TPW 79 Biblical Womanhood Part 1

The Protestant Witness. This is Pastor Patrick Hines and I'd like to post today the first of a three-part series I did on biblical womanhood. I think I posted the ones I did on manhood on the Protestant Witness, but these are some of the most downloaded sermons I've ever preached and people have told me they were helpful and my heart really goes out to women in our society and culture today because of the lies of feminism and because of what's expected of them and because many of them are made to feel badly just because they want to, you know, get married and be a godly wife and have children and that's a great thing to desire to do.

Many are made to feel guilty just because they enjoy that sort of thing and really have a heart to do that. And it's very important that, especially if you have daughters, as I have seven daughters and three sons, but most most of my children are girls and God's good providence to me.

I have seven girls, so I've had to think a lot about how do you disciple your daughters to help them understand what it is that God expects of them and there are a lot of gender-specific passages. In fact, I'm going to put a link to an excellent book called Feminine by Design.

It's a very short book. It's just a very brief study of most of the texts of scripture that are gender-specific for women and it's by Scott Brown and it's just a wonderful little book and I've given out a lot of copies of it and a lot of people have told me it was very helpful.

But biblical womanhood is a beautiful and glorious thing. I have been blessed in my life to have a lot of women that have been very godly and a godly influence in my life. Most especially, of course, my wife, but most of the women that I've known in churches have been a huge encouragement to me and have been a wonderful example of godliness to me and have helped me greatly to be a much better minister, a much better husband, a much better Christian than I ever could have been without them.

And so women are an absolutely vital part of the church and of its ministry, so I hope that you'll find this first part of a three part of this three-part series to be edifying. Let's pray together now for the Lord's blessing on our understanding of his word.

Our merciful Father in heaven, we thank you again for bringing us here together and we thank you for your grace in doing so and for Jesus, our Savior and Redeemer, who has effectually called us and brought us to saving faith and repentance and granted us life and salvation.

Help us now hear from your holy word that we would be encouraged, that we would be challenged, that we would be rebuked if need be, and that your word would dwell in our hearts through faith. In Jesus' name, amen.

Creation of Woman as a Helper Comparable to Man

Please take your Bibles and turn to Genesis chapter 2. We have three passages we're going to read together this morning. Genesis chapter 2, verses 18 through 23 is the first. Genesis chapter 2, verses 18 to 23, here in biblical womanhood part one is the sermon this morning.

Genesis 2, 18 to 23, this is God's word. And the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone, I will make him a helper comparable to him. Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them.

And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept. And he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman, and he brought her to the man.

And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. The second passage is Deuteronomy 6, verse 7. I'm going to turn over there just a little bit to the right.

Deuteronomy 6, verse 7. Deuteronomy 6, verse 7. Just this one verse. Deuteronomy 6, verse 7. The Word of God. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.

And then one last passage, Ephesians chapter 4, verses 4 through 7. Ephesians chapter 4, verses 4 through 7, to conclude our scripture readings for this morning. Ephesians 4, 4 through 7. Ephesians chapter 4, verses 4 through 7.

This is the Word of God. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all.

But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. May God bless the reading of his infallible Word. A writer from a couple hundred years ago named John Angel James, who was a contemporary of Charles Spurgeon, a man who was identified by Spurgeon as, quote, an eminent man of God, end quote.

John Angel James wrote the following paragraph, quote, woman was the finishing grace of the creation. Woman was the completeness of man's bliss in paradise. Woman was the cause of sin and death to our world.

The world was redeemed by the seat of the woman. Woman is the mother of the human race. Listen closely. She is either our companion, counselor and comforter in the pilgrimage of life. Stop there. I am blessed to be able to say that most of the women I've known in my life have been exactly that for me, companion, counselor and comforters.

Or she is our tempter, scourge and destroyer. Our sweetest cup of earthly happiness or our bitterest drought of sorrow is mixed and administered by her hand. She not only renders smooth or rough our path to the grave, but helps or hinders our progress to immortality.

In heaven, we shall bless God for her aid in assisting us to reach that blissful state or amidst the torments of unutterable woe in another region, we shall deplore the fatality of her influence, end quote.

From the fall of man in the garden, gender roles have been distorted and twisted by mankind. The portrait of biblical manhood that we looked at for those three sermons, the leader of family worship, the watchful man who stands fast in the faith, who acts with courage, is strong, is a man of knowledge, is a churchman, is a man of integrity, a Christ-frizer, is not sexually immoral, is not prideful, is not governed by anger and is not selfish.

This has been understood and embraced by men at various points of human history more than at others. But in our day, sadly, the day in which you and I were born and lived, those attributes are almost unknown.

The same sad story applies to the biblical portrait of womanhood. It has been sadly distorted in our day. The great trouble the people of God have always had has been following instead of leading culture.

You need to understand that. That's always been the problem with the people of God. From the very beginning, our problem has always been that we're followers, not leaders. It is amazing how little vision there is among Christian people to set trends rather than following them.

To live distinctly biblically instead of seeing how close they can come to worldliness without stepping over the line. To stand out for following Christ rather than being like everyone else. To be leaders rather than followers.

That has to change on our watch. It has to. Over and over again throughout the history of Israel, the people of God experienced downfall after downfall by imitating their pagan neighbors. One of the reasons the Christian witness to the world is so weak today is that those professing to be Christians are so much like the world.

And for many churches, I'm ashamed to say I've done this before. It was a long time ago. It was 18 years ago. Sent out survey teams to neighborhoods to find out what kind of idolatry people like so they can do it in church.

Yeah, I did that when I was 22. Went and knocked on doors and asked people what don't you like about church and we'll get rid of it. What do you want us to do in church and we'll do it. You know what people actually wanted on those the people I talked to?

They said what would draw them to a church is a pretty building and can anyone guess what they wanted all the preaching to be about? Them. Can you imagine the absurdity of it? Knocking on doors and asking people questions like that?

That would be kind of like Israel sending survey teams with clipboards to the Assyrians and saying, hey, what kind of idols do you guys like? And we'll put them in our temple to try to evangelize you.

Evangelism, brothers and sisters, friends, does not happen when the church becomes like the world. It happens when the people of God are different. When they're marked out by biblical righteousness, biblical priorities, biblical obedience, and especially by love.

This is what wins opportunities to be evangelist for Christ. The imitation of worldliness, especially when it comes to male and female gender roles. The imitation of the world on those fronts is the death knell to the church and it's the death knell to evangelism.

Men that are biblical men, women that are biblical women, and families that are biblical families will be better positioned to engage in evangelism than any gimmick that church growth marketing gurus have ever come up with.

There is just no substitute for the real thing. There is no substitute for real biblical piety and godliness. When God instructed his people, he warned them over and over again in the Old Testament in ways like this.

Jeremiah 10 verse 2, the Lord said to the prophet Jeremiah to his people, do not learn the way of the Gentiles. And speaking of the destruction of the nation of Israel in 2nd Kings 17, in summarizing why it happened, it says, and they feared other gods and had walked in the statutes of the nations whom the Lord had cast out from before the children of Israel.

Why did God destroy Israel? Why did he exile them? Because they acted like their neighbors. They acted like them. They took on their priorities. They didn't lead them, they followed them. In Deuteronomy 18 verse 9, God says, when you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations.

When Peter preached his Pentecost sermon, he finished it by saying, be saved from this perverse generation. You and I live in a perverse generation. What is the theme of all those passages? And they could be multiplied indefinitely.

Don't be like unbelievers who are all around you. Do not desire to be like them and don't desire to be with them either. Proverbs 24 verse 1, do not be envious of evil men nor desire to be with them. And to the women here, I want to exhort you when it comes to the fact that we all live in a feminist culture.

In a certain sense, I'm a feminist preaching to feminists. It's all we've ever known. The whole culture is like this. We have to work very hard to divest ourselves from these things, from a worldview that says that women are identical to men, that there are no gender distinctions, that there are no distinctive roles between the genders.

You live in a culture that has done everything in its power to try to make you think that there's no difference between what men are called to do and what women are called to do by God. Do not care about what our feministic woman-despising culture, and that's what it is.

Feminism is the expression of hatred of women. That's what it is. Do not care what our woman-despising culture around you thinks of you. Do not fear them. Do not be envious of them. Do not desire to be like them.

Being looked down on by the world is a badge of honor by those who are held in high esteem by Christ for doing it. And make no mistake about it, men and women, our culture will despise you. If you exhibit the biblical attributes of manhood and womanhood, you will be reviled, slandered, and have all kinds of evil spoken against you falsely for it.

Jesus told us to expect that. He said in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake.

Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Do not fear the faces of people who do not like your biblical manhood and your biblical womanhood.

In fact, not fearing them is a sign that you are a biblical man. Not fearing them is a sign that you are a biblical woman. Gender assignment is from God. The roles we have are from God. He is most glorified when we love walking in his ways.

Forget what the people around you who do not love God and his word think. Forget what they think. If we believe the word of God is sufficient for all of life, as the scriptures tell us that it is, that it is sufficient to equip us for every good work, Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17.

One of those good works is being a godly woman. Amen? And I want to shout from the rooftops and to all of you, I want to announce to the world, God is really smart. And God knows what men and women were created to do.

You know why? Because he made them. The fact is, the life maker knows a lot more about life living than we do. And thus, we go to the word of God to find out what women are and what God created them for and what he asks of them.

The Woman as Helper and the Joy of Adam

So let's look back at your Bible. Look at Genesis 2, 18 again. Let's look at this glorious passage. So many applications, so many things to learn from this text. Genesis 2, 18 to 23. I'd like to read that whole text to you again, you're hearing here.

Genesis 2, 18. Look closely. And the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him. Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them.

And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper comparable to him.

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam and he slept. And he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, he made into a woman and he brought her to the man.

And Adam said, this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Okay, stop there. Adam, it seems was well aware that he was going to have a helper made for him, that he was going to have someone who corresponded to him soon appear.

Adam would have seen the animals as having mates. Remember, the animals had already been commanded by God to be fruitful and multiply. And so Adam, when he was naming the animals, he would have seen, look, there's corresponding genders here.

There's two of each of them and they're able to be fruitful and multiply. So the animals were already created with that sense of corresponding gender mates with which to be fruitful and multiply. However, male animals are never said to have helpers.

They only have mates. And all Adam knew was that God was going to make him a helper comparable to him. And so Adam must have been anticipating meeting her with great joy. And God brings a very large number of animals to Adam and he, he names them all.

And it's clear from the last sentence of verse 20, that Adam was looking and waiting with baited breath to meet his helper. Animal after animal comes by and he names it and names it and names it. And it says, but for Adam, there was not found a helper comparable to him.

And here we have a repetition of that word comparable. And that Hebrew word is very important. Negev, if you want to write that down. N-E-G-E-T-H. Negev. It means opposite correspondence. That's what the word means.

Opposite correspondence. And it is vital here that we understand that the woman that God was about to create would also be one who corresponded to Adam, not just physically, but also emotionally and spiritually.

That's one of the reasons the idea of same-sex marriage makes no sense biblically. You can't marry someone who is not opposite correspondence to you. You can't marry a mirror image of yourself. It's impossible.

It can't happen. We must be careful how also when you think about God making Adam go to sleep and then taking a rib out, this is not an operation in the way that we experience surgery today. There was no recovery time.

There was no IV drip. There was no post-surgery nausea due to anesthetic. Adam was simply put to sleep by God. God takes one of his ribs out and closes up the opening that he made. And remember, this is still in an unfallen world.

So there was no pain. There was no danger in any of this. All of this had been meticulously planned by God for the purpose of giving this precious gift to Adam. A wife, a friend, a companion, a helper.

And one of the great exegetical insights of this passage is that men need help. Do you agree with that? All the women here, the men you know, wouldn't you agree they need help? We do. All the men jump up and shout amen.

I'm kidding. Based upon what Adam says in verse 23, it seems clear that God told Adam directly what he was about to do. Adam knew that one of his ribs had been removed and then built into this woman. That Hebrew term for build, he then made the woman.

The term actually means build. It's the Hebrew verb banah. It's used in verse 22. It says that from the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man, he built into a woman. He built up a woman. John Calvin wrote these wonderful sentences about this.

He says, something was removed from Adam in order that he might embrace with better kindness a part of himself. Thus he did lose a rib, but he was repaid for it with a far richer reward since he obtained a faithful and lifelong companion.

Even more, he now saw himself made whole in his wife where previously he had been but half a self. Isn't that beautiful? People think Calvin was this this footsie old guy that had a pointed beard. He was a wonderful guy.

He loved his wife dearly. You should read about him, the relationship he had with his wife. God builds a helper comparable to Adam. She is opposite of him in gender and also corresponds to him in the way that she was built by God.

Contrary to all the animals Adam had just made, she is exactly what is needed to take away the saying, it is not good that man should be alone. Now there were all these other animals, but none of them corresponded to him.

None of them were like him. None of them could fulfill that need of aiding his aloneness. But now that is over. Now Adam is not alone any longer. He has a helper. He has a companion, a friend, someone who is similar to him but very different, is negative, opposite correspondence to him.

It's important to note, given the two verses, verse 24 and 25, which follow here, that Eve was not created just as a companion but also as a wife. And we'll get into that later when we talk about marriage.

But I want you to notice verse 23. And men, we've got to take instruction from this. Look at Adam's reaction. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.

Adam is unable to contain his delight with her. God just built her from one of his ribs. He lost a part of his body, but he's been given this wonderful wife now, a woman. And he can't contain himself.

The commentator John Curran said, Adam's response to the creation of woman is elation. And his words have an elevated style. In fact, these first recorded human words are poetical. He begins by exclaiming, this time, this is the one.

Yes. This translates a phrase that literally means at this repetition. After God had brought all the animals to the man, at last he sees a creature corresponding to him. She is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.

That is an expression that occurs throughout the Old Testament that signifies an essence and oneness with someone. People use that expression, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, to talk about family that they were very, very close to.

And that's what Adam is saying. We're a family now. You are with me. We're together. And he praises her. Adam says, she shall be called woman, that Hebrew word ishah, because she was taken out of man.

The Hebrew word for man is ish. So she's an ishah. She was taken out of man who is ish. Even the words which are used to say man and woman in Hebrew, they complement each other. They are opposites corresponding to one another.

So now we have a man and a woman, not yet married, but standing before one another, beholding one another. And it is exactly right. She will be his helper. And Adam likes what he sees. He rejoices in her.

Proverbs 5 .18 says, rejoice in the wife of your youth. And that is exactly what Adam is doing. This woman, his fellow image bearer of God, she's bringing delight to him. Isn't it remarkable that the very first words that are recorded, obviously Adam had named all the animals, but the first recorded words from a man's mouth in world history are him praising a woman.

And brothers, I would encourage you, make sure you do that with all the women in your life, that you praise them, that you speak well to them. And so we learn from the word of God that women are different from men purposefully and intentionally by God.

And also that the very first words ever spoken by a human being recorded in scripture are that of a man praising a woman. Men, we ought to use words to do nothing but build up praise and encourage all the women in our lives.

Adam could have just thought these thoughts, but he speaks them out loud. Many men here today dearly love, admire, and respect the women in their lives, their sisters, their mothers, their wife, their daughters.

But men, it's not enough just to think those things. We must follow the unfallen Adam's lead here and vocalize such things. Praise her. It says that in Proverbs 31, he praises his wife. Many daughters have done well, but you excel them all.

Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. So men, praise the women in your life. Tell them how wonderful they are. Tell them everything that you love about them.

Especially every married man here, you ought to shower your wife with praise all day, every day. She's a saint for being married to you. Okay, let's look at actually a different passage. Look at Matthew 11, 28 through 30.

This is another text I wanted to point out to you on point number two here. Matthew 11, 28 through 30. So that's the first point. The first point is now over that the woman was created to correspond to men.

That's the first thing we know about women. Women are not men. They're created to correspond to men, to help men. So point number two here is that women are followers of Christ and church members. Look at Matthew 11, 28 through 30.

Jesus here gives this wonderful statement. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Okay, stop there. Women are just as much in sin and just as in need of salvation as men are. And when women are redeemed by the blood of Christ, when they are effectually called by the gospel and justified by faith alone in Christ alone, they become disciples and followers of Christ no less than men do.

Women are just as much full communicant members of the church as men are. We are on exactly equal footing in that way. All of us are covenantal creatures. All of us are created in the image of God, and men and women together are effectually called by God to Christ and become full communicant members of the church.

Women are just as much followers and disciples of Christ as men are, and women are therefore learners, and thus women must be theologians. They are to be catechized. They are rigorous students of the Bible and of biblical doctrine and theology.

They are evangelists and apologists for the faith. Women must resist the calls of the feminists and rather listen to the calls of Christ in his holy word. It is the yoke of Christ that women are to take upon themselves, not the slavery of feminism, which is doing everything it can to convince women to take on the roles of men.

Feminism has been a problem ever since the Garden of Eden. In the society and culture that you and I have been born in and have lived in our whole lives today, any suggestion that only men can be elders in churches, that wives must submit to and obey their husbands, that the husband is the head of the wife is absolutely cursed by the culture you live in.

And it is here that we run into a problem. Your culture, for all of its lying to you and me about being tolerant, is one of the most intolerant cultures that's ever existed. It is utterly intolerant of what God loves.

It's utterly intolerant of what his word says. Feminism is just a classic example. If you study the history of it, feminism is just a classic example of victimization. Women are taught by our culture to believe that they are victims of a patriarchal, male-dominated society that is holding them back from their true potential by forcing them to change diapers, bake cookies, and filling their homes with the sweet fragrance of their charm.

The regiments of angry women who have revolted against male leadership in society, in the home, and in the church have created a younger generation of women who almost instinctively have a giant chip on their shoulder about being women.

Remember the quotation I started that series on manhood with? Their minds have been pickled in feminist brine for so long that they can hardly think straight about the mantle of manhood that Christ has laid upon them.

The synapses of their brains are misfiring. This is why modern men almost feel guilty that they're men, that they think like men, that they act like men, end quote. For many women, they almost feel guilty that they're women.

Many women wonder, is it okay that I really, I do want to, I want to get married and be a mother? Is that wrong? Is it wrong for me to think that way? Is it wrong for me to want to be a good wife and mother to my husband, to want to help a man walk with the Lord and be an encouragement to him and help him be the best man he can be?

Is it wrong for me to desire things like that? And the voices of American feminists are saying, yes, it's wrong for you to think that, for you to desire such things. And this chip on the shoulder and this mistrust and despising of men created by the feminism of our culture, hear me closely, it backfires on everybody, on our whole society, making all of us miserable together.

Many men, because they've not been helped by women and their lives, but rather have been nagged, picked apart, slashed and burned with criticism and malcontent. They become selfish brutes who don't know how to lead graciously and don't know how to love sacrificially.

Men have not led well. Men have been selfish and angry toward women. Women have been mistreated by men who don't know anything about what real biblical manhood is. And therefore they revolt. In a lot of ways, it's our fault men for not loving the way we ought to, for being selfish, for being harsh.

Of course, everything goes back to sin, obviously. But for those of us who are redeemed, those who know Christ as savior and as our master, those who have taken his yoke upon us and want to follow him, we need to look at ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves the question, who am I following?

Who am I a disciple of? Who is my master? Is it Christ? Is it culture? Is it a bit of both? Women, who do you follow? Who do you want to please? And as we move into the details of this section of our series on A Theology of Family, a couple more sermons on womanhood, I want you to know that just as men today are expected to try to understand biblical manhood in a sea, in an ocean of sissified men, you have to navigate the treacherous waters of a sea of feminism.

And I want you to weigh this next point carefully. And before I do, I want to share an illustration with you. Before I share this next sub-point with you, many years ago, I taught a 15-part Sunday school series on how to disciple your family.

I had been asked to do so. People wanted to know this. And part of that series on discipleship was how to disciple young women. Obviously, our genders are different. And there are passages that are unique to women, passages that are unique to men.

So as you disciple and raise young men and young women, they need to disciple according to what gender they are, right? Obviously, God has, you know, for me personally, this is important because I have a whole bunch of kids.

Five of them are girls, maybe six of them now. Therefore, what scripture says that is unique about women, that's pretty important to me. And there is a difference in the way you disciple them because they are different by God's glorious and good design.

Well, one of the women in the church did not particularly appreciate that section of the Sunday school curriculum. And eventually, I spoke to her in my office one Wednesday evening as the children were filing out from their Wednesday activities.

And that conversation didn't last overly long. But she eventually said to me, there are certain passages of scripture I would delete from the Bible if I could, like wives submitting to their husbands, wives obeying their husbands, et cetera.

And I said in response, then your problem has nothing to do with me, does it? I don't write the mail. I just deliver it. And with that, I want to show you the very heart of the sissified manhood and feminism.

It all goes back to one fatal question. Genesis 3 verse 1, has God really said that's what it is? Where's all the misery come from, from the collapse of family that we see? Does God really know what he's talking about when it comes to this kind of stuff?

Has God really said this sort of thing? Reflect on that. Has God really told you who you are as a woman, what you were created for, what your roles are, what is the highest and most glorious calling you can have?

Satan would love for you to think, no, what God wants is just going to hold you back from reaching your true potential. That's exactly what Satan said to Eve. God knows in the day you will become like him, knowing good and evil.

He's holding back from you. You don't need to be married to some rundown high-maintenance man who's just going to drain the life out of you by his neediness and his personal failures. You don't want to be part of a church that has only male elders and deacons.

You can't possibly think you're going to make a difference in this world by spending half your life barefoot, pregnant in a kitchen. You don't want to spend the best years of your life chasing little kids around, taking care of a home and listening to men bark orders at you.

Come on, ladies, wake up from your slumber and open your eyes. Men are dogs. You don't need them anyway. Think of all the ways they've let you down and abused you in your life, et cetera, et cetera. And so the lies go.

And men, some of that we have to take on the nose because we haven't been good men. But remember our Lord's words. This applies just as much to men as it does to women. Come to me, all you who labor and who labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you. Listen and learn from me. Don't learn about your gender from the world. Learn from me. He's saying when you come to me because you're weary and heavy laden because you see your sin, you feel the weight of it crushing you.

You come to him for salvation. He's saying now learn from me. Stop listening to the voices all around you. Listen to me. Keep your eyes on me. Focus on me. Listen to what I say is what Jesus is saying.

What will it be? The word of God or the regiment of angry women? I want to encourage the men here to trust God's word to be perfectly clear and accurate always in what it says. I want to encourage the women here to trust God's word to be perfectly clear and accurate too in all that it says.