Book of 1 Timothy - Parenthetical on God's Good Design for Men & Women

Exhortations to Timothy and the Church in 1 Timothy 2

All righty, good morning, everybody. Good to see everyone. It's nice to be back in this class, or at least teaching this class, although I have thoroughly enjoyed the past five weeks with Matt holding down the fort, and I appreciate it greatly.

He did that for me just as much as he did for Dave, and so I appreciate that a lot, Matt. And it was absolutely fantastic, but we are gonna go ahead and continue our study in 1 Timothy, you can turn there if you'd like to, 1 Timothy chapter two, and we have been working piece by piece through this brief epistle.

It's brief, but it is very dense with regard to the topics that it covers. And so we have been taking our sweet time, and we will continue to do that. And we left off literally right in the middle of chapter two and basically chapter two, if you were to summarize it in one topic, it would essentially be exhortations to elders, or you could get even more specific than that, exhortations to the elder, that being Timothy, who would then take these exhortations, share them with his church, which would have been the church at Ephesus at the time, and then all churches from that point forward.

And so as we read this epistle, what we will see is instructions that are given to Timothy are by extension instructions given to all elders to then share with their congregations and to live by, principles, precepts to live by in order to give structure to God's people.

And so that's the broad topic in chapter two is exhortations to elders, but you could even subdivide it from there. And so the first kind of subdivision we looked at or subtopic we looked at were, or it was prayers to our leaders.

And so from verses three, excuse me, verse one through about verse six or so, we have the apostle Paul giving an exhortation to pray for our leaders and why, and we looked at that in detail. And then after that, we see a little section where the apostle Paul essentially uses himself as, excuse me, he talks about his ministry a little bit and explains why all of this comes into play.

Kind of zooms out quite a bit and talks about why these things matter on a cosmic transcendent scale, not merely for those in an individual local church. And then from there in verse eight, he gives an exhortation for leaders of churches to pray, why they should pray, and the attitude they should have while they do it.

And it's in the context of public prayers. So in other words, leading worship, leading the Lord's Day services, these types of things. And so now we get to our fourth subtopic or subsection of chapter two that will run from verses nine through 15.

So all the way through the rest of the chapter. And I'm calling this particular little section Patriarchy and the Garden of Eden. And we will unpack that as we get through it and start seeing some of the amazing doctrine and instruction and things like that that are laid out here.

And so this will take us a number of weeks to get through because there is a lot here and I'm looking forward to it. I think it's gonna be very edifying for so many reasons. So we come now to what is essentially a very vexed passage of scripture.

Again, verses nine through 15, that you are rarely gonna hear very many sermons or even lessons about. Now I say it's vexed, which is true. It is a vexed portion of scripture. But the reason that's the case at this particular point in time is only because theologians and pastors have chosen to kind of obscure the passage in the last 80 years or so.

And I say 80 years, that's being somewhat charitable. Really, it's been more in the last 40 years, but the roots of it were kind of planted, if you will, going back about 80 years or so. And why has this obscuring taken place?

Why has some of these things happened? It's essentially done in order to accommodate some other novelties, theological novelties that have kind of snuck into the status quo of church order. And so in reality, if you had laid out this passage that we're about to be working through over the next few weeks, to both laymen and to the clergy.

So whether you're talking about the theologians of histories past or the churchgoers of histories past, men and women both. If you had laid out this passage at nearly any point in church history, up to the late 19th century, and certainly near the beginning of the 20th century, the person would have wondered why you were showing it to them.

And of course, if you went in and were like, I wanna know what your take is on the controversy surrounding this passage. They would have raised an eyebrow and wondered what on earth you were talking about.

What controversy are you talking about? The pastoral epistles were like the instruction manual for the church, it still should be that. Those epistles still should be that to this day, but it was taken with a more serious and grave attitude for our brothers and sisters for 1900 years.

And just like, okay, this is what our commander says and we'll take it and run from there. And so that is a very important thing for us to remember as we work through this whole passage over the next few weeks, this reality that the controversies surrounding this passage are novel.

They have only been around for the past four to eight decades, which leaves us now having to dig into it deeper than our forefathers would have felt the need to because they didn't have any controversy around them.

It's important to remember because the arguments that are put forth today to show that Paul is, quote unquote, actually not saying what he seems to be saying here, again, they're novel, they're new, they popped up in very, very recent church history and there's not a consistent strain of interpretation throughout the generations that can substantiate the current novel interpretations of this passage.

And of course that presents a great problem if that, so theologians talk about this thing that they call the perspicuity of scripture. And what they mean by that is that the word of God is clear, it's consistent and it's clear on all of the most important facts of doctrine that it lays out.

And so if you have a novel doctrine that pops up in the beginning of the 20th century that wasn't there for all previous generations from the cross forward, you run into a problem there because then you have to explain why it wasn't clear for those previous generations and things like that.

And so once more, some of the arguments that we now have to face, some of the interpretive views of this passage that we now have to face and deal with now, you can't find a consistent strain of that interpretation as you look throughout church history and that's a problem.

And so before we begin kind of verse by verse through this whole passage, let's remind ourselves of what the passage says and then we'll kind of introduce a few things today and specifically talk about why we even have to spend the amount of time we're going to spend in it in a few weeks, nothing crazy.

We're gonna introduce why that's even the case but let's read it first. First Timothy chapter two and let's begin in verse nine. This is the Apostle Paul giving exhortations to Timothy to then share with his church for holy living and in verse nine it says, in like manner also, a little call back to verse eight there, in like manner also that women adorn themselves in modest apparel with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with bordered hair or gold or pearls or costly array but which becometh women professing godliness with good works.

Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection but I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man but to be in silence for Adam was first formed then Eve and Adam was not deceived but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.

Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in childbearing if they continue in the faith in charity and holiness with sobriety. It's an amazing passage and we're going to unfold a lot of the beauty that lies beneath the verses we just read and why that's the case in light of the way the church has historically viewed this passage contra the last four decades or so and I want to say this just as one last footnote before diving into this a little bit more is that one thing we have to remember about the word of God and we've talked about this before and it's especially important to remember as we read the pastoral epistles that include quite a bit of very practical instruction, imperatives, commands from the apostles with the authority of Jesus behind it is that remember the words of John in his first epistle, the commandments of our Lord are not burdensome and that's important for us to remember because the Lord doesn't give instruction from an authoritarian angle.

You know, to be authoritarian implies that you love power and that you love authority and that it's your idol to the degree that you are just kind of meeting out instruction and commandments arbitrarily just cause.

So that's how an authoritarian would work as he divvies out instruction and commands and things like that. That is not the God of scripture who is merciful, who is good, who is gracious. When he gives instruction, when he gives commandments and this was true in the law of Moses as well but certainly in the New Testament commands that were given when he gives instruction, it is to the benefit of his people so that they can flourish so that they can thrive and so that they can have an inner peace fulfillment and experience his peace and grace in a very real way and by real way, what I mean is the way they live their lives out.

And so it's one thing to understand things on a spiritual plane, what is it to live it out? What is it to experience that kind of peace as we live our lives? And so I want you all to remember that as we work through this passage is that everything here is intentional for the purpose of the benefit and the flourishing of God's people which is a beautiful thing.

God's Good Design for Men and Women

Now, what I'd like to do before we really dive into this is first take it kind of as an opportunity to talk about an incredibly important topic that plays into this passage which has been neglected by the church broadly in recent decades including by the way, the most conservative men and women out there.

It's been neglected by them too and that is the topic of God's good design for men and women both. When you survey the biblical narrative from pre-fall Genesis, so prior to sin entering the picture, pre-fall in the earliest portions of Genesis all the way through the new paradise that we will experience in the millennial earth to come, what you find is that from God's point of view and this kind of goes without saying but it's an important foundational piece to all of this is that from God's point of view, men and women are equal in value and in dignity, okay, so they are equal in value and in dignity while at the same time being beneficially different from one another.

Equal in value and dignity while being beneficially different in their natures, in the natures that He gave man and woman. Perhaps one of the most urgent issues that the church is facing both outside the church as far as the public square and the secular culture goes but sadly enough within the church, right now to the point where the largest conservative denominations in our country are having to take these things to the floor, the SBC which is, we're not part of the Southern Baptist Convention, we're not Southern Baptists but we should absolutely be praying for them often.

To the largest Protestant denomination in the country, 10 million members, 40 ,000 churches, they make up the massive majority of the conservative voting block for our country. We need to pray for our Southern Baptist brothers and sisters all the time and especially their leaders but they're having to bring amendments to their constitutions and things like that for things that again, if you went back just a few decades and said, hey, you know, hey, Martin Lloyd-Jones, what are your thoughts on this particular controversy and this amendment we're bringing forth to make sure that women don't step behind the pulpit?

He'd be like, what? You have to put an amendment in there for that? And so these are the types of things that are again, are denominations across the country having to deal with, the SBC, the PCA and things of that sort.

And so again, this is an urgent issue that we're facing both without and within the church. And that is the fact that our culture denies that God created men and women differently with different intrinsic natures that cannot be interchangeable.

And that's the big thing is that we want, and I say we very generally, very broadly, we want there to be an interchangeability between the two for a whole host of reasons that perhaps we'll kind of piecemeal out a little bit.

Dad, you already have a thought? So from God's point of view in the Bible, men and women are created equal in value and in dignity, while at the same time being beneficially different, beneficially different in their natures.

That was what we said just a moment ago. And again, these natures can't be interchanged and we have to remember that. So where the culture that we live in emphasizes at best, kind of an ideological egalitarianism where equality just has to, it has to be equal across the board in all of these areas, otherwise this is not fair.

That's kind of the best case scenario. And at worst, they are emphasizing kind of a grotesque androgyny where you can't even tell the difference or they want to be to a point where you can't tell the difference between men and women.

If you look at a human being, you can't really discern who is who. While the culture is wanting to emphasize these types of things, the church must emphasize something that is far greater, far greater than either of those, certainly the worst case scenario.

And that is what? What is the thing that we get to bring to the table to bring peace and fulfillment and beauty again to the culture around us? And that is that God created men and women with complimentary or beneficial differences, complimentary or beneficial differences.

And that men do have actual God-given authority as leaders that is bestowed upon them by God in order to shoulder the responsibility of justice and to protect women and children and all of these types of things.

And how does that apply to things like the home and the church and the civil society as well? Now, the biblical view of men and women does affirm and emphasize. It's okay, Mary, mommy's working on it.

Don't give her a hard time. Hold your little horses, as I say at home. The biblical view of men and women does affirm and emphasize, and I'm being a little bit repetitive here, but it's intentional. It affirms and emphasizes that men and women are made equally in the image of God.

So when you see the creation account in Genesis chapter two kind of rehashed, male and female created them, or excuse me, man and woman, how does it put it? He created he them, but first it kind of words it with kind of the basis for men representing mankind you know what I mean?

Let me see here. The wording is actually very specific. And so I want to take a look at this really quick. Yeah, if you have it, go ahead. That right there. Okay, the wording for that first clause there was what I wanted to make sure I included.

And so you see this creative act of mankind as a whole via Adam himself, the father of us all. But then Moses, under the inspiration of God, specifically tells us that in this creative act of man, as representing mankind as a whole, he created male and female in his image, all right?

Okay, so again, one important thing that we emphasize and that is foundational to everything that we're gonna be talking about is that men and women are both equally made in the image of God. In a very unique way, women are an image bearer of God in a way that men can't be, and then vice versa.

And together, as they come together in covenant in the one flesh union of marriage, that it is a physical earthly picture of the fullness of the Godhead, which is a really, really amazing thing for so many reasons.

And there are some amazing teachings on this concept in 1 Corinthians by the Apostle Paul, where he really gets into the nitty gritty of what these things represent in the beautiful interplay within them, and kind of how all of this cascades into the glory of God himself.

And we may get to that at some point in this study. But for the time being, we must emphasize that men and women are made equally in God's image, equal in value, equal in worth, equal in dignity, equal in inheritance, in other words, that which the sons and daughters of God will inherit someday, and even equal with regard to importance for civilizational, that's what I wrote.

Apparently I should have practiced pronouncing it first. Civilizational strength, that's what I was trying to say. So they're equally important with regard to the strength of a civilization. That would have been a better way to put it.

And because, yes, while you have the men that are the ones bringing in water to the cities and mining the coal and are in the forests bringing the trees down, felling trees so that you could build houses, and then building the houses, and then literally building the entire infrastructure of civilization.

You have men doing all of that. Without women, there's no posterity to inherit all of that great and marvelous work. Without women, you don't have the next generation being nurtured the way that they need to be in the home as Paul enunciates in Titus chapter two.

And so they are equally important with regard to the strength of a civilization as well. Equal in value, worth, dignity, all of these things. But the problem that we now run into with these wonderful foundational truths, foundational truths that we have, the problem is that both men and women are sinners.

And as sinners, we will use any leverage that we can get in order to advance our personal preferences. This is part of the fallen nature at this point. And so we'll leverage whatever we can, whatever we can grab, whatever we can wield, both men and women, in order to advance personal preferences.

And that could be anything from notoriety, that could be anything from rank in a hierarchical structure, that could be beauty, it could be fame, it could be influence on the culture, you name it. You could come up with dozens of different things that human beings, men and women alike, desire, envy, lust after.

And because of that, what they will do is they will weaponize anything that they can in order to meet those personal preferences. So sin comes into the picture and all of the sudden, all of these beautiful truths need to be really drilled down on and so that we ensure that we are living according to those precepts and nature itself and all of these types of things.

What that means is that both the masculine proclivities of men and believe it or not, the feminine proclivities of women have been abused since the time of Adam and Eve. There was a time leading up to the first wave feminist movement at the turn of the 20th century in which the authority of man was legitimately abused.

And what did that do? It bred now a century, 100 years, in which women have been working to subvert all traditional norms as kind of a corrective for those masculine abuses that preceded them. And so you can swing the pendulum both directions too far where you have what one pastor I admire greatly refers to is the patriarchy, not biblical patriarchy, but the abusive, totally untethered authority that men love to wield.

They like to cut the rope from the anchor of truth and from scripture, but to keep the authority. And so they're just floating away into the oblivion, which then leads to their children having to deal with what they're dealing with now.

So you had the patriarchy is kind of a fun little term in order to really put a point of reference for what led to the feminist nightmare that we have had for 100 years at this point. And of course it's been progressive.

It has evolved. There's been an evolution to it, but you swing too far one direction, the culture has in the church even has a tendency to swing too far the other direction and you are then escaping the biblical norms on both ends.

But the thing is you've had these swings since the Garden of Eden, since the fall in the Garden of Eden. So it's nothing new. It's a part of the depravity of man. It's a part of the fallen nature of human beings.

And so this is why feminism, we talk about it a lot more in especially the 21st century conservative theologians and pastors have had to. And we talk about it in particular, it's kind of a particular target for the faithful church today because that happens to be the point of history that we're in.

And we have to remember that because you always need to give benefit of the doubt to your pastors, to your theologians, to your churchmen out there all across the country. When they appear to have kind of a soapbox that they'll get on every so often and a particular thing that they are fighting against because one, you know, obviously we're called to teach the whole counsel of God, but at the same time throughout all of church history, this is something that is not new.

The thing that's new is the particular heresy you're facing. But what's not new is that there is always a heresy to be facing. And so whether you're the Apostle Paul in the first century with the rest of the first century church who are having to face the heresy of Gnosticism, or whether you're Athanasius in a couple of centuries later who is having to face the heresy of Arianism, which is the total denial of Jesus as God, the deity of Christ and all of these types of things.

There's this Latin phrase, Athanasius contra mundum, which means Athanasius against the world because he was literally seemingly the only faithful church father left that defended the deity of Christ.

And one, if you ever want just a beautiful piece of church history that will just enliven you, and that is Athanasius' work on the incarnation. That's what it's called, On the Incarnation. And it's very brief.

It's probably 60 pages long. There's a number of different English translations of it. And when you read that, in the context of knowing what he was facing, the Arians who were trying to take over the Catholic church, and they did by the way, for a brief time, but couldn't last because it was a doctrine of demons and the Lord's church.

And I don't mean that the Roman Catholic church is his church, but what I mean is Christendom in general, it will not, it will not be conquered. It cannot be conquered. So Athanasius was validated, was vindicated wholesale after he was gone and with the Lord, but he was completely vindicated.

And you read his work on the incarnation, a defense of the full humanity of Jesus and the full deity of Jesus at the same time in light of those heresies, it's just absolutely amazing. So you have the Apostle Paul with Gnosticism.

You have Athanasius fighting Arianism. You have Luther fighting all of the heresies of Rome at his time in the birth of the Reformation. After that, you had the Puritans that had to constantly fight the heresies of antinomianism, lawlessness within kind of like a cheap grace type thing within the church.

And they also had the Quakers to deal with. We hear about them every now and then, but that was a very serious thing around the time the Puritans lived. It's a dying movement now, if it even is still a thing.

Quakers were very significant at the time of the Puritans though, and they were heretics. They, once again, denied the Trinity, the deity of God. They had the inner light as they believed it. So they believed in new revelation.

They could essentially prophesy and say things that were equal with the written scriptures. The Puritans had to deal with that. Then today, we have the heresy of feminism. And you might think, well, hold on a second, Ben.

Why would you call that heresy? Well, you could get really technical with defining the term and make it exclusively about really theological things, such as the doctrine of the Trinity and things of that sort.

But I think you can fairly kind of loosely define heresy is that which subverts the word of God. Teachings that are subversive to the word of God, what it means, and how it is the rule of life for God's people as to avoid the confusion that we now face in this particular generation.

And I'll say this too. If feminism were just kind of this weird peripheral thing only in the pagan culture, then maybe it's something that could be ignored. Unfortunately though, it has infiltrated the church to a severe degree.

And so now it is a heresy that we face today in why we have to spend time breaking down the passages like what we're in now and looking at counter interpretations, counter exegesis, quote unquote, because it's not actually that, and we'll demonstrate that as we go through it.

We'll look at, when we're looking at this passage, we're going to look at the best that the egalitarian theologians have to offer with regard to what this passage is actually saying. And what will we do?

We're not going to approach it with an ax to grind. We're not going to approach it because we have to win an argument. We approach it holding these arguments up against the whole of scripture. And we say, look, this is the only infallible standard we have.

So does it match that? Or is it something that is just kind of a throwaway sentimentality of the times and things of that sort? So it's something we face today. And so therefore we have to deal with it a little bit.

If this weren't a problem in the culture today, we wouldn't talk about it. But alas, we are now dealing with theological results of the feminist heresy, including things like transgenderism, ubiquitous broken households, confusion in self-esteem issues in the younger generations because of it and things like that.

And so what do we do about it? I will say there are some amazing godly men out there right now that have been called to take this to the streets, so to speak, to the public square. They have significant platforms with significant followings, getting on large platforms where they're being put to the test on having to defend biblical teachings like this.

One of the earliest examples of it, you too will appreciate this, was Votie Bauckham on CNN defending the Titus chapter two doctrine against a female pastor on air, on national television live, having to keep his school, having to have the empathy bombs thrown at him, the empathy traps thrown at him.

And this was like back in 2006 or seven. And so this, like he was dealing with this long before it was like what is now a mainstream fight and bless his heart for it. He's being honored for it as we speak, as he dwells in the presence of our Lord.

And so there are great men that are out there as we speak and in times past that have dealt with these types of things that are called for. But what about us in this little country church, small church family?

What do we do about it? Do we sit back and just root them on? Do we feel like the obligation, like we have to get out there and start making a rah-rah against some of these heresies that we face now?

What do we do about it as a small church family with what feels like a very small influence in the world? And the answer is the exact same answer as any other issue we will ever deal with. And that is what we do is we live up to the biblical standard.

We remain faithful, even if faithfulness is scarce at this particular point in history, because in the end, the Lord will judge our individual deeds, thus honoring those who were faithful. Even if the nation or the church, whether it's the nation we live in or the church we're a part of, as a whole let him down, we as individuals can still be faithful.

We can still honor him and be honored for that faithfulness in the end. And so we don't ever have to feel the need to get out there and just make a show of these truths that we do have a legitimate zeal about.

We may not be called to do that. Other men are, and when they are, let's pray for them. And again, may God bless their efforts. But if we aren't, that doesn't mean we have to be passive about it either.

What it means is that we in our context here are to be as faithful as we possibly can be to the standards of scripture so that we can be shining lights out in the world as we go out there and live our lives and demonstrate these things and all of that great stuff.

Now, with all that being said, again, I'm kind of introducing things here. We're not really diving into the text yet. We will certainly open things up quite a bit in the following weeks. But with all that being said, I want to discuss how we can think about these issues in a way that is faithful.

Okay, so what does faithfulness look like? I've raised the question, what does faithfulness look like? And I want to kind of go through a little bit of this so that we have everything set for interpreting and walking through verse by verse in the coming weeks.

For starters, I want to bring something that we don't often talk about to the table, but is integral to this discussion. Now, Brother Otis used to say that God wrote two books. Y 'all remember what they are?

What are the two books that God wrote? The Bible and the earth. Is that what you said, Dave? Science. Oh, science, okay. Yes, either way it would have been the correct answer though, Dave. Brother Otis used to say that God wrote two books.

And he, dad, you can correct me if I'm wrong. He may have used the term science. I'm gonna, if he did use that, I'm gonna replace it with a slightly more broad term, but that still encapsulates all of it.

He wrote two books, the Bible and nature. And I think that would be a fair way to quote Brother Otis there. What are the two books he wrote? The Bible, which we could also refer to as special revelation.

That's a kind of a theological term that you will see pop up in commentaries and theological works and things like that. Special revelation, what does that mean? Well, in Romans chapter one, and later in chapter three as well, the apostle Paul talks about the fact that nature has enough of God's writing in it to let every single human being ever born, regardless of where they live, to know that a God exists.

So in other words, he affirms Solomon's proverb that he who denies the existence of God, I'm paraphrasing big time, is a fool. Because nature screams that there is a God and that he is there and that he is not silent to kind of quote Francis Schaeffer a little bit there.

And so the first book is the Bible, which is special revelation, where nature and the universe says there is a God there, special revelation tells us who he is, all right? So while every human being ever born looks into the stars and says there is a God there, I need to know who he is, where do they go for that?

And that's where the Bible comes into play. That is where special revelation comes into play because that is where we learn the character of God, the attributes of God, who he is as a person, how he subsists as a family, the father, the son, and the spirit, how each of them plays their unique part in our lives and in our spiritual growth.

So the Bible, you could refer to as special revelation and that's closely tied to something we call biblical theology, which is essentially the study of the story of scripture, the story of redemption.

So that's the first book, the Bible. The second book, which we've alluded to already, is nature. And that would be something that we call natural revelation or natural theology. And again, the apostle Paul gives us the foundational teachings of natural theology in the book of Romans, but it's in a number of other places as well.

So we have special revelation or biblical theology, we have natural revelation or natural theology, two books that God wrote, the Bible and nature. Now, with that being said, we don't talk about natural theology a lot because it is our duty as Bible teachers to teach the Bible, so special revelation.

We get in here, we teach the whole counsel of God as it is given to us in scripture. When you come up upon a place like Romans 1 or Romans 3, then we get to branch out a little bit and talk about it because the apostle Paul talks about it.

But generally speaking, our focus as pastors, as Bible teachers is on that special revelation. That's our job. But in this particular discussion, we need to talk about natural theology as well. We need to bring it into account along with biblical theology.

And the reason why is because when you do that, you tend to land on something that is vitally important in this discussion. And that is that you tend to land on God's design. Remember that word, put a pin in it, because it's so important.

We tend to land on God's design for men and women over against specific roles, okay? I will explain why this is so important, but for now, just get the distinction in your minds. When you incorporate natural theology along with the biblical narrative that we've been given, what you find is that you see design in the way God created men and women over against trying to hone in on just specific roles that a man or a woman may or may not live out, okay?

It can be a little bit of a trap. If we ever distinguish men and women by roles instead of by design or instead of by nature. Now, why is that the case? Why is the distinction so important? An analogy that I recently heard kind of on this topic that I think is helpful is think about the job of an actor, okay?

What is his job? He is literally employed to play a part or to play a role that imitates another person. It's the job of the actor and they usually do a really good job at it. Sometimes they are indistinguishable from the person that they are playing and they are employing a role, they are playing a part.

However, even the best actor around can never embody the nature of the opposite sex. It doesn't matter how good of an actor they are, a male actor is not going to be able to play the role of a woman or vice versa because womanhood and manhood are defined by nature, not by roles.

You see now why this distinction is important and why we have to be thinking about design and nature over against roles that human beings can play. So to define women and men based upon role and not design is to subconsciously affirm and stick with me here, bear with me.