Biblical Womanhood (Part 1)

What does it mean to be a woman according to God's design?

In a world filled with competing voices about identity and purpose, Genesis 2 offers a clear and compelling picture of biblical womanhood. Pastor Matt Shackelford begins by exploring God's intentional design for women and the unique role He created them to fulfill.

You'll discover:

• Why God declared that it was "not good" for man to be alone
• What the title "helper" really means in Scripture
• How the Bible presents womanhood as a position of dignity, strength, and purpose
• Why men and women are equal in value while serving different roles
• How God's design for womanhood reflects His wisdom and goodness

God's design for women is not about limitation. It is about flourishing according to His perfect plan. The question is: will you trust His design over the voices of our culture?

Scripture: Genesis 2:18-25

Series: Be Fruitful and Multiply

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Today on Moment of Truth, Pastor Matt Shackelford begins a message called Biblical Womanhood. Our culture has endless opinions about what it means to be a woman. But what does God say? In Genesis 2, we'll discover his beautiful design for women and why his plan brings purpose, dignity, and flourishing. God's design has never been the problem. It has always been our greatest blessing.

SPEAKER_06 1:00

Let's take our Bibles. Let's open to Genesis chapter 2. We're going to be in verse 18, Genesis chapter 2. Now, last week was all about men. This week is all about women, and we're going to we are going to talk about all sorts of things. But I just want to start by talking about how easily we are confused in this day and age. This is a very confusing time. I was reminded of that, just the possibility of confusion. On Tuesday night, I had the privilege of going out with the evangelism team, really to downtown in Memphis, and they were passing out, Mark and the guys, they were passing out hot dogs, and they were sharing the gospel on a corner for anyone that would show up. And I was delighted to know that they have been doing this all summer long. Like every week they've been going out, they've been passing out hot dogs, they've been sharing the gospel with whoever will show up. And the whole time we were there, people were just flooding in and the gospel was flooding out. And it was a great time. Now, the story comes on the way home. Greg and I carpled. And so Greg and I got into my truck and I was driving and uh I was just driving away and I missed the turn. Have you ever done that? And it costs you something when you miss the turn. This moment cost us about 10 minutes, and I was like, oh, Greg, I'm so sorry. I'll follow the directions. And uh we ended up driving further, and I realized uh I had the wrong address plugged in again. And after driving a significant amount of time, it was taking me to my house, not to the church, where Greg's car was. Greg looked at me and said, Will I ever get home? And and and I looked at him and said, We can't be sure. I don't know. Um but it was one of those moments where it's like, oh my goodness, that could be a parable of where we're at today, as far as following the instructions. Mankind doesn't know how to follow the instructions on what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman. There is confusion, and that little parable there could be the picture of society today. Our society is driving in circles, and without following the instructions, it is confusion and it is wasted time. Many people are wasting very precious years of their life. Just the other day, I think it was Wednesday or Thursday of this week, my wife leaned over to me and said, Look at this. And she showed me this picture, and it was it was a picture of a guy dressed up as a wolf. And this guy, his dream in life is to go live among the wolves, and he dresses from head to toe in a wolf outfit, and he walks over and he tries to integrate with the pack and he tries to feed them ground beef. And what do you think happens to this guy? He is mauled and hospitalized. Like that's the next thing to happen. And it's like there is so, not just on womanhood, manhood, womanhood, humanity, there is so much confusion on what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman. This ontology, this ontological existence. There's confusion. And today we want to look at womanhood because last week we talked about manhood. And manhood is about protecting and providing and being a priest. Today, women are equally confused, equally frustrated, equally wasting precious years. What are the reasons for that? Let me just dive into that for just a moment. I think one of the reasons is that because our teachers are so bad today. I think we have a teacher problem. I think we have a godless instruction problem. In our society, the teachers of our culture are weak and woke. And that's a problem. There are people that are sharing information with your children right now that is anti-God, anti-Christ, anti-Bible. They're saying things like, don't have children. Live for yourself. The most important thing in your life is a career. It is a crazy time to live. On college campuses, we see these videos come out, and the lunacy that is happening on our college campuses, it's breathtaking. There was a guy a couple years ago, his name was Matt Walsh. He made a video called What is a Woman? And this is the whole premise of this video. He would go onto college campuses, he'd go to the experts, and he would talk to people, and he would just ask that question. And it was it was mind-blowing, the answers they would give, the circular reasoning. Well, a woman is a woman. And it's like it was just bizarre because the experts didn't have any answers. And it was horrifying as well because one, we just sent a bunch of our college students back to college this week, and two, that's the education we're paying for. It's frightening. It's a world with very little wisdom with our teachers. It's a generation that's being lied to. It's a generation that is confused. And we saw it even over the past decade with NCAA Sports giving trophies that belong to women to men. It's a sad time because there's so much confusion. And the truth is, as we've done studies, women have never been more unhappy. Part of the rejection of God's design is dissatisfaction in life. And I think this is true. Women, because of the time that we're living in, they have to get their life together a whole lot faster than men. Why? Well, men can play around for a little bit and recover, but with women, you're you're wasting very precious years where you can have a family, where you can experience children, right? And so it's a much different situation. There's so much more pressure on women, and there's so much more unhappiness. In fact, I read a story just this week about an influencer, and this was the reality. She had a lavish wedding for herself. She married herself publicly in a ceremony, and at her ceremony, she vowed to never submit to a man or to children or any of the constraints of the modern world. And then years later, she admits crippling depression and crippling regret. They're blessings to our life. They're the reward from the Lord. And when we twist that, when we forget that, it ends in great depression and great regret. I told the young adults this week in my own personal life, my biggest regret, Ashley and I, if we have one regret, uh, we've been married 20 years, and if we have one regret, it's that we didn't start having children earlier. It's like we waited six years. These critters are such a blessing to our life, you know? We love them. And we should have started much, much earlier. And um I watched an interview, another interview, and I just was trying to do a lot of research on this this week. There was an interview of a young lady who said, uh, I hate this world that I live in. She's a young lady, she wants to be married, she wants to have children, and this is what she said. She said, I'm stuck working eight to five in the city. I just want a family, I just want a kid on my hip and a kid at my feet, and I just want to have a house, uh, and I want to care for that, and I don't want to be a boss babe, right? And she's just irritated by the modern world. And I think that mentality is shared by a lot of women today. And here's the hardest part of this conversation. I would say that women, as we enter into the Bible's description, not the world's description, but the Bible's description of what a woman should be. What is a woman? What does a woman do? This is a perilous conversation. I mean, it's far different. Can I just tell you, this week, me up here, it feels far different this week than it did last week. Last week we were talking about the guys, and I'm coming off the chain, and I'm I'm just saying, all right, guys, you've got to you've got to have a job in Jesus. You've got to, you've got to be a protector, a priest, a provider, you've got to be all these things. And the women are like, yeah. Right? And um, and the guys, I don't even know if the guys realized you were doing this in the service, but about halfway through the sermon, the guys are sitting on the edge of their seat. They're taking notes, they're like leaning into it. It's like for the guys, they're being called up, and they loved it. I have had more response from guys this week than almost any other sermon I've preached at this church. Most of them have come to me saying, What are my next steps? What should I be doing? Where should I go? I've had five counseling appointments this week with guys, and it's just been, okay, what's my next step? What do I do? Guys get called up into this and they're excited about it. It's not so with ladies. Generally, ladies, when they approach this conversation, when we start talking about this, it's almost this, what's he about to say? It's uh it's almost like everybody else has an agenda. Everybody else is lying to me about what it means to be a woman. What's he about to say? And what's he want to take from me, right? Friends, I I don't want to do anything but give this morning. And today, that's why we're in a series I've entitled Be Fruitful and Multiply. All right. I want to help you multiply. I want to help you in every part of your life with your family, with your relationships, with your children. I want to help you multiply. And here's the premise of really these next few weeks. We're looking at the original couple, Adam and Eve. We're looking at manhood, we're looking at womanhood, we're looking at marriage. You can't multiply if you don't know what a man is and you don't know what a woman is. What a man's supposed to do and what a woman is supposed to do. You can't do it. So we've got to get back to the original formula. We've got to get back to the original picture. That's what we're doing this morning. And so, what I want to ask you to do is just stand with me, and we're going to see God's plan for women. This is a pathway to joy. This is a pathway to fulfillment. This is a pathway to dignity. And I want to help you understand multiplying womanhood. What is it about womanhood? What is it that you should take on that would help your life multiply? It says this in verse 18 of chapter 2. Then the Lord God said, It is not good. Everybody say not. Nice and loud. Everybody say not. It's not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper. Everybody say helper. We're going to remember that word. I will make him a helper fit for him. Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field, every bird of the heavens, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called, every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. Then they shall become one flesh. And the man and wife were both naked and were not ashamed. This is that passage you've heard at many weddings. This is a marvelous passage of God's Scripture, God's truth.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

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SPEAKER_06 13:26

What I want to do is hone in on three words. Let me give you the big idea first. All right. The big idea is that recovering biblical womanhood, it multiplies delight. How? In God's design. When you come back to God's design, what's going to happen in your whole life is you'll feel fulfillment and delight. That's what God has for you. He wants you to be exceedingly, exceedingly happy in God, in God's design. That your desire to be happy and God's desire to be glorified as we submit to him, obey him, follow him, those two things are not at odds. They come together as you obey the word of God, as you submit and do the will of God. And today what I want to do is I want to look at womanhood in three words, and I see them, they kind of stick out to me as titles or identification markers of what a woman is in this passage. We see the word helper. She's going to be a helper fit for the man. We also see the word woman. She was taken. This is the title that Adam, that she's called, bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. She's woman. We're going to see this partnership. And then lastly, in chapter three, and I didn't read this first, but in chapter three, she's called Eve. She's life giver. And really, in those three words, we see what a woman is and what a woman does. But this isn't everything the Bible says about womanhood. You'd have to go to 1 Peter, you'd have to go to Ephesians 5. There's a lot more in Scripture about what a woman is. But I just love this passage because it shows us three titles, three things of what a woman does. She is helping, she is partnering, and she's life-giving. And today, may God's grace cover this church. May God's grace make every woman in this room like the original design. You were made for this. And this is the path to joy. May God bless his word. May be seated. Let's just run through these. Let's talk about the helping design first. We need to return to God's design for marriage, God's design for the family. We need to return to the helping design. And we see that twice. Anytime in Hebrew, when you see something repeated, that's a very important thing. The word helper is repeated twice. Helper fit for him. Now that word helper in our times is misunderstood, and people panic when a pastor would dare suggest that there are differences between men and women. They panic. Oh my goodness! Because that's the world we live in. The world we live in is absolutely inundated with or indoctrinated with the idea that men and women are exactly the same. And I would say this men and women are more alike than they are different. But we are different. And God made us different. I was doing research this week and I watched a news report on something called, and you may never have even heard this word, the trad mom movement. The traditional mom movement. This these ladies who just say, I just want to be like motherhood back in the 30s and 40s and the 50s, and I just want to be a mom. I just want to have kids. And I watched this news report, this news anchor, he played that segment on the news report, and afterwards all the reporters are just kind of staring at each other like, that was really weird. Can you imagine that? And it was, you could tell by their demeanor, it was repulsive to them. That reaction's everywhere. Maybe you remember Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker's speech at a graduation. How many of you remember this? Do you remember this? This was crazy. I mean, he's a Catholic. He is uh he is not an evangelical Christian. He's he's from a long line of Catholicism in his family. But I think on this point, he got destroyed because he said this line. He said, My wife has found that there is nothing more meaningful than being a wife and a mother. And do you remember what the drive-by media did to him? They destroyed him. How dare this guy say such things? There is this cultural resistance to any kind of life as a helper. In fact, let's just zoom in on this word together. Notice this word helper, a helper fit for him. This is seen today, and really it's interpreted today as a um, well, it's almost a lesser-than existence. It's almost like you're your dad's little helper, right? Uh my sink broke at my house recently in one of the bathrooms, and I went in to replace it, and I know what you're all thinking. Yes, I can actually fix a sink, all right? I can. And so I went in there and I got to work on it, and Ashley said, Caleb, go help your dad. And what she was saying in that is go learn something, right? Go be his helper. Go be his gopher. Go go for this, go for that. Go in there and just be his helper, right? And I think that's the way that society views this word today. She's just the assistant. That's not the biblical word, and I think we have to correct that. Actually, we have to understand and view this through biblical lens. This is a position of strength, this is a position of power. Do you know who else uses the word helper as their title? God. In Psalm 54, verse 4. Behold, God is my helper. In Psalm 121, verses 1 and 2, I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord. Friends, this is a term not of weakness, this is a term of strength and support. If anything, it's the recognition that the man is weak alone, not strong. It's that he needs help. God created the woman to be a helper fit for him. Now let's zoom in on that phrase, fit for him. This does not mean she wakes up every day at 5 a.m. to do CrossFit, all right? This is not your verse, all right, to tell your wife she needs to work out and you might get in big trouble if you suggest anything of the nature of that. What is this? What's it saying? Actually, this is a very freeing text. For ladies, this is very freeing. What it means is that she possesses all the skills to be competent in this mission. It's the manner in which God has made you, the nature which you possess as a woman. You have everything you need to be competent in this. And that's great because we live in a world that tells you that you're never enough. Ladies, I think you could agree with that. This is a world that lies to you about what it means to be a woman every single day. It's always suggesting to you you're never enough. You're never enough. This is saying that you were made suitable. In fact, I think that's how the NIV translates it. You're suitable. Now, it doesn't mean that women won't make mistakes. It doesn't mean that a wife might resist the helping role that she has been giving. That's certainly a possibility. But what it means is that you have the potential to elevate your husband. You have the potential to make his mission, his life, his ministry successful. In fact, I say it this way: you have the ability to elevate or devastate. You might write that down. A wife has been given all the skill that she needs to elevate or to devastate. This is just generally true. Men who are married live longer, they gain more wealth, and they are generally healthier. Here's the question. Why? Now here's my hypothesis. I don't know this to be true, but this is my hypothesis. I think it's true. I think it's because someone is always in their ear saying, don't eat that. Don't dress that way, don't say that, don't do that, don't use that sermon illustration. All right? Which happened this week for me. I think the reason that men are generally more successful whenever they are partnered up is because they have someone that is helping them, that is fit to help them. Ladies, you have the ability to elevate or devastate. I like the story of the county commissioner, and he was out surveying a piece of property. He would uh go and he would unfold the plans, and this was near dinner time, so his wife came with him, and he was planning on going out to eat. Right after surveying the plans. He rolls out the plans, he looks at things, he's looking at all the designs and all that the electricians have to do, I suppose, or whatever group was still working on the building. And uh, as he is doing that, uh, his wife is also there, and this guy, this regular work-a-day blue-collar Joe, yells out, Nancy! Nancy, it's me! Do you remember? We dated in high school. And her husband's kind of watching this unfold, and he's just kind of amused by it, and he's the boss, and and they leave and and he they talk and they leave together and they go to dinner, and he said, How about that? You met your old high school flame. How about that? That's amazing. I mean, you think about that. If you'd have married him, you'd be married to him, and you wouldn't be married to the county commissioner. And she's like, Actually, if I would have married him, he would be the county commissioner. You got it backwards. And I think that's what this text is illustrating. I think I I really do that that a wife has the ability to elevate her husband. True story, this is this is the gospel truth. There have been some pastors I have interviewed, and and we had multiple guys going for the role, and the sole reason one of them got the job was because of their spouse, their wife. And if you're a pastor in the room today, yes, I'm talking about you, all right? If you're a pastor's wife, um, it's amazing. Like, like it's amazing how someone can elevate their spouse. Women have the power, it's a superpower, to make an average man spectacular. I've also would give the warning that a woman can also devastate her home. Proverbs is very clear that the godly woman, the righteous woman, the wise woman builds her house. The foolish woman tears it down. You can elevate or you can devastate. Your wonderful power, this fit-for-you power, can be used for evil. You can embarrass your husband, you can demoralize your husband, you can depress your husband. That's why in Ephesians 5, verse 33, it says to the wife, let the wife see that she respects her husband. Do this, like respect him. Let as you talk about him, let your words kind of drip with respect. Ashley and I have this rule. We will always, always, always speak the very kindest words about each other to other people. We will gossip the very best things about each other to others, and no one will ever hear a negative word about my spouse from me. Ever.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

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