at the tomb, and they were entrusted to be the first heralds of the great news that Jesus is alive.

Jesus didn't merely welcome women into the crowd, he welcomed them in to his movement.

Back to our question.

Is Christianity anti-women?

The question.

There's no question that throughout history, some people, even churches and leaders, have used the name of Jesus to justify abuse, domination, exclusion, and uh other deeply harmful treatment of women.

We should never minimize it.

But one thing is impossible to deny Jesus consistently elevated the dignity, value, and calling of women.

Now about a year and a half ago, as a leadership council, which is our elders here, we began to wrestle with this because one of the number one questions you're gonna uh at 101, those who come there, it's a top question is is around women and leadership in the church, and what does it look like?

And how does awakening um you know um respond and what is their position?

So what we did is we took an entire year, put together what we called a theology cohort.

And it was made up of our leadership council, pastoral staff, and key uh members within our church, and we spent 12 months studying this.

Not because we were looking at, like, okay, what does culture say?

Uh, what do we want, but what does God's word say, and how do we really understand it and know, like, okay, what is Jesus asking us as awakening in regards to not just what does scripture teach about women in ministry, but more specifically, what does scripture teach about women and men and spiritual leadership within the church?

And underneath that question, what I hope to kind of help us understand and develop is how a follower of Jesus is to approach difficult theological questions.

And where we begin, and where the cohort began, is where Mary began.

At the feet of Jesus.

All right, so let's dive in together.

And I would just want to outline just kind of the two big views when it comes to women and men in spiritual leadership.

I want to teach you two theological words.

You ready for this?

Okay.

Are you ready for this?

Let's go.

Complimentarian, can you say that?

Complimentarian.

Egalitarian.

Perfect.

And these words aren't actually all that helpful, to be honest.

Think complementarian, like compliment, they complement one another.

Both views hold this like that men and women complement one another.

Egalitarian think equal, that they're equal in value and dignity.

The complementarian view is this.

Complimentarian is a theological view that men and women are equal in dignity, value, and worth before God, yet given distinct and complementary roles within the church.

Complimentarians generally believe certain leadership roles involving spiritual authority, teaching, preaching, pastoral leadership, and eldership are reserved for qualified men.

Egalitarian is a theological view that men and women are equal in dignity, value, and calling, and that leadership roles within the church include teaching, preaching, eldership, and pastoral leadership, are open to qualified men and women.

First, here's what I want you to hear.

Faithful Christians who love Jesus and believe the Bible land in both camps.

And at awakening, we have both complementarians and egalitarians.

Now, awakening, we started uh 14 years ago, we started egalitarian.

You'll notice we have women preachers and teachers and pastors, and we are what uh some would call soft egalitarian.

Yeah, that's very nice.

Uh and what that means is there's one office or one leadership position that women currently do not hold, and that's the office of eldership or our leadership council.

And this is what we did.

We said, okay, we need to really, we'd get these questions, and and this is like the the theology that we adopted when we planted, but we didn't have a good like position.

What why do we land here and and what is Jesus calling us?

And so what we took a th, like I said, this built this theology cohort, and we did this intentionally.

Uh, it was a group of about 13 of us.

My role was just the moderator, was not to like try to influence or I was just trying to be the guide and direct.

We had strong complementarians in our church, we had strong egalitarians, and it was intentional to have women and men, egalitarian and complementarians, and to study the scripture together and really look at okay, what does God's word say, and then what do we do with it in regards for us as awakening?

And it took, it was supposed to be nine months, it took us 12 months to do this as a group.

Now, you can only imagine that very first night that we met.

Oh, I was nervous.

Oh man.

I mean, this is one of those things that you know has been hotly debated within the church circles.

Um, and it's also obviously also deeply personal.

I I don't know that I've prepared any more diligently or harder for a meeting than that meeting.

Came, prayed up.

I was like, I don't know how this is gonna go, you know?

And Jesus surprised us.

Um one of our uh leadership council members said it this way, and it led the way in our approach.

He said, We will not study our way to unity, we will pray our way to unity.

Prayer was the foundation of our gatherings.

There is something so powerful, and rather than disagreeing with someone or just immediately responding, you don't understand, or we're not like if you just stop and start praying with them, allowing the Holy Spirit to do something.

We live in a culture where if you disagree with me, you're against me, it's my way or the highway.

I just wonder what would happen if we just began to have this posture of well, well, what if we just started praying?

And what if we just began to let the Spirit do what the Spirit does?

And this led us to our first unfollow, and the first unfollow was unfollow winning over oneness.

Unfollow winning over oneness.

That our posture matters as much as our position.

Jesus' fundamental prayer, John 17, for his church was that we would be one even as he and the Father is one.

And we read Philippians 2, and we we just began to wrestle with like the apostle Paul says, if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, then make my joy complete, being like-minded.

Treat others, treat one another as if they're better than you.

In your attitude, in your response to one another, have the same attitude response of Christ Jesus, who being very nature God, didn't consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself, made himself nothing, taking on the very nature of a servant, and humbled himself and became obedient even to death on a cross.

Said, okay, how we approach this conversation matters.

We're gonna unfollow winning and my way or the highway for oneness, because what we have in common in Jesus is way greater than any difference or disagreement that we have.

So then the question we wrestled with is how do we hold this?

How do we hold this conversation?

How do we hold these doctrines?

Saint Augustine gave us great insight, you know, was it 2,700 years ago?

Or not 1700 years ago, but not 27.

And he told us in essential doctrines, these are the creeds, what it means about who Jesus is, what he accomplished, who God is, salvation, God's moral vision for the kingdom.

We have unity, there's oneness.

Then he says, in non-essentials, we have liberty.

Did you know there's non-essentials?

Historic Christianity has held that there's there's uh essential doctrines and then secondary doctrines.

In fact, uh Romans chapter 14, Paul's talking about this, and he says, in disputable matters.

Romans 14 · chapter mention

Did you know there's disputable matters?

There's things like, oh man, we there's things I'm not really sure about.

In non-essential liberty.

This conversation, as important as it is, lands in the non-essential.

It lands in the same place as the giftings of the Holy Spirit and how they outwork in our community and how we functionally do baptism or communion.

These are all important, but they're secondary to salvation.

Then he would give us the best bit of advice in all our beliefs charity.

Charity.

That's the old English word for love.

Jesus was very clear.

John 13, 34 and 35, he said, A new command I give you, love one another.

But let me define love for you because it's not your definition of love, your preference, or the way you think it should go.

Love one another in the same way that I have loved you.

Well, how did Jesus love you?

He gave you what you needed the most when he deserved it the least at great personal cost.

That's the definition of love.

And he says, that is what we are called to and how we're called to love one another.

And he says, by that, the entire world, by the way we love one another, the entire world will know you are my disciples.

And that is what stood out to the Antiochans as they looked at the followers of the way and began to call them little Christ.

How are we to hold our doctrines, essential unity, and non-essentials liberty, and all our beliefs, charity?

What happened?

I just gotta say, through this 12 months, I was so surprised.

Like the Holy Spirit did something beautiful.

There was a unity, not a uniformity.

Not everybody landed in the same place.

But everybody had a greater humility, understanding, empathy towards the other.

There was a fellowship together and a sharedness of heart and a generosity.

Given to the other because we often don't take time to listen or hear someone who differs from us.

And I wish, I wish I could take all of you on that year-long journey because it was so rich and meaningful.

How are we to hold our doctrines?

Andor the first unfollow, unfollow winning over oneness.

The second is unfollow, outsourcing your thinking.

Oh boy, do we need this one.

Unfollow, outsourcing your thinking.

In the age of algorithms, followers of Jesus must learn to think deeply, listen carefully, and sit patiently at the feet of Jesus.

And this is what we did as a theology cohort.

We spent 12 months and we didn't just look at a couple texts, we looked at the entire scope of scripture.

In fact, we started in Genesis, Genesis 1 through 3.

Okay, what does God's word say in regards to women and men and spiritual leadership in Genesis?

What about the whole Old Testament?

And then we went to Jesus and we covered that just a little bit right here.

And then we went to Paul.

Oh, sweet Paul.

And that's where you're like, okay, where we need to get into, but what we want to do is scripture interpret scripture, and what does the whole council of God's word say?

And so I just want to give you a brief overview.

If you come to the school of faith tonight, we're gonna dive in and have a lot of fun.

Genesis 1, chapters 1 and 3 reveals God's good design for men and women, the impact of sin, and the hope of redemption that runs throughout Scripture.

Genesis 1, you were made, we were made in the image of God, which is incredible reality, that both men and women are created in the image of God as co-creators, co-laborers, and co-rulers.

Genesis 2 uh he says that it's not good for man to be alone or make a helper suitable, and that we're there is this partnership by design.

Now, for some, you're this is some of the reasons some people say, well, Christianity's anti-women.

You see that?

That word helper.

See, women are just made to be man's helper.

I would love to like double-click on that, by the way.

We will uh tonight.

And I I have like three slides I can't get to right now.

The word easer, which is helper, translated helper, is not a less than term.

That that word is most often used of God Himself as rescuer, deliverer, strength.

And so this is not a diminutive term.

This is actually saying, you know what, I have created you to be co-labors, co-creators, uh, to carry forth the kingdom, the mission of God here on this planet.

The fall, relational devastation with God and each other, sin fractures what God designed for partnership.

Mutuality gives way to conflict, trust gives way to suspicion, service gives way to self-interest.

Partnership now becomes a power struggle.

The curse corrupted God's vision for humanity.

The problem isn't masculinity or femininity.

Scripture says the problem is sin.

Every broken marriage, every power struggle, every manipulation, every form of domination, that's not God's design.

It's the effects, it's the curse.

And so we wrestled with this question: what did the death and resurrection of Jesus reverse from the curse?

The church is to be a signpost to a watching world of a new way of living, a kingdom community that operates by a different set of values, a unity that is otherworldly because it originates from heaven itself.

The death and resurrection is actively restoring God's vision for humanity.

So we looked at Genesis.

Then we looked at the Old Testament, we looked at people like Miriam, Holda, Deborah, Proverbs 31, there's many others.

One of our complimentarian brothers, he said it this way after studying the Old Testament text that God has historically used women and leadership.

And then we spent time looking at Jesus and the Samaritan woman.

Did you know that the longest recorded conversation that Jesus has with anyone is the Samaritan woman?

Did you know that she's the very first person Jesus ever reveals his identity of Messiah to?

And that she's the first person that acts as an evangelist, leading her entire village to know Jesus.

Mary and Martha, Mary Magdalene, whose ancient church fathers called her the apostle to the apostles.

And we already said this Jesus elevated women, affirming their dignity, inviting them into discipleship.

Now then there's Paul's difficult text, and we got to those.

And the early church.

And we're gonna double-click on this uh in our school of faith coming up.

But something that, like, maybe you're like me and used to just not read the end of Paul's letters because they're a bunch of names.

You're like, this is boring.

This is like, no, they're stoked.

Like, that's one of the highest honors is to be written into a letter that's read before the church.

And and what you what we see is this affirmation, Paul affirmed women and leaderships, called them co-labers, deacons, apostles, like uh prophets.

He affirmed women in leadership.

Then we get to the qualification of eldership, and what we find is the qualification of elder is rooted in character, not gender.

First Timothy Titus.

You go through the entire area, and it's it's it's the quality, what kind of person, the character, the integrity, the wise, godly one?

You're like, well, hang on, hang on, Ryan, but doesn't it say like a husband of one wife?

Yeah, it does.

And so does deacon, just below that.

We should keep reading.

And Paul affirms uh female deacons in his letters and has to do with the quality and character of relationships that we have with one another.

And then we get to the interpretation and his difficult text, and really the most difficult one is 1 Timothy 2, 8 through 15.

And the question is, is Paul, is this situational or universal?

Was Paul addressing a specific situation in a specific church, or was he establishing a universal principle for all churches at all time?

Let me just pull out one of the verses, it's 1 Timothy 2.12, uh, because this would be like pulled out and it'll be like, I do not permit a woman to teach or assume authority over man, she must be quiet.

Ooh.

Paul, that's strong.

Let me, I we we'll dive into it more and more fully, but first, when we read the Bible, we always want to read it in context.

What is the context of 1 Timothy?

Paul is addressing false teaching and the introduction of false doctrine in the church of Ephesus and guiding Timothy, his young protege, in this.

Secondly, we want to look at the words that Paul's using and understand it's called exegesis.

What is he trying to say out of the text?

Now, the interesting part is to assume authority there is like we kind of realize like when Jesus said, all authority has been given to me, we think it's the same word.

That word authority is a little Greek thing here for you, excusia, that's used over 120 times in the Bible.

This word authority, it is it's the Greek word athatane.

Uh, it's used once in the Bible.

In fact, in ancient Greek uh like out extra biblical writings, that we can only find this word used about 12 times.

It's a very rare word.

In classical Greek, that word actually meant to murder.

It has this idea of coercive domination, manipulation.

Paul's actually addressing something that is different than uh we might think.

And then you get the context.

What is the cultural context?

Uh he's writing to Timothy in Ephesus.

Ephesus hosts one of the ancient seven wonders of the world.

It was the temple of Artemis.

People came from all over, and we know quite a bit about the Artemis worship from an ancient novel written in the time of Paul in 100 AD, uh, called Ephesia.

Oh man, I gotta get to saying it.

If I had it in front of me, I could say it better.

But Ephesia, there it was.

Um, I saw it in my mind.

And what you'll notice is earlier in his prohibitions, the very words that he used are in Ephesia connected to Artemis worship.

It actually will unpack it, but you go, like, oh, it makes so much sense that he's addressing a false doctrine that is coming into the church through people who have come to know Jesus and bringing in their expectations and assumptions and their ideas, and he's bringing that.

So now here's the thing that was so powerful: was Paul addressing a specific situation or universal principle?

We brought in Dan Kimball, who spoke here earlier, he came to this cohort, he got the um egalitarian position, and then we brought Diane Comer, who we love, and she brought the complimentarian position, and something they did independently, they're one month uh you know apart.

They they both said this, and this became the posture in the heart of everyone in the cohort, is they would present their position, why they believed what they believed, where they landed, and they had they both said this almost verbatim.

I may be wrong, but my conviction is the humility to hold this with an open hand and go, This is my best understanding and where I land and why.

But I also can hold, I'm I may be wrong.

I'm pretty confident on this, but but I'm not gonna die on this hill.

And for them both to share that, in fact, uh in our cohort, it started to become a thing because we had everyone share after nine months of study, they each got to share where they landed and why.

And every single person took that posture.

I may be wrong, but this is where I'm landing and why.

For us as a leadership council, after a year of prayer, study, discussion, discernment, we came to the conviction that we believe awakening uh is strongest when qualified men and qualified women use their gifts to help shepherd, discern, lead, and care for this church family as elders.

We recognize faithful Christians come to different conclusions on this issue, but after sitting at the feet of Jesus together, this is where we believe he has led us.

Unfollow winning over oneness, unfollow outsourcing your thinking.

And then I just want to simply close our time with how I close the cohort's time.

Unfollow a pick and choose version of the Bible.

We do this, I do this, it's easy to do this.

Unfollow a pick and choose version of the Bible.

We go, like, I like this part, I don't like this part, I'm gonna choose this, but I'm gonna ignore this.

Instead, go, you know, what does Scripture say?

And I'm just gonna begin to go, okay, instead of asking Scripture to adjust to my life, we're going to adjust our life to what God's word says.

And so this is exactly how I closed our cohort time, and I want to close it with you.

We get so focused on a couple different passages from Paul, understandably so.

But let's be careful not to magnify a handful of texts while quietly neglecting the rest of Scripture.

I've been especially convicted by the fact that six times we are commanded, commanded to greet one another with a holy kiss.

I wonder what would happen to our church if we brought this back.

What if it isn't cultural?

What if it's for today?

Now, maybe the application isn't the same.

But think about what's underneath it.

You can't obey that command at a distance, you can't do it anonymously, you can't do it without embodied presence, affection, family-level belonging, and relational courage.

I think we'd be less connected and more, or less disconnected and more caring.

Just so you know, I'm not the touchy filly type of person.

I do want to do this better though.

My guess is the best application today isn't a kiss.

That'd be awkward, but a hug.

It's probably a hug.

If you're comfortable, only if you're comfortable.

Maybe give somebody a hug on your way out.

You can do the side hug.

But it raises the question: why do some commands make us reach for cultural context immediately while others we apply without hesitation?

A whole Bible approach forces humility, reminds us that scripture forms us not just by the verses we debate, but by the practices we embody.

And that faithfulness often looks less like winning an argument and more like learning how to love one another well.

So as a church, in this moment, as we continue, may we simply be like Mary and sit at the feet of Jesus.

And my prayer is that in Silicon Valley, people would start calling us Christians because we look so much like our Christ.

That we would be a people that love well, forgive the way he forgives, serve one another sacrificially.

And they'd know more about what we're for than what we're against.

And so, Jesus, would you make us this kind of church?

This kind of people.

Would you help us?

That come under your leadership, your guidance, that sit at your feet.

And we confess, I confess, there's so many times I want to get you onto my agenda, but God may we just get more of you.

For your kingdom's sake.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

Please subscribe to our podcast for access to every episode as they're uploaded.

And hey, we'd love to connect with you.

Take a next step by filling out our virtual connection card at awakeningchurch.comslash card.