First Timothy 2:15 - May 12, 2024 (Mother's Day)

Mount Zion Community Church

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So, like I mentioned last week, this was something that I really had to think about a little bit.

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I had to think about how I wanted to approach a service on Mother's Day. You know, do we continue on in the

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Gospel of Matthew or do we take a little break and look at something else? And given the fact that the next thing

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I really wanna talk about as we go through Matthew is get us into the Sermon on the Mount and do an introduction to the

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Sermon on the Mount, I thought it would be appropriate to just take a brief break this week, to take one week and talk about something else that I think is really important and a topic that's very near and dear to me.

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And that is the concept of family. And since it's Mother's Day, I wanted to just sort of really focus in on some of the things that Scripture has to say about motherhood.

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And we're gonna look today just at one verse, just so you know what's coming up.

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We're gonna look at 1 Timothy 2, verse 15. That'll be our verse for the day.

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But before we get there, I wanted to just reflect on my experience with motherhood.

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Well, I have a mother and I'm married to a mother and that's about the extent of my experience in motherhood.

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So I decided to do a little bit of Googling just to see what the internet had to say about motherhood in 2024.

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And honestly, it's pretty depressing. So among the things that I found as I was looking through this was a viral list of pros and cons to having kids.

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This is something I think went viral on TikTok. And there were 350 cons and 35 pros to having kids.

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And most of the pros were either silly or just kind of selfish.

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For example, you can be late to anything and blame it on the kids. Or if you raise them right, people will praise you for it.

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So these are the pros. And as we go to more serious publications, we see headlines like this.

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The US ranks lowest in overall policies aimed at helping parents support children.

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Now, some of you probably know a big issue with a lot of people is government childcare.

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Government stepping in to offer the opportunity like countries in Europe do to give people free childcare so that they can go back to work.

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That's not what this is about today, but I will tell you that anybody who's looking for that is what you're looking for is an opportunity for someone else to raise your children in an ungodly way.

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If you're looking for the government to control your childcare, you're not looking for what is best for them.

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Publications like The Economist have headlines that say stuff like this. How motherhood hurts careers.

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And I know that this is depressing, but I feel like we have to look at these either subtle or not so subtle messages that women are just being hammered with when they're on the internet.

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And speaking of not so subtle messages, this was an article a couple of years ago in Time. It said this, women will lose themselves to motherhood if row is reversed.

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Here's a quote from that article. And this is coming out of COVID. Because the last two years in which mothers left the workforce in record numbers to shoulder the burden of childcare in a country that has abandoned us to the pandemic and are now suffering a maternal mental health crisis are a damning preview of what's to come if row versus weight is overturned.

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People with uteri forced to sacrifice themselves for a role the US deems more important than autonomy, more important than ambition, more important than our own actual lives, and yet will not support at any point.

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Which is an odd way to endorse murder. And then there's articles about millennials.

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So our younger generation of women, and I can say younger because I'm even removed from that generation.

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Millennials are dreading motherhood. And I don't think that this is 100 % of everybody, but these are the things that you're getting.

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These are the news articles on websites like Vox. In fact, there was also a survey called the

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State of Motherhood 2024 that a group called Motherly put out. And what they found was that millennial and Gen Z women under 30 were half as likely to have a child or have another child as the same survey showed just five years ago.

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And even women that wanna be mothers get mixed up messages from society about the relative importance of their career or the relative importance of their education.

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So they hesitate, worrying that having a family is gonna hinder that.

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Having a family is somehow gonna make it harder to have a career, and it is, and make it harder to have education, but then they can't decide which one is more important.

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And a big part of this, if we're being honest, is just the cancerous effect that feminism has had on our society, and our churches for that matter.

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So what do we make of all this? What do we make of this little sample of headlines?

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And how do we shape our view as Christians of the meaning of motherhood or the purpose of motherhood?

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Well, if you've been here for any number of weeks, you probably know that the only thing that we care about here, the only thing that I care about, the only thing that I care to teach is what

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Scripture has to show us about what family means and about what motherhood means.

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And I don't think there's any better way to do that than to take a close look at a verse on motherhood.

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Although this verse that I've chosen for today is one that's problematic for a lot of people.

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Now, it was written by Paul, and it was written in his first letter to Timothy. And if you're familiar with anything that Paul wrote about women in 1

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Timothy, you know that it's caused quite a bit of an uproar and sparked more than a few debates in a lot of churches.

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But this verse is one that, while it's a challenge to interpret, and it can potentially be offensive to some people,

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I believe it's ultimately uplifting and encouraging and actually elevates motherhood to the place in society that it deserves, or at least helps to move in that direction.

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So if you'll turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Timothy 2, we'll take a quick look at that one verse, 1

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Timothy 2, verse 15. That verse says, but she will be saved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctification with self -restraint.

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And again, this is a verse that a lot of people look at, and then they try to explain away, because yes, there's aspects of this verse or this concept that make a lot of people uncomfortable.

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But before we look deeper into what it's saying, I wanna take a look at some of the things that the verse is not saying, some of the things that the verse is not telling us.

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These are ideas that have been published in scholarship, but that we can consider to be faulty interpretations or just incorrect applications of what we're seeing in the verse here.

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Now, the first example of a faulty interpretation is this idea, and that's the idea that women, and Christian women in particular, will be safe from harm when giving birth to children.

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So there's a Greek word here that we're gonna look at in just a second that means to preserve. So in order to take kind of the edge off of this verse, people will say, well, it just means that women will be safe.

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They won't suffer in childbirth. But of course, this doesn't make sense for a couple of reasons.

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And the main reason for that first is that unfortunately, throughout history, Christian women have often died in childbirth.

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This is just something that has happened. And however anecdotal that might be, it's a pretty significant argument against that particular interpretation.

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And second, as I mentioned earlier, so contained within the phrase in the Greek is this word, sozo, which means to preserve.

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Again, that's part of the definition, which is how that idea came about. So because it is to preserve, we have to look a little bit further at what it means.

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So we have to look a little bit deeper into the Greek. And this is one of those times when tools like Blue Letter Bible are really helpful because you can look up the

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Greek, you can look up the other places that it is used. And what we wanna do in a situation like this is see if Paul used the term any other times, see if Paul used sozo in any other situations.

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And when we look at that, what we find out is that basically every time Paul uses that, he uses it to refer to salvation.

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And he uses it to refer specifically to the salvation that believers receive through faith in Christ.

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And not only is that the case, but he uses it that way about 27 other times in addition to this one time throughout the letters, including these pastoral epistles, excuse me.

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So we move on from this interpretation. We move on from the idea that it just means to be safe in childbirth.

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But this leads us to ideas that are even more difficult and dangerous to consider.

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We have to ask ourselves, is Paul suggesting that women can earn their salvation by having children?

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Is he suggesting that this is some kind of system of salvation by works?

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But before we even get there, we have to look at one other suggestion. And this is the idea, a way that commentators have considered this in the past, again, to take the offense away from it.

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Whenever we look at these kind of interpretations, the reason people are doing it this way is so that we can explain it in ways that don't hurt people's feelings, or we can explain it in ways that don't confront people's lifestyles or people's decisions.

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And one of the ways that this is done is to suggest that the passage is referring to the birth of Jesus through Mary.

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So this is the childbirth that brings about salvation. And part of the reason that that would be said is because in the verse before it, we talk about Adam, or Paul talks about Adam and Eve, and Eve being deceived.

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But even with that, it takes quite a bit of a logical interpretive leap to switch from Eve to Mary.

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So you really have to kind of twist yourself up in order to make that connection between verses 13 and 14 and verse 15.

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And then further, we have the challenge of looking at the fact that there's a noun in the

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Greek, technogonia, and that refers to the bearing of children. That's specifically what that is describing.

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And it is actually the act of bearing children and not just rearing children or raising them up.

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So when we see that idea, we also see that Mary didn't receive her salvation simply by the fact that she gave birth to Jesus, as if it was some kind of appreciation gift or something like that.

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But Mary, she experienced salvation the same way all the rest of us do, through her faith in Jesus.

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Because Mary, again, Mary was a person just like the rest of us. So we don't follow along with the interpretation that this could refer to Mary giving birth to Jesus.

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So this brings us back to what we said just a second ago. The idea that Paul could possibly be promoting the idea of salvation by works.

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But as we consider this idea, I wanna take just a little detour, a little pause here to discuss some of the historical context that we have in this verse.

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And this will be useful because the historical context of what's going on in the church at the time is actually pretty similar to what we see in our society today.

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So Paul's writing this letter to Timothy in Ephesus. And the church at Ephesus had not only been the subject of a very specific letter from Paul, but it was also one of the churches who received a letter from Jesus in Revelation.

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And one of the biggest issues with the Ephesian church was the fact that there were false teachers there spreading messages that were confusing to believers, messages that were just flat out wrong.

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And in this case, the teachers at Ephesus outside of the Christian church were downplaying the importance of marriage and domestic life in general, which included children.

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So they were convincing believers that marriage wasn't something that was necessary. Family wasn't something that was important.

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And again, this is something pretty similar to what we see going on in our society today.

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This is something that women in the church are forced to contend with now too. So in writing this,

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Paul was bringing forward a pretty specific example to counter these false teachers and the false teachings of the

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Ephesian culture. And he did it by drawing attention to one of the most obvious differences between men and women.

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The difference being that women can have children and men cannot have children. So Thomas Schreiner, a commentator

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I read, said this. Paul saw in the women's function of giving birth a divinely intended and ongoing difference of function between men and women.

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He selects childbearing because it is the most notable example of the divinely intended difference in roles between men and women, and because many women throughout history have had children.

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But now we get back to our question of if Paul is promoting the idea of salvation through works.

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Specifically, is Paul writing that women need to have children in order to earn salvation?

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And I think that we can pretty easily answer that with a very emphatic no for at least a couple of reasons.

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Now, the first reason being is that earlier in this same letter in chapter one, verses 12 through 17, he wrote this to Timothy.

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He wrote, I am grateful to Christ Jesus, our Lord, who has strengthened me because he regarded me faithful, putting me into service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor, yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our

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Lord was more than abundant with the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. It is a trustworthy saying and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom

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I am foremost, yet for this reason I was shown mercy, so that in me, as the foremost,

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Christ Jesus might demonstrate all his patience as an example for those who are going to believe upon him for eternal life.

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Now to the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever, amen.

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So we see in this passage what that boils down to, what those verses boil down to, are

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Paul's acknowledgement of the fact that salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone.

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But there's another issue with Paul that we have to look at, and that's the fact that Paul was actually a significant proponent of the idea of being single, and in certain situations.

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So we see that in 1 Corinthians 7. You can take a look at that whole chapter on your own if you want to, but I want to just take a quick look at two verses, verses eight and nine.

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So Paul writes this to the church at Corinth. But I say to the unmarried and to the widow that it is good for them if they remain even as I, which is single, but if they do not have self -control, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

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So this is confusing when we consider an emphasis on family in Paul's writing about singleness, but we can't lose sight of the fact that singles are in no way second -class citizens in the kingdom of God, and in fact, they are very useful and can be used more powerfully than others in the church a lot of times because people who are single have the opportunity to devote their entire lives, to devote all their time and effort to the things of God in a way that people who have spouses or who have children can't.

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However, just as an aside, a call to singleness in the church is also a call to celibacy because any sort of sexual activity would be considered sexual immorality.

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So this is not a call to just not get married and live whatever kind of life you want.

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This is a call to dedicate your entire self to the service of God. But again, given the idea that Paul commends singleness, it's just not rational to suggest that he would say that childbirth is a work required for the salvation of all women.

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And finally, all we have to do is look at our world and know that there are people who have had children and have not experienced salvation.

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And I'm not even talking about people who you would look at their lives and judge them. I'm talking about people who say that they're not

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Christians. So the idea that childbirth is required for salvation obviously is not the point of this passage, but rather this verse serves to round out a section of the chapter, a section that begins in verse nine, describing instructions for women, including some verses that upset a lot of people.

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This is where Paul says that a woman should not teach or exercise authority over a man. And then

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Paul goes on to explain the reason that he says this, and he refers to the creation order of Adam and Eve, and Eve being created out of Adam, and then the fact that Eve was deceived in Genesis.

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And as I said, this serves to round it out with one of the most common

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God -ordained abilities and potential duties of all women, which is bearing children.

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So why on Mother's Day of all days would we look at a passage like this and talk about Greek words and risk offending people and all that kind of stuff?

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And that's because, as I said at the beginning of our time today, I believe this passage and this verse is one that gives special emphasis and special honor and respect to motherhood.

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I wonder how much these influences affect this church, but there are people out there today who believe that the church is just a patriarchal tyranny that's designed to oppress women and hold them down and prevent them from ever doing anything that's important.

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When if you read the Bible and you understand the

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Bible and you're seeking God's will, you can see that this is not the case at all. And this is frustrating to me as well, because again, it goes back to the messaging that our culture puts out to women and families, the message that motherhood is somehow a lesser calling than something else.

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It's less than getting a degree, or it's less than working outside your house. It's less than making a lot of money.

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Being a mom is less than being a CEO. It's less than being a professor. But no matter how misguided all of these messages are, and they are, they're still so pervasive that they can't help but get into the minds of people.

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And they can't help but get into the minds even of Christian women. But here's the thing, when messages like that come around, when messages like how motherhood hurts careers flash across your computer, your email, or your

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Facebook or whatever, we have to ask ourselves something. We have to ask ourselves who the messages are coming from, and what is their motivation?

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Because I can assure you that those messages are in no way coming from the Bible. Because you will never, ever look at the

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Bible and read the Bible portraying motherhood as less than anything.

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William Mount said this, one of the foundational issues underlying most of the discussions of the role of women in the church, and I would argue in society at large, is the question of whether worth is determined by role.

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Can essential equality and functional differentiation exist side by side?

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Underlying much of the discussion lies an implicit assumption that a limited role necessitates a diminished personal worth.

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It is no wonder that the discussion of women in ministry and society can become so heated.

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I think this is one of the most important parts of the quote. He says, yet the equating of worth and role is a non -biblical, secular view of reality.

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Nowhere in scripture are role and ultimate worth ever equated. In fact, we constantly find the opposite.

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So all that said, let's consider a few points of application, or a few things that we can take away from this verse.

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And I would say one of the first ones is this. We honor God when we respect his design and creation.

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And it's pretty obvious to most of us that God has designed men and women to be different.

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Yet both are still created in the image of God. Let's just take us back to Genesis 5, verses one and two for a minute.

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And that says this, in the day when God created man, he made them in the likeness of God.

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He created them male and female, and he blessed them and named them man in the day when they were created.

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Now what this means is important. It means, again, that there was a distinction in the creation.

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But even in the midst of that distinction, both men and women were still created in the image of God.

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But that doesn't mean that men and women are the same. And God created us in a lot, in different ways, or made us different from each other in a lot of different ways.

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And the result of that is that we're able to complement each other. So there's differences, differences that are physical, differences that are emotional, differences that are mental, differences that are relational, and more.

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But the thing about these differences is that we can look at them as better or worse, but that's not the reason they were designed that way.

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These are not better or worse. Again, these are differences that allow us to work together and to complement each other.

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And Scripture is clear that God has prescribed particular roles for families and churches and ways for them to operate.

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And we honor God when we submit to his will and we operate that way. And motherhood is one of the most miraculous and beautiful ways that we honor the design that God has given to men and women.

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Because only women can give birth. Only women can be mothers.

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Again, stating the obvious. Now, point number two takes point number one and builds on it just a little bit.

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We take it in a slightly different direction. But living in accordance with God's will is a sign of salvation.

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So 1 John 1, 6 says this. If we say we have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not do the truth.

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And in Luke 6, 46, Jesus says, now why do you call me Lord, Lord and not do what

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I say? And again, this is similar to the first point, but taking it just a step further.

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Because one thing we didn't really touch on in discussing why this passage is not suggesting a salvation by works is the idea that the behaviors that Paul is talking about when he writes this are not behaviors that earn salvation, but they're behaviors that reflect one's salvation.

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So going back to Shriner, he says, what Paul means is that abiding in godly virtues and obeying apostolic instruction are necessary for salvation.

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They are necessary because they function as the evidence of new life in Christ.

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Now, I wanna restate the fact that it's not the act of bearing a child that results in salvation, and nor is having children a requirement for anybody to be saved.

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That's not what we're saying. That's not what this passage is saying. But the things that we see in the verse, the things that we see as he continues is faith, love, and sanctification with self -restraint.

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Did this sound similar to anything that we talked about in the last few weeks? These are kind of parts of the fruit of the

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Spirit, right? And again, as mentioned earlier, Paul is using childbearing as a common reference point, something that everybody would understand as a way to push back against false teaching.

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And when we continue looking at the idea of living in accordance with God's will as being a sign of salvation, we see the opposite of that when we look at Romans 1, verses 26 and 27, also something that Paul wrote.

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He said, for this reason, God gave them over to dishonorable passions. For their females exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural.

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And in the same way also, the males abandoned the natural function of the female. And obviously, or maybe not obviously, but that passage is often understood to refer to homosexuality.

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Yet the point remains that acting in a way that's contrary to the nature of God's design represents a rebellion against the will of God.

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And it may not be popular to say this, but the Bible clearly lays out descriptions of biblical manhood and womanhood, and it includes things like roles.

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And then when we have examples, we see that as well. Evidence of salvation is acting in accordance with what you find there.

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And let me also say, just in case anybody is thinking this or is confused by this, this all applies to men every bit as much as it applies to women.

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Again, the standards, the requirements, the roles, all those things are different, but the

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Bible doesn't give men free reign to act or operate however they want. Men are to submit to Christ, and in submitting to Christ, will lead their families, their churches in a godly way.

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But the point of this is that the authenticity of your salvation is questionable if you're consistently living in open rebellion to the will of God as revealed in Scripture.

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Once again, this is for men as well as for women. Submission doesn't mean that husbands, that pastors, that leaders are allowed to do whatever they want.

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That's not the point. And the third takeaway, as we talked about a lot of the things that this verse doesn't mean, is that mothers are saved in exactly the same way as everyone else.

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Because the fact is that we're all sinners. And sometimes we find that parenthood and family life highlights and brings out all that sinful nature of everybody that's involved, from the spouses to the children and everybody.

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In fact, maybe that's part of God's design for parenthood and for marriage, is to show you exactly how sinful you are when you're put with another sinner.

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But because of this sin, every single one of us is destined for an eternity in hell.

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And this is also Scripture, right? It's described in Scripture as a lake that burns with fire and sulfur, eternal punishment, eternal darkness, where you will experience torture and suffering for eternity that is without relief, where the smoke of your torment goes up forever and ever, and you have no rest day or night, and you will experience constant weeping.

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And Jesus talked about hell more than anything else. The reason

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Jesus talked about hell is because he was sent to earth for his ministry to help prevent people from going there.

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Because everybody needs to know, everyone needs to know, that that is your eternal destination apart from God and apart from Jesus.

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Because we've all sinned, and that sin is what's separating us from the love of God the Father, which is why

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God sent Jesus to live a perfect life, to live a life that none of us could ever live, to become the payment for our sins.

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And we know this. We're all aware Jesus was beaten, mocked, scorned, and ultimately he was crucified, as Romans 5, 8 put it.

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But God demonstrated his own love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

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And unlike every other religion, there's no checklist of behaviors that we have to do to be saved.

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That's one of the big misconceptions and misunderstandings or intentional misrepresentations that people make about the church.

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We don't have to make any kind of sacrifices. We don't have to check a box or do specific things in order to please

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God so that we can earn our salvation. Jesus has done all that.

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Jesus has done all that on our behalf. And the fact that he rose, the fact that he was resurrected after three days is proof that God accepted his sacrifice.

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And scripture tells us that the only thing that we have to do to receive the benefit of that is to confess with our mouths that Jesus is

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Lord and believe in our hearts that it is true. And the ability to do this is a gift that comes from the

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Holy Spirit. And we're promised. We're promised that all who call upon the name of the

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Lord will be saved. And that's true for each and every one of us. That's true for me, that's true for you, everybody who's sitting in this room today.

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And it's my plea and my prayer for mothers, for their children, for husbands, for people that are single, that you confess, that you believe in what

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Jesus has done for you. Believe that Jesus is Lord. And if this is something that you have questions on, if any of this is something that you have questions on, please don't hesitate to let me know.

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Please don't hesitate to talk to me about it. Please don't hesitate to talk to me about this. But I wanna close with just a couple more thoughts on motherhood.

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Let's bring this back around to Mother's Day. This is important to focus on because mothers have the power to shape society as much, if not more, than anyone else.

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John MacArthur said this, women are far from being second -class citizens because they have the primary responsibility for rearing godly children.

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Mothers spend far more time with their children and thus have greater influence. Fathers cannot know the intimate relationship with children that their mother establishes from pregnancy, birth, infancy, and early childhood.

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Paul's point on today's verse that we're talking about is that while a woman may have led the race into sin, women have the privilege of leading the race out of sin to godliness.

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This is a role that men can't play. And this is what

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Scripture is telling us. I also wanna say that Scripture shows us, and we believe that motherhood is a high calling.

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Motherhood is second to or less than absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing else that you could choose to do.

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And that's why we celebrate motherhood today and that's why we honor motherhood today. So the last thing

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I'll say is that if you are a mother, if you aspire to be a mother, my encouragement is to devote yourselves to these things and in this order.

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You first and always, you have to devote yourself to God. You have to devote yourself to understanding the will of God through Scripture and living a life that's honoring to God.

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Second is devote yourself to your husband. This is gonna be the most important earthly relationship that you ever have.

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Despite the fact that we're talking about motherhood, this is more important than your relationship to your children, your relationship to your husband.

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Again, husbands have a role in this. Maybe we'll talk about that on Father's Day, right? But the way you model a godly relationship to your husband is what children are gonna see.

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And then finally, devote yourself to your home and to your children. I wanna go back and read

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Proverbs 31 verses 30 through 31 one more time as we close. Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears

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Yahweh, she shall be praised. Give to her from the fruit of her hands and let her works praise her in the gates.

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I wanna thank all of you who are mothers, and that's kind of a funny way to put it, but I thank you for what you've done.

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Like Tom Wills said earlier, you are a significant part of the foundation of this church.

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You're a significant part of the foundation of society. And I encourage you to continue to seek

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God's will for your life. For your family relationships, for your job, whatever it is, and just continue to live that out.

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And things will be much better. Let's pray.

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Heavenly Father, as always, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the wisdom that it shares with us.

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We thank you for the light that it brings to the darkness that our culture can be. We thank you that the words contain in the

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Bible are the most potent weapon for fighting back against the lies that our culture will tell us.

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God, as we read through your word, again, we see the importance of mothers. We see the importance of family.

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And we see how your perfect design, though corrupted by our sinful nature, can produce a society that is good.

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Now, we still need Jesus to save us. Obviously, no society could ever be good enough to earn salvation,

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Lord. But it's through godly mothers and the example that they set and their process of sanctification following salvation that sets the stage for families.

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These are the examples that children see in the household. God, so I pray that no one who is a mother would feel less than anything else.

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I pray that those who aspire to motherhood would continue on that path and understand that it is a perfectly godly vocation.

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So we thank you for this opportunity, God. We pray for the families in our church.

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We pray for the families in our community. And we pray for the godly families throughout the area, throughout the country, who are working day in and day out in ways that nobody outside of their household sees to advance your kingdom.

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God, I thank you that we can gather together as believers today and share your word.