House Rule #7 God Created the Roles for Service in His Church | Adult Sunday School

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Good morning, everyone. Good to see you all. Invite you to open your

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Bibles once again to 1 Timothy. We're gonna finish off chapter two this morning, verses 11 through 15.

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In our study, it's part two, house rule number six.

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Honor God's created order. There are some notes from last week because we're gonna use the same notes again.

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If you don't have your set from last time, there are, I think they're back here on the countertop back here.

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So both sets of notes. So let's begin our time in the Lord's word by committing our time to him and ask his blessing on our time.

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Our Father, we do know that it is by your grace that we are able to gather together here in the name of our

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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to worship you, to fellowship with one another, to hear your word preached and taught.

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And so we thank you for that opportunity. And we pray that you would be our teacher this morning, that you would guide us through your word, that you would show us what you would have us learn and also help us to apply it to our lives and do it for your glory.

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In Jesus' name, amen. Well, just a brief review of last time.

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Last time, we looked a little bit at the nature of the church from this just a two -page study.

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And we saw that the church is a mystery and Paul calls it a mystery. And it was a mystery not revealed in the

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Old Testament but revealed in the New Testament. And so we just saw that since Paul is concerned with the church in this letter to Timothy, we ought to build a little foundation for it.

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The mystery was not known in the Old but revealed in the New to Paul. And we looked at the features of the church.

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And very importantly, that Jews and Gentiles in the church are united in one body through spirit baptism and that every believer is indwelt by Messiah, what we call spirit indwelling.

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And then we saw that the church has a clear beginning point in time.

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First mention of the church in Matthew chapter 16, the church was still future. But then there were three prerequisites for the church to be born.

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And those prerequisites were the death of Messiah, the resurrection of Messiah, and the ascension of Messiah to be with his father.

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And of course, what followed after that was the day of Pentecost and the work of the Holy Spirit. After class last time,

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Brother Dave over here reminded me of a verse very pertinent to this and you should jot down John 7, 39.

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It very clearly speaks of the prerequisite of the ascension of Christ.

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This verse says, now this he said, this is Jesus, about the spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the spirit had not been given because Jesus was not yet glorified.

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So there, once again, very clearly, prerequisite for the spirit's work on the day of Pentecost in forming the church, starting the church was the glorification of Christ.

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And by the way, that whole chapter is very interesting because it really does parallel what we saw taking place in the book of Acts in the experience of Paul.

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Because in that same passage, it talks about the Jews wanting to kill Jesus.

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And you remember what happened with the apostle Paul, the Jews tried to kill him. When he talked about going to the

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Gentiles and ministering to the Gentiles, which is what Christ wanted him to do, they attempted to kill

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Paul. Well, the same thing was happening to Jesus in his ministry. And in that very same passage, he tells the

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Jews who were trying to kill him, where I am going, you cannot go, speaking of heaven. And they mocked him.

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They said, where's this guy gonna go? Is he gonna go to the Greeks? You know, ha, ha, ha, well, the

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Greeks are Gentiles. And so in this very passage then, before he talks about the spirit coming, he says, if anyone thirsts, is that anyone without exception or anyone without distinction?

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Well, in the context, it has to be without distinction. You bet he's going to the Gentiles. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.

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Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.

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He's clearly talking about his ministry to the Gentiles. So this permeates the

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New Testament, the idea of the gospel going from Jew to Gentile. And so we saw that. And then we saw the church is the body of Christ.

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The church is the body of Christ, and the body, the church, is entered by spirit baptism.

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And as of Acts 1 .5, spirit baptism was still future, so the church does not exist yet.

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But then in the book of Acts chapter two and following, the baptism of the spirit is not mentioned, but his filling is.

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And then we saw, this is number five on page two, that Peter recounts the

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Gentiles hearing the gospel and the spirit falling on them when he preached the gospel to Cornelius and his family.

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He personally sees the presence of the spirit in those Gentiles.

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And how did he know that? Well, because they spoke in languages they hadn't learned, just like they did at Pentecost.

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And because they did that, Peter understood the spirit of God is in the

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Gentiles. How could that be if Gentiles were considered to be filthy vessels and defiled vessels?

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Well, there's only one way. The spirit cleansed them with salvation. And so that gave evidence of Gentile salvation.

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And he talks about that in Acts 11. As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them, just as on us at the beginning.

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And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the

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Holy Spirit. And there he makes the connection between the Gentiles being filled with the spirit, baptized in the spirit, and what happened on the day of Pentecost.

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So on the day of Pentecost, the church began with the baptism of believers into the body of Christ.

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So that's just foundational for really, not just the rest of the Bible, but also for our study in 1

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Timothy. So were there any questions that you might have on that? Yeah. They would be believers.

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And like in, we also spent some time in Luke. And when you look through Luke's first couple chapters, he lines out several

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Old Testament saints that are saved the same way we are, by God's grace through faith.

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And of course, Abraham becomes the prototypical believer, according to Paul in Galatians and also

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Romans 4. And his justification, and this is Paul's whole argument, is by faith alone.

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So everyone who's ever saved is saved by faith alone. I'm sorry, what?

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So are Old Testament saints part of the New Testament church? I would say no.

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The church is a new entity, born on the day of Pentecost, that did not exist.

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That was what we saw Paul teaching. But they're still saved. In other words, their salvation is certainly as valid as any

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New Testament saint. They're just a different entity. They're not part of the church.

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Right, they're believers. They're a separate entity. Okay, anything else?

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Well, then we looked also at the idea of, and this is why

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I've just titled this whole thing, Honor God's Created Order, because he starts in verse eight to talk about men and women, and we saw that last time, and how

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God created men and women in the church to be holy. And we worked our way through those passages.

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First he looks at men, then he talks about women, and the idea that the holiness is the prime purpose for that whole passage.

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He's not so much concerned about externals, about posture, he's more concerned about internal spiritual reality.

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So was there any questions about what we saw last time in that whole passage?

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Well, this morning we arrive at verse 11, and I wanted to make a break there as far as last week and this week, because there is actually a natural transition there.

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There's a transition because of a change of topic, probably the big transition, but if you notice, there's also a transition in the number.

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When in verses nine and then 10, he's speaking to women, it's plural. Women should adorn, women who profess.

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But then in verse 11, let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.

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When he does that, he's transitioning into a different topic, and he's also generalizing the teaching.

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He's creating a principle here. This is one of the interpretive issues that is applied to this passage.

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This passage is quite amazing. For one thing, it's very short and concise, but there's also a tremendous amount of literature out there and articles and writings about it, as you probably well know.

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But it really is quite clear as far as I'm concerned.

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But what we're gonna see here this morning is that in honoring God's created order,

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Paul is still concerned with God's created order right through the end of this chapter. In Ephesians chapter two, verses 14 through 22, we looked at that passage, and we saw that the church, by definition, again, is one new man.

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And what does Paul say? He says it's created, okay? So creation, as we're going to see, is the foundational doctrine in the

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Bible. Of course, the Bible starts with creation. But every single true biblical doctrine is built on creation.

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You can see this all the way through scripture. And once you have it fixed in your thinking, that the importance of every doctrine is that it is built on and from God's created order, they'll sort of pop off the page at you when you see them.

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If any man is in Christ Jesus, he is a new what? Creature, or creation, there it is, right there.

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Our salvation has its origins in God's created order. Every single doctrine, every one you can think of has to do with creation, because creation is foundational to what

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God is doing through the rest of the Bible. And it even goes back, of course, to the creation of man and woman.

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And actually, technically, it says male and female. Creation is the foundational doctrine for every other doctrine and practice in the rest of the

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Bible. Genesis 127, God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.

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That's the account in Genesis chapter one. It is quoted by Jesus, Mark 10, six, he said, from the beginning of creation,

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God made them male and female. Now that's a good translation of the word there.

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We saw in the first part of chapter two, the word men, women, but this word, male and female, is critical to understanding creation and how it's used in the rest of the

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Bible. You really could almost translate that, he made them a male and a female, okay?

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He's specifying the difference between male and female. He uses the word that is male, or the male sex, and also the female sex.

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This is also used by Paul in Romans chapter one. A familiar passage, but in many of the translations, well, in few of the translations,

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English translations, does it actually use that translation of that Greek word? It says, let me just read down through it, and I'm gonna translate the word like Jesus translated it, okay?

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Romans one, verse 18 and following. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

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Now that's anthropos, mankind, okay? General application, that would be men and women.

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Who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, for what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

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For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world.

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Creation of the world creates accountability on the part of all humanity. That's what he's saying there.

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In the things that have been made, so they are without excuse. No one will ever be able to stand before God and say, hey, you can't cast me into the lake of fire.

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I never had the gospel preached to me. No missionary ever came to me.

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The fact is, though, that person was part of creation. Creation reveals the glory of God and that creates accountability.

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And so yes, God can legitimately cast them into the lake of fire because they're guilty of their sin, which causes them to suppress the revelation of God in nature.

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And then verse 21, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.

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Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal

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God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

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Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator.

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You see the upside down nature of what they have done. Who is blessed forever, amen.

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Now here it is. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their females exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.

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And the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and were consumed with passion for one another.

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Males committing shameless acts with males and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

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That's very clearly the word that is used there. Now it essentially can mean the same thing, men with men, but you hear the focus on the sexual distinction and difference between males and females when you actually use the very word that's there.

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It's males and females. And so you also see the fact that this descending cycle that they're in where God gives them up, gives them up, gives them up.

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Certainly you can identify this in our own life and generation. So I wanna just start with there this morning.

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Creation is the foundational doctrine for every other doctrine and practice in the rest of the

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Bible. And it's male and female. Well, this morning we're coming to Roman numerals four on your outline from last week.

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And we're going to see this morning that God created the roles for service in his church, verses 11 through 15.

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This is a very interesting passage for a variety of reasons. One is it's so controversial.

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And you probably can tell that this is a passage that really butts heads with the worldview that we find in ourselves.

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And it's very, very interesting to see the history of this. One scholar, a

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New Testament professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Ted's in Chicago.

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He did a survey of scholarly articles, okay? And these would be produced by theologians and published in journals and things like that.

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And so using some of the really cool computer tools that we have nowadays, he was able to survey these.

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And he found out that it was only in 1969 that the egalitarian or the progressive view that women should be in positions of pastors and pastor teachers and elders in the church really became prominent.

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In 1900 plus years of church history, this was not a controversial issue. It wasn't even an issue per se.

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It all began around 1969. Well, studies have shown then that this really just followed after the social movement out there in the world of the feminist movement.

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And so the church just sort of chased after the feminist movement. And these articles began to be published and just really flourished.

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This scholar concluded that the rise in the progressive interpretation's promotion following the women's movement of the 1960s, he says, is indebted significantly and at times probably culpably to the prevailing social climate rather than the biblical text.

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The church chases after the world and that's what happens. Another scholar said, when opinions and convictions suddenly undergo dramatic alterations, although nothing new has been discovered, in other words, nothing new scripturally has been discovered, and the only thing that has dramatically changed is the spirit of the age, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the spirit has had an important role to play in the shift.

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And of course, that's what's gone on. The church has chased after, when I say church, you understand air quotes, my arms get tired,

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I need somebody to hold my arms up if I keep saying the church, the church. Portions of the broader evangelical church, as you well know, follow after the world.

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Wherever the world goes, the church wants to follow after it in some cases. And this is what's kind of dramatic about this, this explosion of articles and explosions of promoting the egalitarian view, it's, at least within my lifetime, in 1 ,900 years of church history, it's relatively new.

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So we need to see that at the very beginning. But this passage is very clear.

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One of the things about it is Paul is very plain, he's very clear about what he says.

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I'm just gonna read through verses 11 through 15. He says, let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.

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I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. Rather, she is to remain quiet.

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

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

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In verse 11, he says, let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.

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That's from the ESV. The ESV here, the ESV is a reworking of the

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King James, you know, and it follows after that, kind of that same English strand. You don't really get a sense of the imperative there.

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That's a command force verb. New American Standard is better, actually. It says, a woman must quietly receive instruction.

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So you can hear the command force of that verb. When they translate commands as let,

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I never did understand that, that's strange. Let? No, that's a command. Let a woman must quietly receive instruction.

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So what happens in so much of this literature, and we can't possibly review it all because there's just so much of it out there, they begin to say, well, what it really means is she needs to learn, and it says quietly, and so that question then comes up, what does it mean by quiet?

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But he actually says that with all submissiveness. That phrase with all submissiveness defines what he means by quietly.

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It does not mean silent. He uses the word again in verse 12. She is to remain quiet.

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Now, some people try to link this back to 1 Corinthians 14, verses 34 and 35, where Paul actually does use a stronger word, and it's silent, but you go back and you look at that passage, and if you carefully walk your way through there, that is a, it's a different group of people in a different location, but it's also a whole different topic.

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It has not to do with her learning quietly, but with her actually participating in some things that were going on in the

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Corinthian assembly, but even in that book in 1 Corinthians, in 11 .5,

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it says women are to pray and prophesy, and even though in that particular passage, it says she is to remain silent, so it has to be understood by how it's used in its context.

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Here, and he uses it three times in this passage, verse 11, quietly, verse 12, quiet.

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It does not mean silent, okay? Some people have said it means silent, but if it does, the first time he uses it up in verse two, for kings, who are we gonna pray for?

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Kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life. Now, certainly,

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Paul doesn't wanna say what we wanna live a peaceful and silent life. Very last thing Paul wanted to do was to be silent, so in the context, it is simply meaning quiet in the sense of willing to listen, willing to hear with all submissiveness.

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He even defines it up in verse two, godly and dignified in every way, but this might have been something a little unusual for these people to hear because the

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Jewish rabbis, historically, really wrote a lot about women, and they were, because it was known that Eve was the one who first was deceived in the garden,

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Paul's gonna talk about that, so the Jewish rabbis, and without really any warrant from scripture, created a whole social construct where women were really placed at a very low level in their culture, and they blamed the fall in the garden for it, but Paul kinda just does away with that.

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Very first thing he says in this passage, let a woman learn in quietly with all submissiveness, so she is supposed to be part of the teaching ministry of the church, and she is supposed to learn.

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Women are to be learners along with men, but with all submissiveness.

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This word submissiveness really fits in well with what we've seen about how she is to behave as far as her dress and her good works and that kind of thing, and then he says in verse 12,

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I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.

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Rather, she is to remain quiet, and here, again, a lot of people would take that, and actually, a good first word in that would be but.

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The word sometimes doesn't show up in the English translations, but Paul is really, he is creating a pretty strong contrast there, even an adversity structure there, but I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority.

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There are those that say, well, what he's really doing there, he doesn't want a woman to teach heresy.

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That's all he's saying there. She can teach, she can teach men, but she just can't teach heresy. Paul has dealt with heresy back up in chapter one, and he uses a different word, actually, when he says that he charges

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Timothy and tells him that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine.

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It takes two English words to describe that word, apparently, because that's just one big Greek word, different doctrine, so he doesn't use that word here.

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He doesn't say that she's not to teach different doctrine. It says, I do not permit a woman to teach.

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The second thing he doesn't want her to do is to exercise authority over a man, and there again, there are those who say, well, she can teach men, she just can't teach them in a domineering way, and what they have to do is they have to take either or these two commands and turn them into negatives, okay, and yet, when we get to chapter three and we look at the requirements for elders, both of those are positive requirements for elders.

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They are to teach and they are to exercise authority. That's part of their job as elders, pastor, teachers of the church, so there's other, many, many other attempts from the grammar and so on to try to change this around and change what

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Paul says, but he is very clearly saying, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, rather, she is to remain quiet.

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This word permit even tells you that Paul is not addressing a particular event or even a local issue in Ephesus.

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There again, this is one of the arguments against this. Well, he's just dealing with a specific event, specific group of people.

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It's confined to a geographic area and also a period of time.

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If they can prove that from the text of Scripture, then they can say, well, of course, it doesn't apply to us here and now.

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That's one of the exegetical interpretive expedients that is used quite a bit. The problem is, when he shifts to the singular, a woman, he is generalizing this and we just simply also have to bring it back under the original purpose of him writing this letter, as we have seen, that you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living

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God. You have to bring that back under that context. He is talking about the church and he's talking about the church wherever it meets and down through history, however it meets and wherever it meets.

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This is not for a particular period of time. These are not confined to the first century. These are general principles for the church to practice.

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His language also, the grammar of that word, I do not permit, his language, it communicates the habitual and continual prohibition of women usurping the

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God -ordained role of men to lead the church in the local assembly.

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This word also implies, this word permit, that there has been permission requested and it's generally thought that this word is back behind the scenes.

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People are wanting to teach. Women are wanting to teach in the church when he says, but I do not permit.

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Tells you that this is a word that's applied to a request that has been made.

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Women are not to teach men in the church and Paul is prohibiting two basic things, to teach men, to exercise authority over men.

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Grammatically again, the object of this in both these words is men. Doesn't mean she can't teach domineering, doesn't mean she can't teach false doctrine, that's not the issue.

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It's the issue of her teaching men in the church. And by the way, women can teach one another, they can be teachers, they should be teachers.

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Titus two, verses three and four. Older women are to teach the younger women and also women are to teach children.

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Timothy, in 2 Timothy 1 .5, we know that Timothy's grandmother Lois and his mother

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Eunice taught him, trained him. His father was a Gentile and believer but he was trained by them and even in chapter three, verse 15,

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Paul says, you know from childhood how you had these sacred writings able to make you wise into salvation.

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So women were teaching Timothy. Both these sentences, on either end of them, the word quietness or quietly brackets these.

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So what Paul is really stressing here is attitude and not so much the issue of what is true is there but also the attitude.

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She's to learn quietly and as far as exercising authority over men or teaching men, she is to remain quiet about that issue.

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And he gives the reason in verse 13. Now when you notice, I say two reasons and some take it that way but just in thinking through this again,

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I think there's really only one reason. He gives one reason in verse 13 and verse 14 is the illustration of that reason.

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He says, for Adam was formed first, then Eve. What does

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Paul do with this? He goes directly back to creation. He just plants the foundation of this right in the created order.

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The reason women in the church, the household of God, are not to serve as elders or pastor teachers is because it violates

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God's created order. He doesn't say a whole lot, right? For Adam was formed first, then

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Eve. That is God's created order. It's kind of fascinating.

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Once Paul anchors this in creation, there's not a whole lot left to say apparently, right? And the apostle

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Paul, he's very capable of making long extended arguments on theological issues as we well know, right?

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Romans, Colossians, Galatians. So he could do this under the inspiration of the

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Holy Spirit but he just basically has one very short, terse sentencer.

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First word is for. That's a little preposition. Paul really likes that. It basically says because, the reason is,

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Adam was formed first, then Eve. Adam is the head of the race and as the one who brought sin and death to all humanity,

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Romans 5, 14, he is accountable for what happened in the garden. Well, what happened in the garden?

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It says, Adam was not deceived but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

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She became a transgressor. The illustration or example is from the fall.

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That's why I think it's basically legitimate to say, he gives one reason God made it that way and here's what it looked like when that was violated.

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She, Adam was not deceived but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

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Paul is emphatic that Adam was not deceived. It was Eve who was deceived but what happened with Adam was, he violated

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God's created order in allowing that to happen. In Genesis 3, 6, it says

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Adam was with Eve when she was deceived. God had created the relationship of Adam as head of the woman.

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He violated his God -ordained created role to exercise the leadership necessary to correct the deception and deal with the serpent.

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He knowingly violated God's command and God holds him accountable for that in Genesis 3, 17.

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You have listened to the voice of your wife and it doesn't mean listen to her advice about different things. In that instance, the fall occurred because he listened to the voice of his wife and he violated the created order as well and he's held accountable as the head of the race for the sin of the whole race down through history.

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Paul holds him accountable for that in Romans chapter five and remember, his wife was also under his headship so he is actually accountable for her sin but the women cannot teach or exercise authority over men because it violates

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God's created order. Eve was deceived concerning the nature of God but Adam violated the

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God -ordained created order that God had set for him. He anchors this, this is so critical, right back in creation in the same created order in which

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God created all people, male and female, in his image he created them so from there on, that sets the value of all people.

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Does it not? And that also sets the value of both male and female. Women are not a lesser person in creation and she's not a lesser person in the church.

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There is just simply a different order of service based on God's created order and we need to connect the dots here a little bit.

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If God created them, male and female and after that, he created marriage and then he also, remember, created the

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God -ordained roles so when Paul goes right straight back and anchors this truth in creation, you need to connect the dots, okay?

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When you see a woman preaching in a church in a gathered assembly of both men and women, when you see that,

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I get it, I understand. The focus is on her, right? We wanna talk about her and all of that but listen, you need to ask another question, very important question, where are the men?

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Where are the men? Where are the godly men in that woman's life and in that church?

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That's the big question because she is usurping God's role in the church.

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She's just the symptom, the men are the disease. They have abandoned their role just like Adam did, okay?

50:19

So we need to ask that question, where are the men?

50:46

Yeah, goes back to creation. Where was Adam?

50:52

He was there, right there. He saw the serpent deceive his wife. He usurped his role and that's what's going on now.

51:01

Where are the men? I get it, the woman, she's kind of the focal point but for every woman that's in the pulpit and you see that and you see the congregation out there, all those men sitting there, they are submitting to something that is not biblical but behind the scenes, in her personal life and in the life of that congregation or that church, whatever you wanna call it, where are the men?

51:24

Where are the godly men who say that's not biblical? They reject the word of God just like Romans 1.

52:24

Even though they knew God, that's where apostasy starts. It starts with some knowledge of God and then they reject

52:30

God, they suppress the truth in their unrighteousness and then it's just a downward spiral.

52:37

God gave them up, God gave them over, God gave them up and I'm sure there's a variety of reasons but the bottom line is they have to just disregard the clear teaching of scripture and that probably has happened way back in the past.

52:52

Usually, these things aren't some immediate cataclysmic event. There's a history of rejection.

52:58

You remember in 2 Timothy 4 too, Paul says to Timothy, preach the word, be ready in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine but wishing to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate to themselves teachers after their own lusts.

53:20

The issue is not with Joel Osteen. Well, how in the world can 30 ,000 people come and listen to this guy?

53:27

Well, who attracted who? According to Paul, they're not attracted to him.

53:34

He didn't attract them, they attracted him, they accumulated him. Now, certainly there's a symbiotic relationship there but this is apostasy.

53:54

That wasn't a church, by definition.

54:04

Why didn't he train men like Paul told Timothy? I know not after that but in other words, there has to be a history there.

54:16

Those things just don't happen with an immediate time. You could track back a history of not obeying the word of God, of disregarding the clear teachings of scripture as in every other area.

54:33

So that's probably my best answer, Nathel. I can't without knowing more about that particular situation but the bottom line has to be if they have a

54:42

Bible in front of them, it's a rejection of the word of God and the clear teaching of scripture.

55:09

I think you're right. According to Paul, you're right. If a woman is a pastor of a church, that church doesn't have a pastor.

55:16

It's not a church by biblical definition. Okay, any other questions?

55:24

Oh, Jim. I agree.

55:43

Okay, and now verse 15, maybe one of the most difficult verses in the entire New Testament. So I'll tell you what, we're out of time, let's just.

55:51

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm just teasing here. We're not scared of tough verses.

55:57

It really is kind of an enigmatic verse and like the rest of this,

56:03

I think if you just practice regular, normal biblical principles, first and foremost, bringing it under the purpose of Paul's writing.

56:13

This is Paul's purpose for the church. So you will know how to behave in the household of God. So it has to be brought under that and what

56:21

Paul says here is, even though the woman was deceived and became a transgressor or a sinner, yet she will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith and love and holiness and self -control.

56:37

Now, some of the issues here are even, you can see and hear from the grammar of this is she, the woman, the referent is the woman, will be saved through childbearing and then there's a shift to the plural, if they.

56:54

So there's just quite a bit to sort through here. She will be saved and now the word saved has a semantic range like these words do and for the most part, it's going to mean salvation from her sins, okay?

57:06

It can also be used in a sense of being delivered from something, okay? But here, consistently, this word is used by Paul and others in scripture to speak about salvation from sins and I think this is how it's being used here.

57:19

She will be saved, future tense, she's going to be saved. Now, here's one of the more difficult ones, through childbearing.

57:26

Now, I'm not gonna rehearse all the varied meanings and interpretations of this, but really it is,

57:33

I think the best one is to think that what Paul's doing here, he's capturing what it means to be a woman in submission to the will of God by basically one concept, childbearing or motherhood.

57:45

Even if you go back and track through the Old Testament, this was very common in Hebrew thought, that a woman's, the description of a woman is best pictured by seeing her as a mother or in motherhood and so I think what he's doing here, he's wrapping up all that it means to be a godly woman in submission to Christ within the church by this single concept.

58:12

She will be saved through childbearing and then of course there's the condition, if they continue in faith and love and holiness with self -control.

58:19

Paul doesn't need any lessons from any of us on soteriology or salvation, right?

58:24

He wrote the book, right? He knows what he's talking about. He's not setting up a condition for her to be saved if she continues in faith and love and holiness with self -control.

58:35

Basically though, in scripture, we know that continuation in faith and love is evidence of salvation.

58:42

It's not the means to it, okay? This is really clear and also we need to understand that in the

58:48

Bible, when a statement is made about somebody's spiritual state, it just doesn't stop there.

58:56

Like look in Genesis 6, Noah. Noah was a righteous man and then it says, tells you how you could objectively see that.

59:04

It's almost as if somebody said, when Moses writes, Noah was a righteous man, somebody said, how do you know?

59:10

Prove it, show me what that looks like. And then he makes that statement about Noah walked with God and so on.

59:16

So a statement of the internal spiritual reality but then that is bolstered with an objective evidence of that person.

59:25

This is very common throughout scripture. This is why Paul uses this idea of faith and love.

59:31

Really, you have faith? Show me your love, right? Because love is the evidence of true faith in Jesus Christ and those are always together.

59:39

So clearly, Paul is not setting up a condition by which she is going to be saved if she continues in faith and love and holiness and so on with self -control.

59:51

He's simply saying, this is gonna be the evidence of a godly woman's life. And so, women and men are both saved by the grace of God through faith in Christ.

01:00:01

Christ is shed blood on the cross. Theologians call this the ground of our salvation.

01:00:08

And so, whether you are an Old Testament saint or a New Testament member of the church, the ground of your salvation is to shed blood of Christ on the cross universally, women and men.

01:00:21

But that faith is demonstrated by their willing obedience to their God -created roles. Childbearing is used by Paul to represent all facets of a woman's

01:00:31

God -ordained role as a woman created in the image of God and her salvation is validated by her perseverance in faith and love and holiness with self -control, okay?

01:00:46

Do you have any questions about this passage? Yeah, Julie.

01:00:59

Absolutely. Well, that's a good point. And when these, so often when you see in Scripture these very dogmatic statements, then all the exceptions come into question and that would be one of them.

01:01:13

What about a woman who never gets married? What about a woman who gets married and doesn't have children? Can't have children, doesn't have children.

01:01:19

That certainly, they're not excluded there. Paul really, he's standing back and saying, this is sort of the picture of a godly woman, but it doesn't exclude all of these other things as well.

01:01:29

Yeah, that's a very good point. Yeah, I think it is a grammatical reference to the women in general.

01:01:55

And it's just a general statement. That is one of the exegetical issues you have to work through with that, but I think it can easily be referenced to the women.

01:02:08

Yeah, he's making general statements about men and women and their roles in the church, yeah, so.

01:02:14

It's a difficult passage, no doubt about it. And when you survey the represent, some really good conservative evangelical scholars, some of them take different positions about this.

01:02:28

One of the very common ones, historically, because you don't see it in the English translations, through the childbearing, there's an article there, the childbearing in the

01:02:37

Greek. And what that does is, since it's commonly used to define something, called the definite use of the article, definite article, many have said historically, well, this is the childbirth of Jesus Christ.

01:02:49

Well, doesn't that make sense? She's saved through the birth of Jesus Christ. Well, that's true in one regard, but I don't think that's what it's talking about here.

01:02:59

The childbearing there doesn't really pertain to a particular birth. It's more of a general concept there,

01:03:06

I think, is how it's being used. So there are several exegetical issues and interpretive issues you have to work through, but I'm personally comfortable with the idea that he's talking about childbearing as a single concept for picturing women and their godliness within the body of Christ.

01:03:25

Okay, anything else? Okay, all right. Yeah, Brian.

01:03:31

You know, something that says that Corinthians 14 is silent in the church, for they are not permitted to speak, but they are, if it's silent or if it's quiet.

01:04:02

It says silent, yeah. First Corinthians 14, 34 and 35.

01:04:09

Yeah, and then that passage that I referenced earlier is also controversial for a variety of reasons, but when you go back and look at it in its context and in the context of that church and what was going on in that church, the issue of spiritual gifts is right there and prophesying or not prophesying.

01:04:28

Also, there's a textual issue with those two verses as well that needs to be sorted through when you study that passage.

01:04:37

Some would say that that's a late addition, those two verses were a late addition, because when you look at 33 through 36, you can see they basically transitioned together and perhaps that was put there.

01:04:48

I can't come down on that issue or not, but there is a textual issue there that needs to be sorted through if you're gonna exegete that passage.

01:04:56

Also, there again, in that same letter, Paul talks about women praying in the church and prophesying in the church, prophesying in the sense of proclaiming the word of God, not necessarily receiving new fresh revelation and proclaiming that.

01:05:11

And so all of these issues need to be brought to bear. Where you can, I think, go wrong is if you have a presupposed conclusion in mind and you're gonna find a verse that supports it.

01:05:22

Now your conclusion is your hermeneutic. You can't do that. You're gonna have problems all the time.

01:05:27

Okay, anything else? Yeah. I recently, as they were much more communal.

01:06:49

Yeah, I mean, we definitely have to try to understand authorial intent. That's critical whenever you interpret scripture.

01:06:58

And authorial intent has to include that person's culture, their social environment, and all of that.

01:07:06

So we not only have a textural context, we also have to ask about that person's background, their culture.

01:07:12

How did they see these things? And so that's a very good point, yeah. And we see these things in scripture.

01:07:21

Sometimes you also have to ask, like Paul's two or three times, greet one another with a holy kiss.

01:07:30

Now you have to ask a question there, okay, are we talking about form or function there? What does Paul want?

01:07:36

He wants people, Christians, to greet one another. The form that it took in that day, could take, was a holy kiss.

01:07:45

You have to say, what does Paul want us to do now? Greet one another, right? That's part of acknowledging each other in the, but how we do it may change and shift with cultural distinctions and so on.

01:08:00

I mean, in some cultures, if you walked up somebody in a church and greeted them with a holy kiss, it might go bad, you know?

01:08:06

Or other cultures, if you were in the East, or like Russia or someplace, I mean, some guy might grab you and greet you with a holy kiss.

01:08:13

So you have to ask, okay, is it form or function? What does he want versus what form does it take when you do it?

01:08:18

And how is that applied down through history and across cultural lines and so on?

01:08:24

So, yeah, it's part of understanding scripture to understand the culture and the background of the people that wrote it and so on.

01:08:30

So, anything else? I agree, 100%.

01:08:50

Greeting one another does not necessarily mean a physical kiss. Fist bump, you know?

01:08:56

Eskimo nose rub, something, you know? Okay, anything else? You care, sure, and greeting one another is acknowledging that person's presence, their existence, and so on.

01:09:07

They're important, yeah. Okay, well, let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for our time and your word this morning.

01:09:14

We thank you that your spirit is our teacher, and we can rely on you to always be there for us in all of these issues.

01:09:23

And even if we have a difficult passage in scripture, you are there for us, and you can help us through it.

01:09:30

You help us overcome our many weaknesses as we try to understand your word, but we thank you for your sure word, your truth, and its place that it has in our lives, in our ministries, and in this fellowship.