July 9, 2017 Order In The Church by Pastor Josh Sheldon

We'll turn please to the book of 1 Timothy.

We'll look this morning at verses 8 -12. I'll read through verse 15. Then the message will be based on 8 -12.

Just for a little context before I read, and actually rather than me explain the context, I'll just start reading at verse 1.

Seems better than me summarizing. We'll let God's Word do that. So look up at verse 1. And we'll read through verse 15.

First of all then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.

For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle, I am telling you the truth, I am not lying, a teacher of the

Gentiles in faith and truth. I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.

Likewise also that the women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self -control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness, with good works.

Let a woman learn quietly and with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, rather she is to remain quiet.

For Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

Yet she will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith and love and holiness with self -control."

Well as I said our passage this morning that we're going to preach on is verses 8 -12, and these passages have to do with order in the church.

The passage I had read by Jesus from 1 Corinthians has to do with that as well, order in the church, and as you heard in the reading there, that's in a very specific context and Paul's addressing very specific things, and we're not going to deal with all those this morning, because 1

Corinthians 14 is not our passage. What I wanted to bring out from that, and which Lord willing will come out from the message in 1

Timothy, is simply this idea that God is not a God of disorder or confusion in any way, but a

God of order, and most especially this order must be reflected in the church, because the church as we know from Paul's purpose statement in 1

Timothy in chapter 3 verse 15, where he calls the church the pillar and the buttress of the truth, and therefore, like it must be in no other place, the truth of God must be reflected in how we worship

God. The nature of God, the person of God, the works of God must be shown forth if nowhere else in the church when we as a body come together to worship

God, our Savior, and thank Him in our worship for what He has done for us in His Son, Jesus Christ.

And that's what this book is about, this first Timothy, this letter to Timothy, 1 Timothy, is about order in the church, how

Timothy is to make the corrections he is to make, how he's to stop the false teachers, and that correction begins with prayer.

That was the first seven verses that I read, and now Paul speaks more specifically about prayer and about order in the church.

He's much more specific than simply the call to prayer at the beginning. And with the precepts we have before us this morning, chapter 2 verses 8 through 15 of 1

Timothy, they have to do with roles, roles within the church.

Now this should make sense to us, this should be obvious to us that roles are important. If we think of an army, and we think of generals down to privates, they all have different roles, and if they didn't, how would an army ever proceed?

How would it ever accomplish a mission? How would it ever do any one thing to get anything done if nobody had a role, or if roles were mixed up, or if the lines of authority were not clearly laid out, if you didn't know who to salute?

Now we don't salute each other in the church of course, but you get my idea. Roles are important in armies, in companies, in families, in church.

And that's what 1 Timothy chapter 2 verses 8 through 15 have to do with, is roles. See a church service is not a free -for -all.

We gather together to hear God's Word proclaimed, we do so in an orderly manner. We're not liturgical here at Providence Bible Church, but we are orderly.

We're not locked into one way of doing things, but we've come up with a pattern that seems to work well here, so we produce the bulletins so you know which hymns are coming, you know when the pastor is going to pray, you know what comes next.

Not to lock us in to tight boundaries, but for orderliness, so that we together know what's coming next, and part of that order is roles.

Part of the order is roles. In some areas we have freedom to do what suits us, what hymns we will sing, with what accompaniment, what's going to be pre -preached, how long, those sorts of things.

We have much freedom. In other areas we are constrained, and gladly so, gladly constrained by the

Word of God. As Jesus read, God is not a God of confusion, but of peace, and that word peace there means orderliness.

Paul's instruction here to the church in 1 Timothy is not arbitrary.

He begins in verse 8 by saying, I desire then, I desire, the word translated desire means to have deliberated on a matter and come to a settled conclusion.

It's stronger than just wish. He's thought about it, he's prayed about it, he's sought God's will on this matter, and therefore this, after much deliberation, is his conclusion.

This is what he wants the church to do. Now the church at Ephesus, where Timothy was, where he's getting all this instruction, it had its problems.

If you read at the very beginning, you'll see that they had false teachers teaching wrongly about the law, and the more wrong they were, it seems, the more confidently they presented their material, and Timothy is told to silence them.

And right after Paul tells Timothy to bring them to silence, to stop them from teaching falsely, to put a halt to all this, right after Paul gives

Timothy that instruction, chapter 2 verse 1, first of all, of prime importance, your first priority in correcting the direction of this ship,

Timothy, is prayer. It's prayer. And if prayer is that important, and it is, then it makes sense that we're not left on our own to just sort of figure things out on the fly.

It seems that at Ephesus there had been somewhat of a reversal of roles. And here's what

Paul is correcting, and telling Timothy to correct. It seems that when they gathered together for worship, what we do here on Sundays, the men abdicated their responsibility of leading in prayer to the women.

And Paul says, no, this must end. Men are to pray, and the women are to be silent.

Now, that's a hard doctrine to state. That's a hard doctrine to hear, much less to preach.

Boy, you know, this is not in how to fill the pews and grow your church type of books.

But this is what the Word of God says. And it's so hard to hear that many churches just refuse it altogether, and they won't hear it, they won't obey it, and make all kinds of excuses for it.

They say that the situation that Paul corrects was specific to that one time and that one place,

Ephesus, two thousand some years ago. They say it was unique just to that one place and the surrounding

Greco -Roman culture, and it was such that they and only they needed this requirement, therefore it has no bearing on today.

And I will not preach polemically against that idea, but I will put forth to you a few questions about it.

If you've been raised in that kind of an environment in the church, if your friends think that, if you're visiting here and come from a church that thinks that,

I do have to tell you, look around. Read up on Ephesus two thousand years ago, if you will, there's much material on that.

And look around Sunnyvale, California in 2017. I don't want to go into a lot of detail about Ephesus two thousand years ago, or this greater

San Francisco Bay Area today, but I will tell you that it's not that much different, that the

Ephesian church that Paul founded and was turning over to Timothy was surrounded by as much a group of sinners as we are.

The people there were no more or less depraved than the people around us, and the people attending church at Ephesus were no better at following God's Word than we are here today.

It's really the same. Churches don't like this doctrine.

It is difficult to preach, it is difficult to obey, it is difficult to hear, if only because so many are so against it.

Society has become what we call egalitarian. It denies more and more the idea that men and women were intended by their maker to fulfill different roles.

Many women, or many churches, follow this false model. They have their women stand and pray over the assembly, and many even have female pastors.

So the question here, as we look to a text like 1st Timothy 2, beginning at verse 8, the question here is, are we hopelessly archaic here at Providence?

Are we completely out of touch? Maybe we're just adamantly holding to a principle taken largely here from 1st

Timothy 2, 8, 1 through 15, or 1 through 5, because, what, are we just pugnacious?

Are we proud? Are we arrogant? Are we trying to make such a distinction between us and the world outside that it's almost a false distinction?

No. No, we are biblical. We are not the paradigm of church order or anything like that, but we understand 1st

Timothy 2, 8 through 15 to be plain instruction, not bound by history, not bound by culture.

And in fact, to head off just such an argument, Paul grounds his command in the

Genesis account of chapter 2 and 3 of that book. That's what was read to you.

What happened there in the garden was the catastrophe of all history, and Paul focuses in on one aspect, this one aspect of the fall of man.

Now there's many, and he addresses many of them in other parts of his writings in other places, but here in 1st

Timothy, he focuses in on this one slice of what happened in the garden, what

Jesus read to you just a few moments ago. It was a reversal of roles.

It was a reversal of roles. Adam was to be the leader. He had named the animals because they were given to him, and we know that in the

Bible, naming something or someone shows authority over that thing that is named, or that person that is named.

In Genesis chapter 3, verse 20, he even names Eve. But at the tree, with humankind's fate hanging in the balance, at the tree, with his wife and the serpent, the tempter, in attendance, he stepped away from his

God -given role, and he allowed himself to be led by the one that he was supposed to lead. Now what does all this have to do with the church?

What does it have to do with church order? Why does

Paul cite that account as he speaks about wrongful roles within the church assembly?

Well, it's because in the church, we are part of correcting that disaster.

In the church, we reflect God's will for men, for women, for how the assembled faithful are to worship

God, for what order in the church means. And all this is a correction, if you will, of the disaster that was sin, introduced there into creation in Genesis chapter 2 and 3.

As men and women maintain proper order in the church, we enter into restoration of Edenic order.

Edenic just means related to Eden, the Garden of Eden, that place where man walked with God, with no sin to distort that relationship.

Edenic, paradise. And by proper order,

I say we maintain proper order, by proper order I mean what the Apostle means, that roles be properly entrusted and duties discharged in the conduct of our worship.

Now before we dig into verse 8, because there's a lot that we need to understand about how

Paul works all this together and some of the things that he says there, before we dig into it,

I want to spend a moment on the significance of Paul hearkening us back to Genesis.

You see, by supporting with the Genesis narrative what he's telling them to do in Ephesus, what he's telling us to do today in Sunnyvale, he's appealing to what we call a creation ordinance.

A creation ordinance is simply a precept or a command that came before sin, that came before the law, part of how

God originally put things together. That's a creation ordinance. And by its very nature, by its position in biblical history, a creation ordinance is not bound by culture.

It is not bound by history. We cannot say if a thing is supported by creation ordinances, if something we're to do today is supported by one of those, then we can't say that therefore it's invalid because this is 2 ,000 years later.

Or should the Lord tarry and another generation will say this is 4 ,000 years later? Because creation transcends all that.

Creation ordinances do not, they cannot, they will not bend to the whims of men.

This does not mean that they're practiced the same way in all times, in all places, at all churches.

It does mean that they stand firm and must be practiced.

Before we move on into 8, this is important, so I want to spend a little bit more time. I'll just give you one example of how a creation ordinance actually works.

If you would turn in your Bibles please to Matthew chapter 19. If you're in the

Black Pew Bible, that's page 824. A teacher in the

Gospel of Matthew, in this history that he gives us, a certain teacher is going to go back to a creation ordinance in order to support a premise that he's going to have, that he's going to make.

He's asked a question, he's going to give his answer, and the answer is going to be supported exactly the way Paul does in 1

Timothy, with a creation ordinance. Now of course you're in the

Gospel of Matthew in chapter 19, so the teacher who's asked the question is none other than our

Lord Jesus Christ. Begin reading at verse 3, and Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?

Jesus answered, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning, important words there, from the beginning, creation, he that created them from the beginning, made them male and female, and said therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.

This is the Lord Jesus Christ answering a question about divorce, and grounding his answer, basing his answer on what

I'm calling a creation ordinance. Well not what I'm calling, they're commonly called that. Even Moses's allowance for divorce had no effect on the intent and the applicability of the creation ordinance from the beginning.

It was not so, our Lord says in verse 8. And this is just what Paul does in 1

Timothy chapter 2. Look at verses 13 to 15, if you flip back to 1

Timothy. Why is

Paul so insistent on this idea of roles in the church being proper?

Here's his reasoning. For Adam was formed first.

The word for at the beginning of this sentence means the reason for what I'm telling you, the basis for it, the support

I have. I say this because of this. This proves that.

For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

Yet she will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith and love and holiness with self -control.

Now the explanation about childbearing, as difficult as those are, and I will wait for the afternoon message.

But what do we have here? The context is the assembled church.

The context is the people of God in the local assembly coming together as the faithful in Jesus Christ around the reading, the proclamation, and the application, the authoritative administration, if you will, of God's Word.

And in that context, as we come together, men have the sole responsibility for praying.

It's that simple. Men have the sole responsibility for praying, and women are excluded from that duty because in the beginning that's how it was, by God's design, by the order of creation.

Adam is made first, and then Eve was made from Adam, therefore Adam was to lead, therefore men are to lead in the church.

This is the apostle's point. As I said, I know the difficulty in hearing this.

Even we who love the Word of God, even we who follow it as directly as it comes to us, hard to read, hard to hear, hard to preach, the plain

Word of God which we are to obey. When we gather for worship, the church portrays

God's original design for His creation nowhere more visibly and distinctly than our mutual submission to our roles.

So with all that background, understanding what a creation ordinance is, how important they are, how

Jesus used creation ordinance to answer the Pharisees, their question about divorce, how Paul uses it here with all that background, how then are men to pray?

When a man comes up here to pray, Jesus prayed for the preaching. He prayed for the hearing of God's Word.

All the men who come up, you know, we cycle through. It's one of the duties of membership here is to stand at this pulpit and read the scripture to the people and to pray for the preaching.

There's other contexts. That's the main one. That's the most common one. How are we to pray?

There's two ways that Paul gives. One, with the lifting of holy hands. Two, without anger or quarreling.

Now what does it mean to lift holy hands? Does that mean when we pray we must lift our hands? No, I don't think

Paul is insistent upon a posture of any kind here. Holy hands are hands that have not been the agents of sin.

Holy hands are simply hands that have not been led into sin, into iniquity.

It stands for the ethical qualities of men who presume to stand and approach God for and with us.

In a word, men who lead us in prayer. In the Bible, hands are a metaphorical term for the quality of one's life before God and in accordance with his word.

Romans 6 .13 has this in mind when Paul writes, do not present your members, and members stands for our physical bodies, hands would convey the same meaning.

He says, do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness.

Jesus had this in mind in chapter 5 and verse 30 of Matthew. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.

Now we know hands don't do anything on their own. Hands obey the whims and the commands of their owner.

Psalm 24 verses 3 and 4, I think comes very close to Paul's meaning here. Who shall ascend the hill of the

Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully.

Now does this mean that before a man can stand and pray or preach for that matter, that he must be morally perfect?

Well no, if we required that of men who take part in the worship, no one could. Nor could the women for that matter.

If perfection is the qualification, then every human being is automatically disqualified.

What this demands is that we who take responsibility be those who at all hazards live by the word of God.

Men who recognize their sin, men who repent of their sin, men whose habitual manner of life is to follow after Christ.

You don't have to actually lift our hands, but we do have to pray as though we do. Pray as though our hands are lifted up and we understand that they're lifted before God.

That we're presenting ourselves as one who can with integrity take this responsibility and bring prayer to the church on our behalf.

Pray to God for us as we prepare ourselves for worship. No, it's not the actual lifting of the hands.

It's where have these hands been? What have these hands been directed to do? It doesn't mean moral perfection.

It doesn't mean I've never done anything wrong all week because if that were the case, the most holy man who ever lived could not stand here and preach or pray for you or any other matter.

We pray knowing that we pray to a God whose holiness is to be protected, not least of all by the cleanness of the hands that are offered to him as we pray.

So that's first, men are to pray lifting holy hands. And second, men are to pray without anger or quarreling.

Now this sounds obvious, doesn't it? I mean, who would pray angrily? Who would try to quarrel during a prayer?

But Paul, as he meant with holy hands, he has in mind an inner disposition.

Anger, as it's used here, it means a settled disposition against a brother. One well -known commentator likens it to the unmerciful servant, the one in Matthew chapter 18, the one who was forgiven an enormous debt that couldn't even be counted, really it was so great, but then immediately afterwards he found insufficient mercy in his heart to forgive a trifling amount that he was owed.

That's the kind of anger, that's the kind of spirit it doesn't require you be angry at a person for a thing, it's simply an angry person.

And Paul says no, men who are lifting holy hands are doing this without quarreling, without that kind of an anger.

Quarreling comes from a word that means your way of thinking, your way of reasoning, and it's only rarely used in the

Bible for open disputes. Again, the inner disposition of the one who stands here to pray in our worship service, as with anger, as with holy hands, it's the inner man that is in view here, that's what matters.

For men to pray here, that means that you have obeyed the Lord's command to keep short accounts with others regarding offenses, that's

Matthew 5, 23 -24, that's Mark 11, 25, that's Ephesians 4, 26, that's

Psalm 133. You see, when a man stands here to pray, he is really assuming the role that was originally

Adam's, the role that he gave up when he allowed his deceived wife to feed him the fruit that was forbidden.

When a man stands here to pray during our worship, he prays on behalf of all of us. And how can you pray for someone against whom you hold a grudge?

How can you claim clean hands if the Lord's cleansing has not been sought? You simply cannot.

And to the men who stand here to read the Scripture and pray and take any part in the service at all, and I mean particularly

Sunday worship, what we call Sunday, what we call Sabbath, coming together on the Lord's day as a body.

This is what I have in mind, because I believe this is Paul's specific context.

You who are sitting and in your spirit praying what the man is praying, you have a right to expect that this man's hands are holy, that this man is not quarreling, is not angry, that he has kept these short accounts, that he is with integrity living according to the

Word of God, not with perfection, not with absolute compliance. None of us can do that with the integrity that common sense would expect.

And you men, when you get that message from me, it always says, for Sunday, you know that's what's coming.

What's coming is the Scriptures to read. You men have a duty to be that one who stands with that integrity praying for blood -bought saints of the

Lord Jesus Christ. It is this important. I said the congregation has a right to expect that.

I should modify that a little bit. You have a duty to expect that. The requirement for men to lead and to take the lead is nothing less than a restoration of the roles of men and women ordained at creation itself.

This is how Paul supports it. You have to keep this in mind as we preach through this.

This is what Paul the Apostle under inspiration of the Holy Spirit says. And I believe that because Paul has in mind specifically the gathering of God's people for worship, church if you will, and he grounds it the way he does, he supports the way he does, that this service as we obey

God's Word, as we come together under the auspices of that Word and the way

Paul tells us here, is really a restoration, somewhat of a reversal of what went wrong all those years ago.

This demands humility from all of us. It also means that we be men who keep a careful watch and guard our spirits.

And simply knowing that this duty, it reverses at least some of Adam's cataclysmic error, that should be enough for us all to keep ourselves ready, in season or out, ready to come up here and read the scripture in prayer and pray and take that responsibility.

Well as for the men, verses 9 -11, maintaining this idea of church order, order in the church, how we're to worship, not the specifics, not the length of preaching, not which book

I have to preach, at which times or anything like that, the broad principles.

And now in verses 9 -11, from men to the women in the church. And then of course the very next verse, he says, for Adam was formed first and the rest of it.

He begins this in verse 9, he begins with likewise. Likewise shows that Paul still has in mind propriety and worship, and he turns now to the other role, to the women.

The idea of roles is still here, with the garden still our standard of right conduct.

We can draw some conclusions from what's inferred here, though I'm happy to say that the problems in Ephesus 2 ,000 years ago, the idea of the dress problems and not having to tell the women to dress respectably and modestly and with self -control,

I'm very glad when I read that to say we don't have to preach that very much here. There's no correction here that needs to be made.

But we can still notice some things in here. In verse 9, notice that respectable apparel, that's actual clothing, is immediately paired with modesty and self -control.

And just as all else in Paul's epistle here, the outer dress is a sign of the inner person.

Just as holy hands say much about the inner spirit of a man, so do the clothes say about a woman.

Modesty from Paul has no detailed description. He doesn't say that hemlines are to be here and neck scoops are to be there or anything like that.

Modesty is really, if you think about it, it's a variable thing. Styles change. Different cultures have different views of things.

What is enticing and show -offy in one place may be humdrum and unnoticed in another.

And if we go all the way back to the garden, well, you know what happens there and we're not going to go there. But all that said, in the garden, because of the shame that sin brought,

Adam and Eve covered those parts of their bodies that distinguished the one from the other. They went from innocence to shame and they went from shame to modesty.

And the upshot seems to be that our women dress, I should say, thank you for dressing this way in a way that does not highlight their feminine distinctions.

I think that's what modesty is. Then verse 11 requires this quietude, this submissive attitude while learning.

Again, the context, public worship. Understand that quiet does not mean silent. If quiet meant silent, then only the men could join and sing in the hymns.

Only the men could say amen. Only the men could give any verbal encouragement during the preaching. And that is not at all what

Paul means here. As always with Paul, with the Bible generally, it's the heart that's being aimed at.

Not a shut mouth. How much we would lose if our women were staunch like that. How unbiblical that would be.

How against Jesus' view of them that would be. But it's the quiet, gentle, humble spirit.

This demeanor, before we move on, we need to notice this demeanor, though here addressed to an

Ephesian problem with women, is not for women alone. I'll just quote a couple of verses.

Jesus himself says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I'm gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

That's our Lord's self -description. Philippians 2 .8 says, and being found in human form, again this is

Jesus, he humbled himself by being obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. This is for all of us. Patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.

It seems probable that what was happening in Ephesus is the women took or were given wrong rules.

For women to assume authority over men in worship is to continue the error in Eden.

Eve did not submit to Adam but instead took over. The introduction of sin is held to Adam's account because he was the head of the race and of Eve.

And it says, Eve was not deceived but Adam, it would seem, understood full well what was happening.

He knew his wife was deceived and yet did nothing to stop.

Allowed the reversal of rules, if you will, to continue. The final verse is,

I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, rather she is to remain quiet. We've already talked about quietude and what this means.

What is Paul's point? I've said several times that Paul's instruction for the church in Ephesus, for this church today in Sunnyvale, is specifically for this gathering for worship.

For when we come to hear the word of God read and explained and applied to us in a word, our

Sunday worship. So it makes sense.

When it says for a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, again it's that spiritual idea.

I don't believe that we can apply this and say, therefore a man cannot work for a supervisor in a company where he makes his living.

I think the context here is in church. But the principle, because it's a creation ordinance that Paul uses to support what he's arguing for here, the principle behind 1

Timothy 2, 8 through 15 has a fairly wide application. The next section in this letter, chapter 3 verses 1 through 13, he speaks about the qualifications of pastors and deacons.

And in there he says that if a man's going to serve in that capacity, one place we look to see if he's qualified for that is how well he manages his home.

Right after this business of roles in the church, understand the very next thing is the officers in the church need to manage their home well.

Proper roles would be the immediate context. Chapter 3 verse 5 he says, for someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church?

So even though the church is his immediate concern, the fact that creation is his basis means that the range of application is much wider.

Simply put, men are to be leaders at home and at church. It's a creation ordinance.

Adam was created first. He gave up that role. It was reversed on him.

And Christian men, we as we lead our families with Christ -like humility, gentleness, knowledge of the

Word of God, dwelling with our wives according to knowledge, all these things that we have, once we do that, we are part of the reversal or the reversing of what

Adam gave up all those millennia ago. You know when

Paul writes in Ephesians 5 for wives to submit to husbands and for husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church, he supports with this with this argument.

He says, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

That's how he supports Ephesians 5. Husbands love your wives. Wives submit to your husbands.

Why? Well, this is the 21st century. Do I have to? Yes. Men, you must love as Christ loved the church.

Wives, you must submit to Christ because in the beginning it was so.

That's what Paul cites there. Genesis 2, 24, therefore a man shall leave. That's why you love.

That's why you submit. That's why the roles in the church must be what they are.

The other place he goes to support himself, I'm still in Ephesians 5. I know I've kind of skipped out of 1 Timothy a little bit, but it's the same idea.

But Ephesians 5, the other place he goes to himself, goes other than the creation ordinance of Genesis 2, 24, is

Christ and giving himself up for his wife. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Now, we have to understand that if a creation ordinance transcends culture, transcends history, does not allow us to say, well, this is no longer applicable because we're so much more modern than this, how much more if the cross is the basis for a command?

How much more does that transcend everything? The cross is the ultimate creation ordinance.

Look at Genesis chapter 3, 15. He shall bruise your heel, but you shall bruise his head.

What we call the proto -evangelium, what we call the pre -gospel, the first hint we have that sin is going to be corrected, that what went wrong in the garden is going to be made right.

And where will it be made right? At the cross of Jesus Christ. At the cross of Christ, where he suffered and died, having taken in himself

God's wrath for your sins. And because of him, because he suffered all the wrath he took upon himself, all that punishment, he, the man who is

God, an eternal being which we shall never be, suffered the eternity of hell that we deserve.

This, men, this is the basis, this is the ordinance

Paul cites when he tells you to love your wives, when he tells all of us to love our wives.

And wives, this is the basis for your submission to your husband. It transcends the norms of the society we live in, the standards of the time when

God would have us to live. It transcends it all. The whole purpose of the book of 1

Timothy is church order. Chapter 3 verses 14 -15 he says,

I hope to come to you soon, but I'm writing these things to you so that if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living

God and a pillar and buttress of truth. What could be more important, brethren, what could be more crucial than that we conduct ourselves rightly here?

Unless we think that we're just given a bunch of rules and that the men who've come together to put our service together so we do things in a decent and orderly and predictable way are just making up rules and saying we're just going to do things this way because, well,

I want to be in charge and I want to repress one whole part of the population because I'm just being pugnacious or anything like that.

Unless we think anything like that, remember that all this hearkens back to what it was before sin.

And this is what we reflect here in this church. God willing, this is what we reflect as we submit to our mutual roles and conduct ourselves in a way that is fitting for those who have been bought by the blood of Jesus Christ and are members of the pillar and buttress of the truth.

May we be able to claim that. May we be able to reflect that. May we be those who hold unabashedly to the word of God and willingly submit ourselves, whatever role we have, to God's will.

Amen. Lord, we thank you for bringing us together. We thank you, Father, for your word, even where it is sometimes hard to understand, hard to preach, hard to hear.

But, Father, we love your word. We love our Savior. We wish to do his will. And we thank you,

Father, for the clarity of your word. We thank you, Father, for your Spirit who gives us strength to follow.

I just ask your blessing continue upon this church, that you continue to watch over us. Hold us together,