MUST WATCH: If This Was Not Recorded You Would Not Believe It...

I want to encourage you today that God has great purpose for your life.

Waiting on My Miracle and the Opening Testimony

And that's what I want to talk to you about today. The title of my message is Waiting on My Miracle.

Hey, hey, welcome to church. We are so glad that you're here. If we haven't met, my name is Chelsea and I am married to my incredible husband of 22 years. He's, in fact, he just amened himself, so.

All right, let me encourage you with a thought this morning that will hopefully rally the smile within. Hallelujah. Rally the smile within. Well, I totally, when I started it, I wasn't even cognizant of the fact that women didn't normally do that.

I mean, I was just so caught up in what I felt like God was telling me to do. And it was being successful. And, you know, I was teasing and say, I didn't know women couldn't teach till people started telling me.

The Rise of Women Pastors in Megachurches

Tonight.

Is a historic night. We're going to ordain our first three women pastors.

It's become extremely common in mega churches all across the country for there to be two pastors over the church, both the husband and the wife. Lakewood Church has two pastors, Joel Osteen and Victoria Osteen.

One church in Los Angeles has two pastors, Toure Roberts and Sarah Jakes Roberts, T .D. Jakes's daughter. Elevation Church has two pastors, Stephen Furtick and Holly Furtick. Zoe Church, where Chris Pratt attends, has two pastors, Chad Beach and Julia Beach.

Church Home, where Justin Bieber attends, has two pastors, Judah Smith and Chelsea Smith. When Brian Houston was the pastor of Hillsong, Hillsong had two pastors, Brian Houston and Bobby Houston. Andy Stanley, pastor of North Point Community Church, one of the largest mega churches in the country, tweeted, Beth Moore is preaching this morning.

Everyone is invited. And Rick Warren was proud to ordain three women pastors at Saddleback Church. It is completely normal now, even expected, that both the husband and wife will pastor a church together and that the wife will preach to the congregation in the same way that the husband preaches.

Contextualization, Cultural Acceptance, and a Non-Offensive Gospel

The reason why, essentially, all of the largest mega churches in the country are celebrating women pastors and preachers is quite obvious. Pastors like Joel Osteen, T .D. Jakes, Stephen Furtick, Chad Beach, Judah Smith, Brian Houston and Andy Stanley believe that the more the church conforms to the cherished values of the culture, the more the culture will accept and perhaps even attend.

The church. Now that would be sort of the first talk that you would hear at a contextualization conference. There's no sense in going into the world with a simple biblical gospel. You've got to find the points of connection or you can't plug into the socket and start the power flowing.

Their goal is to present a Christianity that is completely non-offensive and acceptable to the world. A Christianity that is all about God's love and God's acceptance. A Christianity that does not convict people of the depth of their sin and confront people with their true depraved spiritual state before a holy and righteous God.

They would rather disobey God's clear command in scripture concerning the roles of men and women in the church and family than risk the ire and disapproval of the culture and world. Of course, these megachurch pastors will try to use the bible.

Ephesians 5 and the Argument for Mutual Submission

To justify what they are doing. The word the verb submit is actually inferred from the verse that came before. So we should ask what was the verse that came before that gives us the verb for this verse?

And my friends, you're looking up here, this is a game changer. Here's what Paul said before he told wives submit to their husbands. Here's the verse that sets the tone for everything that follows. Here's our verb.

Submit to one another out of and there it is again. In other words, the submission, guys get ready, is mutual. But arguments like these are weak attempts to get.

Around what scripture actually teaches very clearly. Now the problem is verse 22 is the.

Beginning of a paragraph. But at the beginning of the paragraph you don't have a verb. So they borrowed the verb from verse 21. Small problem. Verse 21 is the end of a paragraph. So if you want to understand the context of verse 22, you got to go all the way back to verse 15.

Now we get to verse 21. And be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Submit to proper biblical authority. After the three commands we get three contexts. Context number one, wives to husbands.

Context number two, children to parents. Context number three, servants to masters. If you understand that then here's what you understand the bible to be saying. If you want to know if somebody is actually submitting to the Lord Jesus Christ, look into their life and ask this question.

Are they submitting to the proper authority that God has placed in their life? In other words, show me a woman who's not submissive and I'll show you one who's probably not walking with God. If you can't say amen, you.

Ought to say ouch. What God has revealed to us through the bible is abundantly clear concerning both that men and women have different roles within the church and family, as well as why God has created men and women to have these different roles within particular spheres of life.

And the reason why God decreed for men and women to have different roles within the church and family is not because women are in any way inferior to men, but rather it's because these roles are a beautiful illustration of the gospel, of the relationship between Jesus Christ and the church, which means that churches that destroy these differences are destroying an illustration of the gospel itself, which is extremely serious disobedience to God's will for the church.

Marriage as an Illustration of Christ and the Church

We see in Ephesians chapter 5, for example, that marriage is not just for procreation and also for sanctification, this righteous outlet for human sexual desires, but it's also for illustration. This beautiful picture of the relationship between Jesus Christ and His bride, the church.

Jesus Christ who gives us a picture of what real male headship and marriage is supposed to look like when He lays down His life for His bride, when He takes upon Himself the sins of His people and suffers the punishment due to their sins so that their righteousness being imputed or their sinfulness being imputed to Him, His righteousness can be imputed to them so that in this double imputation, He can atone for their sins and save them from their sins and grant them entree into eternity with the triune God and His perfect unity.

Christ died for sin, once for all, but just for the unjust in order that He may bring us back to God. God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

This is what marriage is a picture of, which means that when we go to war against Genesis 2, we go to war against the gospel.

Cultural Compromise, Worship, and the Power of the Gospel

By prioritizing being liked and accepted by the culture more than what God has clearly revealed in scripture, these mega churches that are celebrating and promoting women being pastors and having the exact same role in the church as their husbands are essentially going to war against the gospel.

Some might argue that this kind of accusation is unfair and too extreme, but the issue of women pastors is never an isolated issue. It's pretty much always accompanied with a general attitude toward scripture that results in the addition of many more compromises than simply permitting women to preach over men in a church.

Where you see women pastors in a church, you will essentially always also see a church that refuses to teach what scripture clearly says about issues like homosexuality, politics, sin, and repentance.

Because, like the issue of women pastors, these are issues that are offensive to the culture and will not draw as many numbers to the church, which is really the highest priority of these churches. When you look at worship today, I mean in many.

Churches, it's more like entertainment than it is seeking to draw people into genuine worship. I'll sometimes ask music music leaders, have you studied from Genesis to Revelation to discover what God wants in worship?

Many of them say, never. Or even if I see a worship, you know, team in a youth group, I'll ask the leader, what have you studied from the scriptures with regard to worship? And they don't even know what I'm talking about.

Do we not fear God any longer? We just worship Him according to the the latest fad? Do you see how dangerous that is? Christians, we need to stop.

Worrying about what the world wants from Christians and worry more about what God wants from Christians, which is simple obedience and faithfulness to what He has clearly revealed in His Word. There is no power in being just like the world because the world is lost in sin and rebellion to God.

But there is power in proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul writes in Romans 1, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

It's the gospel that is the power of God for salvation, not compromise, not popularity with the world. If we are ashamed of the parts of the Bible that are offensive to the world, then that means we are ashamed of God and what He has revealed.

Jesus says, whoever is not with me is against me. When pastors say they are with Jesus yet rebel against Jesus' clear teachings concerning how God created people male and female, they are rebelling against God Himself, against the beautiful illustration of the gospel that God gave us for our joy and awe.

When they demonstrate their priorities by also rebelling against everything in the Bible that would hurt their standing in the world, they demonstrate where their heart truly lies. So Christians, what will you trust in?

Will you put your trust in being accepted by and popular with the world? Joel Osteen and T .D. Jakes are loved by virtually all the elites in the.

Culture. By Oprah. You can watch Pastor Joel's entire I Am sermon. We have it on Oprah .com. Before we go, I have a very special gift that I want to give to this little girl. You're going to try to break me down right now.

Seriously, seriously, it's from my heart to you.

By CNN. Thank you for joining us. The book is called I Declare 31 Promises to Speak Over Your.

Life. And by the Huffington Post. Trust me, I've talked to enough LGBT, they are not all the same.

Oh, for sure. Any more than all Christians. No, no. Or will you put your trust in everything that God has revealed in his word, even if it means rejection and persecution from the world?

And I'm saying, you want to paralyze me? Then tell me you're having 3 ,000 people sitting in front of me and my job is to not offend any of them. No, I am here to offend all of you. And in so doing, I have offended my own heart.

It's not that I'm trying to be unkind. It's that I must be truthful. That is integrity. I can't say I believe something, but I don't have the.

Courage to say it. So Christians, let's have the courage to proclaim the truth, the whole truth, concerning what God has clearly revealed in Scripture. Because it's only God's truth that can save, and it's God's truth that can set lost sinners free.

Thank you so much for watching.

Until the end. If you'd like this video, hitting the subscribe button helps this channel reach more people with the truth. Thank you so much for your support and encouragement.