SPEAKER_01: The reading today is from one Timothy chapter two, verse eight to fifteen.
SPEAKER_01: I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarrelling, likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness, with good works.
SPEAKER_01: Let a woman learn quietly, with all submissiveness.
SPEAKER_01: I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, rather she is to remain quiet.
SPEAKER_01: For Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.
SPEAKER_01: Yet she will be saved through childbearing, if they continue in faith and love and holiness with self-control.
SPEAKER_01: And so reads God's Word.
SPEAKER_02: Welcome uh to you all.
SPEAKER_02: Uh we are in a series, if you're new or visiting, called Him, Her.
SPEAKER_02: We don't normally do topical series, we normally go through books of the Bible, but at this time of the year we often like to uh to think uh more topically about things that people are wrestling through.
SPEAKER_02: And we figure that gender, sex, sexuality, singleness, marriage, all of those things are reasonably significant and impactful for uh for all of us.
SPEAKER_02: Uh you uh will have heard the text if you were here for the reading.
SPEAKER_02: Do pray for uh for you for me uh as uh as we look at this.
SPEAKER_02: If you need a Bible, uh there are some down here.
SPEAKER_02: I would really encourage you to have that open on your phone.
SPEAKER_02: Uh 1 Timothy 2, go to Bible Gateway or whatever app you're using.
SPEAKER_02: You want to know what translation that was that was read.
SPEAKER_02: It's the English Standard Version, uh, so that you can follow along.
SPEAKER_02: That's what I'm going to be be looking at.
SPEAKER_02: Because we want we want God to be speaking through his word.
SPEAKER_02: We don't just want my ideas, especially on a uh on a text like uh like this.
SPEAKER_02: We want God to be speaking and for him to be uh in authority, as it were, uh over us all and us all seeking to sit under it.
SPEAKER_02: So please have 1 Timothy 2 open in front of us.
SPEAKER_02: Uh when I was uh when I was growing up, um my family uh was uh was full of uh strong women.
SPEAKER_02: It was full, it was a very matriarchal family.
SPEAKER_02: My grandmother, who was one of uh of five sisters uh up until her death last year, she was the matriarch of our little wing uh of the family.
SPEAKER_02: My grandfather was made redundant very early.
SPEAKER_02: He was uh only about 52.
SPEAKER_02: And so she had to go out.
SPEAKER_02: She was the breadwinner, and she was the one around whom really we all gathered, especially after my grandfather died about 15 uh years ago.
SPEAKER_02: Uh my grandparents had three daughters just uh three girls.
SPEAKER_02: My mum's the middle, she's middle child, two uh sisters either side of her, lots of women uh around our house.
SPEAKER_02: My mom and dad split up when I was small.
SPEAKER_02: The reason why I speak with a Nordic accent, even though I was born here in the Republic, is because mom and I left our family home.
SPEAKER_02: My mum was a single mum for uh for about five or six years, and so she met my stepdad.
SPEAKER_02: And I remember those times vividly.
SPEAKER_02: I was three years old, and I remember how hard she worked.
SPEAKER_02: I I I I look back on it now with renewed appreciation, but I can remember things like uh her picking up the uh the single mother uh uh single parent child uh welfare check uh that uh that was happening, uh, that was being given out kind of once a month on a Thursday.
SPEAKER_02: I think it was about 17 pounds back when I was small.
SPEAKER_02: That's how old I am.
SPEAKER_02: And uh on uh a Thursday, that once a month when that check would come through, uh, she'd pick it up in the post office and we'd go next door uh to the uh to the fish and chip shop, and we would have one portion of fish and chips and we would share it together.
SPEAKER_02: Um and uh and so I remember and uh and honor the fact that she held down a job and raised a son, she was incredibly strong.
SPEAKER_02: I say all of that not to garner any pity from you, but to honor the strength of women, the strength of the women who uh uh uh were and are in my life.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm sure many of you have similar experiences.
SPEAKER_02: We live in a world uh that uh that doesn't quite work right.
SPEAKER_02: People don't usually go into marriages expecting them to break down.
SPEAKER_02: Few, I think, actively choose to to be single parents, though some might, especially single mothers, knowing how challenging it is.
SPEAKER_02: Single motherhood is often a consequence of the abdication of responsibility of men.
SPEAKER_02: And God continues to be gracious to us in a broken world.
SPEAKER_02: He preserves people, he grows them and nurtures them in situations that would not have been his intent.
SPEAKER_02: And that's what we've seen over the last few weeks.
SPEAKER_02: That there is uh an intent, a design, a purpose, a right ordering of God's world.
SPEAKER_02: There is a creation order that Satan hates, and in the garden he sought to upend it.
SPEAKER_02: He's the serpent, that agent of chaos in the garden who seek to usurp and upend God's good design.
SPEAKER_02: And so he comes in the form of an animal, and that's not incidental, because you have an animal, a created thing that the man and the woman together the man and the woman together were given to rule over, comes and asserts his authority over the man and the woman.
SPEAKER_02: The woman then, Eve, usurps man's responsibility to lead and to guard his family, and the man in weakness and foolishness says nothing and abdicates all of his responsibilities.
SPEAKER_02: God is often kind and gracious to those in situations that have had that up-ended order that are not part of his design or intent.
SPEAKER_02: God in his wisdom is gracious to those who reject his good rule.
SPEAKER_02: The sun shines on the just and the unjust.
SPEAKER_02: However, to say that there is therefore no intended order in creation is false.
SPEAKER_02: It's not what we saw, especially last week.
SPEAKER_02: What's more, God's ordering of his world is good because God himself is good.
SPEAKER_02: It is the goodness of God that pledged to Eve back in that garden that she would bring forth a son who would eventually reverse the curse and bring back that good order.
SPEAKER_02: It was the goodness of God that pledged himself to righting this wrong.
SPEAKER_02: It is the goodness of God that sent Jesus into the world and by his cross re-established himself as Lord of all, the one in whom and under whose good lordship we find forgiveness and life.
SPEAKER_02: It is the goodness of God that raised Jesus from the dead.
SPEAKER_02: And in his resurrection he becomes the unassailable king of the cosmos.
SPEAKER_02: His order will not be overthrown.
SPEAKER_02: And the invitation of the gospel, the good news of Jesus, is to embrace and participate in that renewal that Jesus is bringing about.
SPEAKER_02: You see, Jesus' reordering of the cosmos does not end with his reassertion as God's holy king enthroned in Zion.
SPEAKER_02: No, he is making all things new, each one of us, and the relationships that we find ourselves in.
SPEAKER_02: He's renewing this creation, he's renewing his people, the church.
SPEAKER_02: It is a good and glorious work, and Paul, in our reading this morning, invites us to see how it works out in the context of the church, and more than that, invites us to participate in it and see it as good.
SPEAKER_02: The basic idea behind this controversial text is this that Paul prohibits women from exercising the authoritative teaching normally reserved for elders in the context of the Gathered Church, so that the church might display the renewed order of human relationships that was laid down in creation.
SPEAKER_02: Let me say that again because I'm already feeling the tension, so let's just turn it up, right?
SPEAKER_02: Let me say it again.
SPEAKER_02: I'm glad you're able to laugh, right?
SPEAKER_02: Let's not take ourselves too seriously, right?
SPEAKER_02: And it's gonna get worse before it gets better, but hopefully it'll get better, okay?
SPEAKER_02: Hopefully.
SPEAKER_02: Paul prohibits women from exercising the authoritative teaching normally reserved for elders in the context of the gathered church, so that the church might display the renewed order of human relationships laid down in creation.
SPEAKER_02: And in doing so, show the goodness of God.
SPEAKER_02: So, what's going on?
SPEAKER_02: Well, look, there's no avoiding that this is all very controversial, and you can f almost feel the bristles because in the there's a massive part of my only child single mother upbringing the bristles against this, too.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not alien to any of that, right?
SPEAKER_02: So I understand that this is controversial, I understand that this is difficult, and there's been much ink spilled over this text.
SPEAKER_02: People have tended to handle this text in a in a few different ways.
SPEAKER_02: First, there are those who simply say Paul is simply wrong.
SPEAKER_02: He's just wrong that this is sexism and misogyny on display and should be rejected outright.
SPEAKER_02: We need to be like Benjamin Franklin and just take our pair of scissors and just cut out that passage because it just it can't possibly be true, especially in our day and age.
SPEAKER_02: That sort of thinking uh is more popular now, but it's worth just noting that that that sort of thinking really didn't come to the fore and certainly wasn't put down on any sort of academic paper until around about 1975.
SPEAKER_02: And so it's a very new way of interacting with the scriptures, just to outright reject its authority.
SPEAKER_02: Another way that people come at this text is they say uh that Paul is saying something here that is particular to the culture either of the ancient world or of Ephesus, that's where Timothy is, the ancient city of Ephesus, uh, that is that is bound for that time and place.
SPEAKER_02: And so we don't take that and say, apply it now, that it's a culturally bound thing.
SPEAKER_02: And there are two kind of branches off that culturally bound idea.
SPEAKER_02: First is that in Ephesus, in particular, you had one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
SPEAKER_02: You had the temple of uh of Diana, of Artemis, up there on the on the hill, and uh there were lots of priestesses there, and so there was a huge center of cultic worship.
SPEAKER_02: And what Paul wants to do is kind of divorce himself and divorce the gospel from looking like that.
SPEAKER_02: And so it's a kind of it's a it's a missionary contrast.
SPEAKER_02: So that's the first, and you know, they would come in and they would teach falsehood because they would be bringing in this uh this kind of uh Diana-esque worship into the context of the church.
SPEAKER_02: The other more broad way of understanding is that some people say, well, women in the ancient world, well, they weren't educated, they weren't taught to read.
SPEAKER_02: And uh and so uh why would they then teach the church?
SPEAKER_02: But if we educated women, uh, which we have now done, well, why wouldn't they teach?
SPEAKER_02: As long as they have the ability to do it and have the training to do it, why wouldn't they teach?
SPEAKER_02: I think actually that either of these instances is hard to make the case from this text, because what exactly Paul says is he says, I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man.
SPEAKER_02: And if you're gonna say that it's culturally bound, uh, one of the implications of saying that is saying, well, Paul Paul's not really up for any heresy being taught to the men, but they can teach it to the women.
SPEAKER_02: That's okay.
SPEAKER_02: And you know, if they're if they're uneducated, they can't teach the men, but if they're uneducated and can't read, that would be all right with the women.
SPEAKER_02: I think that's actually a more sexist reading.
SPEAKER_02: I think it's a more sexist reading, uh, or say, well, you know, it's just kind of culturally bound to that sort of time.
SPEAKER_02: Third way of reading it is that the word specifically translated have authority over is a word like domineer, uh uh an inappropriate dominating authority of men, where the women were coming in and they were doing the men down.
SPEAKER_02: But that's what he is speaking against, that it's kind of unruly dominating women.
SPEAKER_02: But again, there's some difficulties with that.
SPEAKER_02: That doesn't quite stack either, because the normal usage in all of the ancient literature for the word have authority does not have these negative connotations.
SPEAKER_02: It is either neutral or positive in its usage.
SPEAKER_02: And so it's reading back into the text to say that it must be a domineering sort of thing.
SPEAKER_02: So what is going on?
SPEAKER_02: There certainly is an issue in Ephesus.
SPEAKER_02: It's clear that the church is dealing with some sort of uh of heresy.
SPEAKER_02: Paul's already talked about this in chapter one, where he's been uh encouraging Timothy to be uh refuting error, and uh and he's talked about people who have been uh false teachers, interestingly, not women.
SPEAKER_02: He talks about two men, Hymeneus and Alexander, right at the end of uh of chapter one in verse 19.
SPEAKER_02: It says that they're making a shipwreck of their faith.
SPEAKER_02: So it's uh a little bit hard to see what's going on, but I think we get some senses from our reading as to what the what the heresy or what the disorder is, and it seems to be a kind of prideful one-upmanship.
SPEAKER_02: In chapter one, he calls himself the the chief of sinners, which is very significant because he's the you know the apostle of God, the sent one.
SPEAKER_02: And he says, you know, uh, I'm the I'm the first and foremost of all of the sinful people, and Christ has given me grace.
SPEAKER_02: He's modeling humility to Timothy and by extension the church.
SPEAKER_02: What's the answer to pride in Ephesus?
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's the gospel of grace, and the rest of the book is essentially showing how that works out.
SPEAKER_02: So in the uh in the prescriptions for how an elder ought to be qualified, uh it centers a lot around kind of humility and compassion and peaceableness.
SPEAKER_02: And uh, it's about the working out not of pride, but of graciousness.
SPEAKER_02: In chapter two, in our in our reading, it seems like there was there was a quarreling and a looking down on others, people pushing themselves forward, and generally in the gathered church being uh chaotic.
SPEAKER_02: It seems like the men, even when they were praying, had half an eye on praying better than this other person.
SPEAKER_02: And so this was leading to kind of arguments, you know, it's kind of, you know, thank you, Lord, that you know I'm a better businessman than uh than Michael over here.
SPEAKER_02: And Michael's been like, what the you know?
SPEAKER_02: And and so they're and so Paul's kind of saying, well, if you're gonna lift holy hands, lift them in prayer, right?
SPEAKER_02: Stop doing one another down.
SPEAKER_02: Equally, the the women were coming in and they were ostentatiously dressed.
SPEAKER_02: You know, they they had they had all the gold and all of the apparel, not because it's wrong to wear jewelry, but because they were doing the other women down.
SPEAKER_02: They were, they were, they were coming in and preening like peacocks, it's kind of, well, look at how wealthy uh my husband is against your husband's just Michael and he's not a good businessman, you know, right?
SPEAKER_02: Um and and so they're coming and they're dripping with all of this stuff in order to show how better they are than everyone else.
SPEAKER_02: And Paul's like, this isn't just not how you how you act.
SPEAKER_02: So rather than having braided hair and ostentatious jewelry, it's like, adorn yourself with godliness and with humility.
SPEAKER_02: It's not that it's wrong to wear jewelry, it's not wrong to get your hair done, but it's wrong to wear jewelry and get your hair done if you're coming in going, well, look at how much better I am than you, you know.
SPEAKER_02: Like that's just ridiculous.
SPEAKER_02: And we understand how unwise and ungodly that is.
SPEAKER_02: And so it's in this chaotic, disordered context that Paul gives the prohibition of verse 12.
SPEAKER_02: I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, rather, she is to remain quiet.
SPEAKER_02: So, what is being prohibited?
SPEAKER_02: I think hopefully we can agree that something is being prohibited.
SPEAKER_02: And so we need to work out what it is.
SPEAKER_02: I'm doing this.
SPEAKER_02: I wanna I want to, in all of this, not go beyond what the text says.
SPEAKER_02: I want to just say what the text is because that's that's my safe zone, right?
SPEAKER_02: Um, so what is being prohibited?
SPEAKER_02: The words here are teach and exercise authority, teach and have authority.
SPEAKER_02: And the question there is, are these two things or one idea?
SPEAKER_02: Are these two things or one idea?
SPEAKER_02: The way that leaders in the church exercise authority is by teaching the word.
SPEAKER_02: Any authority that I might have in city church as an elder does not come from the office of elder, nor does it come from me being anatomically male.
SPEAKER_02: My authority is derived from the word.
SPEAKER_02: Or might be better to say, any authority that is exercised is God's authority from the word.
SPEAKER_02: The word is how God governs his church.
SPEAKER_02: My authority, therefore, is limited, it is derived.
SPEAKER_02: That's why we say Jesus is Lord of City Church, not me, I am his servant.
SPEAKER_02: And the way that this authority is exercised is by the teaching of the whole council of God.
SPEAKER_02: When we gather together on a Sunday morning, we come not to hear me in my naughty accent, we come to hear God.
SPEAKER_02: We believe that when God's word is read, his voice is heard.
SPEAKER_02: He comes to lovingly and graciously govern and rule his people this morning by his word as it is taught.
SPEAKER_02: It is by the teaching of the whole council of God that God exercises his authority through qualified men in the gathering of the local church.
SPEAKER_02: And so these are two inextricably linked things.
SPEAKER_02: They are one idea.
SPEAKER_02: So what is being prohibited here is the authoritative teaching of the congregation reserved for elders.
SPEAKER_02: We see this in the following passage uh that if you were to cast your eye over the qualifications in 1 Timothy 3, The qualifications are terribly ordinary in lots of ways and shared between men and women.
SPEAKER_02: But what you see here in 1 Timothy 3 is an emphasis that the elder should be a male and that he should be able to teach.
SPEAKER_02: The ability to teach stands out in this list because that's how God exercises his authority over the church.
SPEAKER_02: Taking these things as one idea helps us massively.
SPEAKER_02: Because if they were two different ideas, and he was prohibiting both teaching and having authority, you would get into the unbiblical position of saying that women have no teaching ministry in the church, which is not true either.
SPEAKER_02: Can I get an Amen?
SPEAKER_02: Amen, right?
SPEAKER_02: Paul, in other places, in 1 Corinthians 12, 14, actively affirms and encourages the teaching ministry of women and encourages women to participate in it and to be active in participating in the service.
SPEAKER_02: Even in this passage, he wants women to learn.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't want them just to kind of stay out the back and be uneducated and uninformed about the faith.
SPEAKER_02: He wants them to be growing in their knowledge so that they might serve the body.
SPEAKER_02: And so I think it's helpful at this point, and this is a slightly arbitrary distinction to the text, but I think it helps us make sense of the whole, uh, of the whole New Testament and what is going on, is that there is a distinction between what we might call big T teaching and little T teaching.
SPEAKER_02: I get this from Andrew Wilson.
SPEAKER_02: Um so just in footnote, I'm stealing this just shamelessly.
SPEAKER_02: Big T teaching is this, it's the authoritative preaching of the word reserved for elders in the context of the mixed gathering.
SPEAKER_02: And small tea teaching is informal, day-to-day encouragement and guidance and instruction that both men and women are called to participate in.
SPEAKER_02: Whether that's Philippa last week coming in and joining me for 15 minutes after the sermon and us having a discussion together about what God's design looks like and how it plays out, or whether it's co-leadership in the context of community groups.
SPEAKER_02: Having women's voices in those contexts is not just a nice additional add-on, it's essential for the effective ministry of city church and for the growing and discipleship of both men and women.
SPEAKER_02: Men need to hear female perspectives.
SPEAKER_02: Women need to uh need to be given those contexts where they feel like they can, where they can speak and be encouraged to do so.
SPEAKER_02: And so I think one of the best ways to think about, and we can, you know, we wrestle with and play with how this is all uh how this all comes out and we apply it all, but it seems that in the New Testament there is some sort of distinction between big T teaching, what's happening right now, and little T teaching that both men and women participate in.
SPEAKER_02: Next question.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Why is Paul prohibiting female authoritative teaching?
SPEAKER_02: Verses 13 and 14.
SPEAKER_02: For Adam was formed first, then Eve.
SPEAKER_02: And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.
SPEAKER_02: All okay?
SPEAKER_02: Shall we pray?
SPEAKER_02: This is where the idea that all that Paul is saying uh is culturally bound, I think kind of runs aground.
SPEAKER_02: Because Paul doesn't root his rationale for the prohibition in the culture of Ephesus of the day.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't say, I don't permit women to teach and have authority because I've seen the women in Ephesus and they just aren't up for it.
SPEAKER_02: Um, or you know, I've seen the women in Ephesus, and man, they are domineering.
SPEAKER_02: They've come down from the temple of Artemis, and you know, it's not that.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't root it there.
SPEAKER_02: Where does he root it?
SPEAKER_02: He roots it in creation and in fall.
SPEAKER_02: Two events of any events, you might say, are utterly transcultural.
SPEAKER_02: That is, they are for all times and all places.
SPEAKER_02: We're never not created in our lifetimes, save the return of Jesus, we're never not affected by the fall.
SPEAKER_02: And so his rationale is not culturally bound, but transcultural, rooted in creation and in fall.
SPEAKER_02: He begins in verse 13 by affirming the created order.
SPEAKER_02: God formed the man first and then the woman, as we saw last week, as a helper for him.
SPEAKER_02: I encourage you to go back on Spotify and listen to what we were talking about last week in terms of what it means to be a helper and how that is such a positive, game-changing thing, something that God Himself takes to describe Himself as a helper.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so there is no denigration of value.
SPEAKER_02: That's emphasized a lot last week.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not going to get into it now.
SPEAKER_02: This creation order is not incidental, but is good and designed to maximize both the flourishing of men and women.
SPEAKER_02: And then he goes on to say in verse 14 that Eve was deceived.
SPEAKER_02: I told you it'd get worse before it gets better.
SPEAKER_02: In fact, 15 is probably a low point.
SPEAKER_02: Um does he mean when he says Eve was deceived first.
SPEAKER_02: Sorry, for Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.
SPEAKER_02: Let's be very careful about what is being said here.
SPEAKER_02: Let's be precise about what is being said here, and let us not go beyond the text.
SPEAKER_02: Paul is not saying that women are more open to deception, more gullible, or weaker intellectually.
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: Paul's point is that Eve, in listening to the voice of the serpent, participated in the usurping of the creation order.
SPEAKER_02: She took the initiative over the man who was with her and began to exercise a kind of authority over him that God had not intended.
SPEAKER_02: This, by no means, gentlemen, absolves Adam.
SPEAKER_02: Indeed, he is held accountable for his sin.
SPEAKER_02: Because what did Adam do?
SPEAKER_02: He abdicated his responsibility and allowed his wife to lead him into the rejection of God's good order rather than stepping in and creating and correcting the lies and the falsehoods that Satan was telling this first couple.
SPEAKER_02: Adam was the first man ever to turn around and say, Happy wife, happy life.
SPEAKER_02: Abdication of responsibility.
SPEAKER_02: Paul here then is urging women not to take this kind of authority onto themselves.
SPEAKER_02: Because in doing so, they are again upending the created order, something which Jesus is renewing and remaking in this world.
SPEAKER_02: All of this has implications as much for men as it does for women.
SPEAKER_02: I have a great degree of sympathy for Eve on some level.
SPEAKER_02: She's there in the garden, the snake's talking to her.
SPEAKER_02: That's a strange day.
SPEAKER_02: No one's giving a lead.
SPEAKER_02: And the snake's telling lies.
SPEAKER_02: And Adam is dead silent, playing video games.
SPEAKER_02: But the answer is not to reject loving male servant leadership, but to encourage men to be those servant leaders.
SPEAKER_02: Because our default is to go the easy route, is to say happy wife, happy life, is to uh abdicate responsibility rather than participating lovingly in the reordering of creation.
SPEAKER_02: So what on earth does verse 15 mean?
SPEAKER_02: Let's read it again in case you've forgotten.
SPEAKER_02: Yet she will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith and love and holiness with self-control.
SPEAKER_02: Yet she will be saved through childbearing.
SPEAKER_02: This is a hard verse.
SPEAKER_02: I hope to show you how good it is.
SPEAKER_02: Here's what it can't mean.
SPEAKER_02: It can't mean that women will only be forgiven their sins if they have a baby.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: If you take it in notes, just you know, note that down.
SPEAKER_02: It's not that women will only see the face of God if they bear children.
SPEAKER_02: That's strange and cannot possibly be true.
SPEAKER_02: Some others uh think that this verse is saying something like, Well, uh, if they if they do this and you don't usurp the authority of men, uh they'll be kept safe through delivery, through labor.
SPEAKER_02: And again, I have some difficulties with that interpretation.
SPEAKER_02: That can't be right either.
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure there are many uh faithful, godly women who through the centuries have uh sadly, tragically died in childbirth.
SPEAKER_02: So, what does this mean?
SPEAKER_02: Again, you need to appreciate that this whole passage hinges on the idea of us all together embracing God's good design.
SPEAKER_02: Men and women together, made equal in value, dignity, and worth, similar in so many overlapping ways.
SPEAKER_02: And yet there is one unique thing about the design of women that men can never share.
SPEAKER_02: That is, women are the only ones who can bear children.
SPEAKER_02: That is not to say, sadly, that all women do bear children, but it is simply to affirm that only women can bear children.
SPEAKER_02: Women, as designed by God, have this superpower whereby they can nurture and create and gestate life within themselves, and the Bible sees that as a positive good.
SPEAKER_02: And Paul here is encouraging women to embrace that design.
SPEAKER_02: Our world abandons and holds in disdain God's good design for both men and women.
SPEAKER_02: Men are not to be passive abdicators of responsibility, nor are they to be harsh, domineering, quarrelsome, but godly, humble, and prayerful servant leaders.
SPEAKER_02: Women, similarly, have been encouraged that to be a woman is to be as good as, if not better than, a man, to do what they can do, and to do it all, despite differences in temperament and desire.
SPEAKER_02: A woman's identity should never be defined with reference to men.
SPEAKER_02: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_02: A woman's identity, her value, should never be defined with reference to men.
SPEAKER_02: God has made you different.
SPEAKER_02: He's given you the ability to do something that no man can do.
SPEAKER_02: This design is not a limitation, but a gift.
SPEAKER_02: Flourishing, then, for both men and women, is not found in the repudiation of God's design, but in the embracing and celebrating of it.
SPEAKER_02: I think one of the reasons why perhaps we bristle is because we do not see the we do not see feminine qualities or the bearing of children as something to be valued in our world.
SPEAKER_02: We do not value motherhood.
SPEAKER_02: I think that that is wrong.
SPEAKER_02: And Paul wishes to elevate the goodness of this created order.
SPEAKER_02: That is, of course, not to say that all women should therefore just be stay-at-home mothers.
SPEAKER_02: But nor should we see motherhood as secondary or lesser.
SPEAKER_02: Paul's encouragement to each one of us is to re-engage in the goodness of God's design and to consider its implications for the decisions that we make.
SPEAKER_02: You see, Eve's salvation came not from usurping creation's order.
SPEAKER_02: They were sent out of the garden and quarrelsome and wandering.
SPEAKER_02: Where does the battle between the sexes come from?
SPEAKER_02: It comes from Genesis 3.
SPEAKER_02: Her salvation was not in the usurping of the creation order, but into the living into that order.
SPEAKER_02: That God's good design would ultimately be used to bring forth the savior of the world.
SPEAKER_02: Yet she would be saved through childbearing.
SPEAKER_02: And she did bear a son, who bore a son, who bore a son, who bore a son.
SPEAKER_02: Ultimately culminating in the Lord Jesus, born of Mary.
SPEAKER_02: We are all, men and women, saved by the child born of a woman.
SPEAKER_02: We are all saved by the one born of Mary.
SPEAKER_02: And she counted it a blessing to be given this gift and to express its power.
SPEAKER_02: I think that's what this verse means.
SPEAKER_02: I think it has such countercultural force and encouragement and power to elevate and to really beautify the role of women amongst us.
SPEAKER_02: Some final questions.
SPEAKER_02: We'll do Q ⁇ A after the service.
SPEAKER_02: I imagine everyone, bye, and everybody's gonna stay in their seats.
SPEAKER_02: But we'll do Q ⁇ A after the after the service.
SPEAKER_02: Let me let me close with uh with some uh just final kind of catch-all questions just to kind of preempt some of the some of the things that you might be thinking.
SPEAKER_02: Question number one.
SPEAKER_02: So, does this mean that all men have authority over all women?
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, no, I don't think that it does.
SPEAKER_02: God is remaking and reordering his world, and he is beginning with the church.
SPEAKER_02: We read that at the end, he gives these qualifications for elders and then for deacons, and then he says in Genesis 3, verse 14, sorry, Genesis 3, 1 Timothy 3, verse 14, he says, I hope to come to you soon, but I'm writing these things to you so that if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is his church, the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.
SPEAKER_02: These teachings are limited within the right exercise of authority in the context of the church.
SPEAKER_02: Authority in the church is exercised by qualified servant leaders, elders who are men, and men and women who are deacons.
SPEAKER_02: And so we we operate together in the household of God.
SPEAKER_02: That's not to say if you have a female boss, if you're a guy, should you know you go in Monday morning, you go, you're usurping my authority, you're gonna get fired.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: And you deserve to get fired.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: Similarly, women don't go into work tomorrow and and think that you can no longer give any direction to your to your male teammates.
SPEAKER_02: That would be silly.
SPEAKER_02: God is remaking the world and he's doing it amongst his people.
SPEAKER_02: Second question.
SPEAKER_02: Does this mean that men, sorry, does this mean that women have no leadership position within City Church?
SPEAKER_02: Certainly not.
SPEAKER_02: We have women leading teams as deacons, co-leading Bible studies, teaching in our women's ministry, reading, arena, read, praying in the context of the church.
SPEAKER_02: Praying is a great uh example, actually, of that small tea teaching.
SPEAKER_02: Because when you pray, you are uh you are giving instruction as to, well, one, how to pray, and the kind of things that the church believes.
SPEAKER_02: So that is one of the ways in which we show that small tea teaching in the context of the of the gathered church.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Why do we do this?
SPEAKER_02: Why do we have women as deacons and co-leading Bible studies and teaching of women's ministry and all these other areas?
SPEAKER_02: Because we want to be faithful to what the Bible says and not say more than the Bible says.
SPEAKER_02: Third and final question.
SPEAKER_02: What if I love the Bible and I love City Church, but I hate this.
SPEAKER_02: I think that all of us, I'm speaking for the elders right now, the three of us, would want to affirm that we recognize that not everybody agrees with this.
SPEAKER_02: And some people find it very hard.
SPEAKER_02: We want to affirm how much we appreciate your devotion and commitment to our family.
SPEAKER_02: And I wouldn't want this to actually alienate you.
SPEAKER_02: But it is important to set out clearly what we believe.
SPEAKER_02: And I hope that actually, from going through the text and from showing, okay, here's some of the other interpretations, here's why I think that they don't work.
SPEAKER_02: You see that what I'm trying to do is not impose my framework onto the text, but to sit down with the text and go, I don't think that I can make it mean anything else.
SPEAKER_02: And I am trying to sit under its authority.
SPEAKER_02: And my invitation is to say, let's all sit under its authority together.
SPEAKER_02: And so I guess my encouragement as I finish is this if God is God and we're not, there's going to be points where God doesn't agree with us.
SPEAKER_02: If we only ever agree with God, then what we're doing, I think, is taking all of our intellectual preferences and the things that we've experienced and projecting them upwards and saying, well, God must be like that.
SPEAKER_02: If your God never agrees with you, you might just be worshiping a perfected, idealized version of your own intellect.
SPEAKER_02: Surely it's reasonable.
SPEAKER_02: Reasonable to assume that if God is gone, there's gonna be things that He thinks that you bristle up against.
SPEAKER_02: That is where there is integrity and maturity in saying I struggle with this.
SPEAKER_02: I find this hard.
SPEAKER_02: But your thoughts are not my thoughts, your ways are not my ways.
SPEAKER_02: And I know that you're good.
SPEAKER_02: I struggle to see your goodness here.
SPEAKER_02: Would you show me?
SPEAKER_02: Would you help me to see how this is good?
SPEAKER_02: Would you help me to taste and see that the Lord's good and experience that goodness in my life?
SPEAKER_02: I think that's gonna be the place of growth as a Christian.
SPEAKER_02: And it's not just on this issue.
SPEAKER_02: We're all gonna bump up against things in the Bible that make our the hairs on our necks stand on end.
SPEAKER_02: We're all gonna face things that that we struggle with.
SPEAKER_02: The decision, or the question at that point is, well, am I going to am I going to stand over the Bible and say, I'm the one who has interpretive control and authority over this?
SPEAKER_02: Or I'm gonna say, whether I like it, whether I like it or not, it has authority over me.
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to seek to live out in light of that and wrestle with these questions in good faith in the context of community as we seek to grow and to learn together.
SPEAKER_02: Sisters and brothers.
SPEAKER_02: I hope you know and I hope you sense that yes, this text has been hard, but it does not come from a place of wanting to denigrate women.
SPEAKER_02: It does not come from a place of uh of wanting to elevate myself or my own position, but comes from a place of love and to set through, set forth the truth plainly, and to invite us all to see its goodness and to participate in the renewal of all things that Jesus is about until he comes again.
SPEAKER_02: And at that point, all of our questions are going to be answered.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to this week's sermon.
SPEAKER_00: If you found this helpful or want to know more about City Church Dublin, please visit our website found in Dublin below.