What is a Pastor? Not a Woman, Part 1

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Welcome to the Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport. We are here to provide for you biblical interpretations and applications for the

Christian life. I am the Executive Director of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is just one of the over 50 vetted podcasts.

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What we're going to deal with in this series as we are starting, we started last episode with an overview of the series on What is a

Pastor? Yes, it is a complete rip -off of the title of the documentary,

What is a Woman? by Matt Walsh, because though we know what a woman is, there's also lots of debate on what a pastor is.

So what is a pastor? And what we're going to deal with today in this episode and in the next episode, what a pastor is not.

And focus on this and next week on a specific thing that a pastor is not, and that is a pastor is not a woman.

Now, it's going to take two weeks because this is the number one issue that has to be addressed on what a pastor is not.

We'll get into other things on whether a pastor is a street preacher, whether a pastor is someone within education.

We'll get into other things, but the number one issue that we have to address when we talk about what a pastor is and is not is to deal with the question of can a pastor be a woman?

And I'm just going to tell you right up front, the answer is no. A pastor cannot be a woman. I've made it kind of clear by saying what a pastor is not a woman.

So with that, what we're going to do this week is give you real arguments.

I've been collecting arguments that people make for women being pastors and preachers.

I have a little document that I keep track as I hear new arguments, and I put them in there and I keep adding to it.

What we're going to do is actually go through my document. And so the first one is going to be really non -biblical, somewhat biblical, but people are just making broad,

I put it under the area of excuses, but broad arguments that are not necessarily biblical to argue for a woman being able to be a pastor and or preach.

Now next week, we're going to actually go into the scriptures and deal with each of the passages that people use in scripture to try to defend women preaching.

Now I'm going to say again, if you disagree with me, hey, that's fine. I don't mind because we'll discuss your arguments as well.

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So with that, let's get into the arguments that are made. And I'm going to say, thanks to some listeners, we've added to this list because we got a couple more that were not on the list.

We got a couple of emails that are, well, those emails already covered things that we had, but we actually have two or three more that were added because of you listeners.

So we do appreciate that. So I want to get your feedback, info at strivingforeternity .com.

So with this, let me go through some of the arguments that people make. And with those arguments,

I want to be able to review them and give you a biblical interpretation and application to why

I'm going to disagree with these. So we have like 15, 18 of these that we're going to deal with.

So the first one that I want us to cover is this idea that if you claim, and this is what some will say, and I should say upfront in case

I didn't, that every one of these that are ones that I have actually seen online, gotten emails on, something where we have had to interact with it.

So the first is that if you claim that a woman cannot be a pastor, cannot be a preacher, that in itself is monogistic.

So the idea of someone who's monogistic is the idea of a person who hates, dislikes, or mistrusts women.

So that is the definition of the word. So let's deal with this. If someone is saying that a woman cannot preach, this would be true under one case, one case only, that they're saying it because they hate, dislike, or mistrust women.

Now, I'm going to say that there probably could be some people making that argument. There are probably some, and I've seen some over the years, people online people have called up on Apologetics Live and try to make the case that women can't be trusted and therefore they shouldn't be preachers.

I don't know many that would do it out of a hate or dislike of women, but I have had one gentleman who believed that women couldn't be trusted.

He tried to make the argument out of 1 Timothy 2 and claimed that God said women couldn't be trusted.

We'll get to 1 Timothy 2 in detail. But I don't think that's what it's saying.

Though there may be a very few people that have this view because they hate, dislike, or mistrust women,

I don't think we should make an argument based on something that is the minority view.

You don't make a belief or make an argument based on the extreme positions.

This would be an extreme position because the overwhelming majority of people who hold to a view called complementarianism versus egalitarianism, in case you ever hear those words, let me give them to you and define them.

Complementarianism is the idea that God has created complementary roles between men and women to function specifically within the church, that there's one role that God has ordained for men alone to do, and that would be the role of pastor and teacher.

So, egalitarianism is the idea that everyone is equal and therefore there's no distinction between men and women, and because of that, women can do anything men can do.

Those are the two terms, but the people that hold to a complementarian view do not hold to that because they hate, dislike, or mistrust women.

They do so because they believe, as they look at Scripture, specifically 1

Timothy, whether you're going to want to look at the qualifications in 1 Timothy or Titus, or be more specific to 1

Timothy 2 .12 and following, where it's explicitly clear on God's view of a woman being a teacher of men and the why.

We'll get to that, if not in this episode, next episode, probably both and more because it's an important passage to deal with.

So, as we look at this, this argument is not a valid argument because the people that hold to the complementarian view are not doing it because they hate, dislike, or mistrust women.

They're doing it because they see this as something that God has ordained in Scripture. So, when people make that argument, the thing to do is to go back to the definition and point that out.

Because a lot of what this is, is these are emotional arguments, and that's really what we're dealing with here today, is emotional arguments, and these arguments, though emotional, that doesn't make them wrong, just because they're emotional arguments doesn't make them wrong, but it doesn't make them right either, but what an emotional argument does, the goal of an emotional argument is to tug at the heartstrings so that you just feel like this is the way you should respond.

And so, this first one is one that is not logically valid because people are not holding to the view because of their hatred for women.

Another response I've heard, and I'm going to group these next two together actually, because they kind of fit together, women are just as good at public speaking as men, or another way

I've seen it is women can teach just as good as men. I want to be clear that, again, those who hold to a complementarian view do not make the argument based on ability.

It is not a question of how able a woman is. So, let me be explicitly clear.

There are women who are far better public speakers and far better teachers than I am.

So, it's nothing specific about me or any other man that puts them in the role.

It is because of the belief that what we see in scripture that we hold to this.

And that is the authority. The authority is scripture. Just because I've been mentioning 1

Timothy 2 quite a bit, maybe it would be good for us just to read this.

And this is what Paul, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, had written.

Why do I word it that way? Because this is not Paul's writings on his own. This is God's word because God has said this through Paul.

And he says, but I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet, for it was

Adam who was first created and then Eve. And it was not

Adam who was deceived, but the woman who was deceived falling into transgression.

That's the passage. And this is, by the way, just after the passage of what men should be doing in the church, praying, lifting up holy hands.

So, the issue that we see is the men are to be praying. He says, this is verse 7, for this

I appoint a preacher and apostle. I am telling the truth. I'm not lying. As a teacher of the

Gentiles in the faith of truth, therefore, I want men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without wrath or dissension.

So, you have men's roles, you have women's roles. Okay. This is how he lays this out.

And he has specific things for what the women to do. And if you look at this, he says the women are not to teach or exercise authority over a man.

This is in the context of the church. And as you see in here, what you have is a purpose clause in verse 13 and 14.

There's a reason for this. And the reason is not based in the culture. The reason he lays this out is based in the creation order and the sin order.

Adam was created before Eve, Eve sinned before Adam. That's the argument.

He's making that argument, basing it off of creation. So, this is not something that we're saying has anything to do with a woman's ability versus a man's ability.

So again, if I'm going to look at this logically, I have to come to the conclusion that the argument that women are just as good at public speaking as men, or that women can teach just as good as men, both of those are true statements.

Now think about it, they are. I've already said there are women who are better at public speaking than me, who's a public speaker.

There's better women than some men at public speaking or teaching.

But in the context of can a woman be a pastor, the issue is not whether a woman is better at it or not.

The question is, has God ordained it or not? And therefore, this argument is not logically valid because it's not addressing the issue that needs to be addressed.

The issue is not who's better at doing it, who's got a better talent. The real question is, what has

God said? Has God ordained it? That becomes the issue. So, we're going to get into it more, but we're going to keep working through these emotional arguments.

The third one that we have is, why do you think women are not smart enough to read, interpret, preach from their

Bibles? Okay, let's look at that and see if that is in the case of why a woman cannot be a pastor.

Am I saying women are not smart enough? Well, actually, no. I've kind of already hinted to it in the previous one.

I think there are women who are smarter than some men. And there's women who are smart enough to be able to read, interpret, and understand, even preach the

Bible to women. Notice the caveat. In fact, I know many women who speak at conferences and they speak to women and they are good preachers.

Why do they preach only to women? That's the issue. Should they be preaching only to women? Are they pastors?

Okay, let's address each of those in this one. So, why are they preaching to women? Because that's what the Bible tells them to do, not to preach, not to teach or have exercise authority over men.

That's what I just read out of 1 Timothy. So, when we look at that, can a woman preach at a conference?

If it's to other women, sure, why not? Does that make her a pastor? No. So, what is a pastor?

Well, to make an argument that a pastor can be a woman because she is smart enough to read, interpret, or preach from their

Bible is, again, just like the previous one, a logical fallacy because it has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

It's answering something that's completely different. The fourth argument that I have heard and received is this one, that women will respond to the gospel presented in a way that they can relate to, and men can't do that.

So, this is an argument where we need to have women preach and be pastors because they can reach other women.

This is the notion that we end up seeing that's very common, that only women can teach and counsel women.

Only, what, people who have abortions can talk about abortion. I've heard that, basically, is

I, as a man, can't speak about abortion because I can't understand it because I'm not a woman, and only a woman can talk about these things.

How far are you going to go with that? Are you going to say that if you're going to get marriage counseling, it can only be by someone that's had an adulterous affair in their life to help counsel you in an adulterous affair in your life?

You really want that? Do you want someone that's going to counsel you when you have drug abuse problems, and it's going to be, hey, it only can be someone who has drug abuse in their background?

You see, we can counsel and teach and present the gospel the way that God lays it out in His Word, and know that we're doing it biblically, not because of our gender, but because of God's Word.

So can I agree that a woman may be able to present things to another woman in a way that they can understand?

Sure, that may be true, but guess what? Not all women, and what a lot of times people mean by that is women are more emotional, but that's a stereotype.

My bride, for example, is very much not emotional. She's very logical, and is one where she does not like women's

Bible studies because it's too much emotion. It's too much, as she would say, fluff.

She wants meat of the Word. Well, she's not going to be one, and I warn people that come to her when

I was pastoring, and people would want, well, you're the pastor's wife, I want you to counsel me, and I'd warn people, my wife will counsel you, but she's not going to beat around the bush, and she's not going to play nice.

She's going to tell you things and tell you straightforward because that's how she rolls. Now, most women would say, well, that's not the way women are.

Okay, so then not all women, just because they're a woman doesn't mean that they have some special ability to reach other women and present the gospel in a way that only a woman can do.

In fact, I would say there's some emotional men that might be more emotional than women. So again, is this proof that a woman can be a pastor or teacher of men, a preacher?

No, because it has nothing to do with it, because the argument is not, can they present the gospel differently?

Because I would argue probably all of us present the gospel differently. In fact, I present the gospel differently to probably every person

I present it to, because I'm wanting to reach that person. So I'm going to try to build a connection with that person and relate to that person different than most other people that I might meet because of something they say.

And so the gospel is not just, here's this outline that we are to follow. It's a conversation you have with someone.

Let's move on to the fifth one. And this is one that I received in the email. Quote, who did

Jesus appear to first? A woman! Exclamation point. Thank goodness she didn't believe she couldn't preach.

Unquote. Now, is it true that Jesus first appeared to women? Yes. By the way, it wasn't a woman, there were women.

When he rose from the dead, he first appeared to these women.

So the question then is, does that mean, because when you have an argument, what you want to do is break down what the person is saying.

This person is implying that if Jesus didn't appear to a woman, then women wouldn't have come and preached to men.

And if they didn't preach to men, what, that they wouldn't have heard? By the way, let's examine this again.

Is this actually saying that Jesus told the woman to go and preach? No, no, it isn't.

Is this within the context of a church service? No, no, it isn't.

Is this in the context of he's telling them to be pastors of a congregation?

No. It isn't. So again, in this context of trying to say, can a woman be a pastor or preacher?

It has no bearing. It is a red herring fallacy. Red herring fallacy is one that has nothing to do with the point.

You just throw it out there, usually for an emotional reaction. And that is what this one is.

Because did Jesus appear to women first? Yes. Why? I would argue Jesus appeared to women first because it validated something that in their culture would have been a problem.

In their culture, women did not have the respect that if a woman says something that it would carry weight.

So the fact that Jesus went to a woman actually counters the argument that we've already been dealing with from people about the view of the

Bible and Because in that day and age, going to the women first and Jesus sending the women to go and tell the disciples that Jesus rose and the disciples recording that would have been frowned upon.

And this would have been something that people would have, if that day looked lowly on the disciples, that they weren't first and that they're receiving the message from the women.

This tells you that God has a high view of women, a higher view of women than the view at the time of the writing of the

New Testament, people don't want to think about that, but that's the point. What we end up seeing is that at that time, there was a higher view of women in the

Bible than in the culture. And people use this to argue that the

Bible has a low view of women. Why? Because the

Bible says women can't be pastors in a church. By the way, in that passage in first Timothy two, the word for instruction that God gives us is that a woman cannot instruct is a general instruction where a woman cannot have authority, that authority is a forceful authority.

Why do I make that point? Because there are some people that say that that passage in first Timothy goes beyond the church setting, that presents a problem.

Why? Because Jesus is giving women a general instruction to give to men.

Therefore, Jesus, who cannot sin, cannot be telling the women to do something that he would call a sin.

So he telling them to go and give a general instruction means that women can give general instructions to men.

But not in church, which is what first Timothy is addressing, how to structure the local gathering of believers.

And that is the context of it. So the fact that Jesus appeared to a woman has nothing to do with whether or not she can be a pastor or a preacher, because this woman's argument that she emailed me, where she says, thank goodness she didn't believe a woman and couldn't preach, we have no record that the women did preach.

All we have record of is that the women went and told the disciples what they were instructed to tell them.

Now, some people will say, hey, it does apply outside the church, Andrew, because Jesus instructed the women.

They were not instructing the men. They were just carrying the message. It would be no different than women reading the

Bible. They're just reading it. They're not interpreting it. They're not preaching out. They're not teaching on it. They're just reading it and therefore they could do that.

Now, this is, I'm going to agree with that and say that, that, you know, you can, women can, you know, you could make that case here and I used to go to a church where they would have the women, though I didn't like this, but because women couldn't preach or teach or have authority, the women in the worship service would read the scripture.

Now, if it was men and women, I might not have had as big of a deal, but because it was only women doing it, because they wanted to lift the women up during the worship service,

I had more of an issue with it because they were marking it out in that way. I personally would prefer not to have that, to have all male leadership in the church setting.

But can I say biblically they couldn't do that? No, I think that would be no different than Jesus telling the women, hey, go and do this.

But he's instructing them what to do, and I would argue that I think that this is a valid argument to say that because Jesus is instructing the women to instruct the men, that I think they were doing instruction, not just relaying a message,

I think that woman could give general instruction outside of the church setting. Okay. Number six, we only have 16, so we'll have to pick up pace, but it is about equality.

Well, okay. The argument here is to say that if a woman can't be a pastor or a preacher, then what, she's not equal to men?

That is the way that people end up trying to make this argument. And as we look at this,

I want to point something out. When it was in Genesis chapter two, that God instructs

Adam not to eat of the tree of life, the instruction is that he can eat of any tree of the garden except one.

The one he cannot eat is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And what we see in chapter three, it says this, now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field in which the

Lord had created and said to the woman, indeed has God said, you shall not eat of any tree of the garden.

I'm going to come back to that. I first want to address what the woman says, because she gets things right that many people end up criticizing her for, but the woman said to the serpent, from the fruit of the trees of the garden, we may eat, but the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden,

God said, you shall not eat of it or touch it or you'll die. Now everyone focuses on the fact that Eve added the words or touch it, because that's not what

Adam was instructed. But guess what? Who gave Eve that instruction? See, the question is, did

Eve add to that or did Adam add to that? Could it be that Adam said to her, hey, don't even touch it.

And she's taking that as the word of God, because she heard it from Adam who heard it from God. That is plausible.

So I do not say that Eve added to the word of God, because I don't know that she did that.

It could have been Adam. That's not the point of this passage though, that I'm bringing it up. It's what the serpent said.

I want you to notice this, and I'm going to show you how this plays into this question of equality. Satan is saying, so you can't eat of any tree of the garden.

And the woman's saying, no, we can eat of all of them. We can eat of all of them, except one. The ploy of the devil is to say that if you can't do one thing, then you can't do anything.

And the issue when you're talking, saying about equality to say, well, if you say

I can't be a pastor or a preacher, then I don't even, I'm not even a human being, that's a big leap that there's not equality that we're different, you know, different classes of people.

No one's saying that. No one's saying women are not equal to men. We're saying that God has not ordained for women to be pastors and teachers.

If you have a problem with that, let me ask, do you have a problem with the fact that our, our constitution in the United States says that the president must be a native born

American citizen? He's got to be a naturalized citizen. I mean, is that a problem?

Why is, does that mean that anyone who comes to this country from another country is not equal to whoever is president?

Now, if I made that argument, you would say, no, Andrew, that's a stupid argument. Exactly. Exactly. Just because there is a constitution that states how some, how someone can fulfill an office.

Remember, pastor is an office within the church. God has ordained. You want to say it's a constitution.

God has ordained that role to be filled by men. He's not saying women are less than no one's saying women are less than not equal.

But what women do is say, if you don't let me do, if there's one thing you won't let me do, you're not letting me do anything.

That's satanic. Why? Because that argument comes from Satan. Eve corrected

Satan in that she was saying, no, we can eat of any tree, but one. You see, but this is the same thing.

If you're saying I can't be a preacher, then you're saying I can't do anything. No, no one's saying that at all. Now, number, number seven kind of goes along the lines of equality and says there is no male or female, no

Jew or Greek. There aren't gender distinctions in Galatians three 28.

Well, that's true. Galatians three 28 does say no male or female, no

Jew or Greek, but what's the context of that? Is that the context of who could be a pastor in the church? No, that's a context in how we get saved.

That there's no distinction between male or female Jewish person or Gentile, free or slave, everybody can come to Christ.

What's the big emphasis there on the Jewish versus Gentile folks? Because that was a big thing because the

Jewish people thought only Jewish people could get saved. So what he's doing is making it clear that in anything in life, every human being can come to Christ.

This is not talking about the roles within the church. This is talking about salvation.

That's what Galatians three 28 is in its context. So again, yet another red herring argument.

It's not logically valid for the argument. Therefore, we we've so far gone through seven arguments.

All seven have been logically invalid, are not dealing with the issue, and therefore we toss them.

Another argument that people make from the scripture was one that someone said, well, the

Bible says you are chosen people, a royal priesthood. So if we are all priests, then women can act in the role of preaching.

Okay. This is something where this is a different fallacy, not a red herring, but this is a fallacy of equivocation.

A fallacy of equivocation is where we take a word and that might have two different meanings and we give that because it's the same word, we use it two different ways, just because, by the way, in the scriptures, in the old

Testament, it was really clear that only men could be priests, by the way. So what this person is saying is, oh, see, we're a royal priesthood, male and female.

And if we're a royal priesthood, then women can be priests and therefore women can be pastors.

Is a pastor a priest? No. First off, the role of a pastor and the role of a priest are two different roles.

There's some overlap with them, but the priest was a mediator between God and man.

Part of the role of the priest was to offer sacrifices on behalf of the people to act as a mediator, now that Christ has come and been that final sacrifice.

What scripture says in the new Testament is we no longer need a mediator between God and man because we have the mediator,

Christ Jesus, and that is why we are now called a royal priesthood because we can go directly to God and don't need anyone between us, that is the meaning of us being a royal priesthood, that we do not have to go through a priestly class to get right with God, we could go directly to God through Christ who is

God. So that is what that meaning is that we're a royal priesthood. It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that you could be a pastor.

Now, are there overlap? Yes, because the priests were teachers as well. What's the pastor's role? Teacher. So they have some overlap in that, but the primary function of the priesthood was to act as mediators between man and God, and therefore, we are priesthoods in that sense, and that's what we see in Jeremiah 29, 29 and following,

Ezekiel 36, 25 and following, where we have the promise of the new covenant, and what do you see there?

That the Spirit himself would indwell us and we no longer need a priest, we no longer need men to go to because God will indwell us, that's what it means to be a royal priesthood.

So again, logical fallacy doesn't fit with the context, doesn't answer the question, can a woman be a pastor or preacher?

Number nine, if women are not allowed to preach, then they are victims of oppression and are not being allowed to serve

God fully. Does this, I mean, just listen to that. I mean, does that sound some emotional?

Yeah, there's a lot of emotional language in that, right? Victims, oppression, not being allowed, somehow you're limiting the woman.

Okay, simple question, are we who are holding to this complementarian view limiting the women, or are we saying

God is limiting the women? Good answer, I heard that, I know someone just screamed it out in their car as you were listening.

Yeah, it's God, God is the one who's putting that limitation. The same

God who created all of us, the same God who created the entire universe, the creator has decided this, and he's given us the reason in 1

Timothy 2, because of the creation order and the sin order.

So this is God's decision, not ours, and this is the thing that I have for us to consider.

We must consider this, this is what God has said. Now, if men are saying it, and they're not turning to scripture, then maybe you might have a case that men are somehow trying to victimize them.

If you're trying to extend this, now look, where do I think that there's the extension where this becomes an issue of victims and oppression, is when you have men that argue that all the women are in church, and there are some extreme cases of this, and that's why, again, you don't make a doctrine based on the extremes, but there are churches, very few, that argue that all the women in the church are to submit to any man in the church.

Well, that's not in the Bible, because it says very clearly that the women are to submit to who? Their own husbands, not someone else's husband.

So, and I've heard this in more cultic type churches, where they try to argue that the pastor, that all women in the church are to submit to the pastor.

No, no. If you're in a church that's arguing that, I would say run, because that's not what the

Bible teaches. So there are churches that do victimize women, but you know what?

I never noticed, by the way, just a side note, I never hear any of the people that would make this argument about being victims of oppression.

I don't see them ever calling out Islam. Islam's really clear that a woman can be raped, and she shouldn't even have the right to speak and defend herself in court, because her voice doesn't matter.

So you look at this and say, which one's more in the, not the extreme, but the commonplace?

Well, if you're going to want to talk about victims of oppression, Islam oppresses women far more than Christianity, but they don't make this argument with Islam, even though it's a standard doctrine within Islam, and it's an extreme doctrine that very few hold to in Christianity.

Just something to think about, but this is purely one of emotional language, victims of oppression.

Women are not oppressed because they're not preaching. If you're going to carry that out, are you saying that every man in the church is oppressed if he's not the pastor, if he's not preaching?

Because if you replace women with men in this, if it's logically valid, it should be the same.

If men are not allowed to preach, they're victims of oppression and are not being allowed to serve

God fully. Does that sentence sound right? People are going to go, no, that has nothing to do with it because they're going to say men have the ability, they could do that where the women are being told they can't do that.

No, I don't know any church that just says any man can just come up and preach. No, you actually have to be qualified to be a pastor.

Not any man gets to just be a pastor. There's qualifications. Are the men who are not qualified, are they victims of oppression?

Are they not being allowed to serve God fully? No, they can serve God fully in the function that God's created them to serve, in the way that God gifted them to serve, and that's the whole thing.

If God didn't gift the women for that role, guess what? They're not lacking in their service.

That gets us into number 10. The argument number 10 is, if God has gifted women with preaching and called her to do it, who are you to say she cannot?

Well, see, in this, this is a fallacy. We look at this, the premise, if God called a woman to preach, that is begging the question, why?

Because, and a logical fallacy of begging the question is when you assume your conclusion from the beginning.

See, the assumption is that God gifted a woman to preach to men. That hasn't been supported.

She just assumes the conclusion and then says, who are you to say she can't? It's not me saying she can't.

It's God saying she can't. And I would argue God wouldn't gift a woman to preach to men.

Why? Because he makes it clear they're not to fulfill that role. Now, could God gift women to preach?

Yes. You know, as I mentioned, Michelle Leslie, she preaches at conferences. I've been to conferences with her and she preaches to women.

Is she preaching? Well, I don't know. I'm not in there. But can she preach in that setting?

Yes. Another would be Amy Spearman, but both godly women. And when they do speak at conferences, it's only to women.

So what you have is the fact that God can gift women to preach, but that doesn't mean that they have to preach to men because if they're not preaching to men, they're not serving

God fully. No, they could fully serve God in the giftingness that God gave them by preaching to women.

If the followup of this is number 11, which is how do you know God has not called some women to preach and gifted them with this gifting?

This is really kind of right in line with the previous one. And maybe it should be combined.

But what we see with this one is we end up seeing very similar to what was before.

God may gift them to preach, but not to preach to men. That's the whole point with this.

The issue is not whether she's gifted to do it. It's whether God has ordained her to do it to men.

What about children? We see very clearly in scripture that women are to instruct their children. Is that church?

Well, we don't see women instructing children in church. Can a woman instruct children in church?

Yeah, maybe they can instruct young boys in the church setting.

But when you look at Timothy being instructed by his mother and grandmother, that was in the home setting, not in the church setting.

And the question we're talking about is can a woman be a pastor or preacher where? In the church.

So again, this idea of the giftedness isn't enough. But then there's a different one where it's not so much the giftedness, but it's worded this way.

The way it was sent to me was if a woman feels, quote, called to preach, unquote, but is denied this by the church, then that church is causing her to sin by not allowing her to be behind the pulpit.

Okay. Again, this is the same logical fallacy we dealt with in argument 10 and 11. It's begging the question.

This person is assuming the thing that they're looking to prove and they never support it.

They go right to the conclusion and that's a begging the question fallacy. It means it's an invalid argument to the question, but let's deal with it.

If a woman feels called to preach, well, if I feel called to be a police officer, do

I get to just be a police officer or do I have to qualify to be a police officer? See, our feelings don't matter.

The question is, has God called her to preach? Well, the answer in this one where behind the pulpit would be no, not unless there's only women in the congregation.

You see, the assumption is God has called the woman because she feels it.

You know what? Sinners feel like sinning and they feel called to it. Does that mean it's good to do?

No. And that's the thing. The issue is not whether she feels called to do it. It's whether God actually did call her to do it.

And God's not going to call someone to do something against his own word. And therefore it doesn't matter how you feel.

God's word's clear that a woman is not to do this. Why? Because he said it in 1

Timothy 2, 12 and following. And to say that a woman, the only place that you could preach is behind a pulpit and somehow you're being caused sin.

Well, guess what? I feel called to preach, but I'm not called to preach at my church every week.

The preaching pastor is. When I was the preaching pastor, I was called to preach every week, but I didn't always preach,

I mean, there are times other people would preach, but does that mean that all the other men in church who could preach were somehow in sin because they weren't preaching that week?

See, this is what you end up having with this argument that you have. And a lot of these arguments you're seeing are based off of this idea of social justice.

The difference between equality and equity. Do you know the difference? Let me explain. Equality is the idea that we all start at the same starting point.

In other words, if we're going to run a race, we all start at the same starting line. Equality is the idea that we all have to have the same results.

Therefore, in our race analogy, equality would say that we all must finish at the same time.

It has to be a tie. Now, is that possible? No, it's not practical in the slightest, because for equity to be true, every one of us must be president of the

United States, if anyone is. Every one of us must be a police officer, if any of us are. Every one of us must be the

CEO of every company, if any of us is. You see, that doesn't even make sense. God makes a distinction in Paul's writings between pastors and deacons.

We're not all pastors. We're not all deacons. There's different roles. He makes it clear in 1

Corinthians 12, there's different gifts. We all have different gifts. So equity would say we all have the same gift, but the

Bible says we all have different gifts. But the Bible says we all start at the same point. See, the

Bible teaches equality. We all have the same starting point. We all come to Christ the same way.

That's what Galatians 3 .28 is saying. We all have equality when it comes to getting saved.

We don't all have equity. We have different functions in the church because we have different giftings within the church.

We're not all called to preach. And if somehow someone feels like they should be teaching doesn't mean they should be teaching.

There's plenty of people that are in churches. They come into a church and they feel they're called to preach, men included, and they shouldn't be teaching because they don't even understand doctrine.

They just like to be heard. So the fact that someone feels they're called to preach doesn't mean a church is causing them to sin by following God's word.

See, the question in this one is not what does God say? They start with the assumption that women's feeling that she's called to preach is all that matters.

And therefore, what is the authority in this person's life? Well, it's not the word of God.

It's their feelings, what they feel rather than the word of God. God says she shouldn't do it.

That's all that I care about. I don't care about my feelings or your feelings or any of our feelings. When we compare it to what

God's word says, when God speaks, my feelings go away because God has spoken. And that's what we have to do.

We have to submit ourselves to scripture. Do I personally care whether a woman is a pastor and teacher?

Personally? No, it doesn't affect me personally, but God's word has spoken on it.

And so I'm going to say what God has said. That brings up number 13. Number 13 is that people say that Paul was speaking of a cultural situation in 1

Timothy 2, 12 and following, and it no longer applies to us. Most often what people will say is that what people are doing is

Paul was arguing about these loud, ruckus women that were disturbing the church service.

And he was trying to say they have to be quiet. And it was just because of the culture of Ephesus. Well, then the question

I would have for you is why in verses 13 and 14, does Paul give the purpose clause of this instruction being the creation order and the sin order, he's not basing it on culture.

He's not saying you're being too loud. You should be more like the other churches. No, he, and the way people argue this is that when you have a synagogue setting, the synagogue, the men and women would worship separately.

And so here now you have this Gentile setting and the women and men were together in the worship.

And so the argument that people make is that Paul is saying that because of this now mixing of men and women in the service, the women who are used to more livelier discussion during the teaching time are applying that to the men and the men are used to just lectures where the women are more used to teaching and they can ask questions or they could jump up and say things and that's not being allowed.

But that's not the argument Paul makes. Paul makes the argument that Adam was created first and Eve was deceived and sinned first.

So he bases it in the creation order, not the culture. So again, the context of scripture answers this.

Now we'll probably deal with this again next week because this is the one of the first ones where people are making, trying to make out of all these arguments, where people are trying to make a biblical argument.

This one's not purely an emotional one, but I wanted to include it anyway in the emotional arguments because people often use this as the way that they argue it is sometimes emotional.

So this will be one we'll include in both. All right, women can be pastors over children's ministry.

This became more popular, I guess, with the SBC when they tried to say women ministers that are ministers of, they call them ministers or pastors over the children's ministry.

And we got a letter this week from someone up in Alaska who was in a church where what ended up happening was that there was a pastor of children's ministry.

And the question that I ended up asking with that is that I would end up having to ask is, was this quote unquote pastor in the elder meetings?

If they're going to argue, if a church is going to argue that they are just pastors in the realm of children and they have authority in that area over the children, the one distinction is going to be, okay, first off, you're giving them a title for an office that God's word says they shouldn't hold because they can't be qualified for that office.

According to 1st Timothy and Titus, we'll see that later in this series when we talk about what it means to be qualified as a pastor, but it's a, to be a one woman, man means they're men, to be a pastor, it's a pastor, bishop, overseer.

They're all masculine words there. And so the role is when a man desires to be a pastor, he desires a good thing.

So there's nowhere in scripture where we see a woman being a pastor, but if you're going to try to say, oh, they're a minister of children's ministry, or that you want to give them the title of pastor so that they're an authority over this area, well, the one question is, are they in the elder's meetings?

If you have pastor's meetings and they're there and they're in the meeting, having a vote with the men, then they are not functioning in the way of being just over children's ministry.

So it's not just a title, as people say, I'm giving air quotes about the word title, but some people say, oh, it's just a title.

They're not actually having authority. Well, we'll know that if they have a vote in the rest of church decisions, because if they're in the pastor's meetings making decisions with the rest of the pastors, then they are functioning in the role and office of a pastor, and that would be unbiblical.

If you're going to say it's just a title, I would say, well, shame on you for giving women a title that adds confusion in this issue.

Come up with some new title, leader. Don't call them a minister, because minister has the same connotation in our day and age as pastor.

Call them a minister of children's worship. No, don't do that. It's like saying pastor of children's worship.

Just call them the leader, call them the coordinator, call them anything else that doesn't blur the lines between women being pastors the way men are pastors.

So that one is how I would say to handle that one. And this is again from someone that we got this week, a woman who is from Alaska.

So these are two new ones that were added, but having a woman who is preaching, the thing that they ended up seeing was that the pastor had a woman in children's ministry who then was given the pulpit to preach, and the argument was women pastors in the church could preach because they're under the authority of the senior pastor.

You'll hear this sometimes that the wives of pastors can preach because they're under their husband's authority.

Just show me where it says in 1 Timothy 2, 12 and following, women cannot give instruction to men or have authority over men unless under the authority of their husband or pastor.

Yeah, that's not there. What you're doing is reading something into scripture that doesn't exist.

And when you're doing that, you no longer have God's word, you have man's word. So we don't want to do that.

We don't want to read into scripture something that is not there. And so it's not a matter of whether she's under someone else's authority.

I would actually disagree with the argument anyway, because I would say that there is no hierarchy within the pastorals.

If you have a pastoral board, you should have a pastoral board. You should have several pastors in a church and they all have equal authority.

So if you have a pastor, he's equal in authority to every other pastor in the church, I don't, that's why

I don't like the term senior pastor. You could have a preaching pastor because it defines his role in the pastoral staff or pastoral team.

But the reality is, is your pastors should have an equal authority. So when they get together, all of them have equal authority in the decision -making.

So you can't have someone who is under the authority of some other pastor in that sense.

Okay. Maybe you can make the case, okay, if you have a preaching pastor, he's the authority in that area, so someone's under his, under his authority in that area, okay,

I could agree, you can make that case, but you can't make the case that a woman could then preach when

God's word makes it clear that she can't because of the creation order and sin order. All right.

So this is number 16, our last one. Didn't know if I can make it through all 16 in one episode.

Now you see why we're going to do the others in a whole nother episode. By the way, in this document that I'm referring to, that's page one of four pages, we're going to see if I can wrap up all of this in just one more episode.

I don't want to have to go three, but we may have to. So number 16, I'm going to read this. This was an email that I got and let me read the email and I will let you decide if there's a little bit of emotion in here and people are going to say,

Andrew, you're poisoning the well because you just said that before reading it. I already said that because I said all of these are emotional arguments.

So, uh, I, I think if that's the case, then I poisoned the well from the beginning, just in what I, I claim them.

But I think I gave throughout this arguments for where I thought there was good points that could be made points that are, even though I put it in the area of emotional arguments where I think they aren't completely emotional, where you can say that.

So I'm trying to be fair, but you decide with this one, as we discussed this last one is the email quote.

I have a need. Please stop maligning women pastors in your memes.

I have been called and ordained by God. I am conservative and pro -life.

I pastor a small congregation that no man would take because the salary is very low.

Women were never maligned by our Lord. Now your meme about quote, not a pastor, not a church unquote has stirred up a hornet's nest on Facebook Calvinism.

The group that chose that chooses you. Does this serve the body of Christ?

What is gained? This diminishes what should be our common efforts to combat

Satan and reach the culture. God hating publicity. If, or pop,

I'm not sure what word she actually meant there, but publicity, popularity, not sure.

Uh, if you, uh, if the spirit gives me gifts to preach and pastor, who are you to ignore that and criticize?

May the peace of Christ and his truth be with you, Karen GC, unquote.

Okay. There's a lot to unpack here. And so an hour into the episode and I do sound that's a lot to unpack, but we've covered a lot of this already, but I want to go through and unpack some of this.

And so let me give you the context of what this is. There was a meme going around from a comment that I made at a conference in the

Philippines when I was asked about what to do with women pastors, uh, you know, the issue had come up and, and I had said that if there, if you're going to a church with a female pastor, she's not a pastor and it's not a church, and that became a meme that was spread around and it made it into this

Facebook group called Calvinism, the group that chooses you. And she was very upset, obviously.

And people are going to complain. Hey, you were reading emotional, the emotion into it. I think I was reading the emotion pretty fairly into it.

I can read it in a monologue, but you know, I think she was pretty upset just by the words, maligning women with your memes.

Now look at how, so, so there's the emotion to it, but by the way, she's, she's ordering me to do something, by the way, stop maligning women.

I'm not maligning women by doing that. Now this gets into some of the things we've already built upon with this.

That's why I saved this one for last, because I don't have to go through all the stuff, but I'm not maligning women. I'm telling you what

God has said, and that's not maligning women because God doesn't malign them. I agree with her.

Our Lord doesn't malign women. But are you maligning pastors when you say that they must be women when

God says they haven't been? Now look at the argument she makes. The argument she makes is she's conservative and pro -life.

Is that the argument we should be making? That women can be pastors because they're conservative and pro -life?

No, that's not what defines a pastor. God's word is what defines a pastor and God's word defines a pastor as a man.

So it doesn't matter that she's conservative and pro -life, but we got the problem of begging the question when she says,

I'm pastor of a small congregation, she's assuming her conclusion, but then she says, no man would take that church because of the low salary?

Low salary? Wow. I think the most I ever got paid pastoring a church was $10 ,000 a year.

That's a low salary. The least I got was, oh, nothing. Yeah. I pastored a church and didn't get paid anything.

That's less than she's getting paid. So there are men who are willing to pastor churches on not only a low salary, but no salary.

So the argument that she has is, and this is the argument. Well, what if there's no man that will pastor the church? A woman has to do it.

No, then don't have the church. When I was in the Philippines and another meme that upset some of the women online was when this became a meme was when, when someone asked, we were trying to rapid fire questions.

We had a lot of questions to get through in the Q and a, and they wanted us to move a little quicker so we could get through them all. And so in my argument to be quick, quick witted could get you in trouble.

But the question was, what do you do if you go to a church with a woman pastor? And if you can't find a man to, to preach, to be the pastor, what should you do?

And my answer is fire her, shut down the church, right? If, if you have a woman pastor, fire her.

She's not a pastor. If you can't find a man to step up to that role, shut down the church, go somewhere else.

If that is the evidence that God's, that God's clear, that church shouldn't continue.

If you have no man to step up to the role that God has ordained men to do, then

God doesn't want your church open any longer, or God's going to bring a man to do that role. But the argument that a woman must step up to that role is assuming a whole lot of things in there to justify the role of a woman being a pastor.

And so I'm sorry, but if you want to know what to do when a man doesn't step up to that role, shut the church down, go somewhere else, find another church.

Maybe what you need to do is start praying real serious that God will bring a man to do that.

But then look at what she ends up saying in this. And because this is, again, is some common things that we end up seeing.

Does this serve the body of Christ? This is the emotion. Does it serve the body of Christ? Yes. Obeying God's word serves the body of Christ.

Disobeying God's word, as Karen is doing in this role, doesn't obey, doesn't help the body of Christ because she is the one in sin serving in a way that God has not ordained her to do in a way that God would say is sinful because he's made it very clear she shouldn't do it.

Therefore, no, what she's doing doesn't serve the body of Christ. In fact, when she says that we should, that diminishes our common efforts to combat

Satan, well, we're not here to combat Satan. We're here to glorify

God. And when you serve in a role that God says is wrong, you're acting as part of Satan.

She's the problem. Why? Because what she's doing is undermining

God's glory by weakening the church in what its role is.

So if she says they want to reach the secular, you're not going to reach the secular by acting like them.

If you want to reach the secular, glorify God. When you glorify God, we are different than that secular thinking.

She's stuck in the secular thinking. And so what you see with this is that you have to say, what does

God say on the matter? That's all that matters in this. God has spoken on this.

And we are to obey our creator. Guess what? He's omniscient.

He knows all things. He knows more than you. He knows more than me. So when he has said these things,

I don't need anything more than what he has spoken. I'm good with what

God has said. And so as I look at her argument, and she's making the same argument we addressed, the spirit has given me gifts to preach and pastor.

Says who? Says her feelings, not God's word. So who am I to ignore that or criticize?

It's not me ignoring it or criticizing it. It's God's word in 1 Timothy 2, 12 and following.

God has said he has not given you those gifts. God has said this. He's the one criticizing you,

Karen. And unfortunately for Karen, she's going to be stuck facing God.

She may be a believer. I'm not going to question that. I don't know. But she may be a believer who is being disobedient to God.

I have a hard time believing that a woman is going to be in the role of pastor and continuing that role as a believer, because I think the

Holy Spirit would convict her of that sin. I know a woman who was in a Lutheran church who was a pastor, felt she was gifted by God and called by God and went to seminary and pastored, if you want to say that, pastored a church and then got saved and realized what she was doing was wrong and left that role, left that church because she wasn't biblically qualified on two counts.

One, she wasn't saved. She was a new convert, but she was a woman. And what convinced her?

The word of God. She said, well, Andrew, that's what the word of God says. I'm never going to do this again.

So this is something that I think this email really captures a lot of what we end up seeing with this. And I know

I went a little bit longer, but there's a lot in this, in these emotional arguments. Next week, what

I want to do is I want to cover biblical arguments that are made, arguments that people try to make from the

Bible. And I want to do that so that we can look at that and examine that.

Now, you may disagree with me on some of these things. Hey, great. Email me. Info at strivingforeternity .com.

Email me so we can engage with that. Maybe as I wrap up this series, if you email something on an episode, maybe

I'll wrap up the series dealing with answering some of the questions that we get or challenges that we get in email.

So feel free to email us about this. Info at strivingforeternity .com.

We'll continue this next episode, dealing with the biblical arguments for women being preachers, and we're going to examine those things.

And I'm going to argue, I don't think the Bible says what you think it says. And that's a wrap.

This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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