Our sermon today comes from 1 Timothy 2.11-15. I have to say this, I should begin by saying that I did not intentionally intend to be preaching on these verses on the same Sunday when America is observing Mother's Day. didn't intend that, even though I would point out this is the only mention of childbearing in the New Testament. It happened only because it's our practice here in Providence, obviously, to preach lectio continua, that is to preach successively through books of the Bible, verse by verse, chapter by chapter. And that means that sometimes you end up with some interesting juxtapositions like this one. So anyway, I hope you'll bear with me, and I hope that the Lord would make this edifying, even though, as we all know, these are some controversial verses, especially in our culture at the moment. But before we turn to the Word of the Lord, let's turn to the Lord who gave us this Word and let's ask for His blessing. Sovereign Lord, I have to admit, I would not be able to understand a word of Your Scripture. In fact, I was not able to understand it prior to the gift of the Holy Spirit being given to me. It was only because of your illuminating grace that opened my eyes and showed me my own foolishness and darkness and gave me that light that's necessary not only to understand the Scriptures but to apply them. And since that time, Lord, I would be a liar if I said that the Scriptures had not stepped upon my toes again and again. And that happens when I come face to face with something in me that's not in accord with the way I should be, that's not in accord with the way Christ is and desires me to be. And I find that's the case with all of us, Lord. So I pray that as we come to these scriptures, that you would help us not only to understand them, but to apply them, and to be humble, to accept them, and to understand them rightly. O Lord, please let us learn, let us be attentive, and let us be mindful. This is Your Word, and that it is inspired, inerrant, and infallible in everything it teaches. We pray this in Jesus' holy name. Amen. 1 Timothy chapter 2 and verses 11 through 15. I do remind you this is the Word of God to His people. Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. And they do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression. Nevertheless, she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness with self-control. Grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Well, when we come to these verses, to say, as I just said before, that they're controversial would be a major understatement. The context of these verses, as we've seen, is the worship of the church. Paul is spelling out the correct worship of the church, and he's correcting some of the abuses and problems that were occurring within the church in Ephesus for his disciple Timothy. But to think that these problems were not occurring in many of the churches would be wrong. There was a similar culture in many of the different churches he planted. and that he had already encountered. He knew that the churches were not perfect. No church will be perfect this side of glory, but it was his desire that his spiritual son in the faith, Timothy, would be able to help them to adjust their worship so that it was more godly, that it was more in keeping with the worship that God wanted. Now, the context, as I said, of these verses is the worship of the church, and Paul certainly expects that women will be present in the worship of the church. But in verse 11, Paul says that what the women are to be doing in the worship of the church is to, quote, learn in silence with all submission. Now, that by itself would be enough to offend modern egalitarian Westerners. But then what Paul does is he doubles down in the next verse and explains what he means by that learning in silence with all submission and adds to it. When it comes to the worship of the Church, Paul tells us, women are not to teach, and they are not to have authority over men, but again, they are to be in silence. He makes that point twice. This would mean that they are not to preach, and they are not to exposit Scripture in a worship service. nor are they to fill leadership positions in the church. So what that means is no female pastors and no female elders. Now, having said that, I am very aware, as I'm sure you are, that we live in America circa 2018. We now have women filling combat positions in the army. We have female sports reporters walking around in locker rooms filled with naked male athletes, and nobody dares at this point in time to say something like that is not right. So, when somebody like me stands up and preaches on verses that say, clearly, women shouldn't be pastors, people have a tendency to take great offense, to get into what people used to describe as a high dudgeon at that particular kind of saying. And I'm not just talking about people outside the church. Of course, people who aren't believers, who see this book as a Bronze Age book of patriarchal myths and so on, they get offended. But people within the church also get offended as well. These people who get offended also aren't necessarily... I mean, obviously, these verses are deeply offensive to people we would describe as liberal Christians, who don't believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. But people who believe that the Word of God is inspired also have a tendency these days to be upset by these verses. They believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God is the tendency until they reach verses like this. And then something very odd happens. Let me explain what I mean. As I was preparing to preach on these verses, I noticed how modern commentators who had, up until we reached these verses, been laboring hard to explain what 1 Timothy means, I watched as these modern commentators suddenly switched into another gear. Suddenly, as we reach 1 Timothy 2.11, they switch over to explaining what Timothy doesn't mean, 1 Timothy 2.11 doesn't mean. They tried to limit what scripture is prohibiting to the least possible restrictions. Some of the commentators and otherwise orthodox guys tried to get rid of it entirely. saying that these verses were just Paul's opinion, or that what Paul is doing here is just an accommodation to the highly patriarchal, highly misogynistic culture of the time, and therefore it no longer applies. Well, let's talk about those ideas. Let's deal with them. First, let's deal with the idea that this is just Paul's opinion. After all, doesn't he say, and I do not permit, in verse 12? Well, that's clear. It must be just Paul's desire, not God's command, right? Well, no, when Paul speaks in this epistle, and indeed in all of his epistles, all of his letters, he is not conveying his preferences, but God's commandments. In just the same way, for instance, that in verse 8 of this chapter, look with me, if you will, to 1 Timothy 2.8. Note how he says here, he says, I desire, therefore, that the men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting. The words there, I mean, obviously, we all know that they don't mean simply that Paul's preference is that men would pray, but that this is not a commandment of God. No, Paul is expressing a commandment of God in this. It is God's command that men pray everywhere. And Paul, as an ambassador of Christ, is expressing the will of God. That's the way it should work with an ambassador. An ambassador should not be at odds with his king. He should be going and delivering the message of that king as if it was his own word. His desires should be in keeping, in sweet harmony with the desire of the sovereign that he is representing. Wasn't that the way with Christ, who said, who even prayed, nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done? And that was twice as true for Paul. His will was in keeping with the will of God. So when he says, I desire in this epistle, it's not just his desire. He's speaking God's desire for us, God's commandment. It is God's command that men pray everywhere. And it is also God's desire that women not speak, preach, have authority in the church. And not just the church in Ephesus, but the church in every place and every age. Well, what about then the second objection? This is just a reflection of the culture of the time. You know, women don't teach in Ephesus. They don't have positions of authority. So they needed to follow the cultural norm. Well, all I have to say to that is rubbish. It's ridiculous. The Ephesians lived in a city where the most coveted religious position, that is high priestess at the temple of Artemis, had always been filled by women. It was a position of the highest honor. And the chief families of the city fought to have their daughters fill it. Let me give you just one example of an inscription that was found on a monument in the city of Ephesus. It reads, the council and people honored Vipsania Olympias, daughter of Lucius Vipsanius Appellius, son of Neo of the Cornelian tribe, and of Claudia Pythos, the daughter of Pulmonus. completed her term as priestess of Artemis, as befits a sacred office, fulfilling both the rites and sacrifices worthily. She read the shrine and all its precincts in the days of the goddesses' manifestations, making the public sacrifices and the distributions of money to the state council and to the council of elders, and bestowing in addition for repairs the sum of 5,000 imperial denarii. She served her priestly term during the pritony of Gaius Licinius Dinesodorus. Now, does that sound like the kind of inscription that you would find in a city that didn't want women in positions of religious authority? Clearly not. This is a religious inscription that indicates that women were in the highest positions of religious authority within Ephesus. In the context of Ephesus, therefore, Paul's command that the men be the authorities and do the teaching is actually profoundly countercultural. It goes against the norms that the Ephesians would have been practicing for hundreds upon hundreds of years. And incidentally, to this day, missionaries deal with this phenomenon. They go into cultures where the women have traditionally had the spiritual authority, and they have great difficulty getting the men to make that transition to them being the teachers, them being the authorities. I've spoken to missionaries who have essentially said, I can always, in this particular culture, find women who are willing to do the work. I have great difficulty finding men who are willing to take up any sort of spiritual authority in the church or in the home. But we don't have to go, brothers and sisters, to foreign cultures to see that happening. We can see that happening right here in the United States of America. Let me throw some statistics at you. Did you know that just 35% of American men attend a church on a weekly basis? Women comprise over 60% of the typical adult congregation on any Sunday. And incidentally, in the mainline congregations, it is much higher. At least one-fifth of married women regularly worship without their husbands, and not because their husbands are in Afghanistan, but because their husbands are at home in bed. The majority of men attend worship services and nothing more. They don't go to the Sunday schools. They don't go to the Bible studies. They don't go to the discipleship meetings. They don't do anything. And the least likely demographic to be found in an American church is men ages 18 to 29. Least likely. Men in the United States, what are they doing? They're handing over the spiritual authority to women, and it isn't right, brothers and sisters. Now, in order to explain why men are supposed to exercise headship in the church, and why female leadership in the church is a problem, Paul goes all the way back to the creation order. And he says that God could have created both men and women at exactly the same time. Or, he could have created women first. But instead, what did he do? He created men first. And why did he do that? Everything in the creation week was done on purpose by God. There were no, well, let's just do it this way and see how it works. No, He created in the space, for instance, of six days to give us a cycle. He worked for six days, we're supposed to work for six days, and then rest on the seventh day. So too, He created the man first to be the head. And then he created the woman from Adam to be his helpmate, not his head, not his leader. Now, God intended Adam to be the authority in the garden, but that is not what happened. Paul goes back and he recounts how Eve was deceived by the serpent, that is, the devil. And what happened was that she took some of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and she gave some then to her husband. But notice that Paul makes this amazing statement when he describes what took place in the garden. He says, Eve was deceived. What does that mean? It means that Eve honestly bought into what the devil was telling her. She thought that it would be okay, that they would be as gods, that they would not surely die. But then he goes on to make an even more startling statement. Adam wasn't deceived. Now what does that mean? That means that Adam sinned with his eyes wide open. He understood he was going against God's commandment. He didn't take the fruit and eat it because he was convinced by the devil. Adam took the fruit and ate it because at that moment he had made Eve his authority. He took the fruit and he ate it because at that moment his heart was invested in pleasing Eve rather than pleasing God. That was his highest desire. So when God asked him in Genesis 3, have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat? His response was, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate. Now, in his answer, I want you to see what he's doing. He is abdicating his responsibility, just as he abdicated his responsibility in that moment. He doesn't say, you got me, I did the wrong thing. No, no, no. What does he say? It was the woman, okay? It was her fault. Now, this is the response of a leader acting like a subordinate. Captain, would you mind telling the court why you killed all the civilians in the village? Well, you see, your honor, the sergeant major you gave me, the sergeant major the army assigned to me, he suggested we kill them, so I did. Now, what court would say, oh, it's the sergeant major's fault, not the captain? Of course it was the captain's fault. He was intended to be the leader. If he abdicated his authority and gave it over to somebody else to do things that were wrong, he was responsible. And so too, Adam was responsible. What had he done? He had abdicated his authority and now he's blaming it on Eve and indirectly upon God. The woman you assigned to me, she was the wrong sort. I needed a better leader in the garden, somebody who would have kept me on track. How childish. At this point, he became a child instead of the leader of the family. So, what is Paul saying? Paul is saying that not only is the male supposed to be the authority in the church, but when men abdicate that authority and when they reverse the roles, bad stuff happens. He's saying this is not an insignificant matter. This goes all the way back to creation. It goes all the way back to the fall. Therefore, it is not something that can be ignored. And if we do ignore it, as so many evangelicals are ignoring it, I gave you examples of people who are going against what Scripture teaches and creating rationale for doing it. The average evangelical at this point doesn't even bother to create rationale. They just ignore it wholesale. They don't even deal with this text. Most of the televangelists, the female televangelists like Paula White and Joyce Myers, they're not going to preach on 1 Timothy 2.11. especially because it's not going to lead to them getting any money out of it, but it's not a verse of Scripture that has any importance whatsoever. And again and again we see in American churches, evangelical churches, and I'll talk about this a little more, we see people demanding that women be given roles of authority, and the Scripture doesn't have any word. Pastors or elders will stand up and they will say, but does not the Scripture say so-and-so, and they will get responses, as happened in actually one of the churches in this town. Pastor or elder, those scriptures don't agree with our consciences. We just don't accept what they say. We're not even going to hear them. That was then, this is now. You better do what we want. But as difficult as those verses are to deal with, verse 15 is the most difficult of all the verses in this difficult section to understand undoubtedly. Nevertheless, she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness with self-control. Now, what is Paul teaching here? Is he really teaching that women are saved by having babies? Men are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, and women are saved by childbirth. So if you're a mom, you're good, okay? If you've given birth, you're going to heaven. Is that what Paul is saying? No, clearly not, because that would contradict Scripture all over the place. It seems to me that there are three reasons why Paul adds this verse. And the first, I think, is a pastoral reason. It adds consolation after some very hard teaching. There is going to be, and please understand this, yes, every set of verses that were ever preached were given into a particular context. And these verses, we need to understand, were just as hard for the church in Ephesus to accept as the church in America in 2018. Human nature doesn't change. So after preaching some hard words, that are going to be very hard for many women in the church to bear, he puts in words of consolation. John Calvin puts it this way, he says, It is proper to observe that the good effect of this consolation is twofold. First, by the hope of salvation held out to them, they are prevented from falling into despair. Secondly, they become accustomed to endure calmly and patiently the necessity of servitude so as to submit willingly to their husbands when they are informed that this kind of obedience is both profitable to themselves and acceptable to God. So there are words of consolation. Paul is essentially saying, look, this is not servitude and submission and bondage that will break you down. It's not a slavery that you're being called to. This is the Word of God, and it's good for your soul. This is the way things should be, and it'll work best in the church. It'll work best in the family as well. Secondly, Paul pointed out that the first woman, Eve, did not adhere to her proper domain. She didn't stay within the domain that God had given her, and consequently she fell into sin. So, how then are the women of the church age, how are the women of our present age going to avoid falling into the same error, succumbing to the same fate? How will they be preserved? from the deceits of Satan. Well, they'll be preserved from Satan if they adhere to their God-given role, which is focused on the family and the home. Now, Andreas Kostenberger points out rightly that the phrase here, childbearing, is, in the Greek, it's a synecdoche. It would be the Greek pronunciation. What that simply means is when you use one part of something to render the whole. So when Paul is speaking about all of the life of a woman in the home, the life of a mother in the home. He uses the phrase childbearing, but he means much more than that. And he says, essentially, that within that domestic sphere, this is the place where you will find salvation. And it encompasses marriage, and having children, and managing the household, and raising those children, and doing all of the things, for instance, that we see the Proverbs 31 woman doing in the Old Testament. Now, to quote Phil Riken, and I wish our society understood this, a woman is not saved by becoming a man. Do you know that was what the Gnostic Gospels taught? The end of the Gospel of Thomas, which was this abomination written in the 200s in Egypt by men who were obviously trying to inject Greek philosophy into the church. The Gospel of Thomas has a big problem because the Greeks, they genuinely had, in most cases, a low view of the spirituality of women. In certain places like Ephesus, that was not the case, but certainly in places like Alexandria, in the Hellenistic world, that was the case. And so, how are women going to be saved in Christianity? I mean, you can't reason with them. They're not the type who engage in philosophy. If you read Plato and Aristotle, women are really, you know, they're slaves. Well, there's animals, there's slaves, there's women, but you don't, you know, You don't have conversations and deep philosophical interactions with them the way that the New Testament writers did with women. And they're not involved in correcting problems like Priscilla and Aquila did when it came to the understanding that Apollos had of the scriptures. They take him aside privately and they explain to him what these things mean. That wasn't the norm in that culture at the time. So how are we going to deal these Gnostic gospel writers with women? How are they going to get into heaven? Well, first Jesus honors in the Gospel of Thomas, Mary Magdalene, and then the apostles get angry. Hey, wait a minute, she's a woman. She can't be a partaker of salvation with us. And he says, don't worry, I've made her a man. Now, brothers and sisters, I hate to say this, but what the Gnostics did deliberately, our culture is trying to do as well. They're trying to make women into men, saying women, because that's what they really believe. All of the good stuff, all of the important stuff, all of the most important things in life are the domain of men, so therefore if women are to be anything in this world, women have to be men. All of the feminine things, pa and poppycock. You know, one of the things I hate the most is when you get people who are asking you questions, you know, filling out forms, census and so on. They ask you, what does your wife do? Well, my wife is a homemaker. Oh, she's unemployed. Tick. What? Did you not hear what I said? She's a homemaker. We would be living in chaos. My clothes would be, well, they'd be mismatched first off. I probably would be wearing the wrong socks. My children would be running around like banshees. The house would be on fire. If my wife wasn't organizing our world and pouring herself out on the kids, we would look like basically a Visigoth camp in between moves. Brothers and sisters, we have this incredibly low view of the family, a low view of childbearing, a low view of motherhood even. And it's wrong, it's not biblical. It should be so much higher than it is. So, as Phil Reichen puts it, a woman is not saved by becoming a man, but by embracing her God-given calling as a woman. Indeed, this is one of the ways that she works out her salvation. And that's the important thing. It's not the having babies. It's the faith. It's the holiness. It's the not simply staying within that sphere, but within that sphere, believing on the Lord Jesus Christ and then living a sanctified life that shows that she's been justified by faith in her Savior. And that brings me to the third point. There's a sense in which not only the women, but all of us are, in fact, saved by childbearing. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, in the original Greek, the particular text in 15 is not childbearing, but the childbearing. There's a definite article in front of it. So the verse reads, women will be saved through the bearing of a child. And when we hear that verse, women will be saved through the bearing of a child, how can we not be reminded by that scripture of the birth of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world? Did not God say to Eve in Genesis 315, right after the curse, right after the fall and so on, I will put, and I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed, he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. Now, Eve understood, and her hope was that her firstborn child, Cain, that he was the man that God was speaking of, the one who would crush the head of the serpent and bring about redemption. Of course, that did not happen, but eventually, it was the seed of the woman. In time, the seed of the woman did come who would crush the head of the serpent. And so, therefore, there is a great truism. If there is no mother, there is no savior. I hate to use the church calendar, but without Christmas, you don't have Easter. Without the birth of Christ, there is no savior. There is no disembodied spirit coming into the world to save us on a cross. He had to be enfleshed. He had to be born of a woman, born on God. So Walter Locke, one particularly poetically inspired commentator, created this couplet that I think draws out the meaning of what Paul is saying here beautifully. He said, a child from woman's seed to spring shall saving to all women bring. It was actually the child born of a woman that was the salvation, not only of all women, but the salvation of the world. Now, what's the application of this? Well, one of the applications is obvious. Within our time, this is going to be very, very difficult to convey to the world. but it's something that we have to hold on to. And I mean, we're going to have difficulty not only conveying and holding on to this truth about authority within the church, within the context of the world and evangelicalism, which is in free fall on this. More and more evangelical churches are simply caving on this issue. There are major churches within this city that would call themselves conservative and evangelical, which regularly have women preaching at this point in time. But it's not just those churches outside, it's our own denomination where there's a real struggle going on. For instance, and I'll name names, one of the most influential pastors in our denomination is a man by the name of Tim Keller. I would be surprised just by a show of hands, how many of you have heard of Tim Keller? All right, lots of hands going up right now. He is one of the most influential pastors in our denomination, and he has long, and I mean for decades, taught that 1 Timothy 2.11 should not be understood to say what it says, and I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. Instead, he believes that it should be read, and I do not permit a woman to teach authoritatively over a man. Do you see the difference there? One is teach and have authority over a man. The other is teach authoritatively. So therefore, he comes out and he immediately says, this verse gives room for non-authoritative teaching by women in the context of the worship of the church. Now, I remember being confronted many years ago with this interpretation by a PCA pastor who was defending the practice of one PCA church out in Tennessee that was regularly having women share messages in worship services. And they were saying, well, you know, it's not really a sermon, although it came in exactly the space in the worship service when you have a sermon. And they didn't say, you know, elders didn't charge the pulpit saying, I want you to understand, people, everything you're about to hear from this woman is non-authoritative, all right? Everybody, completely different. We're changing the entire worship service now. Come on up and share a message with us, sister, that's non-authoritative. They just said, now, sister, so-and-so is going to come up and give us the Word. Give us the Word. But then when they explained what was going on, they said, this is non-authoritative. And this man was telling me I was completely off base to be opposed to this, because this is just non-authoritative teaching. I answered him, and I said, OK, for the sake of argument, brother, let's just say you're right. And we can ignore the oudé, which is in between teaching and authority. And we're going to ignore the Greek word for or entirely. And we're going to say that this verse really does mean, as Tim Keller wants it to mean, teach authoritatively. All right? So it says, and I do not permit a woman to teach authoritatively over a man. That's that clause. Fine. He's like, OK, fine. I was wondering, where are you going with this? And I said, what I want you to do now, brother, is explain to me how that woman is going to teach non-authoritatively in silence. Because that's the second clause in the verse, backing up the occurrence in the verse immediately preceding. In silence, in silence. How is she going to teach in silence? Is she going to do sign language, charades? Maybe first word sounds like Jesus. You know, that kind of thing. Or flip cards on YouTube as everybody watches on. Well, he got very angry with me, but he didn't have a coherent answer because it's a complete verse. And then I followed up and I said, okay, let's move on beyond that. Could you explain to me, brother, exactly what is non-authoritative teaching? non-authoritative teaching in the worship of the Lord? Let's say a woman comes up and she preaches a real barn burner of a sermon. She preaches just the truth from the scripture, but I don't like it. Can I then say, that's non-authoritative, so I don't have to obey it and sit back? I said, can I do that, brother? And he said, well, of course not. You have to obey the scripture. And I said, why? Well, because it's the Word of God. And I said, therefore, it's got what over me? It's got, what is it? And that was the end of the conversation. He would not say authority at any point. You can't have authoritative, non-authoritative preaching. It's just ridiculous. But there you see we're straining so hard to create some sort of category that gets us under the wire. Now I've watched that happening for over 20 years now when it comes to women teaching. And I'm watching, and this is the thing that frightens the living daylights out of me, the same hermeneutic being applied to homosexuality right now. Trying to create a way for us to ignore what Paul says. about homosexuality and whether or not it's compatible with being a Christian. Now, these days, as I said, female teachers are becoming the evangelical norm. And the tendency of any denomination, ours especially, is just to follow after the evangelical norm. To resist is very, very hard. But what that means is we're going to have to stand contra mundum against the world on this particular subject. Because remember, if we cave on this, we are caving on something that Paul ties all the way back to creation and the most essential differences between male and female. And experience has told us that if we adopt some sort of weird interpretation of Scripture, some sort of hermeneutic that's utterly self-contradictory on this space, because this particular verse offends us or offends the majority of Scripture, we'll begin doing it everywhere. We do. That's the way it works. Second, While these verses apply to teaching and authority in the worship of the church, that doesn't mean that women can't teach, period. Matthew Henry, for instance, has this wonderful quote within your worship folders I would like you to look at. It's interesting. I had to go back to the early, very early 1700s to find a verse this time for your Sabbath meditation. According to Paul, women must be learners and are not allowed to be public teachers in the church, for teaching is an office of authority. And the woman must not usurp authority over the man, but is to be in silence. But, notwithstanding this prohibition, good women may and ought to teach their children at home the principles of religion. Timothy, from a child, had known the Holy Scriptures, and who should teach him but his mother and grandmother?" 2 Timothy 3.15, the very man whom this letter was written to. Where did he get his faith and his understanding of the Scriptures? He got them from his mother and his grandmother. He understood the importance of women teaching their children the principles of our holy religion. Aquila and his wife Priscilla expounded unto Apollos the way of God more perfectly, but then they did it privately, for they took him unto them. What did they do? Priscilla didn't charge the pulpit, push him inside and say, Apollos doesn't know what he's talking about here. Let me explain it to you. Rather, she and Aquila took Apollos and explain to him the doctrine of our God. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with women in the process of that Titus 2 discipling and mentorship teaching other women the principles of Scripture. The only thing that this verse says cannot be done is to hold office in church and to preach in church, to hold those leadership positions that have been reserved for men because that's the role that God gave them. Now, that means there's still a world of places where the gospel needs to be shared, the gospel needs to be taught, not the least of which is within our own homes. And when your husband is telling you that you should do something that goes against the word of God, you don't say to yourself, well, I know he's completely wrong, and this is completely contradicting the word of God, but I'm going to accept it. No, that's the point at which you have to say, not so, my husband. So for instance, if he comes home and says, you're going to be Mormons tomorrow, not so, my husband. Jesus is not the spirit brother of Lucifer. There is no planet Kolob upon which there was once a man who eventually became, you know, that kind of thing. And so it is the responsibility of women to be the true helpmate to their husband in making sure that they don't go off the cliff spiritually there. Now, what does it mean to listen in all submission? Well, a beautiful picture of that. And submissive learning, this is something that should be something we all do. And this is my final application. The model of submissive learning that is being taught here can be seen so beautifully modeled by Mary, the sister of Martha and the sister of Lazarus in Luke 10 39. We read these words, and she had a sister called Mary who also sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word. But Martha was distracted with much serving and she approached him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore, tell her to help me. Jesus answered and said to her, Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things, but one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her. To sit, to hear, to learn. We live in an age where sitting submissively and learning is so hard. The way that God's people, though, are supposed to learn is by sitting at the feet of their master. whether it is God speaking directly, as in the case of Jesus speaking to Mary, or whether the Word of God is being conveyed to them through a minister, it's still our responsibility. When a minister, other than myself, fills this pulpit, and I'm sitting out there, I'm supposed to sit and learn submissively from that person, not be saying in my head, well, I wouldn't have preached it that way, and going through all of these things, you know? Sitting in judgment of the Word, rather than sitting under the teaching of the Word. Now we, brothers and sisters, live in an age where everyone wants to talk and no one wants to listen. It's almost as though, you know, when everybody is speaking, that person is just formulating their reply rather than listening, measuring, and seeking to learn from what's being said. We should be a learning people. We should all be exercising that submission to the will of God. It's very hard when it goes against our natural inclinations. But we will find if we listen to God and we do what He tells us, especially when it comes to believing on the Lord Jesus Christ to the saving of our souls, well, that will be the best course that we can possibly take. So let us learn to learn. Let us develop that sweet and gentle tendency to submit. Just as women are to submit in the case of the authority in the church, we men, for instance, are called to submit in a ton of other areas to the authorities above us, the authorities at work, the authorities in the government. We, too, have a tremendously rebellious spirit. We could all learn from the kind of submission, though, that is being counseled here. by Paul, a man who was brought to submit to the Lord Jesus Christ by being knocked on his back and shown where his rebellion was getting him. Well, let's go before the Lord who teaches us hard things for our own good. God, our Father, we do pray, Lord, that you would help us to stand contramundum, to stand against those things that the world teaches that are not in keeping with your word. We pray, Lord, that you would give us humble spirits, that you would give us the ability to submit to the authorities that you've placed above us, and that, Lord, we would recognize that all the authorities exist are put in place by you. We understand that often authorities abdicate their roles, as unfortunately, Adam abdicated his role as the head in the garden and did not tell his wife that what she was doing was wrong. but instead sought to make her happy, to please her by taking from the fruit that she gave. Oh, Lord, I pray that you would help us as husbands not to have that kind of spirit where we would allow our wives to do things that harm them, ultimately, instead of being willing to exercise authority. And in the church, we pray, Lord, that we would not allow the church to travel down a self-destructive route in order to please congregants, help us to stand firm on the word of God, and to do so because Jesus is the one to whom we must all submit. And this is His Word. We pray these things in Jesus' holy name. Amen.