The following sermon is brought to you by Capitol Community Church, located in Raleigh, North Carolina. Capitol Community Church is a people awakened to a holy God. If you are searching for a new church home, or from out of town looking for a church to worship with, or simply seeking for answers, Please join us for worship at 1045 a.m. every Sunday morning and 6 o'clock p.m. for our evening service. If you have any questions, please email us at info at CapitalCommunityChurch.com. We pray this sermon will help you grow deeper in your walk with Jesus Christ. Well, good morning. I'm doing something unique this morning, something I normally do not do, and that is to depart from our normal expositional study, whatever it is, we've been studying the Gospel of John, and I just felt the Lord lay on my heart a message, a message on womanhood, and I'm gonna explain why in a moment, but first, I'd like to pray for our time, so if you would, bow your heads again. Heavenly Father, we pray, Lord, for this morning. We pray, Lord, for all the women in this room. We pray, Lord, that one, that they would know you in faith, and two, that in their lives, that they would walk in a manner pleasing to you. We pray, Lord, for those who are mothers, that you would strengthen them, encourage them, and give them the grace and strength that is needed to raise children who know and fear the Lord. I pray, Lord, that you would also speak through me in the power of your Holy Spirit. And I ask this in Christ's name, amen. I felt led to do a message on womanhood because I think womanhood is so attacked today in our culture. For so long when I was growing up, what was pressing forward was radical feminism. And feminism really said to women, you need to be like men. You need to work like men, you need to dress like men, and all these things. Today, what we're facing is postmodern intersectionality. which says there is really no such thing as a woman, and a man can be a woman if he wants to. In fact, a few years ago, two years ago to be exact, during her Senate confirmation hearing, Supreme Court Justice Katonji Brown-Jackson was asked the question by Marsha Blackburn, what is a woman? And she said, I do not know. you would have to ask a biologist to find the answer to that question. And that right there is an example of how far Satan has deceived people in our society, in our culture, up to the highest levels. The Supreme Court bench where, of all places, people should know what truth is. People say, well, we can't define something so basic as what it means to be a boy or a girl. Now, looking around this room this morning, I think that you're pretty smart people. We don't need to have a doctor, one of our physicians in the room, come forward and explain to you the intricacies of XX chromosomes or XY chromosomes. I think we all understand the basics of what it means to be a male or female, at least in terms of physiology. But my fear is, in terms of the biblical standard for womanhood, perhaps that has been lost. Just because we're bombarded with such different standards. So this morning, the message that I want to give to you is entitled, The Ideal Christian Woman. The Ideal Christian Woman. When I was in college, I noticed something interesting. When I would talk to girls from different sororities, I noticed that the girls from the same sororities dressed the same, talked the same, had the same mannerisms. It was like there was a carbon copy. that was made. And I begin asking myself, is there some woman down the line who was like the ultra Chi Omega that they are all just kind of patterning themselves after? And then the Tridelts were different, so maybe there was some Tridelt figurehead that they all just kind of modeled themselves after. When I got in the Marine Corps, it was interesting. There was this gentleman by the name of Louis Chesty Puller. And Chesty Puller, has anybody heard of Chesty Puller? He fought in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. He was called Chesty because he had a big barrel chest. He's famous, when the Marines were surrounded by Inchon, by just thousands of Koreans and Chinese soldiers, he said, well, we're surrounded, that simplifies things. But when you get in the Marine Corps, everything you do at night, when the recruits are in their rack, holding their rifle, everybody says, good night, Chesty Puller. When you're doing pull-ups, do one more for Chesty Puller. Even the little bulldog up at 8th and I. Chesty. Everything's, you are to mold yourself, be like Chesty Puller. So we have these ideals. It's almost like in a platonic form that you are to mold yourself after. And in terms of womanhood, you see these ideals in scripture. You see, for example, Sarah, and we'll talk about her momentarily, who was the great example of faith. You see examples like Mary. the mother of Jesus, who had outstanding character. We do not venerate her like the Roman Catholic Church does and says that she intercedes. We don't do that. But we honor her as a woman of Christian virtue. And then we have the Proverbs 31 woman, which many of you have studied. And so what I'd like to do today is really take a compilation of those characters and distill certain character qualities from their lives that really form for us the ideal Christian woman. So with that being said, there easily could have been more, okay? But I have seven qualities. So let's try to go through these with the time that we have. Seven virtues of the ideal Christian woman. And I think the first one is obvious. The ideal Christian woman must be a woman of faith. A woman of faith. Now, if you have your Bible, open it up to the book of Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 11. This is the great chapter on faith, and we're gonna be looking at a number of different scriptures this morning. Some of them I'll have you turn to, others I'll just reference in passing. But Hebrews chapter 11, verse one, defines faith this way. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for. the conviction of things not seen. In other words, it's believing God at his word even though you don't presently see the outcome. Does that make sense? It's believing God. Not just, oh, I hope, but I know that God will carry through even though I don't presently see the outcome. And the Christian life must begin by faith. The Christian life begins by coming to the end of yourself, by repenting of your works' righteousness before God, looking to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only Lord and Savior, who lived a perfect life, who died for sinners, and because he was perfect, he rose again from the dead three days later, so that all who believe in his name might have the forgiveness of sins. That is where all true biblical womanhood starts, and biblical manhood, I might add. You don't just go to the actions first, you go to Christ first. You must go to the narrow gate, and you must get on your knees, and you must humble yourselves, and you must trust in Christ and faith. That is where biblical womanhood starts. But here's the thing, that's not where it ends. Listen very carefully. the Christian life not only begins by faith, but is carried by faith to the very end. Because what God does is he brings you on the Christian path, if you will, to trial, to trial, to trial, and he forces you to a place where you must have faith in him, where you must exercise faith. If you look over to chapter 12, Chapter 12, verse 2. Look at this. Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. So Jesus founds our faith, but then he also works to perfect our faith, to grow our faith, to strengthen our faith. Faith is like a muscle. If you want to grow a muscle, you have to go to the gym and you not only have to work out the muscle, but you have to work the muscle to exhaustion. You have to work the muscle to the place where it's strained. And oftentimes what God does is he tests you to the point of breaking, where you have to trust God. And in that moment, your faith grows from maybe a mustard seed to something greater and bigger. And your faith has grown from trial to trial. but it's grown nonetheless as God works through faith. And this is how the great women of God live. The ideal Christian woman is a woman of great, great faith, that her faith continues to grow. When I was a little boy, my father was killed in a plane crash, and my mother was only 25 years old. So you can imagine, a young widow, just lots of complexities in terms of life, dealing now with being a single mom, moving from where she was back to her hometown of Houston, and just facing all these unknown challenges. And I remember several things distinctly about that time. I remember it was the 80s. I remember she always wore this purple shirt that had these black elephants on it. I don't know why I remember that. I always remember that. I remember that she wore that outfit quite a bit, but I also remember that she had great, tremendous faith. And I would go to her, I would ask, where is my father? I would be upset, I would be in tears, and she would always quote to me Psalm 68 5, father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. She had faith that God would protect us, that God would provide. My aunt, her sister, my mom's sister, her daughter, right when she was out of high school, was sadly killed in a horseback riding accident. I was talking to my Aunt Mary, and I said, what got you through? And she quoted Psalm 27, 13. She said, I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Wait for the Lord. What faith does is it takes the promises of God. So if you're in a difficult place, what you need is you need to go to God's word, where God has made promises to us. And you cling to those promises with all of your heart. and you trust God at his word, that God will carry you through, and that's how your faith grows. And you will find that God carries you through from that trial to the next. So that's the first quality of the ideal Christian woman. And the second, naturally, is that she is a woman of the word of God. That she is a woman of the word of God. If you would turn over to Psalm 1, in the middle of your Old Testament, Psalm chapter one. This applies not just to a man, but a godly woman. And I'm going to read it that way. Blessed is the woman who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but she delights in his law, in the law of the Lord, and on his law, she meditates day and night. My main goal as a father, is to convince my daughters to love the Word of God and to hold God's Word over their lives. Because I know that the Lord could take me home tomorrow. We're not guaranteed another day, but God's Word lasts forever. And I know that if they will submit their lives to God's Word and love God's Word and cherish God's Word, then regardless of where they go in life and the realities that they face, they're going to be okay. And if you as a woman can figure this out, then we can pray and go home. Because the other five qualities are all coming out of His Word. Listen. Listen to how God describes his word. The words of Yahweh are flawless, like silver purified in a crucible, like gold refined seven times. That's Psalm 12, six. Solomon says to his children, Proverbs 8, 10, take my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold, for wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with it. So, to be a godly Christian woman, you must love his word. And in God's word, you don't just love God's word for the sake of his word, you love God's word because in God's word, you meet the author. You meet God. And you begin to know God. And then you also learn his will. The will of God is what is good. What is good? God's will. God's will is good, acceptable, and perfect, Romans 12.2. And so as you study God's word, you learn how God wants you to live your life. So a godly woman loves God's word. She loves to encounter God's word. She humbles herself before God's word. And I wanna just give you four quick application points here. First, Listen to the Word of God. Listen to the Word of God. Be diligent to come to church on Sundays. This is why it's so important to be part of a Bible-teaching church, because every week that you come, underneath the Word of God, as it's taught and preached, your soul is recalibrated, and you're hearing God's Word. You're hearing God's Word read. You're hearing God's Word taught, and God the Holy Spirit begins to work in your life. Second, Read the word of God, read the word of God. You wanna take up and read, that's what Augustine said, tola legae, take it up and read. There's no shortcut here to reading the Bible. People ask all the time, how do I read the Bible? You pick it up, you begin on page one, Genesis 1-1, and you go all the way to the end. You read, and you reread. Tommy Nelson said, reading the Bible is like excavating an ancient city. Every time you go through, it's like going down a quarter of an inch, and you begin to discover new worlds. You want to read the whole Bible, all the way through. You want to study individual books of the Bible. You want to get to know books and reread books and know the outline of the book. And you want to begin to, third, hide the Word in your heart. You want to memorize and meditate on the Word. Bible memorization is really a lost art. But if you store God's Word in your heart, now God the Holy Spirit begins to use God's Word in places and situations where you don't have your Bible handy. Maybe you're at your work and somebody says, hey, I'm having this issue with my marriage, what advice would you have? And then all of a sudden, God the Holy Spirit brings to mind 1 Peter chapter three or Ephesians chapter five, and you're able to quote the verses to this person. It's immensely helpful to them. But that only happens when we dedicate God's word to our memory. And then fourth, apply the word. Apply the word. Jot this verse down, James 1, 22. James 1, 22. Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. You know people that they're a student of the word, but they never apply it? Yeah, you find them at liberal divinity schools all over the country. There's a lot of people that study and know God's word, but there's no submitting their lives to it. James says, look, if it's going to be of any value, you must be a doer of the word. Now listen, this is amazing what he says in verse 23. If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man. Literally, the Greek word anir is the word for a man, not a woman. So he's saying he's like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror for he looks at himself and goes away at once and forgets what he was like. That's what men are like. Women look at the mirror and And they remember, they remember, okay, I got this little tuft in my hair, I need to correct this and I need to do this and I need to fix that. Men just kind of look in the mirror and be like, oh, you know? And then we're gone through our day. And James is saying, don't be like a man who looks in the mirror, don't be that type of Christian who just reads the word and forgets. You read the word and you remember as a woman remembers her countenance looking in the mirror. So we need to be women of the word of God. That's the second quality of the ideal Christian woman. Third. She is a woman of devotion, a woman of devotion. She loves spending time with the Lord in prayer. Prayer is not just a moment where you give requests to God. We're gonna talk about this more next week, but prayer, there's a spiritual dynamic that takes place when you pray, where you begin to commune with the living God. That's why Paul says in Ephesians 6, he says pray in the what? In the spirit. Jude says the same thing, praying at all times in the spirit. When you pray, God the Holy Spirit comes alongside you and now you find yourself, have you found this to be true? Where now you are interacting with the living God. And now you have entered the throne room, if you will, by His Holy Spirit, and you are communing with Him. And godly women figure this out. They begin to love to commune with God. And I know many of them, many of you, are very, very busy. In fact, there's a story in Luke, I'm not gonna have you turn there, you remember this, from Luke chapter 10, Mary and Martha. Jesus goes and visits these sisters' house, and what's Martha doing? Serving, ministering, she's meeting everybody's needs. Does it sometimes feel like in your household, ladies, that that is what you are doing, that you are just being Martha all the time, that you are going from one need to the next, that you're simply serving, serving, serving? Well, Mary, on the other hand, what did she do? She sat at the feet of her Lord. And Martha takes Jesus aside and she says, Jesus, tell my sister to begin serving. Don't you see that I'm serving? And Jesus says, Martha, Martha, Martha. Mary has chosen the good portion. Mary's chosen the good. So, what you want to do, regardless of how busy you are, one, you can pray without ceasing, 1 Thessalonians 5, 17, while you're busy serving the kids, or serving whoever, pray, don't break that communion, but set aside time, whether it's in the morning, or at lunch, or while the kids are resting, or whenever it is, set aside time to spend with the Lord. We sang that hymn earlier, And Can It Be, by Charles Wesley. Charles Wesley's mother, Susanna Wesley, had 10 kids. 10 kids, and John and Charles Wesley were two of them, and they were firebrands. So she had a difficult time, I can promise you. Her husband was a minister, but not a successful minister. And he decided to write a commentary on Job in which he went away to faraway libraries. So he went away to write on suffering, leaving his wife at home to suffer with these kids. That was kind of Susanna Wesley's lot. And she was a good mom. She would set aside an hour for each of the kids on consecutive nights. So 10 nights, she would spend one hour with each of those different kids. But she made a vow, and this was her vow. She said, I will always spend more time in prayer than in leisure. I will always spend more time in prayer and devotion to God than I do in leisure." And Charles and John Wesley, they saw her do that, and that was the impetus behind the Holiness Club at Oxford, was the piety of their godly mother. Jonathan Edwards married Sarah Edwards, also renowned for the number of kids that she had, renowned for her godliness. This is how he described Sarah. Her maiden name was Pierrepont. This is how he described her before they got married. He said, she is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness, and universal benevolence of mind, especially after this great God has manifested himself to her mind. She will sometimes go about from place to place, singing sweetly, and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure, and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have someone invisible always conversing with her. So, that's a question I think that every woman should ask, that we should all ask, is do we desire to spend time with the Lord? Is that your desire? Or would you rather just simply delve in entertainment? Do you know God? Do you love to spend time with Him? Or you go and it's you and the Lord, and the Lord is your mediator and the Holy Spirit is helping you to pray. Let me give you a suggestion if you don't find yourself praying as much as you would like. Take a notebook, take a journal, take a piece of paper, right, a line down the middle. and begin to record your prayer request. And you can do this a number of ways. I've heard the acronym pray, praise, request, adoration, all these things, acts. There's different ways that you can pray. What I like to do is pray in concentric circles, pray for yourself, then pray for your family, pray for your church, pray for your nation, pray for the world. and begin to record in that prayer journal your request. And then dedicate yourself every day, 30, 45 minutes to go back and spend time with the Lord. And as the Lord answers those requests, begin to document it. And then what you find is what response when you see God answer your prayer? Thankfulness. Thankfulness. And that just adds fuel to the fire of your devotional life. What did the Psalmist say? Better is one day in your courts than a thousand days elsewhere. That is the heart of the ideal Christian woman. Fourth, fourth, she is a woman of femininity. Femininity and this is jot down 1st Corinthians 11 14 1st Corinthians 11 14. This is what Paul says. He says Does not nature itself that means that this is written into the fabric of the universe He says does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is a disgrace for him But if a woman has long hair it is her glory for her hair is given to her for a covering. Now I don't want to get into Paul's argument for head coverings this morning and whether that's appropriate or not appropriate. I think you can make an argument either way, but certainly Paul is making a point that there must be and should be a distinction between how men look and how women look. Men are created differently than women and vice versa. And it's fascinating what Paul says. He says, for a woman, her long hair is her glory. Glory. Now, glory means something about the person's character. Well, what does long hair communicate about somebody's character? Well, it communicates beauty. God is the one who created beauty. And beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is a fact. A sunset is beautiful. A flower is beautiful. a face that is symmetrical, is beautiful. And Paul says, long hair, in this case, is something that is beautiful. It reflects a woman's glory. And this is something else fascinating that Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, 7, just a few verses earlier, he says, quote, the woman is the glory of the man. In other words, the woman is the beautiful one. The woman, the woman is designed, you know, men. It doesn't really matter what a man looks like. When I was growing up, we had this wig in our house. It was like this red haired curly wig and I would sometimes put it on and I would come out and my mom and dad would just say, wow, you would make an ugly, ugly woman. It doesn't matter. I got to A&M and the Corps of Cadets, the upperclassmen say, you know, you have the face only a mother can love. But it doesn't matter, right? For men, it doesn't matter. We don't even care, really. We care about trying to be successful, trying to do things. But do women care about how they look? Yes, they do. Because God designed them that way. And what Paul is saying here, and I don't think we need to be legalistic about long hair and short hair, but what Paul is certainly saying is, is that there needs to be distinctions. Women are not the stronger sex, they are the more beautiful sex. And God made them to be beautiful. God loves beauty, and so the woman's desire to be beautiful is a good quality. That is a feminine virtue. And godly women accept that. They dress like a woman should dress. And I'm not gonna, as a man, I'm not gonna comment on what that is, but they understand this and they beautify everything around them. You know, that's why, men, do you ever find yourself just waiting to pick something up and move it from one area of the house to the next? You know, you're moving the furniture again and you're changing the locations of the couch and the chairs and the table. You know, what's going on there? the wife is beautifying the home. And that's normal and natural, and that's a good thing. That's how God made women to be. You know, if men, if we were just designing a house, it would be, you know, it would look like our study. You know, it would just be dark and animal heads everywhere, and we would have our books and, you know, our coffee, you know, very simple, But what do women do? They come in and they beautify our lives. They make things comfortable and lovely and wonderful. And it's the same in how a woman dresses. So they are a woman of femininity. Fifth, and this is related. She is a woman of modesty. a woman of modesty. Listen, this word modesty is so out of fashion today. This is so counter-cultural. What we are about to talk about would send shockwaves on social media. If I were to post this as an Instagram reel, for example, there would be hundreds of comments. Maybe we should just do that as a social experiment after this. But everywhere you look on social media, what do you see? It's promiscuity. It's seduction. Everywhere you go, the grocery store. Women are wearing inappropriate things. And so, Grace Hannah has done such a good job of this, teaching our girls to dress modestly, but then we also talk to our boys about not looking at a modestly dressed women. And the other day we were, I think we were at a Walmart or somewhere, and the boys, one of the boys was walking along, he literally put up his hand as he's walking. As he's walking past someone, I'm like, alright, that a boy. But this is the world that we live in, and if you're going to be a godly woman, you have to set the bar high here. And you have to be careful about what you're posting on social media. You need to be careful about what you are wearing out in public. Let me give you, this is so important in the New Testament. Let me show you this. This is in 1 Timothy. Go to 1 Timothy chapter two. You remember we studied this several years ago. Did a whole message on this actually. But 1 Timothy chapter two, verse nine. Paul says, 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. The braided hair, in the ancient world, they did what was called plaited hair, where they would literally put gold plates in the braids of the hair. So Paul's not saying, oh, you can't have a braid. He's saying, be careful that your clothes, your style is not overly ostentatious. And he's also, you see, uses the word modesty. He's saying, be careful about how revealing your clothes are. And the overarching Character quality is respectable apparel. Respectable apparel. That word, idos, means to give honor to somebody. Well, who are you honoring when you get dressed, ladies? Answer, the Lord. Whatever you do, Whether you eat or drink, do it all for the glory of God. So when you get dressed, whatever you wear, it's for Him first. And then it's also to honor your husband, to honor your husband. You belong to your husband, not to other men. And therefore, really only your husband should have eyes for you. And so you need to be careful about what you wear so that you respect the Lord, you respect your husband, that what you wear is not causing brothers to stumble, that you're not causing anyone to lust. So the godly woman is very careful that she wears clothes that are respectable. If you would turn over to 1 Peter. 1 Peter chapter three. Paul says this, verse three, do not let your adorning be external. So, now real quick, obviously he's not saying don't wear anything. Obviously a woman will adorn herself. But Peter says the main focus of the woman's adorning should not be primarily what she is wearing on the outside, the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry or the clothing you wear. But, here's your primary adorning. Let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart, with imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. That is your adorning. Godly virtue, kindness, good character. Have you ever met somebody, either a man or a woman, and they looked good on the outside, but then you met that person and you found out that they were really just a very mean-spirited person? And they come across because of their character as actually very ugly. Peter's saying it should be the opposite with Christians. That regardless of how we look on the outside, we communicate beauty to everyone because of the godliness of our character. Make sense? Six. Six, and this is a biggie. This is a big one. This is a controversial one. The ideal Christian woman is a woman of Submission. A woman of submission. I use the S word. So controversial in our culture. Turn to Ephesians chapter five. Ephesians chapter 5. One thing that's amazing when you read the passages about women in the New Testament, almost all of them to some shape or form talk about submitting to your own husband. So the way that the Bible talks about submission is this. One, everybody has to submit. Nobody is outside the realm of submission. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, he says, the head of Christ is God, God the Father. And then he says, the head of man is Christ. And then he says, the head of the wife is her husband. And that word head, kephele, means authority. So Paul says, and you can jot this cross-reference down, Colossians 3.18, wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Ephesians 5.22, this is the passage I had you turn to. Paul says this, wives, submit to your own husbands. It's not to all men. Nor is it that women are inferior to men. Women are equal to men as image bearers. Women are equal to men as blood bought sinners. Women are equal in the kingdom. But men and women have different roles in the household. And look at Paul's explanation in verse 23. For the husband is the head of the wife. even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, and we do, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church, and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word." Now, he keeps going, but here's the point that Paul's making, is that God designed marriage to be a glorious picture of the relationship of Christ and his church. That the husband represents Christ and Christ's love for his bride. That the husband is to love his wife sacrificially. And that the bride, the wife, is to submit to her own husband, symbolizing the church's submission to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now notice that the imperative is not, for the women to submit, the imperative is not given to the men. It's not husbands, make your wives submit to your leadership, is it? Who's the imperative given to? The women. He's saying, wives, you must do this. This is a choice that you must make. that you have to decide that you will endeavor as much as you can in the Lord. This doesn't mean that you follow your husband into sin, but it means that as much as you can, you submit to your husband's leadership. I was talking to a young gal this week. And she said, look, I have this conundrum. She is married to a godly man, and her husband believes in infant baptism. And she said, I am a Baptist. My husband is not. He believes in pedo-baptism, that we should baptize the children. What do I do? Well, I said, well, you chose to marry him. And so it's important that you honor your husband. Now, baptism, I think, is a secondary or you could even argue a tertiary issue. Being a Baptist or a Presbyterian, we're all gonna end up in heaven. So, I do not think it's an issue that you should not follow your husband on. So I said, look, this is a situation where I think you should submit to your husband's leadership and baptize that child. So you want to, as much as you can, follow your husband's headship and leadership. And there's great protection there. And husbands, this doesn't mean that you are a tyrant and that you roll your wife with an iron fist. Your wife is there as a helper. She is someone that you should listen to. But nevertheless, the husband is the leader of his household and the wife is called to submit to that leadership. What if your husband is an unbeliever? What if your husband is an unbeliever? Well, this is what Peter says. He says in 1 Peter 3, 1, jot that down, he says, likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, listen, so that even if some do not obey the word, They may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives when they see your respectful and pure conduct. So he says, you submit to them as much as you can in Christ, and then by so doing, you have the opportunity to win them over, that you could win them over to the gospel. Peter goes on to say, listen to how important this is in the Christian life for a woman. He says, this is verse five, for this is how the holy women, the holy women of the Old Testament who hoped in God used to adorn themselves. by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord. And listen, ladies, and you are her children if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. So this is your choice to make. Will you submit to your husband's leadership? And not just by the letter of the law, or the letter of the rule, but in spirit. Now remember one time. My grandma and grandpa Castleberry, wonderful, godly saints, just absolutely great Christians. They were in First Baptist Lake Jackson every time the door was open. And so just commend them in so many ways. But I watched and sometimes my grandma didn't always submit according to spirit. of my grandpa's request. One time, my grandma was a shopaholic, and every Saturday, Dillard's would have a sale. And she would be up at the Dillard's getting some exercise before the stores opened, and then when the stores opened, she was onto the sale. And one particular Saturday morning, my grandpa Castleberry said, Phyllis, now listen, I don't want you to buy anything at the sale today. So she's like, okay, okay, Charles. She goes up to the mall, goes into the Dillard's, she shops, she picks up all this stuff, she takes it to the cashier counter, and she puts it all right there on the counter, and the cashier says, are you buying this today? She says, no, sir. I'm putting it on hold. For tomorrow. So then after church the next day, she gets in her Cadillac, drives over to the Dillard's, goes in, gets the stuff, comes home, big Dillard's bags. Her grandpa said, Phyllis, I thought I told you not to get that stuff at the cell. And she said, you said today, Charles. You said today, and that was yesterday. Today's a different day, but you specified today. You get it? I also remember one time going to Walmart, and bless her heart, she loved me so much. I think it was because my father had been killed, but I remember she bought me so much stuff, just hundreds of dollars worth of stuff, and we're getting in the car, and I was like, man, I've never had a haul like this before. And we park in front of the house, and she says, we're gonna leave this stuff in the trunk. You don't need to tell your grandpa about these things. Anyway, I say all that, I say all that. She was a godly woman. But follow in the spirit, not just the letter, okay? All right, seventh and finally, seventh and finally, The ideal Christian woman is a woman of discipleship. A woman of discipleship. That means that they look out for the people of God, particularly the other women of God and the children of God, that they minister to them. Remember the midwives in Egypt, that they feared God more than men and they ministered to the women and they preserved the children. The ideal Christian woman is a person who, when you arrive at that place of being a mature woman, your impulse is not to say, look at me, I've arrived at the top of the mountain, and I'm at this place where I figured it out. Your impulse is to reach down and help other women up. Your impulse is to look to train other women to know and fear God. And Paul makes this very clear in the book of Titus. This is Titus chapter two, verse three. He says, older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior. not slanders or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and listen to this, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children. Do you think it's ever hard for a young woman to love her husband and children? Yes, it is. And he says the older women are to train the younger women to love their husbands and children. They are to train them, he says, to be self-controlled. To be pure, that's in terms of their sensuality, that they are to live godly lives. They are to be working at home. That means that they are to own the home, that they are to be the primary caretakers of their children. Obviously some women are single moms or in situations where they have to work. But Paul says the norm is that the wife is the oikio despotes, the house manager, the one who works in the home, kind. And then look at this, submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. So the ideal Christian woman is there to teach the younger women, and specifically, notice how so much of what she is to teach revolves around the home and the family. That's not something that a pastor like myself can teach the young women, or should be teaching the young women. That's not, I don't need to be doing that, nor do the elders need to be doing that. The older women need to be doing that, and Paul knew that that was the right way for a church to function, is for the older women to be training the younger women. So the older women are not to just kind of have their sunset cruise and write off and say, well look, I've arrived at this place now, I've done my work, I've raised my kids, I've mastered my home, but you are to turn around and help the next generation of women to do the very same. How can you do that? Let me give you just several application points. First, begin by serving them. Do you want to meet a young woman? Begin by serving young women. Serve them. We need many more leaders in CAP Kids. We need more leaders in students. So, volunteer to serve, maybe once every six weeks, once every eight weeks. And say, put me on the list. And I promise you, if you're up there, Like I just saw Joan and Nancy Garris and others this morning, you meet young women. You do because they're there to drop off your kids and you have that conversation and now you have an opportunity to invest in them and disciple them. So it's a wonderful opportunity for you to get to know young women and then begin that relationship where you have that open line of communication. Ask them, what do you need prayer for? What are your family's needs right now? Could I even maybe go by Costco and get you a few groceries? And you begin to do that, well now you have this connection to a younger woman where you can begin to teach, train, and disciple. The point is, don't coast. Don't coast. Don't get to the top of the mountain and say I've made it. Reach down and help the next woman up. I wanna close with short story, short anecdote. You maybe have heard of this guy. His name is Aurelius Augustine. We know him as Saint Augustine. Saint Augustine is, in the history of the church, the greatest theologian the church has ever had. The Protestant Reformation with Luther and Calvin and Zwingli was really a rediscovery of Augustine and a rediscovery of Paul's epistles. The reason why Augustine became Augustine is because of the faith and the godliness of his mother, Monica. Augustine was a hell-bent reprobate. He got involved with a cult called the Maniches. He ran in the opposite direction of everything his mother told him when he was a little boy, but you know what? She kept praying. And she prayed and prayed and prayed. And you know what else she did? She followed him around. She followed him around and said, when will you give your life to the Lord? When will you give your life to the Lord? And Augustine was a brilliant rhetorician, and he moved up to Milan, Italy, and was doing things up there. And she kept praying, and eventually the Lord grabbed hold of Augustine's heart, and Augustine was baptized. And before they could travel back to North Africa, sadly, Monica died. But this is, I wanted to read you what Augustine, Augustine has a number of pages in his Confessions. devoted to his mother, Monica, but this is what he said about her. But by the way, she was married almost the entirety of her life to an unbelieving husband. And at the end, she evangelized him into the kingdom. But he says this, at the end, when her husband had reached the end of his life in time, she succeeded in gaining him for you. After he was a baptized believer, she had no cause to complain of behavior which he had tolerated, and one, not yet a believer. She was also a servant of your servants. Hear that? She was a servant of your servants. Any of them who knew her found much to praise in her, held her in honor, and loved her, for they felt your presence in her heart, witnessed by the fruits of her holy way of life. She had been the wife of one husband, 1 Timothy 5.9. She repaid the mutual debt to her parents. She had governed her house in a spirit of devotion, 1 Timothy 5.4. She had a testimony to her good works, 1 Timothy 5.10. She had brought up her children, enduring travail as often as she saw them wandering away from you. Lastly, Lord, by your gift, you allow me to speak for your servants before her falling asleep. And Augustine is saying, we were bound together in community in you after receiving the grace of baptism. She exercised care for everybody as if, listen to this, as if they were all her own children. She served us as if she was a daughter to all of us. So, Monica is an example of this type of woman. And here's the final thing I want you to take away. is these virtues, these seven virtues, aren't something that you arrive at overnight. But these are virtues that by God's grace you plot at. And you keep coming back to. And you keep asking God, by your grace, help me to be better here. Help me to be more modest. Help me to be more submissive to my own husband. Help me to be more devoted to you. Help me to be more a woman of your word. Help me to be all these things. And God, I promise you, by His grace, will answer those prayers. And you will become a godly woman. You will become, by His grace, an ideal Christian woman. Amen? Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we Thank you for all these truths that you've given us. They're so countercultural about what a woman is to be, what a Christian woman is to be. And so, Lord, I pray for your grace and your kindness to these women that they would know these virtues, model these virtues, help younger women to understand these virtues, and that you would raise up these type of women in our church, that this church would be known for a church filled with godly women, women who love your word, women who are devoted to you in prayer, women of piety, women who are known for their love of the scriptures, women who are known for loving and submitting to their own husbands in the Lord. These are counter-cultural virtues. These are virtues that Satan hates, that the world hates, but Lord, that we champion because we know, Lord, that you call them good, that all that you have given us is good. And so, Lord, we pray for these things, we thank you for these things, and we ask all this in Christ's name, amen. Thanks for listening. For more sermons, information, and events, check out our website at capitolcommunitychurch.com.