Special April Q&A Part 2 with Pastor Osman

I'm going to begin with prayer and then we will get started with Adult Sunday School class. Let's bow our heads.

Father, we are thankful for your grace and your goodness to us and we thank you for the technology that makes it possible for us to meet as we do and to learn together.

We're thankful, Father, that you control and are sovereign over all things. Thank you for your grace and your mercy to us and giving us salvation and giving us your word.

We pray today as we answer some questions and look at your word that you be glorified through our time of reflection and meditation upon your truth.

Help us to submit our hearts and our minds and our will to your truth as you revealed it in scripture and that you would be glorified through all that is contemplated here by your people and may you be honored through this time.

Give us strength for this time and resolve and encourage our hearts together in your word we pray in Christ's name.

Amen. All right, so if you do have questions, you can post them in the chat here and Peter will clip them out for me as I mentioned earlier.

One quick announcement and I'll go into a little bit more detail about this before the worship service, but the governor's orders are what we have been using sort of to determine our own course of action in this period of time.

And according to what was released this last, I think it was Thursday, yeah, it was Thursday, maybe

Wednesday, there's no more restrictions upon church worship services. So if you go to,

I think it's like rebound .idaho .gov, I think is the website, there's a whole protocol there that Governor Little released this last week that details the whole reopening of the state and reopening the economy and getting back to normal, all that stuff.

So that's available on that website and according to that, under phase one, and it's the third column if you're looking for a quick reference to it, it says that churches and worship services can come back together and meet as long as we practice social distancing and disinfecting and going by CDC guidelines and all that stuff.

So I'll talk a little bit more about that right before the worship service during announcement time then, but Lord willing, that means that this is our last streaming

Sunday school service, at least for the foreseeable future until they determine that they need to shut everything down to avoid global warming or the common flu or the common cold or whatever it is that they decide next time is going to be the crisis.

So next Sunday, I don't know, Jess or Cornell, one of them is going to teach adult Sunday school class here. If we have

Sunday school, but don't know that yet. That's another thing I need to talk about right prior to the service. But if we do have a

Sunday school, Jess or Cornell will be teaching again because this break that I've had to do the streaming has really not been the break after God wrote a book that I had intended it to be.

Although it is a break from God wrote a book, it's not a break from me doing Sunday school. So I guess you could argue that I've had one long break.

I mean, teaching God wrote a book was a break from not teaching and then doing the streaming is a break from God wrote a book. So really,

Sunday school for me has been one long extended break. So I could teach next week, but I'm going to take a break from my other break and not teach

Sunday school next week. So Jess and Cornell, Jess or Cornell will do that and then we will be back in our worship service back resuming

Hebrews chapter eight, beginning at verse one, picking up right where I left off. So for adult

Sunday school class, just glance down here to another question that came up.

I wanted to revisit something that I talked about last week, which was the role of women in the church. Because I had somebody email in kind of an extensive question about that, not in opposition to it at all, but for some clarification and some questions about passages that she said had been used to teach certain things concerning this issue and she wanted some clarification on that.

So this will be a good opportunity and I don't mean to beat this drum because the role of women in the church is, though it is not a, what we would call a heretical issue or a primary issue, it is very close to being a primary issue as you'll see here in just a moment.

In other words, you could be wrong about this and still be saved, but ultimately if you look at what Scripture says concerning this subject and you still want to be wrong about it, that's good reason to question exactly what the role of Scripture is in your life and whether you really do have the

Holy Spirit. Because people who are confronted with the truth on this issue of women's roles, men's roles, gender distinction, actually, generally speaking, and then they resist that truth, that's a really serious issue.

So this is a very important issue and as I hope to show you at the end,

I think that your view on this is going to be connected to your view on a whole lot of other issues.

So this is an issue that, let me begin before I start that, let me begin by affirming that I have nothing against women at all.

I've raised two of them and I'm married to one. I don't hate women. This is not an issue of hating women or an issue of being a patriarch or an issue of being a sexist or anything like that.

This is really an issue of submitting ourselves and our minds and our wills to what God has revealed in Scripture is best for us according to His created order.

So that's really what this issue is. And anybody who would say, well, you just hate women or you're just a misogynist or you're a brutal dictator or you're just a sexist and you want to oppress women, those are emotional appeals, they're not rational appeals, they're certainly not appeals that have anything to do with Scripture.

So I want to walk through the issue just with a little bit more detail that I've had a chance this last week to kind of think through some of the implications of this and some of the ways that I would answer this and then

I want to deal with the question specifically that was raised in an email to me this last week.

So this is an issue that in our day right now is deserving of some attention simply because as the social justice movement is gaining a head of steam and people are pushing forward with equality and egalitarianism, and by the way, what they mean is equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity or equality before the law or anything like that, they want equality of outcome.

So as they're pushing forward with all of these egalitarian perspectives and social justice perspectives and everything, it is creeping into the church through the social justice movement and unfortunately the

Southern Baptist denomination is going south in a hurry and a lot of people connected to the Southern Baptist denomination are going south in a hurry and that includes the

Gospel Coalition, some of the stuff that they've posted and some directions that they have gone on this issue as well.

This issue of egalitarianism is creeping into the church, I shouldn't say creeping, it's being pushed into the church at breakneck speed actually.

And so much so that this last, what was it, two year, I think it was the summer of 2019 or 18,

I forget which one it was now, it was 2000 and I guess it was 19.

Last summer, Beth Moore's name was floated as a possible president for the

Southern Baptist Convention, which of course would put her in a position of authority in many ways over men within a church structure, certainly within a denominational structure and one of her responsibilities would be in a teaching role there, obviously preaching and teaching at general conferences and different conventions and conferences and Southern Baptist events, and Beth Moore really never came out to my knowledge and came out on our side of it and said, no,

I could never do that, that would be a violation of scripture. If you know anything about Beth Moore, it's simply because she has no problem teaching men and this last

Easter she posts tweets, the last two Easter services about being invited to speak in these

Southern Baptist churches and how she takes the pulpit behind the pulpit for these massive churches in the

Southern Baptist Convention, so she is all in on teaching men and exercising authority over men.

And this is so much an issue that actually recently as elders we've talked about the possibility of having a special Saturday seminar, you remember like we did with the same -sex marriage after the

Obergefell decision with the Supreme Court? We had an evening seminar where we spent about three hours kind of walking through as elders the theology and the practice of how we're going to deal with that and what the implications of that would be for the church both theologically and practically, and we devoted quite a lot of time to preparing for that and then taught that session, and we've been talking about the possibility, and I think it was

Dave Rich actually who raised the issue about doing that for the egalitarian -complementarian debate.

And if you're wondering what the word egalitarian and complementarian are, let me define those terms for you just briefly.

The complementarian, well, let me begin with the egalitarian. The egalitarian perspective is that men and women, because they are equal in nature in terms of their ontology, their value before God as created beings both made in the image of God, because they are equal in value and worth, they are therefore equal in their roles.

And so there is an equality there that whatever a man can do, a woman can do, and so if men are called to teach and preach in the church, then the egalitarian would say, so women are called to teach and preach in the church.

So women can be elders and women can be deacons and women can exercise authority over men, and women can be leaders in any capacity that a man exercises, a woman can exercise the same capacity.

That's the egalitarian perspective. Just think of equality, of outcome, of roles, of value, and everything.

If women are valuable in one way, therefore there can be no submission to authority, no ranking of authority by gender roles.

That's the egalitarian perspective. The complementarian perspective says that men and women, though, ontologically in terms of their being, their value as created beings in the image of God, their ontology or their value of being is equal, but there are gender or role distinctions which

God has revealed not only in creation but also in scripture itself in terms of the roles that he expects men to fulfill in the home and in the public gathering of the saints and worship and preaching and teaching, etc.

And then there are roles that are revealed for the woman to fulfill in the home and in the church as well.

And so that there is an equality, but the complementarian says that these two genders complement each other. They complement one another so that they go together.

And then the weakness of the man is offset by the strengths of a woman and the weaknesses of the women are offset by the strengths of the men.

But there are separate and distinct roles that each gender has that God has ordained and those roles complement one another, complementarianism, for the benefit of the family and for the benefit of the church and the people of God.

So those are the two different views. And I'm obviously a complementarian and not an egalitarian.

So here's the position basically of a complementarian. A complementarian would say that the distinction between genders inside the church is a reflection not of culture, but it reflects an order that was revealed in creation.

And that revealed order, that order that was revealed in those gender distinctions revealed in creation also come over into the church.

And that the church has a responsibility to honor the gender roles and the gender distinctions that God has set in Scripture and revealed in creation.

That's the complementarian position. So as a complementarian, I would go back to Genesis chapter 2 and the creation of men and women and the roles.

And I would say man is created first and he is given dominion. He is given authority over the creation.

A woman is created to be his helpmate and to come alongside of him. There's an order there of creation. Men first and women taken from the side of man.

And that complementarian, that complementary nature of all of creation, male and female animals and all the rest of creation, that this is then seen because Adam was alone.

It is seen to be something that was a defect that Adam was, that there was not good that Adam should be alone.

So God created a woman to be his helper and to be his companion. And so that's the order of creation and that's what is revealed in creation.

Then I would turn to 1 Timothy chapter 2. Well, before that, 1 Corinthians chapter 11. I talked about this last week with the head covering, etc.

And Paul there in 1 Corinthians 11 appeals to the order of creation and he goes back to creation itself to talk about the gender roles and distinctions that should be displayed inside the church.

And so Paul puts that on display in 1 Corinthians 11, that these distinctions are necessary, not just the gender distinctions, but the role distinctions as well.

So that men have certain roles and women have certain roles and these ought to be displayed in how the church conducts or comports itself.

Then 1 Timothy chapter 2, Paul says, I do not permit a woman to preach or to teach or to exercise authority over a man.

And as I mentioned last week, in the context of Paul saying in 1 Timothy chapter 3, verse 15 and following, that he writes these things so that we ought to know how to conduct ourselves in the church of God, which is the pillar and support of the truth amongst the church as a family of God.

Those instructions in 1 Timothy are given so that Timothy and us, by virtue of the fact that we live and we have that epistle, that we would know how it is that we ought to organize and structure and run a church.

1 Timothy and 2 Timothy and Titus were given those pastoral epistles, given for that purpose. So in 1

Timothy chapter 3, Paul gives the detailed instructions for the qualifications of an elder first and then of a deacon.

I think elder versus 1 through 7, I think it is, and the deacon versus 8 through 15, and he speaks there about deacon's wives as well.

Those qualifications and those roles, elder and deacon within the church, those are leadership roles that exercise authority, both of them do to some extent, prescribed authority inside the church.

Those roles are to be filled by men. If any man aspires to the office of an overseer, it's a fine work that he desires to do.

And keeping in mind that the chapter division between the end of chapter 2, where Paul puts that prohibition on women teaching and exercising authority over a man, that chapter division is artificial.

It needs to vanish in your mind because Paul is not switching subjects. I've heard somebody argue that the gender distinctions or the woman teaching and exercising authority over a man only applies to the home.

And then the church is chapter 3 verses 1, as if there's this distinction, this division between chapters 2 and 3 that chapter 2 is dealing with the home and the woman's role in the home, chapter 3 with men in the church.

And so women can exercise authority and teach men in the church. That's how that view would go. It's kind of a modified, egalitarian view.

But the chapter division is an artificial one put in hundreds of years after the book was written.

In Paul's mind, there was no chapter division there. In the early church, in Timothy's reading of it, there was no chapter division there.

Paul goes immediately out of a discussion of the role of women in exercising authority and teaching men into a list of qualifications where a man aspires to the office of an overseer who must be able to teach.

So the teaching role in the church in terms of the corporate body, when the corporate body comes together in a mixed audience of men and women, that teaching office must be held by a man.

It must be held by an elder. And only men can be elders because they have to be a man who aspires to that office.

It's a fine work that he desires to do, and he must be the husband of one wife. That is, in Paul's mind, the office of elder could in no way at any time be held by a woman.

And it's not because Paul was a sexist. It's because Paul was recognizing the gender distinctions that are established by God in creation and then revealed in Scripture.

Those gender distinctions, those role distinctions that are there with someone in authority, exercising authority, other people submitting to that within the church in the teaching office, that office belongs to men, not to women.

And since an elder and a pastor and a shepherd and an overseer, they are all the same office, therefore a woman cannot be a pastor.

Another sort of modified egalitarianism would say that men must be elders, but a woman can be a pastor of a church, and that elders can serve alongside of her, and those elders must be men, but a woman can be a pastor.

There's no distinction in the office of pastor or elder anywhere in the New Testament, and so we would reject that out of hand.

The pastor slash elder slash overseer slash shepherd must be a man who aspires to that office of an overseer, and he must be one who rules his own household well, and he must be one who is the husband of one wife.

And so what about women? In the corporate assembly, which I think is what 1 Timothy is dealing with, when you gather together as the church of God, in that corporate gathering where there are men and women both present,

Paul did not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. So you can't have a woman who is an elder slash pastor but never teaches, and you can't have a woman who is teaching and in that way exercising authority over a man.

Both of those are prohibited for women. So that gender distinction, that role distinction within the church goes back to not culture but creation, and Paul argues that in 1

Timothy chapter 2 where he talks about the woman being first deceived and not the man and Adam being created first.

This order of creation is something that must be reflected in the authority structure of a local church and in the way that the church comports its entire ministry.

It must reflect and honor the distinctions that are there that God has established in creation, in creating man first and then woman.

And if these role distinctions and gender distinctions, the prohibition against women were only a cultural thing, then why does

Paul go all the way back to creation in establishing the precedent there? And in both 1

Corinthians 11 and 1 Timothy chapter 2, Paul goes back to the created order.

In other words, this is a creation ordinance, something established at creation, not something that is in flux in culture as times change and we become more enlightened and we start to see how oppressive and backwards and unenlightened our forefathers were.

That's the attitude sometimes among some egalitarians, oh that was just a cultural thing. Paul was just prohibiting a cultural thing.

Paul doesn't argue from culture. He doesn't say in our culture, the Romans or the

Greeks would never understand how a woman could teach or exercise authority over a man.

They're just not enlightened enough and so culturally we should keep women from doing that because the

Greeks won't understand it because that would have been true. The Greek culture was a culture where the women, the wife stayed home and managed the house and raised the children and then men had mistresses on the side for all of the fun stuff.

And the women stayed home and just raised the children and managed the home. So there was, you know, women were horribly abused and treated as chattel in the

Roman culture in the first century Roman and Greek culture that in which Paul lived. And so Paul didn't,

Paul was not affected by that cultural perspective and he doesn't argue for that perspective of women not exercising authority over men.

He doesn't argue that from culture. He argues it from creation as if culture doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter what your culture says. Doesn't matter what the current contemporary view of men and women and gender distinctions and roles are.

It's not a cultural issue. It's not a times issue. It's not a we live in a different time and a different epoch of human history and there's none of that.

It goes back to creation. And so it doesn't matter what our culture says.

And when I was asked by somebody one time about why our church doesn't allow women to pastor or to preach on a

Sunday morning, I simply said because scripture prohibits women from doing that. Period. And it's not a cultural issue.

So it doesn't matter what the culture says. It's a matter of what scripture has revealed and something established in creation. And so you're either obedient to that or you're disobedient to that.

And of course the answer that this person gave me back was well we believe that that was a different cultural thing and we've moved beyond that.

And I simply said well Paul's argument is not cultural. It's creation. So therefore it doesn't change with culture.

It doesn't matter what your culture says. It would not have mattered at all what Paul's culture of the first century was. Truth is truth.

And Paul does not even appeal at all to culture. So it's a creation ordinance. All right. So then this brings up the gender distinctions.

Here's the question that was asked in an email. And again to clarify this was not somebody who was, this is somebody who agrees with everything

I've just poured out for you. This is somebody who's entirely on this page. But they were asking about some teaching that they heard that kind of would be my position on steroids

I think. And she didn't tell me who it was who taught this that I could guess. But she didn't mention who it was that taught this.

But here was the question. Recently I heard a pastor use

Genesis 2 15 to 18 to say that women should not teach women's

Bible studies. Only the elders and the pastors should teach women. Since God only gave

Adam the instructions about not eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and then expected Adam to instruct Eve what

God's word said that this then applies to all of scripture. So I'll read to you

Genesis 2. You might already be there a little bit ahead of me. Genesis 2 15 through 18.

So verse 15, then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and to keep it.

The Lord God commanded the man saying from any tree of the garden you may eat freely but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.

So that's you know God created man and put him in the garden gave him the instruction regarding the tree. Verse 18 then the

Lord God said it is not good for man to be alone I will make him make him a helper suitable for him.

So then God created Eve and the implication is then that that God expected

Adam to communicate that command God's word to Eve and that this then would apply to all of scripture.

Therefore anything God says the whole gamut anything God says must not be communicated by a woman to any kind of an audience but only by a man to all women.

So that women's Bible studies would be taught by men. The children Sunday school classes would all be taught by men.

Women teaching and discipling other women would be prohibited in terms of scripture. It would be a man who did this a man and only the elders who did that that would be the position.

And so the question then was was this descriptive or is it prescriptive. Also since Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 23 named sorry also since Adam named

Eve just as he named the animals in Genesis 2 19 through 20 and 23. This gives him dominion over her because of the biblical examples of God naming and renaming people and that name showing something about that person and giving that person who names them authority over them and plans for their lives like God renamed

Abraham and Sarah and Jacob and Peter etc etc. So then the question becomes is what we see in Genesis chapter 2 descriptive or prescriptive.

We would know that it is prescriptive if we saw something else in scripture that would indicate that it was only that it was prescriptive.

For instance if Paul said in first Timothy chapter 2 I do not permit a woman to teach period ever anything ever then you would know that that is prescriptive.

But God gave that instruction to Adam and commanded Adam to name the animals I think in order to demonstrate to Adam that he was alone and that he had no buddy like the animals had a complimentary complementary mate or a complimentary portion of creation for them.

Adam named the animals so that he might recognize that he did not have that. I think

God's act of allowing Adam to name the animals yes was exercising dominion over the animals but it was also a gracious thing that made

Adam to realize that he was alone and that this was not good so that when God created a woman he would not he would see her as the blessing that she was to him.

So that is why I think God allowed Adam to name the animals. There's nothing in the context that says that this is prescriptive for all of time and there's nothing else in scripture that says women can't ever teach even if it's other women or children.

It's just not in scripture so I think that that's an old I'd say it's an abuse I think it's going beyond what's written in Genesis chapter 2 to try and make that case.

I think it certainly describes what happened simply because Eve wasn't there so of course

God spoke it to Adam he was the only one that was there. Did God intend for Adam to share that with his wife?

Yeah I think he probably did but since but Adam after God created Eve, Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the garden they enjoyed

Eve would have enjoyed fellowship with God just as Adam did. I see no reason to believe that Eve did not understand that or even be taught other things by God directly or that she couldn't have enjoyed that fellowship with God apart from Adam etc.

There's just nothing the order of events there I think is specific I think it's clear but I don't think it's prescriptive in terms of for all time anything about God's word that's communicated to woman has to be created communicated by only another man.

And to see this I think you need to ask here's the second part of the question I think we need to answer the second part of the question because not only is

Genesis 2 used in that way by this person but Titus chapter 2 is used similarly. This person uses

Titus 2 verses 3 to 5 to say that women can teach women but only about women's stuff like being a wife a mother or running a household.

Let me go over here to Titus chapter 2. This person is not supportive of nuthetic counseling or direct counseling but did acknowledge that a woman could meet one -on -one with another woman to exhort her with scripture.

So Titus 2 verses 3 through 5 say older women likewise are to be reverent their behavior not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine teaching what is good so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands to love their children to be sensible pure workers at home kind being subject to their own husbands so that the word of God will not be dishonored.

All right so this person would say that Titus chapter 2 says that women can teach women but only women's stuff only women's stuff not not scripture only women's stuff okay so what's the woman's stuff that women are supposed to be able to teach women in the context of Titus chapter 2 well

Paul says they're to teach them not to be to be reverent in their behavior okay so how would a woman teach an older woman teach a younger woman to be reverent in their behavior.

What would reverence look like how would you even describe what reverence is wouldn't you have to appeal to some source wouldn't you have to look to some example of something in in in some book somewhere to teach a woman what reverence is or if women are to teach other women what malicious gossips are where would you find prohibition against malicious gossip where would you find information about malicious gossip and you look to scripture for that or if women are to teach other women not to be enslaved to much wine where would you find

God's standards and expectations regarding wine and the use of wine and not being a slave to much wine where if older women are to teach the younger women what is good so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands where would you find commands about loving your husband and the role of men and women and what it means to be submissive to your husband as Paul says in second

Titus chapter 2 that they should be love their husbands to love their children where would you find where an older woman find information about God's will regarding how to raise their children to love their children or to nurture their children or if the older women are to teach the younger women to be sensible and pure and workers at home kind subject to their own husbands where would they find information about God's expectations for being pure and subject to their husbands and gentle and workers at home and kind where would they look for that instruction so explain to me how a woman meets with a women or other women multiple women and gives them all of those instructions without in any way appealing to scripture and doing it in a

God honoring fashion how would an older woman do that without using scripture and if an older woman does that with one woman communicating that with one woman she's able to use scripture for that but not in a group of women to do that does that make any sense that makes no sense so I think that the whole prohibition about that goes far beyond that complimentary compliment complementarianism perspective that whole far that perspective is far beyond that is

I think unbiblical I think that is an abuse or a misuse of those passages I think it's going beyond what is written so what then does it look like for women to fulfill their role even teaching roles within the church

I think it's okay for women to teach children I think that we get into I think we get into a real potential conflict of interest when you have women who are teaching teens teen boys and mixed company there

I think that that has to be done carefully if at all I think that that's a

I think that's where we begin to get out of what I think is allowable into we're getting close to what might not be allowed in that situation women obviously should be able to teach can teach small children they can teach their own children they can teach other people's children women can teach other women women can lead bible studies with women when the the only prohibition to scripture in the context of the church is first timothy chapter 2 which prohibits a woman from exercising authority over a man so if you have a man present who is there in a in a in a in a learning role under the authority of that woman