Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Desire the unadulterated milk of the word, like a newborn baby, that you may grow thereby. His divine power has given to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises that through them we may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. Jesus prayed to the Father, sanctify them by means of truth. Thy word is truth. Before we open up God's word, let's bow our heads together and go to the Lord in prayer. My Father, we're thankful for your word that it is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. And as we examine your word, it illuminates our thoughts, it illuminates our motivations, it illuminates our actions, and it illuminates our speech. It informs us of how we should be thinking, of how we should be talking, and how we should be living. And that we are to be transformed, not shaped and conformed to the world, but transformed by the renewing of our mind. And constantly, this is our battle, that spiritual warfare primarily is a battle of our volition. It's a battle that takes place between our ears, a battle to obey you, to submit to your authority, or a battle to go about life our own way. So, Father, we pray that we might be humble and that we might be willing to obey you and follow you and submit to your word that you might be glorified. And we pray this in Christ's name, amen. Last Sunday morning as I was finishing up the lesson about 10 minutes before closing prayer, I swallowed and felt that burning sensation on the back of your throat knowing that, uh-oh, I've got a cold and it's coming. And then Thursday morning, I woke up and it had not had this before, and I had no voice whatsoever, just a high squeak. So as you can tell, it's a little bit better, but it's still not fully recovered. So we're going to see how far I'm going to get this morning and how long my voice holds out. So we're studying in Ephesians. We've come to Ephesians 5.21. which is the last of several participles that give us both commands and result of the command given in Ephesians 5.18 to be filled by means of the Spirit. In other words, what we see in these participles and all through the rest of the chapter is this emphasis on what the Christian life is characterized by, what it looks like, and what will flow from the believer who is walking closely with the Holy Spirit and letting God the Holy Spirit fill our souls with God's Word, letting the Word of Christ richly dwell within us. And this affects every area of our lives. And in this section coming up, It focuses on the home and focuses on the relationship in marriage between husband and wife and also between parents and children. And then it also impacts how we conduct business. In the ancient world, they had slaves. We don't have slaves. We have employers and employees. So there's application there. And so I have been looking at the issue of authority because in these passages, it's not just Paul that says this. He says this here. He says very similar things in the parallel passage in Colossians chapter 3. Peter talks about this in Colossians, I mean, in 1 Peter 2 and 1 Peter 3. And there are other passages in Scripture that support all of this. And so I talked about that last week under the metaphor of locking shields, that all of the doctrines, everything that's taught in Scripture fits together and supports one another. Like under the Roman legions that would lock shields in order to protect the whole group from incoming arrows or spears. And so you have the same kind of thing with doctrine, that it protects us. But objectively, in the Word, it all fits together. So we can't go in and pick and choose and select this passage because, well, I believe in that, so that's good. And then look at this other passage and say, no, that doesn't fit. I don't agree with that. That's what happens. That's how a lot of people do Bible study. And what we get is a unified presentation of reality from God who is our creator. So in terms of review, I want to focus on just three things quickly. First of all, the divine institutions that God established from creation. Second, the fact of the creator-creature distinction. And third, the trends of the sexes as a result of the curse on sin and the sin nature. We have studied through these details quite a bit, but this really forms a framework for being able to properly understand what is said. What the world around us says in terms of the roles and relationships of men and women, parents and children, and all of these different spheres of authority that exist is completely contrary to what the Word of God teaches. And so this causes a lot of friction. It also creates situations where if you have somebody who you lead to the Lord, who has been reared in this culture, or somebody who has been saved but they've never really been taught, they've never really studied a lot of things about the Bible and they're basically ignorant and they get up into later in life and all of a sudden decide that they want to read the Bible. They will start reading the Bible and on almost every page the Bible is saying things that are 180 degrees opposite what they have been taught and learned in school, in their culture from their friends and their family. And there's a real culture clash that takes place between the years. And this is a real problem. But we as believers need to understand that there's some foundational truths here that we have to keep in mind when we start looking at what the scripture says. The first of these is the divine institutions. And this is a great framework for application to many different things. And that begins with what God did in his creation of human beings. He created us as human beings, male and female, in the image of God. Genesis 1, 26 to 28. And this is foundational because it tells us that there's no no inherent differences between men and women. They're equally in the image of God, and so we are equal. The fancy word for this is ontology. Ontologically, we are the same. We are equal. We are created in the image and likeness of God. Men are not, as a group, intellectually superior or inferior to women. Men and women as a group are not inferior or superior to men in any way. There are some biological differences, but that is not part of who they are as a person. That is sort of a secondary characteristic. We'll talk more about that probably next week. So we have the divine institutions, and in the Garden of Eden, three of them are established by God. And they are to enable the human race to fulfill the mission that God was giving the human race to function as his representative, ruling as God's representative over the earth. And there are three. The first is responsible choice. Second is marriage. Third is family. Responsible choice emphasizes the fact that we are responsible for the decisions that we make in life. And sometimes we make good decisions and we reap the benefits and other times we make bad decisions and we have to live through the consequences. And that's fundamental. It's foundational to all of the other divine institutions to function as God intended. And so we come to marriage. Marriage works when you have a man and a woman who are married to one another and each fully recognizes their personal responsibilities within that union. And if they have not been taught by their parents about personal responsibility, then it's going to become very difficult for that marriage to work. So Divine Institution 1 is integral to Divine Institution 2. Divine Institution 2 will lead to Divine Institution 3, which is family. This is God's training ground for the next generation, for parents to teach, train their children on how to live. The role of a parent is to train your children to be able to live successfully without you. And so that by the time they reach adulthood, they can go out on their own and they can function successfully in society. And whether you ever see them again or not, you have provided that training for them. Well, we know what happened in the Old Testament, that sin came along, and so all of these things are marred. And after the worldwide flood, God established two more. After the flood, he established civil government to restrain evil. Tribal diversity are nations in order to restrain criminality and to protect its citizens. The third group is composed of one, and that is Israel. God called out Israel to provide worldwide blessing through the seed of Abraham Singular, who is the Lord Jesus Christ. So the first divine institutions were designed to promote stability and blessing and for the perpetuation of the human race. The second group was to discipline and punish and restrain evil. And then Israel was designed to bless the world. What we're really talking about in this sub-series from Ephesians is the marriage and the family grounded upon personal responsibility and accountability. And that when we get to the New Testament, the focus of the New Testament is that there are there are certain standards for the Christian life. Some people get the idea, and I've heard this, they are what I would call hyper-grace people, overuse grace, and they think that if you say, well, the Bible says we shouldn't do this, or we should do that, that's legalism. It may be, and it may not be, because the Bible is filled with commands to church-age believers to do certain things and to avoid certain other things. And that is not how we earn salvation. It is not necessarily the way in which we gain blessing from God. It may be in some cases because we are being walking in obedience to God. It's not a legalistic type of framework. And so a lot of people understand that. I misunderstand that, excuse me. So we have this issue of responsible choice that underneath it all, every individual has to be growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ to make marriages work, to make families work, to make government work. Otherwise, you end up in chaos and disarray. The second area is the creator-creature distinction. On the first level, we have the God who is the infinite, sovereign, omnipotent, omnipresent God who rules over his creation. And then below that, totally separate and totally distinct from God, the creator God, is the creature. The creature is finite. The creature has a limited knowledge, limited power. And so there is this vast distinction. Now, if you want to boil this down to the basics, what this basically says is God is God, and you're not, and I'm not. And don't get those two things confused. When you confuse them, you're going to get yourself in a tremendous amount of trouble. Second, God knows everything. He knows everything you might do, everything you will do. He knows the thoughts and intents of our heart. He knows our motivations. He understands the secrets that are deep inside of our soul. He knows everything. We know very, very little in comparison to God. So what happens is that people get in situations in life, usually some kind of crisis or disaster or tragedy, and maybe they lose their home in a hurricane or maybe they lose a loved one in death and they blame God for it. Well, they don't understand God at all. They don't understand sin and the consequences of sin in life. And they're putting the blame in the wrong place. The blame for death and chaos goes on the human race because of sin. And what God gives us in his word are the tools, the intellectual tools for being able to handle the difficulties of life by trusting in Him. When it comes down to marriage, when it comes down to relationships, we have to understand that God is the creator and who is omniscient, designed men and women to be different. And He created them in such a way that they would be able to fulfill the roles that God gave them. The problem is that because of sin, that gets all messed up, that gets all corroded and corrupted. But men and women still are fundamentally designed to fulfill certain roles, and we have to learn to walk in dependence upon the Lord in order to be able to fulfill those roles in a way that honors and glorifies God. It doesn't mean it's going to be easy. And we all have to do it in a marriage, in the relationship with somebody who is a corrupt sinner. And they always seem to get in the way, don't they? And make it a little more difficult for us to do what we know we should do. And it happens because we deal with sin. So we have to learn to deal in grace and kindness. And understanding works both ways, even though the Peter passage we read this morning said men are to live in an understanding way with their wives, that's a two-way road. We have to always be in understanding of one another. And then we have to deal, the third thing is having to deal with the problem of sin. And the problem of sin and the effect of the curse is that we have these trends that are identified by God in Genesis 3.16. where God addressed the woman and he said, your desire shall be to control your husband. That's how that should be translated. It's a distinctive verb that is used there for desire. And it is used again in the very next chapter of sin desiring to control each one of us. In that case, it was sin desiring to control and dominate Cain. What this is saying is that women have a general trend to take control of the situation in the marriage. And on the other hand, men have a general trend to be domineering and tyrannical. And you can see this play out in history. You see several different religions that have been invented by men under the inspiration of Satan. and where women are treated as lower class citizens than dogs or camels. And this is a problem, so you have this conflict. The only thing that can overcome those trends is the spiritual life, is spiritual growth and maturity. So that goes back to the sin when the serpent came along and basically set the stage for all these problems by telling Eve, Well, what did God say? Did he say that you shouldn't eat of every tree of the garden? And Eve responded by saying, well, we can eat from the fruit of the trees, but not eat or touch the one in the middle, lest you die. And then Satan came along with his twisted logic and said, you won't die. And that put the burden of deciding whether God was true or not on the woman. Now, we do that every single day. We make decisions. We hear what God's word says, and we have a choice. Are we gonna believe God? Or are we going to just go with our own inclinations and what our friends tell us and what our culture tells us? We face that decision dozens of times every single day. So this is what we have to avoid. So when we get into the scriptures, what we discover is after that sin in the garden, for about the next 1,500 to 1,800 years, there's just chaos on the earth because God has not set up these additional divine institutions yet. And before the worldwide flood, we read in Genesis 6, 5, then the Lord saw the wickedness of man, and there it's mankind, was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Look at those words. It was every intent, only evil, continually. It was a horrific place to live. But then what happens is that God, brings judgment on the planet at that time through the worldwide flood. And then as a result of that, things start over. There's another judgment that occurs at the Tower of Babel. And between the two, you have the establishment of the different languages, which leads to tribal diversity. And then the establishment of governments or nations in the Tower of Babel. You have government at the covenant with Noah, and then the division of mankind into tribes and nations as a result of the Tower of Babel. And so then God begins to work through one group of people, and that's the Jewish people, and through Abraham. And this then sets the stage for the majority of what Scripture teaches. So we've come to study in Ephesians, and we see that the ultimate motivation in our life for obedience, for submission, for fulfilling all of these things is the fear of the Lord. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church. Children, obey your parents in the Lord. Ephesians 6, for fathers, don't provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. Ephesians 6, 5, bond servants, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling and sincerity of heart. When you look at this word fear, it is used primarily in terms of fear of the Lord, not fear of the person that's in authority. We are to live our lives as if you work for somebody, you are to do your work as under the Lord, not for the person who is immediately in authority over you. wives are to submit to your husbands as to the Lord. There's a comparison there. It is tempting to make a comparison that for a wife, how you submit to your husband is pretty similar to how you submit to God. But I think that's true in every area of authority. How you submit to whatever authorities are over you, whether it is in the realm of government, whether it's in the realm of family, whether it's in the realm of education, or in the realm of military, how you respond to authority is going to be pretty much related to how you respond to the authority of God. We have to learn humility. When we are facing an authority that we disagree with, and we do not submit to that authority, then what we're doing is we're saying, I'm the ultimate authority in life. I'm the one who decides what's right and what's wrong. It's all about me. And that is the opposite of humility. And humility is fundamental to being submissive. And submissive doesn't mean being a doormat. Submissive means being obedient. The best passage on this is Philippians 2, 5 to 11. Because in the middle of that, it says that the Lord Jesus Christ humbled himself by being obedient even to the point of death on the cross. He was willing to go through the whole process of incarnation where the absolutely perfect, sinless, second person of the Trinity willingly limited himself, taking on, adding to himself genuine humanity. and then being maltreated in the greatest act of injustice in all of human history, basically framed and convicted and then punished by being crucified on the cross. And he endured that and he didn't utter a word. That's the picture, the ultimate picture of humility that we find in the scriptures. So we go back to Eve, and the reason I keep going back there is because that's where Paul's gonna go in almost every time he talks about this particular topic. She has her responsibility, and she can either choose that door number one and decide that she alone has the ability to evaluate the credibility and integrity of God, or door number two, to hit the pause button and go ask God, well, what do you think about what the serpent's telling? We make those decisions every single day. You have to decide, am I going to listen to what God says, or am I going to just go ahead and do it on the basis of my own limited information? So all through Scripture we have this central issue of authority. And that's what undergirds all of that, and we saw that in detail in our study in 1 Corinthians 11, which pointed out that the angels are looking for that symbol of authority on a woman's head as to whether or not she is obedient. They're learning from that. They want to know that if she is submissive to authority. So that's just one of numerous examples. So I want to get into these two passages. There are difficult things said in both of these passages that make many of us uncomfortable. And a lot of that is just a matter of understanding historical context. And it's also a matter of understanding exactly what is said here because of the nature of translation being somewhat inadequate. So I'm going to start this morning, finish next week, looking at a comparison and contrast between 1 Timothy 2, 8 to 15, and 1 Peter 2, 11, down through 3, 8, although we won't cover most of those verses in between. So we're going to start off and we're going to look at the broad context of both passages, and then the narrow or the specific context of each of these passages, because though they're addressing these role distinctions, they're in different contexts. And that's very important to understand that. So first of all, in the first Timothy passage, the broad context of Timothy is that Paul is addressing a problem of false teachers in the church in Ephesus. Ephesus was an extremely large city, so by using the singular, he's referring to all of the believers who are meeting in different locations and probably house churches to begin with, although there's indications that there were places where they could rent There is a school that Paul rented, and he taught Bible class and training there for a while. So there were different congregations, small ones as well as larger ones, in Ephesus at the time. And we see this problem emphasized at the beginning in 1 Timothy 1 verse 3 and 1 Timothy 1, 6 and 7, where Paul says to Timothy, as I urged you when I went into Macedonia, remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach different doctrine." They're teaching something different. They're not teaching true doctrine. And so he charges Timothy, you need to handle this problem and let them know what they're teaching, what it's wrong, and why it's wrong. And then in verse 6 we read, some have deviated from these and turned aside these what? These doctrines. Some have deviated from these and turned aside to fruitless discussion. They want to be teachers of the law, although they don't understand what they are saying and what they are insisting on. So this is a problem. He comes back and mentions this again at the end of the epistle. It's not the primary reason he wrote the epistle, but it's one of the reasons he wrote this epistle. And so he's addressing this problem of false teachers. And the context of chapters two and chapters three relate to handling these problems because along with false teaching, people coming in, there needs to be some better governmental control within the congregation. So chapter two talks about some specific problems on the part of the men in the congregation and the women in the congregation. And then chapter three is going to talk about basic problems that could be resolved by having spiritually solid leadership in the local church. So in this immediate context of chapters 2 and 3, we see that's what he's doing. Chapter 2 is talking about problems within that particular context. And it's a context of the local church and the public worship of the local church. So he's not, in this passage, he's not focusing on home life. He's focusing on the structures and relationship of men and women and what their priorities should be in the local church. When we go over to 1 Peter 2, we look at the broad context there, and Peter is addressing Jewish background believers. It's primarily a if not exclusively, a group of Jewish believers who have trusted in Yeshua as their Messiah. And they are a group within this Gentile community. He addresses it to a broad range of people generally living, these believers generally living in central, northern, and eastern Turkey. And when he begins this epistle, he says, he addresses it to the pilgrims of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. So he uses that word for pilgrims. He's going to come back and use that word again when he gets to Hebrews 2 to 12. And that is when he shifts and starts talking about within the family. And so when he gets to 1 Peter 2.11 he says, Beloved I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims. So he's specifically addressing the fact that they are a minority population that are Christian in a majority environment of pagans and how they should live. And the bottom line is he is going to affirm most of the social mores of the pagans, but he's going to put a twist on them and ground the motivation in what Christ did on the cross, and by so doing he elevates what he is saying to a whole other plane. So basically what he is saying is you still need, as Christians, you still need to live honorable lives, but we're going to we're going to elevate the definition of what an honorable life looks like. And so it's not something that the pagans are going to be condemning you for. You're going to be doing everything to promote stability in the society, but even at a higher level or a higher standard. And so the context here is not on public worship as it was in Timothy. The context here is on their private lives and their relationships within the home. And so they are to conduct themselves in 1 Peter 2.12, conduct themselves honorably among the Gentiles that when they speak against you as evildoers they may by your good works which they observe glorify God in the day of visitation. Now one of the things you should notice here is that this is sort of a topical sentence for what he's going to say in the next section. And what he tells them is that when they are in the environment of the pagans, that by their good works, by their submission to the authorities that are set over them, by the fact that they do their jobs better and to a higher standard than what the pagans do, then this is a non-verbal testimony that is going to glorify God. That's no different from what he is going to say to the wives in chapter three, when he tells them that if they are married to a husband who is not a believer, that the wife, without a word, the husband may be won by the conduct of their wives. So he's not giving the wives instruction that is somehow radically different from what he's telling all of the believers. That when they're dealing with unbelievers to live in such a way that your life stands out and is a testimony to them. So this sets the stage in terms of the broad context for both of these particular passages. we get into some of the specific details in the context. And so look at the first part of 1 Timothy 2. 1 Timothy 2 starts off with some general challenge to the men in the church, and to actually everyone in the church as well, to pray. And so he says, therefore, I exhort first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks. These are four different aspects of prayer. Supplications are bringing our requests before God. Prayers and intercessions are prayers for others. Giving of thanks be made for all men. The word for men there is anthropos which means all mankind. And then he specifically hones in on the issue of the authority of government in verse two. For kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. So he writes this at a time when Nero is the emperor who hated Christians and persecuted Christians. And he is saying that we are to pray for them, for those in government, doesn't matter which party they're in, It doesn't matter what their politics are. We are to pray for one reason, and that is so that we can lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. Not so we can have a better economy, although there's nothing wrong with that. Not so that we can have our borders protected. There's nothing wrong with that. The ultimate purpose is so that covers both of those other categories. is that we can have a, not be distracted in carrying out the mission the Lord Jesus Christ has given us. When there is chaos because of crime, when there's chaos because of economic instability, it makes it more challenging to carry out our ministry. When we go through a time period where there is inflation, and there's high unemployment. We went through a period in 2008 and nine, and that impacts how much money people have to support a local church and to support missionaries. And so this puts a hindrance on those ministries. And then when there's a time of economic prosperity, then there are more financial resources to support missionaries, to support the teaching of the word and other ministries. But the way he defines this is he uses two words here. He uses the word quiet so that we can live a quiet life. Now, this is a word in the Greek that is only used here, and it's rarely used anywhere else. And I think it has the idea of having a somewhat stable life. In the two or three other places, it's translated as quiet, but quiet has a lot of sense. What does quiet mean? We can use the word quiet to say, well, there's no noise. But we can use noise in a metaphorical sense. There's no noise or chatter, no problems from the government, no instability, no financial problems, things like that. Things are stable. And the word that he uses that's translated peaceable, actually, is this word, hesuchias. Here it's the... Here it is the noun form. And this is important because it's going to show up later on. It is not just as a preview of coming attractions. When Paul talks about women being silent in the church in first Corinthians 14, it's a totally different word. That word means total silence. This word doesn't mean total silence. It has a word that really means tranquility. Things are calm. Nothing is being disrupted, and so we should live a life that is not being disturbed, where we're not being distracted by problems of the economy, problems of wars, problems of persecution, problems of famine, that we can focus on the mission that the Lord Jesus Christ has given us. Now, why does he say this? It's for evangelistic purposes. See, Paul is not distracted from his mission. His mission is not all the pleasures that the culture offers. His mission is not the great restaurants. His mission is not entertainment. He focuses on the primary mission, which is that people need to learn about the Lord Jesus Christ, and they need to trust in Him for salvation. And so now we have one of the largest sections in this chapter deals with this, and that's verses three through seven. He says, why should we pray for a government that will allow us to live a quiet and peaceable or stable, tranquil life? Four, this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior. who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. This is Paul's priority. This is a priority that he wants every believer to have, is that turn off your televisions, turn off your devices, turn off YouTube and whatever other channels you're listening to and get into the Word so that the Word can saturate your soul and you can see your priorities transformed from the distractions of the culture around us to the mission that God has given us in promoting the gospel and teaching the word and building churches and establishing churches that have solid teaching ministries. Who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Actually, the article is not in the original. To the knowledge of truth. It's an absolute. And then he gives another for statement. Why should we do that? And he's saying, and essentially you could translate this with because, because there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus. Why is he so special? Why is he a mediator? Because he gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time. So Christ is the focal point here. He is the mediator. He is the one who paid the price for our sins and provided redemption. And then Paul says, for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle. I'm speaking the truth in Christ and not lying, a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. So he addresses The priority. And then he's going to focus in on problems in the local church. There are problems with the men and there are problems with some things that the women are doing. First he addresses the males in the congregation. In verse 8 we read, I desire therefore that the men pray. Now in Greek there's the word anthropos which can mean just men, males. And it can also mean mankind. It can include men and women. But the word aner that's used here is specifically males. So he's singling out the males because they are to be the spiritual leaders in the home and in the church. God has delegated that responsibility to the men. When I do a wedding ceremony and I give a charge to the husband and to the wife, My charge to the husband is that you are the spiritual leader in the home and God will hold you accountable for that. That the man is the spiritual leader in the home. When we get over to 1 Corinthians 14, which we'll get to probably next time, is that you realize that when it says women should keep silent in the church and if they have a question, See, there was some sort of issue going on where they were just speaking out of turn apparently. And so what Paul says, ask your husband at home. There's a twofold purpose in that. One, it limits the discussion at church. Number two, it puts the onus on the husband to know enough about the word to be able to answer the wife's questions. So every Sunday afternoon, Wives, you go home, have some questions for your husband. Put him on the hot seat, because that's his responsibility. He needs to be the one who can explain these things. So here he is emphasizing men. He says, I desire, therefore, that the men pray everywhere. So this is talking about not just in this congregation, but in all of the congregations. And he describes it as lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting. So first of all, in the culture of that time, Eastern Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, and Israel, the custom was that when people prayed, they would lift up their hands like this to God. We have different customs. This is not a mandate that that is how you are to pray. There's no particular posture that you need in order to pray. But the emphasis is on holy hands. This is not the word we usually have for holy, which is to be set apart. This is a word for more of what we would say somebody who has already confessed their sin, and now they have been forgiven and cleansed. And that's the idea here, because the next statement it says, without wrath or doubting. So apparently they have a problem. The men get together and they start arguing, getting angry with each other over different issues related to doctrine because of these false teachers. So instead of having peace, they're disputing and arguing with one another. And so Paul is saying, basically, you need to confess your sins, be in right relationship with the Lord, and having unity rather than disharmony when you come together in the church. And then for the women, he says several things, and they had their own set of spiritual problems. And this is really, as I said, it's all in the context of the public worship service. It's not talking about in the home. So in 1 Peter 2.9 we read, 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." That is how the ESV, the English Standard Version, which was based off of the Revised Standard Version, that's how they translate that. And also you have, I have the Holman Christian Standard Bible quoted. Also, the women are to dress. The word for adorn and dress is the Greek word kosmeo. We have the noun kosmos for the world. It has to do with orderly, organizing something and making it orderly, making it attractive. And it has the idea of it's orderly and it's respectable. and with modesty and self-control. Those are all good ways of translating these words, decency and good sense, propriety and moderation. I have read on more than one occasion descriptions of how people dress going to some of these really large, nondescript, generic evangelical churches. young women going and they're showing their midriff. They've got tattoos everywhere. There's just, there's a disorderliness about how they dress. They dress just like they do out on the street. And this is not, this does not fit this category. Now you have other people within Christendom who go to the opposite extreme. And for many years, I remember as a child noticing that there were some strange looking people found out later that they were Pentecostals, and the women always had their hair in a bun, they never wore makeup, and they looked real frumpy. And that's the other extreme, that's making something legalistic out of this. What Paul is simply saying here is that the attire should be modest, and the attire should not be one that is ostentatious, where you're going to worship God, you're not going to be the focus of attention, by the way, way that you dress. And so that's what he's emphasizing. He is not saying that it's wrong to have a good hairstyle or jewelry, but that that should not be something that is a distraction and something that takes the focus off of the reason you come to church. He's not talking about how you dress the rest of the time. He's talking about that there is an appropriate dress code for when you come to worship, the Creator God of the universe, and dress should not be something that is a distraction. So he has these same admonitions on dress are found over in Peter. And we go back to the governing statement in 1 Peter 2.12, having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you So the whole idea in the following section is talking about what is this honorable behavior. And so he, in 1 Peter 3.1 talks about, and go down to 1 Peter 3.3, he says, do not let your adornment be merely outward, arranging the hair. Now the word merely, you'll find it, are only, that's not in the original. But most translations will do that. So that indicates it's okay to do all of this, but also focus on the inward person. That's not the intention here. The intention here is don't dress in a distracting manner when you go to worship the Lord in church. That's the focal point. Don't let your adornment be outward. Arranging the hair, wearing gold, And as I pointed out last time, they didn't have all of the costume jewelry that we have today. And so then if you were wearing gold or silver and you had diamonds or pearls, it was the genuine article. And it was just showing off your wealth in some ways. And that was the problem. And it's not talking about when you go out in the street or carry out the rest of your life. It's talking about what's appropriate for worship. And again, the word for adornment is based on the same Greek word kosmos. We get our word cosmetics from this word as well. And it says, then he goes on and he says in verse 4, rather let it be the hidden person of the heart with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit. Now, that is often misunderstood and some people think, well, that's personality. No, it is the adoption of a certain virtue in life when you're in the midst of opposition or pagan culture that you know when to keep your mouth shut for men and women, it's not unique to women, but that they should focus on developing their spiritual maturity. And the idea for gentle really is the word that has to do more with humility and not with being an aggressive, argumentative person in certain contexts, social contexts. And then the next word, quiet, is that same word that we saw in Timothy, hesuchias, meaning the sense of tranquil and not something that is chaotic or out of control. So this, and the word spirit just refers to their mental attitude. Spirit has about seven or eight different meanings. It can refer to the Holy Spirit, the human spirit, it can refer to wind or breath, and it can also refer to someone's attitude. And so then in verse five, he says, for in this manner in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves being submissive to their own husbands. And then he's going to get into an example with Sarah and Abraham, which we will look at when we come back next Sunday morning. With our heads bowed and our eyes closed, Father, we thank you for this opportunity to look at your word, to come to understand that there are certain virtues and values that you have, that you stipulate in scripture that should characterize what takes place when a body of believers comes together to worship you. and that they should recognize how significant this is, and it should be a time of reverence and a time of respect for what we are doing in terms of looking at your word and focusing upon you, and that this is also reflected in the way in which we relate to one another. And so, Father, we pray that you would give us insight into these passages, what is said to men, what is said to women, that we may realign our thinking, realign our opinions, realign our actions, so that we can recognize how we are to function within these divine institutions of marriage and family. Father, we recognize that there's always some possibility of someone here who is not a believer in Christ, someone who does not have eternal life, someone who is searching for truth, And maybe they're listening to this online, listening some other way. And we want to make the gospel clear that the only way to have everlasting life is to trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior. That means that He died on the cross for your sins, paid the penalty for your sins, and that He was buried and rose again. And that when we trust in Jesus, recognizing that He is fully God and is capable of saving us and preserving us, then we are trusting in the gospel of Scripture. And so, Father, we pray that we would recognize this and that if there's any listening who are unsure of their salvation, that this would be clear to them and they would put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. And we pray these things in His name. Amen.