Sarah (Hebrews 11:11-16 Jeff Kliewer)

Women's Ministry Announcements and Upcoming Bible Studies

So, July 6th, there is a continuing Bible study in the Book of Jude for women. Jill Deacon is leading that, and that is at 9 .30. June 11th, July 6th, there's a Bible study, fellowship, and a religion conference on Friday.

Please see the show for more information on that. Please stay engaged for women also. There's a women's fellowship ministry. Precious Stones, there's a fellowship event in July as well, from 7 to 9. And if you weren't aware, also, there is a Bible study being held right now for women, by Kimberly, going to the Book of Matthew.

The Praise of Psalm 133 and the Character of the Psalms

So, lastly, Psalm 133 says, Ninei matod o manayim, Shevetayim, from Yahshua. Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brethren to walk together in unity. As we look at the Book of Psalms, it's a collection of 150 psalms, and it's covering laments, it's covering praise, and a lot of us will turn to the psalms when we're in a low point of life, but Psalm 23, we read the psalms when we're struggling.

But if you look at the Book of Psalms, the overarching theme of psalms is praise. The word praise is found in the psalms 175 times, and when you see that, if you look at the Hebrew Bible, the name of the Book of Psalms is called Sefer Tehillim, which means the brightness of praises.

And each, it's divided into five different books, and each book has an apsology of praise. And the entire psalms, as with Psalm 150, were the praises. Praise the Lord, praise God in the sanctuary. Praise Him in His mighty heavens.

Praise Him for His mighty fields. Praise Him according to His excellent grace. Praise Him with trumpet sound. Praise Him with lute and harp. Praise Him with tambourine and dance. Praise Him with strings and pipe.

Praise Him with sounding cymbals. Praise Him with loud clashing cymbals. Let everything that has breath. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord. Let's pray as we continue. Father, we just offer our hearts before you and thank the Lord for your goodness.

And as we worship and praise you, we want to focus on your character, Lord, and not our concerns. We owe nothing else to you.

Thank you, Lord, for your care, and we ask our cares upon you to take care of us.

Thank you for your steadfast love, your faithfulness, your goodness, and your mercy. We thank the Lord that your mercies are new every morning. We pray for you. Bless this time as we worship you and look upon you, we offer our thanks for our God.

We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Worship, Submission to God's Word, and the Authority of Scripture

All right, let's all stand. Heavenly Father, we just come before you with anticipated marks. What we're gonna hear today, your word being preached in truth and in power. Holy, holy God, we just, we bow our hearts and we bow our knee before you and lift you up in praise for you are worthy.

All the praise we can give you.

Our sinner, the king of glory, the king above all kings. Our sinner, the king above all kings. His amazing grace.

Thank you that you would draw us here this morning, and we recognize that we are here not by any merit our own, but by the sheer mercy of a gracious God. Thank you so much that you would welcome us into this place to worship you in spirit and truth.

Now, Lord, as we open your word, we pray that you would speak to us and correct our thinking. We pray that we would never approach you as a judge over you, that we would read your word and make judgments upon you, but rather that we would sit under you and be judged by you.

My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Fearful and terrifying thing it is to be judged by the living God, and yet good because you show us the way to be saved.

So now, Lord, we pray that we would come under your authority that your word would chastise us and correct us and train us in righteousness. In Jesus' name, amen. It was the late 1950s. The place was Guatemala.

Now, prior to the 1950s, Guatemala was almost 100 Roman Catholic. They believed in the gospel of sacraments, of maintaining salvation and justifying oneself through the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church.

But something changed in the 1950s. In the 1950s, Protestant missionaries were welcomed in the country, and they really began to make headway. And my grandfather, Bill Wagner, was on the forefront of that.

And so my mom told me stories growing up, and my grandfather told me stories of the things they saw. Now, when the gospel is first penetrating into a new territory, there are often things happening that are beyond the ordinary.

My grandfather would always tell me the story, and I would ask him to tell me, about the blind boy that he saw healed when his uncle Fred came to town. He said they were at a train station, and there's this little boy who had eyes that were actually completely shut, and there were even little gnats around his eyes.

And Fred laid hands on him, and his eyes were open right before their eyes. They saw the healing of a blind person. Now, that's a long time ago, and it's hard for me as a 21st century American to imagine that such things happened, but my grandfather said he saw it with his own eyes.

And my mom tells me the story of one time when a demon-possessed person came into their home. My grandfather welcomed him right in. He had long claws. He was on all fours and shrieking, and my grandfather cast the demon out of the sky, and he walked out on two feet.

These are the stories I grew up hearing from my grandfather and my mom. Another one, they were on a mountain. See, back then, they would send the kids to missionary school, like kind of a boarding school, and the parents, the missionary parents, would go from village to village preaching the gospel.

And so my mom was in Huehuetenango, out in the mountains of Guatemala, and on one of these journeys, she was in the back seat, and Fred was there again. Fred was in the front seat, and my grandfather was driving, and as they started to go down the mountain, the brakes gave out, and so he was pumping the brakes and nothing, and so he pulled hard on the emergency brake, and it didn't take.

So as they began to gain speed going down a mountain, Fred turned around in his seat, and all the kids were told to get down on the ground, but Fred turned and knelt, and he lifted his hands, and he said, in the name of Jesus, restore these brakes, and like that, they came back up.

Amen. And so my mom lived to tell the story, and I grew up with that story as well. My mom was in a boarding school for many years in Huehuetenango. You know, in difficult circumstances, in hard days, the result will be hard men, but I heard somebody say that hard men eventually produce a soft society.

Things become so comfortable, and I think the generation following World War II, the hard men, produced what I think was a soft society in America in which we still live. And so the dangers of Guatemala that my mom experienced as a missionary kid paled in comparison to the kind of dangers she faced when she got back to America.

She went off to college, and there at George Fox University at that time, they were still teaching sound theology. Not so today. Her sister, though, went to Ball State University, and there she was deceived by the teachers who taught that there are no differences between men and women.

And my aunt, she wanted to do great things for God, just like her dad, a missionary in Guatemala. She probably imagined things like Lottie Moon going to China, how women can do things too, and so she set her mind to become a pastor.

But before long, pastoring led to other compromises. See, the Bible says in 1 Timothy 2, I forbid a woman to teach or exercise authority over men. They are to remain silent in the churches. But compromising at that point, eventually she compromised in other areas and became a gay pastor, which sadly she has continued.

This, the daughter of a missionary. My mother chose an opposite course, and she sought to serve the Lord as a wife and to raise godly offspring. The one sister left her family behind in Indiana and went to plant churches in Florida.

The other, our family growing up in Florida, invested in her children. And so I remember growing up, my mom training us in the Bible and faithfully living out what she taught. Now, she was no pushover of a woman.

She was strong. When my dad was at the apartment complex building as men do, she was by his side, helping how she could, cleaning apartments. She did the books and would be up to 11, 12 o 'clock every night working.

And during the day, she was a stay-at-home mom, caring for us. I remember how she taught us the Bible. You know how boys, it was three boys. You know how boys have a lot of energy. Here's how she harnessed that.

She said, you can run in the house, around the kitchen, through the family room, and even jump over the couch, as long as you're quoting Bible verses while you run. And so jumping over the couch, we would say, hey, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Run, run, run, run, run. Come around, jump over the couch. B, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. C, call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.

D, depart from evil and do good. E, even a child is known for his doings. F, fear not for I am with you. Be not afraid for I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

I know these A to Z Bible verses because they're stuck in my head. I used to like to write a lot. And my mom trained me in that. She had a faith very similar to Sarah in the Bible. She trained us in righteousness.

But my question is, was it enough to hold up when I went off to college? A secular college in Florida, I went there to play basketball. Well, little did I know when I signed up for a religious studies class that the professor at a secular college wouldn't believe the Bible he was teaching.

One of the first classes, he said, turn to the resurrection accounts in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And he showed me the differences. In one case, there's two angels on a rolled away stone. But in another case, the angels are in the tomb.

So he cast shade on the Bible. Contradiction. Which was it? Were the angels up on the stone or were they in the tomb? As if angels can't be in two places or move from one place to another or be more than one angel.

There was no contradiction, but he undermined the authority of the Bible. One day he was teaching about women preachers because his wife was the chaplain at the school. And he undermined the text of second Timothy two.

And then he undermined the sexual ethic taught in the scriptures from Romans chapter one. So after class, I went to Tim Beal, the professor, and I said, please help me understand how are you reading Romans chapter one and teaching what you're saying?

And I'll never forget what he said. He said, when I come to Romans chapter one, I just read that passage against the grain. Against the grain. Which meant I read it how I want it to speak to me. Not how it is actually written by the ordinary use of language.

He read the scripture against the grain. Lord, protect us from such thinking. Well, I turned in my papers and he always gave me an A plus. Always an A plus. And he completely disagreed with everything I had to say, but he would write little marginal notes.

I turned in a paper and I cited this book that my mom sent me in 1998 when it came out, the revised edition. R .C. Sproul, The Holiness of God. I quoted in one of my Bible papers for this religious studies professor.

You know what he wrote on it? You're a far better scholar than R .C. Sproul, Jeff. Use better sources. A plus. Such is the forked tongue maneuver of the enemy. What was he doing there? To flatter me. Oh Jeff, 20 year old Jeff, you're a far better scholar than R .C. Sproul.

Right? Use better sources. You see, this is the maneuver of the snake in the grass. He flatters, he builds you up. But what he teaches is absolutely a lie. The Bible teaches very contrary to the ways of the world.

And the degree to which you believe the Bible is the degree to which you will be a stranger in this world. Back in 1990s, I was the minority at Eckerd College, but the majority of people agreed with the scripture.

In fact, do you realize that a Bergafell didn't take place until 2015? The legalization of gay marriage. Things are changing very quickly. But look around now. The view taught and believed by those who reject the authority of God's word as written has now become the mainstream view.

And we, brothers and sisters, who hold to the inerrancy of scripture and the clarity of scripture, the perspicuity. See, that's a good word to trip over. It means the clarity of scripture, that when God speaks, he speaks clearly.

And what he says can be understood. Not a matter of private interpretation, but a matter of God having authority over us. We are the remnants. We are the exiles. We hold a view that is contrary to mainstream America.

That's the reality in which we live. Turn with me to Hebrews 11. And today, we're studying Sarah, a woman. And it begs the question, what is biblical womanhood versus biblical manhood? And how can we look at Sarah in Hebrews 11 and understand what it is to live by faith?

So Hebrews 11, we'll see the equality of men and women before God, but also the distinct roles that God has created. Let's read Hebrews 11, 11 to 16. By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.

Therefore, from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants, as many as the stars of heaven, and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.

For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. They had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out. They would have had opportunity to return, but as it is, they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one.

Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. So the first thing to notice is the equality of Abraham and Sarah. Notice in the text, as we look through Hebrews 11, each hero of the faith is introduced with the same expression, by faith.

Verse four, Abel. Verse five, by faith, Enoch. Verse seven, by faith, Noah. Verse eight, by faith, Abraham. And now, by faith, Sarah. Sarah, like Abraham, comes to God in the same way as the men listed above her in the text.

The first thing that needs to be said about manhood and womanhood is that God made male and female equal in his sight. We are men and women created in his image. Genesis one, verse 27. We are all made in the image of God.

Secondly, in the fall of Adam and the fall of Eve, men and women who proceed from Adam and Eve, which is all of us, are together fallen in sin. All of us together stand in need of saving. Women are not more virtuous than men by nature.

All of us are corrupt by nature and by choice. Adam and Eve alike, Abraham and Sarah alike, in need of saving. But a promise is given way back in the garden that the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent.

And that promised seed is Jesus the Messiah. In Genesis 12, we were told that that seed would come through Abraham, that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through him. And just to show how precise God is in his prophetic word, in case you doubt that the things that God says are true, when Abraham tried to take Matthew to his own hand and he went to, not Sarah, but to Hagar, his servant girl, and impregnated her.

And from her was born Ishmael. He asked God that Ishmael would be blessed and that the promise would go through him. But God said, no, through Sarah, your wife, you will give birth to a son and his name will be Isaac.

The promise goes through Isaac. And then from Isaac, Esau and Jacob were together in the womb and God said that Jacob, have I loved Esau, was rejected. The promise went through Jacob, not Esau. And then Jacob had 12 sons and God specifically said in Genesis 49, 10, that the scepter shall not depart from Judah.

Of all the 12 sons, it was Judah uniquely that would carry forth this promise. And so we come along to King David, a descendant of Judah, and God again speaks in 2 Samuel 7, that the throne, the scepter would always belong to a descendant of David.

And both Matthew and Luke trace the genealogy of Jesus and sure enough, Jesus is a descendant of Abraham. And through Abraham, a descendant of Isaac, not a descendant of Ishmael, a descendant of Jacob, not of Esau, a descendant of Judah, not one of the other 11 tribes.

He is a descendant of King David, the son of David. And so the promise was given that the world would be blessed through a descendant of Abraham and specifically down a genealogical line. And so it came to be that Jesus was born out of a woman, born in no ordinary way, a virgin birth, through Mary, to designate him as that promised seed, the one who crushed the head of the enemy while being struck at the heel.

And so the promise was fulfilled that Christ was struck. He died the death that he deserved. He was hung on a cross, struck up for the world to see, and he bled and he died. That all who look to him will be saved.

And this is the promise, that if you believe that Jesus is Lord, confess your mouth and believe in your heart, you will be saved. That promise is the same for men and women, for children, for young, for old, for all the people.

The promise is the same. Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. So the first thing we need to say is that we are fundamentally equal before God, created in the image, fallen in Adam, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.

One man, so that out of the races three, Paul will say there is neither slave nor free, skiffy nor barbarian, male nor female, but we are all one in Christ. There is not a hierarchy, how do you? God created men and God created women and there is not a hierarchy.

Redeemed by the same blood. So first of all, notice that it is by faith that she's saved. She received power to conceive. There's a difference. There's no such thing as birthing people. There are women who give birth.

There are women who conceive. And in verse 11 it says she received power to conceive. Even when she was passed. So here's the difference between men and women. Women can give birth, men can't. There are also differences of role in the church and in the home.

God never called a woman to pastor a church. First Timothy two, he forbids such things. Does that make God a chauvinist? A misogynist? Or is God God? Notice there are differences. And when Sarah's faith is held up as an example for women, it is her submissiveness to her husband, which is idealized in the text.

If you don't like that, you need to argue with God, not me. First Peter chapter three, verse five and six. In your notes. For this is how the holy women who spoke to God used to adorn themselves. By submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord.

And you are her children if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. Sarah's example of the faith in the home is held up as one of submissiveness. That there is a headship in the home.

Now wherever the word kafale in the Greek is used in the New Testament, it denotes authority. In fact, that's also true in extra biblical literature from the first century. The word kafale referring to headship always denotes authority.

That in the home, there is authority of the husband and wife. Now that is not a domineering authority. It's not a trampling on your foot. It is a leadership. Look at the definition of manhood and womanhood as described by John Heifert.

I think he gets this right as he correlates biblical texts. He says, at the heart of a mature masculinity is a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, provide for, and protect women in ways appropriate to a man's differing relationships.

And of women, he says, at the heart of a mature femininity is a free disposition to affirm, receive, and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman's differing relationships.

And I think that's right. Leadership, headship, is not a matter of domineering, but of leading, which involves protecting, providing for, and making ultimate decisions, but with due consideration and counsel one to another.

Ultimately, though, it is a leadership role. Now, does that mean women should submit to all men? Absolutely not. The qualification of that definition said worthy men. I remember being in Kensington when we were missionaries.

One day, I was talking to some teenagers on Orleans Street, and on the corner of Jasper and Leaney, we looked over, and we saw that a man had pinned a woman against a wall. It was a pimp with a prostitute, and these 16-year-old boys and myself saw this, and we heard her scream.

Now, in that moment, you have a choice to make. If you run over there, you probably will end up in a fistfight, or perhaps you'll end up shot to death, bleeding on the ground, because he's probably equipped to defend himself.

But the choice you have to make at that moment is really whether life is more valuable than being a man. Those teenagers, 16 years old, and many of them had gotten into quite a bit of trouble themselves.

There was something instinctive in their young minds that knew they had to do something, and as soon as we heard it, all of us ran. And when we got there, there was a fist thrown, and the guy was wet, and the girl went in the opposite direction.

She was right not to submit to him. He was not a worthy man. But the question is, is life worth living if you're no longer a man? Our culture has taught men to be independent. And nowadays, more men than not would have stood there and watched her being abused by that man.

That's the product of a feminized culture. I would say I would rather die on the street than cease being a man. And men, that's how we ought to think. Manhood means protecting women. Manhood means providing them to get a job and work, and you provide for your home.

And headship means leadership. That means you train your children to worship the Lord your God, and you make sure they're there on Sunday morning to learn the work of God. To be feminine is to affirm that strength, and to nurture that strength, and to draw out, not seek to take authority over them, but to strengthen them in who God has made them to be.

This is the biblical teaching, and this is under attack in our culture. Now, we don't have time to spend in Genesis,.

Sarah's Faith, Submission, and the Promise of a Heavenly Homeland

But remember Sarah's story.

When God appears to Abraham in Genesis 12, verse one, the Bible says that God says to Abram. It doesn't say God said to Abram and Sarah. It says to Abram. That means in order for her to obey God's command, to leave her home and her family, and everything that she knew, and to go to a strange land, it required faith in God, but it required faith in God through Abram.

It required submission to his intention, to say, yes, honey, you've heard from God, and I'm following you. Wherever you go, I will. Your God is his likeness. Your people will be my people. It requires submission.

In chapter 17, the Bible says that the Lord appeared to Abram, and as the story unfolds, God changes Abram's name to Abraham, and later in the chapter, he tells Abram, Sarah will from now on be called Sarah.

You're not to call her Sarah anymore. How do you think that would go over in a modern home? He comes home visiting with God and says, honey, your name is now officially changed. You will be known as Sarah, no longer Sarah.

Get hit by a lightning in a modern home, but this is what happened. God appeared and said, I am no longer Sarah, the all-sufficient one. Abram obeyed, and in the very next chapter, chapter 18, Sarah does hear the Lord speak.

She from the tent, she laughs, but ultimately, she believed, and her faith is commended. She trusted God with a promise. Abram himself, the two of them aged, you do realize, he was already about 75 years old when told to go to the foreign land.

At this point in time, chapter 17, 18, he is 99 years old. She is going on her maiden, and yet being told that she would conceive, which means submitting to him. Maybe he'd run out of the marriage bed, but she had probably died at that point.

In fact, let's go back to Hebrews 11. If you look at verse 12, it says, there were one man, and him as good as his dad. This is an old guy. And then if you look at Hebrews 9, it's not fully in the text here.

He says, him as good as his dad, were born to send as many as the stars in the heavens. Well, look, the first thing to notice is, this is the promise that would uniquely give to them. In Genesis 22, verse 17, that very word he was used, you will have descendants like stars in the sky, more likely to stand on the seashore.

And so this is fulfillment of the promise. But he is called as good as his dad. Things are not looking unequivocally, but like this is impossible any longer. It's not possible, biologically, any longer.

And yet God had promised, and he will fulfill his promises. As I look at this phrase, him as good as his dad, I'm reminded of a comment by a daughter made in the car. Yes, okay. We were talking about this whole egalitarian thing, and everything must be equal, and she said, you know, dad, you have a group of the littlest ones in the nursery, and you call them the boss.

That's it. You have the stepping stones for the children. You have the living stones for the middle schoolers. The rock! You have the precious stones for the women. By the way, they are like the older step...

We don't have a group yet. Group name. But she said, what about the older people?

There's no group for the older people. I propose you start one, and you can call it the boss.

We gotta keep everything equal, right? That was well played. So notice, though, him as good as his dad, he'd be part of the process of our church, and a gift from him would come up in a sentence. Last, let's look at verse 13 to 16.

Very often, as we wait for the promise, here we are sojourning, waiting on Christ, his promise to come over the line, and yet we're still waiting. We live as strangers awaiting the promise. Verse 13, these all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on your earth.

Remember, Abraham's living in tents, as do Isaac and Jacob. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a home. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had an opportunity to return.

There's Sarah, 90 years old, still waiting, still trusting the promise, following her husband under his headship. Verse 16, but as if they desire a better future, that is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared them well.

He's not ashamed. Isn't it amazing that we would ever be ashamed of him? Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God and salvation. All who believe in the true Christ also believe in him.

But how often are we ashamed of God? Amazing that we ever would be. God is not ashamed to be called your God. Why? He sees you in the righteousness of his Son. Believing in Christ counts you righteous.

And as you live here, to the degree that you take him at his word, you believe every word that he speaks, you become strange. Some of you are saying, I was strange before coming here. I've always been strange.

Well, you'll become stranger and stranger, because the culture is leaving the standard. And as they depart, you will look different. As you hold to the word of God and the teachings, as it's given, not against the grain, but as it's written, you become an exile.

And you wait on the promise to be fulfilled. Our promise will be fulfilled in the new Jerusalem. Not this world, but the world to come. People who speak thus make it clear they are seeking a homeland.

So the world thinks that we need bigger and bigger government in the patriarchy and all oppressive structures. Right, so we need to centralize power to stop oppression. That's going to go well for us.

Good plan there. The world is pushing for the end of any kind of patriarchal system. One of the teachings that the Bible clearly brings us, but that the world absolutely hates, is that in the home, the husband is to be the head of the wife.

And in the church, the church leaders and pastors are to lead the congregation. And there should be subsistence to them. These ideas are considered to be oppressive. But the truth of the matter is that in Christ, there is freedom.

All of his promises are yes and amen. And when we walk in these things, we find the right thing in the world as God designed it. And the kind of blessings described in Psalm chapter one. God's way is better, but you will look like a fool.

And worse than that, you will be derided. And maligned, because you do not plunge with them in the same blood as this Haitian. You count yourself a soldier in your gear. And to the degree that you do that, is the degree will look strange on earth.

We are blessed in this church, big time. We have three women Bible teachers, who could be nationally known, but I thank God that they're not, because the limelight tends to twist and pervert what we're ordinarily good teachers.

In this church, we have Jill, who teaches on Tuesdays, a women's Bible study. In this church, we have a woman named Cindy, who teaches precepts. And this might be the most important thing for Christians to learn, precepts is about permanence.

How do you read the Bible? How do you interpret? How do you interpret? As God intended it to be understood. And so she teaches that precept study on Monday night. As I'm teaching now, we have a woman in the classroom named Kimberly, teaching through the book of Math.

In all these cases, women are using their spiritual gifts as the Bible intended, according to the book of Titus, teaching other women. These are good, beautiful things. And I'm blessed to have a wife that behind the scenes, probably does enough to be full-time in the church.

But she doesn't want that. She doesn't want the limelight. She would hate to stand in front of the lights and speak to a group of people. But she runs our Facebook page and our website and supports me in the things that I do.

And she raises our children while I'm at work. And she leads with women and encourages women in councils and serves her God within the sphere, the domain that she's called to serve it. It's the example of Sarah, lived out in our church in Pittsburgh.

And every woman who is living like a soldier in this culture, but serving her King within the sphere in which she was called. It's a blessing to her family and to her church. And if we will build up a church like this, our children will not die.

They will grow stronger than they did. And when they go off to college, they'll resist the lies of the enemy. God is building something powerful and astonishing because the culture wants nothing to do with what's happening and yet it grows.

The hand of God's favor and blessing on the church is owed entirely to his word. Amen. The degree that they are faithful to the word. That's the reason for what's happening here at Cornerstone. I'm glad that you want to be a part of it.

In closing, remember, God made men and women of the same value. We're fallen in Adam, but redeemed by the same precious blood. Equal. And yet there's roles that God has and these are good to be celebrated.

Distinction between the genders. Embrace those things and celebrate those things. But that is the path of life. Let's close in prayer. So Father, we have looked to Sarah as an example to us, an example of femininity.

We thank you that your word contains this teaching.

From 1 Peter 3, from Hebrews 11,.

From Genesis 12 and following. We have the example of Sarah. It is the example of a woman who submits to her husband and so to her God. We pray that the women of Cornerstone would be like Sarah. Their desire would not be against their husband,.