Women - Workers @ Home 07-14-10

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome back to No Compromise Radio, a ministry proud to be on WVNE 760 here in Worcester, Massachusetts.

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I'll send you a free book. How about that? All right, I got an email, and here is the email subject line,

How Women Can Juggle Being Workers at Home and in Profession. That's the email line.

Hi, Pastor Mike. Thank you first off for taking the time to read my email. So as not to waste your time,

I'll get to the point. I was hoping that you could address the issue of societal pressures for women to work outside the home.

I am by no means against women working, but it seems like even in the church that a woman who stays home as wife and mother is looked down upon as if they are not contributing to the well -being of their family because they don't have a, quote, job, end quote.

I have a desire to stay home when I'm married, have children, and I would like to be a part of women's ministries, but I often feel like people think that I am lazy because I don't want to hold a profession.

It also doesn't help when trying to plan for the future. What should a girl do that wants those things?

Does it make sense to spend money on a college education, and what can you study in school that would prepare someone like myself?

And so I want to say, this is a young lady, I would assume, young lady named Danielle, and so Danielle, here's what

I would say. First of all, thanks for listening, thanks for writing, and other people are in your shoes as well.

I'll never forget when I went to Bethlehem Bible Church 12, 13 years ago. I hadn't been here very long, and there was a lady named

Laura, and she had a job, and she had a career, and she stepped down to be at home with her daughter, and lots of other ladies at the church didn't like that, because when someone does the right thing, then those who don't do the right thing, they become convicted.

And after all, who wants to be convicted in this life when we would just like to be entertained and amused? So I think what's going on in society today, you've got lots of factors.

House prices, it seems like these days, you've almost have to have two incomes for a house.

And so maybe we're going to have to set our sights on a So you can do that. I don't like it when people, especially from the homeschool -only ilk,

I'm not against homeschooling, one of my four children is homeschooled, but the crazy rabid left -wing type of homeschool people that go around spouting that Jesus' Word says that you have to homeschool, and Jesus was homeschooled, and it's the only option, and if you don't do it, you're sinning.

That group, I think, tends to say on a regular basis that college, not everyone, of course, but college for women is a waste of time, and you're just going to get strapped with a big debt, and you're not going to be able to get out of that, and why give your husband a big debt, and so therefore do something differently.

Well, I think college for young ladies is a great thing. It's maybe not for everyone, but it's a great thing, because we do not know,

Danielle, when you're going to get married. I don't think you know that time, and so you say, how can

I contribute to society? How can I serve in the local church? How can I do things so if the

Lord doesn't bring a man for me to marry, that I can fulfill my roles in the church and in society, and have other people not take care of me, but I can take care of myself.

Certainly, if you'd like to be under the headship of your father, that is right. That is good. That's proper thinking, but you can be 25 years old under the headship of your father and living outside the home and work in a nursing career or another career that you say,

I'm a productive member of society. I'm helping other people. I'm helping people.

I'm loving my neighbor. I'm helping unbelievers, and you can say, I am going to go worship as I go earn money and do things, and by the way, let's say it's just nursing.

That will be very practical when it comes to helping other families at church. That will be practical when you get married and have kids.

If the Lord sends you a husband and sends you children, nursing would be wonderful. My wife's foster mother was married to a pastor, and he would work and didn't make a lot of money as a pastor, and a couple nights a week, she would go work the night shift from midnight till 8 a .m.,

and she would help with some nursing at the hospital, and then she would be back in the morning when the kids would be ready for school, getting them breakfast and all that, and so there's all kinds of ways to help.

If you want to have a college career, I would encourage that. I would encourage you to go get educated and trained, and you have all your plans.

You have your plans and your goals according to the Scripture. That is, if God wants to change things according to James chapter 4, according to his sovereign will, he can change anything he'd like, but this is what

I'm going to plan to do, and then you'll know it's God's man for you to marry when he comes along and he wins you.

He wins your dad first, and then he wins you, and then you're willing to turn your back on all your plans, all your education, all your future training to marry this man and help him in his ministry and in his life.

Women are helpers, and so when someone comes along and you're not willing to stop your schooling and to get married because you've got to move across the country and your particular school doesn't transfer credits or have your certain kind of emphasis or degree selection, and you say, but I'm going to turn my back anyway because I love this man,

I want to go help him, that's the kind of man that you want to marry. The ones that you say, no,

I'm not abandoning anything, I've got my own life to live and my own career, I'm not abandoning anything for this guy, that wouldn't be the husband for you.

So Daniel, I'm glad you did write. I don't know why the Church looks down upon women who wake up at work.

These are married ladies, they wake up at work, they have a home to take care of, they have children to take care of, and there's ministry to be done, certainly, but I don't know why they would say, let's not have our children, as they grow up, get educated.

I want to push my kids to go to college. Where I'm going to get the money, I have no idea.

GI Bill, I guess, but that is not a bad thing. They ought not to look down upon you in your

Church. They ought not to say that you don't have a job if you're a mother who takes care of children, and your desire to stay home when you're married is a right desire.

It's a good desire, and it is biblical. And so, for the feminists who are listening,

I'm sure there's going to be some kind of problem with what I'm going to say, that I want, you know, ladies barefoot and pregnant and all that.

That's not what I'm after. I don't think there's anything wrong with being pregnant, by the way, and there's nothing wrong with being barefoot, and there's nothing wrong with being barefoot and pregnant, but that's just some kind of pejorative term that people use.

Well, so far, my name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry, and I'm referring to biblical roles, and what about young ladies?

What about young ladies who want to work and have a college education? I would say you should pick something that will actually give you job credentials when you get out.

You shouldn't pick some kind of thing that is not going to help you in the future, you know, something we have no demand for.

I don't think that would be wise. I also don't think it's wise to say, you know what, I think I'm going to be a medical doctor, and I need 12 years of training, and I'm going to go get 12 years of training beginning at age 18, because probably between the time of 18 and 30, you're going to meet someone, unless you have the gift of singleness, you're going to meet someone that you want to marry, and so what

I don't want is roles reversed. I know many people whose wives are the doctors.

They have to continue to work, and the dads basically have to stay home because they've gotten used to making a lot of money that the woman could make as a medical doctor.

They've gotten used to trying to have to pay off these medical debts that they have for schooling, debts for medical schooling, and so that becomes very, very problematic.

So here's what I'd like to say. In case someone is saying to me today, well,

Abendroth, you're just a sexist. You think women are under men. They're not as good as men.

There's a low status of women that you have because you're some bible teacher.

I want you to know that in the biblical days, women were treated as inferior.

The first -century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, in all things women are inferior to the man.

It's interesting that Jesus made sure everyone realized that that was wrong thinking.

That was sinful thinking. He had his apostle write in Galatians 3 .28, there is neither

Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

That verse in Galatians 3 .28 has been called the Magna Carta of humanity.

And so we have the bible not showing the low status of women, and you don't have a low status just because you have to submit to your husband.

Privates in the military have to submit to the general. They're not worse people. If you read

Rabbi Judah, a contemporary of the historian Josephus, he said a man must pronounce three blessings each day.

Blessed be the Lord who did not make me a heathen, blessed be he who did not make me an uneducated person, and blessed be he who did not make me a woman.

See, that is wrong thinking, that is faulty thinking, that is unbiblical thinking, and it certainly wouldn't be biblical to have that kind of mental persuasion.

In the bible you see spiritual equality between men and women, even in the

Old Testament. Women had to obey the law, women had to learn the law that their parents would teach them, they had to participate in festivals like the

Passover, they had the same protection under the law, under Mosaic law, that if you kill a man and kill a woman there wasn't lesser sentence because you killed the woman.

God valued the life of a woman. He values the life of women. They take vows.

You could take a Nazirite vow if you were a woman. You could pray to God and have the same access to God.

And so we want to do what the bible does, and that is to say men and women who said something differently in biblical days, not in the bible because the bible didn't teach that, but in biblical days were wrong.

One writer says, not the bible writer, but it says, better is the iniquity of a man than a woman doing a good turn.

Ecclesiastes 42 .14. That's not in the bible. And so we want to make sure here,

I say that a lot on No Compromise Radio, we want to make sure we think about things biblically. And so when you see

Proverbs 31, extolling women who work, I think then it would be helpful if you would know how to work better, wiser, smarter, some kind of training, some kind of trade school, some kind of home ec class, some kind of nursing class,

I don't know what it is, architectural class. There's a lot of things you can do as a woman to work at home to help contribute to the financial stability of the family without dropping your kid off at daycare and then going to try to make more money.

Now certainly all daycare is not wrong. There are things that happen in terms of marriages that are broken up, widows, widowers, and then you have to drop your kids off at daycare.

But if you have to drop your kids off at daycare because you want a bigger house and you want to make more money, then I do have a problem with that, because I think it's a biblical issue.

By the way, how much money do you have to make out in the real world to pay for all those things?

You have to pay for car gas, you have to make sure you have to keep the car up, you've got to pay for a wardrobe, you've got to pay for daycare, all these other things.

And so I'm just not so sure that's the wise thing to do. I think if you would like to be a praiseworthy woman, you ought to contribute to your family by making some money on the side.

There's nothing wrong with that. That's something that Solomon, Solomonic wisdom would extol, even though we don't have

Solomon writing Psalm 31. You want to be a praiseworthy woman, Danielle? I think you get a college degree, and if there's a guy that comes along, a man of God's own choosing, and he sweeps you off his feet, wins your father, and you want to stay at home and raise the kids, that's a great thing to do.

But if you've got a nursing degree, or you know how to draw blood, and you want to go a couple nights a week while your husband's home with the kids,

I don't have any problem with that whatsoever. I think it is admirable.

I think it is good. I mean, let me just read a couple of these things and see what the

Bible says. Charm is deceitful, Proverbs 31 .30, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the

Lord, she shall be praised. She fears the

Lord, and that's what drives this whole thing. She doesn't kowtow to the feministic agenda.

She doesn't somehow buy into post -modernism. She's not influenced by the society.

Satan's agenda of what you look like, how much money you have, and how your felt needs are all met, it does not concern a woman who fears

Yahweh, the covenant -keeping God. She doesn't have to have a husband who's perfect. She fears

God. She doesn't have to understand all the issues of submission. She just understands the

Word of God, and she obeys it. What does Paul tell Titus regarding younger ladies?

Titus 2, that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home.

Now, if you don't like it, you don't like it, but it is in the Bible. So if you don't want to obey it, if you don't like it, then you might choose a different religion because the word

Christianity is already taken, and Christians follow what the Bible teaches. Workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, that the

Word of God may not be dishonored. And so, short of extreme situations of being a widow, having a husband who's left you and he's divorced you or ran off with somebody else, but if you are a lady and you have children, you're married, your husband works, your primary place of work needs to be in the home.

That's what the text says, workers at home, Titus 2, 5. We, again, might not like it, but that is where God blesses, workers at home.

Why? What is at stake? Why is it such a big deal? The issue isn't money.

The issue isn't fame. The issue isn't fortune. The issue is not good standing in the community.

The issue is not evangelizing at work and rationalizing going. The issue is not, I've got a piece about it.

The issue is not, the Lord is leading me to do this. The issue is, according to Titus 2, 5, that the

Word of God may not be dishonored. Show me someone who says, I've got to drop the kids off early in the day.

I've got to pick them up late at night. My husband and I could downsize and we could live on his wages.

My husband could pick up another job so I could stay at home and obey the Bible, but we don't want to do it.

I will show you a house where the Word of God is dishonored. Why don't you just fear the

Lord and do what the Bible says, and let God then honor you, and let

God honor who you are, honor what you've done. There is a high role, according to the

Bible, according to God, for a homemaker. You don't have to be embarrassed when it says your job, homemaker, housewife.

That's not somehow extolled in our society today, but in God's eyes, it is wonderful.

What does 1 Timothy 5, 14 say? Therefore I want younger widows to get married, bear children, keep house, and give the enemy no occasion for reproach.

Show me a single lady, Daniel, like you, and you want to work, and you want to be involved in corporate

America or nursing or something like that, and you still have the priorities right for ministry first, and you're involved in the local church and involved in the lives of other ladies, and your worship of the

Lord is right, and you'd like to go make some money. Good, I think you should contribute. Even if you want to live at your parents' home and be underneath your father's direct headship at home, you can work, you could save, you could help your parents out and repay some of the great things they've done for you, and you could help them financially.

But if you want no occasion for reproach, and you're married, and you have a husband who's able to work, where it's not like he's disabled somehow physically, then you need to be a person who keeps house, so you give the enemy no occasion for reproach.

Show me the worker all day who's able to stay at home if they make some hard decisions, but works anyway, then that gives the enemy an occasion for reproach.

John MacArthur said the number one symbol of women's rebellion against God's order is the independent working wife.

Over 50 percent of all women are in the workforce. Over 50 million working mothers, most of them with school -aged or younger children, and in fact nearly half of women with children under six work.

Two out of three, because the younger women lead the parade in these working trends, two out of three children three to five years old spend part of their day in facilities outside their home.

So if you'd like your best life now, if you'd like to have a fulfilled life, if you'd like to have a life of purpose, then you do what

God says. I've met men on occasion who, for whatever reason, they need to be at home to take care of the kids while the wife works.

Temporary situation, I don't think that's bad. Part -time situation, I don't think that's bad, but if it's day in and day out, month in and month out, year in and year out,

I'll show you a relationship that's strained because the woman is acting like a man and the man is acting like a woman.

It is proper, it is right, it is good to keep house if you're a married lady and your husband's working,

Danielle, or if it's proper and good to be a worker at home. My question is, why is the church that you're at looking down upon biblical qualifications, not biblical qualifications, but biblical requirements?

Why are they doing that? Shouldn't the local church be the nest or the nursery for biblical thinking and encouraging ladies to do the right thing?

I think it should be. I think it must be. So my question is, why don't the ladies at church encourage such a thing?

And it goes without saying, we are all maturing as Christians, and so if you're a

Christian today and you're a brand new Christian and you haven't figured all these things out and you still drop your kid off to day care and your husband's working, you got the big car and blah blah blah, the big house, lots of cars, and you're trying to figure it out, well,

I'm not after you. I'm saying to you, why don't you ask God for wisdom so you can make the right decision now?

I didn't expect you as an unbeliever to make the right decisions. You just go with the crowd. You go downstream with the crowd.

But now that you know, why can't you and your husband get together and say, let's pray that God would help us, even in days like this, where we can do the biblical mandate, and that is husbands working outside the home, and wives can keep house.

Wives can be workers at home, according to 1 Timothy chapter 5 and Titus chapter 2. They certainly can be helpful, like Proverbs 31 says, to be wise in business, to make some extra money, to help the poor.

She extends her hand to the poor and she stretches out her hand to the needy. These are things that that kind of righteous woman can do.

This is the kind of righteous woman that children rise up and bless her and her husband also when he praises her, saying, many daughters have done nobly, but you excel them all.

That's the kind of woman we're looking for. These are the words of King Lemuel, the oracle which his mother taught him,

Proverbs 31. So if you want to be a praiseworthy woman, Danielle, and anyone else who's listening,

I suggest you don't follow the advice of those ladies who are giving you that bad advice at church.

You know what to do, and you knew what to do, and you're basically looking for me to help you and to remind you to do the right thing, to do the biblical thing.

As the Harris brothers would say, do the hard thing. We know society's upside down. We know that the scenario for women who work are pressured by the feminist and others, and they're pressured by greed, they're pressured by their husband's greed.

All kinds of wrong things to think about when it comes here, but there's something good and noble, and that is young ladies like you who love the

Lord, have been loved by God, and you say, you know, I want to honor God. And so I would pray that God would grant you a husband, and in the meantime,

God would grant you, Danielle, wisdom, so you know what kind of job to get, what kind of job that all this training that you would have could help you when you're older, contribute to the welfare of the family, contribute to the life of the

Church. And so that's what we're after. We're after you saying, number one priority is to worship the

Lord. Number two priority when married is my husband. Number three priority if married and having children is the children, and then it's the home, and then it's ministry, and if you can get all that taken care of and you have time for work, then you can do that as well.

Show me somebody that's working full -time as a lady, and she is not in a distressed situation like being a widow, and I'll show you somebody that doesn't have a lot of ministry, doesn't take care of the kids like she should, and doesn't take care of the husband like she should.

And so it probably goes back to loving the Lord your God. Danielle, great question. This is Mike Ebenroth, NoCompromise .com.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebenroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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