What is a Pastor? 1 Timothy 2:12-14, Part 3

What is a pastor? Well, we have been discussing this for a couple of weeks and this week on The Rap Report, we're gonna dive into the scriptures.

Well, just a few scriptures to talk about why a woman is not a pastor.

One, two, three. Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

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Let us continue in our study of what is a pastor? Now we have spent two weeks looking at what a pastor is not specifically that a pastor is not a woman.

We dealt with emotional arguments. We dealt with biblical arguments. And I offer to the audience here to say, what would you like to hear?

We want to make sure that we're covering everything you would like. And today's episode is because a number of people said they wanted me to dig in deeper into a couple of scriptures.

Well, one specifically, but to dig in deep to deal with the issue of Matthew, sorry, correction, of 1

Timothy 2, 12 to 14.

And so the issue here is that this is the passage people use to say that a woman cannot teach or have instruction over a man.

And so this is the one that is clearest on the role of a woman being a pastor teacher of men.

So can we dig into this was the request. And if you have a request, yes, we want to hear from you.

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Just email us and we'll send it out to you. So with that, let us dig into 1 Timothy chapter two.

And I don't actually wanna start with verse 12. Why? Well, context, hello.

We're gonna back up a bit. And you say, oh, you're gonna back up to verse nine where it mentions the women and starts with the whole instruction.

No, actually I'm gonna start with verse one. I'm gonna read this so we have some context and then we're gonna dig in a little deeper to verses 12.

So if you have a copy of God's word there with you, if you wouldn't mind opening your copy of God's word, if you're driving, just listen along unless you wanna pull over to the side of the road.

Do not read your Bible while driving, please. I know if you live in New Jersey, hey, that's just normal.

Well, okay, they don't normally read the Bible. They're usually watching TV. I've seen it.

I have seen it in Jersey. People driving while watching YouTube videos on their phone.

So yeah, don't do that, please. So what we want to do today is read through this.

This is 1 Timothy chapter two, starting in verse one. First of all, then

I urge that in treaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men for kings and for all who are in authority so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.

This is a good, acceptable and acceptable in the sight of God our savior who desires all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.

For there is one God and one mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all for the testimony has been given at the proper time.

For this is why I appointed a preacher and an apostle, I am telling the truth and not lying, as teacher of the

Gentiles in faith and truth. Therefore, I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without wrath and dissension.

Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with the proper clothing modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls and costly garments, but rather by means of good works as is proper for women making a claim of godliness.

A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness, but I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet for it was

Adam who was first created, then Eve. It was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression, but women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self -restraint.

So I want to work through this larger passage so we even understand the context here as well.

So he starts off by talking about the fact of prayer. He wants people praying.

He gives us four different ideas of prayers, entreaties, prayers, petitions, thanksgivings, and to be made on behalf of all men.

Kings, which we don't have a king in America. Not too many kings left. There is one over in England now after a very long time of a woman queen, but finally there's a king there.

But we don't have kings. We have authorities though. We have presidents here in America, prime ministers, things like that in other places, but we have authorities.

But notice what it says, that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life. I guess that's a life that's not on social media, right?

The fact is, is we as Christians should have a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.

So this is where he's saying, first of all, this is what he wants. He wants prayer. He doesn't say the first thing

I want is discernment. Just notice that by the way. So many people put this in, when they deal with this topic, it's an issue of discernment.

Well, it is, but he starts it off by saying we should be praying on behalf of authorities, okay?

That's where he's saying that his primary focus is in this. So that's what's setting off.

That's the primary focus. He talks about there being one mediator between God and man. But what he then does is he talks about the fact that this mediator ransomed himself.

And now he gets into, in verse seven, he gives a purpose statement. For this, I was appointed a preacher and an apostle to the

Gospels, sorry, to the Gentiles. So what he's saying here is for this purpose, he was appointed as a preacher, okay?

And which would be like a herald and an apostle. Hmm, interesting.

Now people say, well, he's saying, I'm telling the truth, I'm not lying. Okay, he is saying that, but this is

God writing this in scripture as an instruction. And therefore, the part that we have here, we're gonna read that way.

Why do I say that? Well, I'm very glad you asked that question. What I just did was give you a little indication of a rule of interpretation.

Study of interpretation, we call the study of hermeneutics. And hermeneutics is the art and science of interpretation.

And one of the things we recognize when we do interpretation is to recognize the fact that each type of genre, each type of literature has their own rules.

1 Timothy is an epistle, so its rules are instructional. It is one where we would build doctrine on it because it is meant to be instructional.

It's not like the Gospels or Acts, which are more of a historical narrative telling you what did happen, not what should happen.

So this is what is proper for instruction. And so he gets done talking about himself and he talks about the men.

Now, this becomes an interesting note because where he's saying the men, this in the

Greek is what we'd call a definitive article. So earlier when he's saying, you know, that God desires all men to be saved, he's not saying specifically men.

He's saying he wants all people, all human beings to be saved. That's a general term.

But the fact that there's a definitive article means that here he's no longer referring to the human race, but specifically a subset of the human race, the men.

And so therefore I want the men in every place to pray lifting up holy hands.

By the way, notice that lifting of holy hands has nothing to do in this context.

And in fact, in every context in the Bible, it has nothing to do with singing songs in church.

Okay? Every time, and I've looked at every passage of lifting up hands in the Bible, every one of them refers to the act of prayer, not singing.

Just a side note for you. So if you try to use this as one pastor did with me to say this had to do with raising hands during a church service when singing, that's not the context.

There's nothing about that. This is in every place pray lifting holy hands without wrath or dissension.

So we should be praying in such a way we're not asking for God's wrath to come down on people, but men, what is

Paul saying to Timothy here is the men's role in church is to pray.

Why might he make that specifically for men? Well, I would say this, men typically are the people who are more problem solvers.

They're more action oriented and therefore, and that's stereotypical and I get that, but in general, and Paul's making a general instruction here, in general, men are people who rush off to take care of something, fix something.

And we often do it, if we're gonna be honest, in our own strength. A lot of time what we're gonna do is we're gonna rush ahead to try to do something on our own.

And then what do we do when we make a mess of it? What do we do? Then we pray. Well, wouldn't it be wiser to pray beforehand?

I'm just saying, and I think the answer is yes, it would be. And so what we look at here is the fact that this is the goal of us as men that we should go to prayer first.

Why is that instruction? Because that's kind of goes against our nature. That's a struggle for us.

So he gets done with the men. Yes, men have one line. And the women are longer, true.

So what does he say about the women? Well, he says, likewise women, what does likewise refer to?

Does it refer to the prayer? Well, yes, it does refer to the general prayer that we see in verses one through seven.

Well, really one through six, right? Women also should offer entreaties and prayers and petitions and thanksgivings on behalf of all people, right?

That be doing it in a way for tranquility and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.

So likewise that. But now he's gonna speak to the women. So this is separate from the men.

I want them to adorn themselves. So how does he describe this adorning? Well, they should adorn themselves with modesty.

He says this is, and it's interesting the way he words it, it's proper. It's a proper manner.

It's the manner in which they do things. Now the clothing here, it's a symbol of the manner of their dress, a manner of their behavior.

A woman that is dressing to get attention for herself is not someone who is dressing for a woman to glorify

God, but so that men would notice them. And the thing here is, now the men have one thing, prayer.

The women have a couple things. And the first one is the way their clothing, the proper clothing.

The proper clothing should be with modesty. It also describes it that it should be discreetly, okay?

In other words, not for others, but for self, to cover yourself, but not to draw attention to yourself.

And so that's what you end up having here is this idea. It's the discreetly has the idea of to behave in a sensible manner with the implication of a thoughtful awareness of what's best.

And so you see two ways referring to the clothing, modestly and discreetly. And now

Paul gives a second thing here where their hair, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly garments.

So now it's again the way they conduct themselves, but not about their clothing, but now their hair and their garments, how they're attire.

And so how are they not to, so he starts with how they should do it and how they should not do it.

So Paul gives four ways into which a woman should not adorn herself and two ways in which they should adorn themselves to profess godliness.

And as we look at this, let's break it down. Why would women, what does it mean to the braiding of hair? Like that's a problem.

Well, in a culture where women didn't show their hair because that was a sign of sensuality, that would be an issue.

So that's why women would cover their heads. And so to show their hair was to draw attention to themselves, to put gold on or pearls or costly garments is to get attention to themselves.

I remember being in my first church, we had a, I can't remember if it was a Resurrection Sunday, I think it was

Resurrection Sunday. And we had some people that were new to the church, a woman wanted to be in choir and the choir director or one of the pastors recognized that this woman always seemed to want to get attention.

She would try to sing louder than everybody else. And he tried to tell her to keep with everyone else and he had noticed.

And so what happened was is that they came in early for practice and she had a very, as she explained later, expensive dress, but it was one that made her stand out.

And this is before we had choir robes. This was actually the reason we got choir robes, but he knew she was trying to draw attention to self and even leading up to this.

So you know what he did? This was just classic. He said to me, he says, can we set up a mic? Now for Presbyterians, you won't understand this, but in Baptist churches, you have a big baptismal with a room or two rooms on the side for the men and women to change after baptism.

And so he said, can you set up a mic in one of the baptismal changing rooms?

And I said, sure. So he got the choir together and had them go in there and said they're there to practice.

But what he didn't tell him, but he told me is they weren't coming out of there. So they thought they were gonna stay there until it was time to sing.

And what happened was when it came time to sing, he had them stand up right there around the microphone that was there and sing, but not be seen.

And this woman was outraged and said to the pastor, I bought this dress specifically for today so people could see how

I was dressed and it cost me a lot of money. And he turned to her and said, and that's the very reason we're hidden away in here because you aren't up there so people see you, you're up here so people see

Christ. Needless to say, they left the church. Okay, but why?

Because she was there so she could be seen. And that's the difference.

As we look at this, how should a woman not adorn herself? Well, with braided hair, which in other words, in a way that is drawing attention to herself with gold, with pearls, with costly attire.

So those are ways of adorning herself to draw attention to herself. How should she then adorn herself?

With modesty and self -control or modesty and discreetly, right?

In a manner that is making a claim of godliness, a woman who is making such a cain should be doing this.

Or she should be adorned with it that says they're good works. And so all of that to get to now to verse 11, where we start to deal with what is the issue to address here.

And so as we come here and look at this, it's an area where now we're starting to get to the instruction that many people have issue with.

And I understand that, so let's deal with it now. So what we have here is a woman must quietly receive instruction with the entire submissiveness.

Now the receive instruction is an imperative in the Greek. And it's interesting to note that verse 11 deals with the woman learning well, where verse 12 deals with the woman teaching.

Both sides of the issue are covered, the learning and the teaching, both passively and active roles, and they are voluntarily to submit to quietness.

Now you say, well, how can someone teach quietly? Well, we're gonna deal with this, but should a woman be teaching?

Well, we could teach other women. Yes, we've already addressed that, but here's the thing that I want us to see in this.

It says that the woman must receive instruction with entire submissiveness.

Now, let me give the argument that many people are gonna make when it comes to this. They will argue that what we saw in the first few verses there before verse 11, you have women braiding their hair.

Well, is that cultural? That was more of a cultural thing maybe than it is today, but not the gold and the pearls and the expensive attire as much.

You see, those things people say, well, see, that's just all cultural. And Paul is giving issue to a cultural instruction.

Well, he may, if you wanna use the braiding of hair as cultural, but it's not really because the overall instruction is true, whatever culture that the woman shouldn't be coming to the worship of God gathering together to draw attention to herself.

That is still true everywhere. And so because of that,

I don't see that that's enough of an argument that this is just cultural. Now, what you end up having in, and this is true in a

Jewish setting, you would typically have the men and the women worshiping separately. You'd have the men that would be led by a rabbi.

He would teach, you'd have the women who would often be led by a rabbi, or you might have a woman that's instructing other women, but they're separated.

And so the way that people will say is, well, here in this situation, the men and women are coming together.

And the reason they should be quiet is because the women were used to being all chatty and the men were not used to that.

So Paul's just giving an instruction just for that cultural time that they should just quiet down and just be submissive to the men's style of teaching, which is instructional and not have all this back and forth.

Here's a problem with that argument. And is that everything I said, is that true?

Did they have men and women that were worshiping separately? Yes. Could it be the women were more chatty?

That very well could be. Is it the fact that they started to worship together after Christ?

Yes. Is that what Paul's talking about? No. Wait a minute, Andrew, you just said all those other things are true.

Yes, they're true in what? What did I say? In a Jewish context. But Timothy's not dealing with a

Jewish context. That's why Paul earlier said he is an apostle to who? The Gentiles.

This is a Gentile context. And what we don't see is that in the

Gentile context that the women worshiped separately and had that issue. So I don't think that really fits to say this is just about a cultural issue.

But so why should they be quiet then?

Now, some people will say that this is, that women should be absolutely silent in church.

But this is a quietness, a rest. Yes, it could mean silence.

An undisturbed life. You see, it's not just that they shouldn't speak, but it's more about, well, what the end of this verse says with entire submissiveness.

Did we not see this already? That we should be praying how? That we may lead a tranquil and quiet life.

If you're gonna say that in verse, in this verse, verse 11, quiet must mean they cannot speak at all.

Are you going to hold to that in verse two to say that every Christian should have an absolutely quiet life?

We shouldn't speak at all. Should we go be like the monks who don't speak? Take a vow of silence.

If you're not gonna make that argument, if you're gonna say that we should be praying out loud, speaking out loud, then that means that either we're in sin of not having a quiet life or it has more to do with our attitude.

Our character. So a woman must be quiet, not meaning not to speak at all, but she must be submissive.

She must receive the instruction submissively, quietly. In other words, the idea of that you shouldn't be speaking back or you have someone who is to argue against something at every claim.

And so that is, cause a lot of people miss verse 11.

Now we get into verse 12. But I do not allow a woman to teach or have exercise over a man, but to remain quiet.

Paul's instruction to here is that a woman cannot teach men.

Now it says, but to remain quiet. Does this mean, as some argue, that a woman cannot speak in church?

Again, the context matters. I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.

In what capacity do they remain quiet? In the teaching capacity. So verse 11 is saying an overall attitude of quietness, of submissiveness.

Verse 12 is talking about teaching and exercising authority. They shouldn't do that, but they should remain quiet.

They should not be giving the instruction. Now in here, what we end up seeing, many people will argue that what we see here is that Adam, sorry, sorry, the woman,

I was reading ahead in verse 13, that what we see is the woman here is being told not to teach or exercise authority because of Paul's own personal views.

Because it says, but I do not allow a woman. So what people are saying is, because it says

I, this is just Paul's views. It's not God's view. This is not God saying a woman can't teach or give instruction or have authority over men.

It's just, you know, he's just saying it's his personal view. It's his personal view for women that they shouldn't do this.

And therefore, this is not some sort of thing that is instructional today.

It's only Paul's personal view. Now, this is the argument that many make.

And what we end up seeing here is that this is something that, as we see, this is not something that's just Paul's opinion.

Now, how do I make that claim? I make that claim very simply because what you see here is you see the case of this being written in scripture by the

Holy Spirit in a context that is instructional or in a style of literature that is instructional.

So right out of the gate, because of the type of literature, we know that this is an instructional passage.

We know that all scripture, as Paul's gonna say later in this book, is God breathed.

So God has written this down. God has said this is what

Paul is to write and these are instructions for the church. So this is not

Paul writing this because if Paul is doing this, he's doing this under the inspiration of the

Holy Spirit. And we know when it comes to the inspiration of Holy Spirit that it is

God working through people to write exactly as he intends them to write. So when we see that, is this something where we have men can write their own personal things?

Well, yes, we just saw that above where Paul says, I'm saying the truth, I'm not lying. That's his own personal thing, but he's not lying.

Well, that's also being because of the context here, it's instructional genre, and therefore this is something that God is instructing to the church.

That's the reason God has Paul writing this and God is writing through him. And so this instruction is clearly instruction, but this is not to be able to say that it's only

Paul's opinion and not God's. Because what you're gonna see next is that Paul is going to give a reason.

And this reason is really gonna be helpful for us to understand whether or not this is just a cultural issue or a biblical issue that comes from God as a doctrine.

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So we thank MyPillow for helping to sponsor this podcast. Okay, well now as we come back to this, we're at verse 12 and it says, but I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man but to remain quiet.

And he gives a reason, a purpose clause. Now is this the first purpose clause that we saw in this chapter as we've looked at?

No, because we saw it in verse seven. He gave some instruction and he says, for this reason

I was appointed as a preacher and apostle to the Gentiles. So you have him give a purpose clause there.

The purpose clause tells you the reason for this instruction. So the reason that he says a woman is not to teach or exercise authority over a man, is this based in culture as the liberals would say?

Well, that's not the reason that we're given here. By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we have two reasons.

It says, for Adam who was first created and then

Eve. So what you have here is the fact that when you look at the creation order,

God chose a federal headship. He created Adam and then Eve. Now why did he do that?

I don't know. Why did he decide that there'd be this federal headship? I don't know.

I can only tell you that that's what we see in scripture. What we see in scripture is that there is a headship that God has ordained in this way.

It's something that I can't say, oh, this is the way it's, you know, this is cultural because I want it to be cultural.

Now, what he's saying here is this is based in creation.

Now, once you realize that, I hope you then immediately realize, well, if it's based in creation, then it's not something that we can say is personal or cultural.

No, we can't. Because he's saying back from the creation of Adam and Eve, he's saying that God purposely created

Adam first and because God created Adam first, he has the responsibility in the church to teach and exercise authority over men.

This is the idea of a male headship. Now, you and I may not like that. That's okay.

The problem is we don't get to set the rules. We have to follow the instruction.

We don't get to make the instruction. Our culture doesn't get to make the instruction. We follow the instruction.

And so what we have here is the fact that we are to follow the instructions that are provided for us.

And so the instructions that we have here are the fact that God ordained that men should be in this role because he created

Adam before Eve. This goes all the way back to the sixth day of creation.

Therefore, it cannot be a cultural issue. That's the thing that I want us to see.

It can't be cultural because it goes back to creation. But you know what?

He gives a second reason. He gives a second reason. First one is based in the creation order, something that occurred 6 ,000 years ago.

And he has a second reason. You wanna know what that reason is? We're gonna get to that right after this break.

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Okay, so as we come back, we're looking at the first argument that Paul is giving the reason why he does not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man.

The first reason was, as we said, based in the creation order. His second reason we now look at, and again, this is based in something 6 ,000 years ago.

Culturally or time -wise, we're closer to Paul than Paul is to creation. He's 4 ,000 years from creation, 2 ,000 from us.

And you say, but the culture was more similar. That could be. I mean, because a lot has changed in the last 100 years.

However, he bases this first in creation order. His second reason is the sin order.

Look at what he says. For it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression.

So where he says Adam was formed first, and because of that reason, the man should be teaching and having authority over men.

He says the woman was deceived first, and therefore the woman should not be teaching or exercising authority over men.

Now, there are some people who say, well, that's the reason for this instruction is because women are so easily deceived.

I don't know that that is what God is saying. I don't know that you can make that argument as some try to make it.

I think what he's doing is saying that this is all rooted in the way creation occurred, that on day six of creation, the man was created before the woman for the purpose of realizing that the man was supposed to have the headship and the woman was to be the helper to the man.

And so that carries over, that imagery of male headship carries over into the church in one area, and that is teaching and exercising authority.

And so as we look at this, we see that this is something that is from creation, and on day something, because we don't know how long

Adam and Eve were around before Eve took that fruit, but somewhere early, somewhere before they started having children, we see that the woman ate of the fruit, but she was deceived, and she was the one who fell into transgression.

That is the reason for this instruction about the woman's role in the church.

It's not based in the culture. Paul's not saying because some women are too talkative in the service.

It's not because what women are talking back and need to be quiet and should be just learning at home from their husbands, because in church, it's not appropriate to be so talkative.

That's not what he says. God, Paul, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but God says that the reason is because Adam was created first and Eve sinned first, that's why.

So it's the creation order and the sin order. That's the reason that God gives to us for this instruction.

And that's why in 1 Timothy 3 and in Titus, when we look at that, when we get to the qualifications, of what is a pastor, we're going to see that a pastor is a man because he's the husband of one wife.

It speaks of the men, the overseer used, all the terminology is used in a masculine.

The overseer is a masculine. It's describing the husband's role, the father's role.

Okay, it doesn't give any room in the qualifications for a woman.

And so what we see clearly here is that everything in this is based in the creation.

It is not based in a way that we can say that this is just cultural.

It's not a cultural issue. This is clearly a creation mandate, all right?

Let me just wrap up really quick with a kind of a confusing verse for some. And it says, but women, and by the way, the word women is not there in the

Greek. It just says, but will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self -restraint.

And so people look at this and obviously it's speaking of women, because well, men don't bear children.

I know that people are trying to say that today, that men can bear children, but it's speaking of women.

So the English is just clarifying, but women will be preserved. Now, some translations say saved.

Women will be saved through the bearing of children. And this has caused some confusion.

I think the new American standard here is better in translating it, because it has the better idea.

Women are preserved. Now, one of the things is some people would say, well, woman, you're saying if a woman can't teach or have exercise authority over a man, she can't do anything.

If you remember in previous episodes, we went to Genesis chapter two and three, and we looked at the teaching that we have from Satan with Eve, where in the garden, there was only one tree she could not eat of.

And Satan says, you can't eat of any tree? And she rightly says, no, we can't eat of any tree but one.

But what is it that is the Satanic doctrine is to say that if God says you can't do one thing, that means you can't do anything.

That is not new with our generation. We see it in our generation too. Oh, it's very common.

I was just speaking to someone today at church who said that his wife, who's not a believer, doesn't like the church because, well, there's someone who, you know, a church doesn't let a woman be the pastor, and therefore they're oppressing the women and don't let them do anything.

Now we covered that in part one with the emotional arguments but as we do that,

I think that as we examine it, we realize that here you have a case that no, women can do many things in a church, can do basically anything that a man could do in church except for one thing.

And that's why now we have verse 15 because there's one thing men can't do and a very special thing, men can't bear children.

And there's a special bond between children and their mother and men can't experience that, never can.

I don't care if you, you know, in the news recently there, you have some woman who got pregnant and then changed their gender and trying to, you know, get praise for being a man that is giving birth.

This is like the third time, I find it interesting. There's three people that have done this and all of them claiming to be the first man to give birth.

You're not a man. And so what you see here is women are preserved, not saved, this does not teach salvation, meaning regeneration.

The word saved has many meanings, context helps us to understand it. So the idea of preserved makes more sense.

Okay, women are preserved through the bearing of children. Okay, this is the idea that women have the opportunity, the privilege of bearing children.

And though they may not be able to teach and give instructions to men, they can do something men can't do, bear children.

And if they are submissive as we saw and quiet of spirit, and here it says, if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self -restraint.

So you see, it's all about the character that he's describing here, the behavior. That's what we end up seeing here.

So I was asked to dig in specifically to this passage. I hope this has been helpful for you.

And in this series, as we said, what we're doing is trying to ask the question, what is a pastor? And we're asking the question right now, what a pastor is not.

And we spent now three episodes on what a pastor is not. A pastor is not a woman.

I wanna wrap this up on what a pastor is not with one more thing that a pastor is not that I said

I would mention. A pastor is not a street preacher. And there really isn't enough that I could do a full episode just on this.

And so therefore I'm gonna put this in instead of having some short episode. But a pastor is not a street preacher.

Someone going out on the street, opening a Bible and sharing the gospel is not being a pastor.

This is just confusing for some because some think that that's all it takes.

I go, some people, they prepare a sermon like a church and they go on the street and they preach what seems like a sermon.

So they think they're like a pastor and the people listening are like the pew. Well, that's not church.

There's no pastors and deacons there. There's no church discipline. You don't have that.

If you wanna see what a church is and part of the book, in my book,

What Do We Believe? I have a chapter on what is the church. I go through historically the definition of a church and how it's become more and more precise throughout the centuries.

And I did that because an individual wrote a book about the fact that he argued that women are not allowed to go on the street and do open air evangelism.

I don't wanna call it open air preaching because that's the whole thing that causes confusion. People say,

I'm doing open air preaching. So I'm preaching, I'm a pastor. No, you should be doing evangelism.

And that's what you're doing on the street. You're evangelizing, you're heralding, you're preaching. Yes, but you're heralding the gospel.

You're not a pastor. Just because you read

God's word or expound God's word does not make you a pastor. And so this person's argument for why a woman, and there are,

I think, some good arguments that could be made on why a woman shouldn't be doing open air evangelism. But this argument was because that is the function of a church.

Now, the reason this person did this is if you say that a woman on the street can't teach or have authority over a man because it's based in the creation order, then what you're saying is one of two things.

Either this is limited, as I think Paul says to Timothy at the very beginning of 1 Timothy, that this is instructions for the church.

Well, I will take this and say all this book is instructions for the church. But if you wanna say you wanna extend this outside of the church, well, then a man can't work at a secular job for a woman.

And you better have pastors and deacons in your secular workplace, right?

But if you're gonna extend it to the street, as this book tries to do, and say that, well, when you're preaching on the street, and the arguments he made is, well, where two or three are gathered, there's

Christ in the midst. Well, that's taking that passage out of context. Matthew 18 is dealing with church discipline. And that's part of a function within the church.

You have one person there, Christ is there, because Christ is with every believer everywhere.

But in fact, if there's no believers, Christ is still present. Because Christ is omnipresent, he's everywhere present.

So there's no place that Jesus isn't, there's no place God isn't. So as we examine this, just because there's people gathering to hear the preaching doesn't make it church.

No, read through 1 Timothy and Titus, and the instruction for church, and you see a church is gonna have pastors and deacons.

You don't have that on the street. You can claim to be a pastor, where are your deacons? Where are you gathering specifically for the worship of God with pastors and deacons doing the

Lord's supper, and baptizing, practicing the ordinances that should be done within the church?

Where's your church discipline? No, it's some guy who stands up and just claims he's a pastor because he's preaching the

Bible. That's not the same thing. And to extend this, which is instructions to the church, to what happens on the street, is to overextend what this passage is for.

Because this is something that is designed for instruction to the church. So a man who is out on the street preaching, and they could be there heralding the gospel, but it's the gospel.

It's not the role of a pastor. And therefore, it's not just pastors who do that.

Now, I know that some Presbyterians will argue that only an ordained minister should be doing open air evangelism because they see that as preaching.

And so that gets even stickier with some because some who grow up with that mindset would argue, well, see, if I'm out here doing it,

I must be a pastor. Well, I would argue that's not from scripture. That's something that comes within the ordination and the rules within some groups of Presbyterians, not even all

Presbyterians, but that's not for all Christians. And it's not found within the scripture. And so I would say that someone who is on the street that opens the word of God, proclaims the word of God is doing just that.

And it is not a pastor. I hope this was helpful for you. I hope that you'll contact us, let us know what you think, like it, you don't like it, whether you want more of something, less of something, whether you think we are off on something, we said something,

I said something wrong, whether or not you think that we need to include something. I may, if there's something

I say on this or previous episodes that you want addressed, I may do a final, in the final episode, to just do a catch up and answer all the questions that I haven't gotten to.

Now, I know someone asked specifically about what it means for a pastor to be the husband of one wife.

We're going to cover that when we deal with the qualifications of a pastor. We're going to first deal with, when we talk about what a pastor is,

I wanna spend a little bit of time in the next episode in this series on the pastor's role as a shepherd, an elder, and an overseer.

And then we're going to look into the qualifications of a pastor. I hope you enjoy this series,

I hope you like it. But for now, that's a wrap. This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry.

For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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