God's High Calling for Women, Part 3

We are in a day today when role reversal is really high priority for Satan. It would be one thing if it was occupying itself with the world, but it is even more tragic when it occupies itself with the church. And the church today has definitely lost its sense of perspective and balance in terms of what a woman's role is to be. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Several years ago, a group of feminist writers published a book titled A Woman's Bible. In short, these authors reinterpreted passages of Scripture that they found old-fashioned or chauvinistic and unflattering to women. Well, what do you think? Is the Bible you own a sexist book?

Does Scripture teach that women are second-class citizens? For answers to those important questions, you'll want to hear what John MacArthur has to say as he continues his series titled God's High Calling for Women. But before we get started, just a reminder that every day this program is reaching all sorts of people in countless circumstances, and the common denominator is that lives are being shaped and strengthened by the timeless Word of God. John, you have a few short letters there that illustrate what I mean.

If you would take a minute to read those. Well, it's always a highlight for me to read these letters, and I hope they're encouraging to our listeners as well. Here's a letter from Jeff. I start my day with your sermons as I drive to work. Your series, Our Great Salvation, was particularly helpful. Thank you for airing it. I also enjoy your daily conversations with Phil Johnson. I gained great insight.

Thank you for all you do. Here's another letter from Caroline. As newlyweds, my grandfather gifted my husband and me with the MacArthur Daily Bible. I had been a Christian for several years, but that was the first time I had read the Bible from start to finish. I've now been married for 21 years and am thankful to be a housewife. I read through the Bible several times a year, and I listen to grace to you and to the messages on your app for several hours each day while working in my home. You have richly blessed my family and me. What a sweet letter. Thank you, Caroline.

And then another letter. For 14 years, my husband was in and out of the hospital with liver disease. He faced death daily.

At the same time, we were taking care of aging parents. There were many days that I was overwhelmed emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Being able to hear the Word of God taught faithfully by you was help to my weary soul. And through your teaching, God comforted me.

He was my strength when my strength was gone. By the grace of God, my husband received a new liver and new kidney, and today is doing well. We are privileged to be God's slaves, and it is our desire to give the gospel to as many people as we can. Through grace to you, the Lord has drawn my husband and me closer to our wonderful, merciful Savior. It's our privilege to pray for you and partner with you as long as God allows.

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If you're led and you're able to partner in this work, stay with us, and I'll let you know how you can do that before we end today. But first, here's John MacArthur to continue his study, God's High Calling for Women. Let's go back to 1 Corinthians, chapter 14, and you're going to find this, I think, very, very interesting. In verse 34, it says, "'Let your women keep silence in the churches.'" Now, it isn't too hard to figure out what that means.

You do not have to be a Greek scholar. It is obvious what it means. And in case you missed it, "'Let the women keep silence in the churches.'" I love this kind of reasoning, "'For it's not permitted to them to speak.'" And you say, well, wait a minute, that's just saying the same thing twice without a reason. No, that is the reason. The reason women are to keep silent in the churches is because it isn't permitted for them to speak. You say, it doesn't give me a reason.

Sure, it gives you a reason. They are commanded to be under obedience, so also says what? The law. The law of who?

The law of God. Do you know why women aren't to preach in the church? You say, well, it has to do with their psychologic... No. No.

Well, it has to do with the fact that, see, if you give a woman that kind of role, she doesn't have the mentality to deal with the things that come... No. No, the reason they don't do it is because God's law says they can't do it. That's all. That's the issue.

It's not sociological, it's not psychological, it's not pathological, it's not anything. It's just the law of God. Verse 26, he says, "'What is going on with you when you come together? Every one of you has a psalm, a doctrine, or a teaching, a tongue, a revelation, interpretation. Let everything be done decently and in order.

Get this mess straightened out.'" And then he says, "'No more than two or three people in tongues, never without an interpreter. Don't let the prophets speak except two or three of them, and everybody evaluate them to see if they really know the Lord, they really speak the truth. Get this thing together, verse 33, because God is not the author of what?

Confusion." And then in verse 34, he says, "'Let the women keep silent.'" Keep silent about what?

What's obvious? Speaking publicly in the assembly of the church, either in ecstatic speech or prophecy. So if we look at 1 Timothy, we see women are not to preach or teach. If we look at 1 Corinthians 14, 34, and 35, we can conclude very simply women are not to speak in tongues and women are not to give prophecies in the church.

They are not to speak forth in the church. Why? It's not permitted. Why? They're to be under obedience. Why? The law of God says that.

Here it comes. It is indecent for women to speak in the church. It's not indecent for women to speak. You speak all you want, unless you're usurping the role of authority, unless you're taking leadership in the church.

This is so clear. So what are we saying then? When it comes to the meeting of the church together, women are not to preach or teach, they are not to speak forth the Word of God and they are not to speak in ecstatic speech. Obviously, the sum of those things is to say that the church, when it comes together, is to be spoken to by men. That's just God's way.

But the underlying thing that I want you to understand here is this. This does not mean that a woman can never, under any circumstances, speak in a group of Christians. What this speaks to is the women who usurp that, who push themselves in the place of prominence. Remember, God used Miriam to speak a word for him. God used Deborah and Huldah to speak a word for him to very important men. God used Anna for scores of years in the temple, speaking of the coming Messiah to anybody that came there. So there's no reason to believe that in the right time and the right place women can't speak. When Paul traveled on his trips through the book of Acts, it says that he went into an area, to a church, and he dialogued with them out of the Scriptures.

I believe there were men and women. I believe honest questions could be asked by women in a right format and could be answered by the Apostle Paul. I think there was a time and place for women to speak a testimony of praise to the Lord. I don't think that he's saying that they can never do that. What he is saying is they cannot rise to leadership in the church so that they become the ones who dominate the church with their authority and their teaching and their gifts. There is a place, of course, when it is the right environment and we ask for those to ask questions where a woman has every right to ask a question in a right spirit just as a man does. There is a time when we ask for praise to be offered to God when a woman has every right to praise God just like anyone else does.

That's when the preacher or teacher deflects the communication responsibility to his congregation and says, I want to hear from you. But that wasn't the issue here. The issue here was interruption. The issue here was usurpation.

That's a different issue. So, we understand what he's saying. Now, let's go back to 1 Corinthians 11 because we can't understand this whole picture without understanding this passage. By the way, in chapter 14, he says not to do this is absolutely unthinkable because he says in verse 36, what? Came the Word of God out from you or came it unto you only? In other words, he says, if you defy this, are you telling us that you're the originator of the Word of God, you're going to decide how it ought to be done? Or maybe it was just written for you to twist any way you want. It's ludicrous to him.

What? Did you write the Bible? You who want to exercise authority in the church, you who want to speak out and be the preachers, teachers and prophesiers and tongue speakers and all that? It's just ludicrous to imagine that you can overturn the Scripture, that you can do it any way you want. And going back to 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 2, he says, I praise you, brethren, because you remember me in all things and keep the ordinances as I deliver them to you. I think we often get the idea that everybody in Corinth was corrupt, but this verse tells us not so. There was a great number there who were not, and he says, I know you remember me in all things and you do keep the commandments or ordinances the way I delivered them to you.

But there's something you have to know. Now remember, this is Corinth. In the middle of Corinth was a temple to Aphrodite, a thousand priestess prostitutes with heads open and exposed and hair cut short, flaunting their sexuality, trying to lure men into sexual acts in the temple. Put up on the acro Corinth, the hilltop outside Corinth, this big temple. And these women, again, flaunting their liberation, flaunting their sexuality.

There was a whole attitude there, very much like Ephesus. So he says, I know you obey me, I know you remember what I said, but I want to tell you this, folks. You've got to realize the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God.

You have to get one thing straight. Women are put in a place of submission to men. That's just how it is.

That's just how it is. And again, I remind you that it's not to say that women can't speak. It's not to say women can't pray.

It is to understand as an attitudinal objective that the man is the head of the woman. Now look at verse 3 again. Nobody argues about this, the head of every man is Christ. You know anybody that doesn't believe that? You know anybody that now has a sort of a Christian's liberation, demanding equality with Christ? Anybody running around saying, I want to be equal with Christ or forget it?

No. And everybody understands that God is the head of Christ. Christ comes in subjection to his Father, becomes a servant, takes upon him the form of a servant, humility and all that, Philippians 2, the kenosis. Then why do we debate about the fact that the man is the head of the woman? That's just basic. So let me give you a little cultural thing. In Corinth, women as a custom covered their heads. That was how a woman identified her humility. That's how she hid herself, as if to say, I am not available.

I belong to one man. And that was her modesty. That was her femininity. This is how she carried herself and how she clothed herself to demonstrate her womanliness, her femininity. In the Corinthian society, men were uncovered. Their heads were bare, their faces were open, and that was the mark of maleness. Somehow in the Corinthian church, these things were getting inverted. And women were praying and speaking the Word of God with their heads uncovered, actually sort of identifying with the prostitutes and the women's liberation movement. And men, maybe from some Jewish background or something, were covering their heads and praying, and people were looking at them and saying, they're feministic. So he says in verse 4, look, every man who prays or prophesies having his head covered dishonors his head. What are you doing? Don't do that.

Why? You say, you mean it's a sin to put something on your head when you pray? No. Not unless your culture perceives that as something that's feminine. And the point there was for a man to cover himself was to be acting like a woman. Men didn't do that. Verse 5, and every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, and she might as well be like one who's totally shaved. She might as well destroy all of her femininity.

Look like a prostitute or some liberated person. Verse 7, a man not to have his head covered. See, in their society, that said something. So what Paul is saying is this.

Now listen carefully. Look at your society and mark out the symbols. What are the symbols of femininity in our society? What are the symbols of masculinity?

And identify with those. If they don't violate Scripture, if they don't violate God's design for morality, then adhere to those symbols because that says something to your society. Listen, even this society today still knows when a woman looks like a woman. There are symbols in our society for femininity. And you know as well as I do that you can look at a woman who obviously has adapted the symbols of femininity and looks like a woman, and you can look at another woman who looks like she is rebelling against everything that womanhood absolutely means.

Can't you tell that difference? Of course you can because even our society has symbols. Every society does. Our society has symbols of maleness. You can look at a man and by the way he appears and carries himself and dresses, you can say, now that guy's a man. And you can look at another guy and you get the impression that this guy is really very feminine because he's denying the symbols of maleness.

And he's communicating an inverted and perverted message. So that's all he's saying to the Corinthians. Look, when you behave yourself as Christians, do so in a way that adheres to the perception of your culture so they'll understand. And further on down in verse 14, even nature has provided an analogy for the symbol of head coverings by giving faster growing hair to women as a special covering from God. So women then are to take a role of submission as the one who is under the headship of man. Now people say about verse 5, well, wait a minute, here are women praying and prophesying. Isn't that in the church? Well, it doesn't say so.

Let me show you something. I think he's just talking about general things. I don't think he's talking about the formal worship of the church, the coming together of the church.

Say, why don't you? Go down to verse 18. This is really the first time he gets into issues about the church.

Look what it says, for first of all, what is that again? Literally in the Greek, in the first place, which means if this is the first place, there isn't any place before this. If this is first of all, there isn't anything else related to what he's going to talk about. So first of all, when you come together in the church, may I suggest to you that nobody has come together in the church until that verse. First of all, when you come together in the church, I want you to take care of these divisions. So prior to this, he hasn't been talking about the worship of the church. So the women who are permitted to pray or prophesy with their head covered are not doing that in the church. They're doing that in other than that duly constituted worshiping place of the church.

He doesn't get to describing the church until verse 18. So here he is just saying in general, maybe it's in a home fellowship. Maybe it's in a Bible study. Maybe it's in a prayer time. Maybe it's when you get together as a family around the table. Maybe it's when several families get together. When you Christians get together wherever it might be, you women maintain the decorum of submission.

You men maintain the decorum of headship. And then later on, he gets to the church when it comes together in its formal assembly. So the allowance for a woman to pray and prophesy in verse 5 does not overturn what Paul says in 1 Timothy. Sure a woman should pray. Of course she should speak forth the Word of God every time she has an opportunity, but not when given the title of the official teacher or prayer on behalf of the church when it comes together for worship, and certainly not as an intruder into the worship of the church.

This is very important. So in verse 13, he says, decide for yourselves. Just decide for yourselves.

Take a look at the symbol and make a decision. Is it right that a woman pray to God uncovered? And you know in your society you're going to say, no.

So follow the custom. The sum of what he says is this. If a woman is veiled when she prays or speaks the Word of God, she attests to her womanhood, she affirms her role, she reflects her husband's protective covering over her, she protects the relationship she has with her husband, she doesn't rebel, she knows heaven is pleased. Verse 10 says, even the angels are watching.

Even the angels are following. She is acknowledging what verses seven and following say, and this is so important. Man is the image and glory of God and the woman is the glory of man. Boy, that is a verse that just sends the women liberation people right up in space. So man in a sense is the sun and woman is the moon who reflects the light of the sun. Man is the representative of the glorious dominion and headship of God, and woman is the representative of that one who follows. The woman is the glory of man. God could have created them together because He said, man, woman.

And they would have been there and He would have said, you're equal, go out and see who wins. He didn't do that. And why do we want to fight that? She was taken out of man. Verse eight, the man is not of the woman but the woman of the man. You talk about which came first, the chicken or the egg? The man came first in this case, the man. Neither was the man created for the woman, the man created for the woman, but the woman was created for the man.

Why do we not want to accept this? Let me tell you what the underlying philosophy is, very simple. God has designed all of human life in terms of, this key word, relationships, okay? Everything is built on relationships, family, fathers and mothers and children, husbands and wives. Everybody has a relationship and within those relationships there are differing roles.

Is that not so? All right? In our culture and our society, the word is not relationship, the word is individuality. I want my rights. I want to do my thing. If you fit into my life for a little while, you can come in.

The first time I don't like the way you're doing it, you're gone. Marriage, divorce, marriage, divorce, live with somebody, whatever it is, everybody living for himself. The family is being disintegrated.

It's just a bunch of sticks all living side by side. And in a society where relationship as a concept of life is lost and it is replaced by individuality, why not everybody having equal rights and equal roles, you see? So what does Satan do to undermine the role of a woman?

He attacks the whole concept of family, devastates, destroys the family, and in the devastation and destruction of the family, all you've got left is a bunch of individuals who look at the whole world through their own eyes and see only their own individuality and scream for their rights. That's the whole thing, bottom line. But the church is an organism. And the family is an organism. And the relationships of the family take right into the church that same kind of attitude.

The feminist movement is nothing more than the human race being defined as a bunch of unrelated individuals all demanding their own rights. That's Satan's big lie. Now, I'll tell you to be honest, you may not agree with what Paul says.

You may not like what he says, but he said it, and it's obvious what he said. You say, well, now, when can women prophesy? Any time you want to speak the Word of God, speak it. Any time in any place. But don't try to take over the church.

Don't try to step into territory where you're not allowed. A woman can speak the truth. Anna spoke it. Mary, when she gave her Magnificat at the announcement of the birth of Christ, spoke forth the word of the Lord, spoke forth the Word of God, and no one ever more modeled the virtue of womanhood than she. Listen, women, I pray, God, that you speak forth the truth over and over again as long as you live. You say, well, what about at a Bible study?

Can we share what we see? And of course, of course, in the right environment, when that is given to you, when the leadership says, yes, we want to hear from you, share what the Spirit of God is doing, offer praise to God. Yes, you say, what about praying? Can women pray?

What if there are men there? Can women still pray? Look at Acts 1. In Acts chapter 1, we have the prayer meeting, verse 13. They came in, came into Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. They went into the upper room and there abode Peter, James, John, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James, the son of Alphaeus, Simon, the zealot, and Judas, son of James. This is what's left after Judas, of course, who is called Iscariot is gone. Here are the remaining disciples. Now, look at verse 14.

These all continued with one accord in what? What were they doing up there? In prayer and supplication. Watch this, with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus and with His brothers. Can women get together with men have a prayer meeting?

Of course. Here's one right here, and it involved the 11 disciples, a lot of women, including Mary and some other people. In fact, how many were there in that upper room?

120, weren't there? They had a prayer meeting. There's a time and a place for a woman to speak forth the Word of God. There's a time and a place for a woman to pray. There's a time and a place when asked for a woman to share a question.

The point of all of these things is this. You go back to 1 Timothy again, and it's very obvious what he means when he says, Let the women keep silence. He's talking about in the official meeting together of the church, and he's meaning their silence in the sense that I do not allow a woman to teach.

It's just that that's consistent. In the Old Testament, no woman kings, no women prophets, no women priests, no women Bible writers. In the New Testament, no women prophets. In the ongoing New Testament sense of the prophet, no women evangelists, no women pastor-teachers, no women elders, no women Bible writers. So why are we concerned when the church goes on with the same pattern that when it comes to the order of the worship of the church, that responsibility to be the preacher, the teacher, the one who speaks for God, the one who leads in prayer, as we saw in verse 8 where he says, I command that the men pray, the one who leads the congregation before the throne of God.

This is a role given to men. Let's bow in prayer. Father, how thankful we are for Your Word.

How thankful we are for its clarity. We understand what You ask of us as men and women. Help us, Lord, not to be looking for the toothpick in somebody else's eye till we've taken the two-by-four out of our own eye. Help us not to be criticizing others until we've examined our own hearts, and if we are the head of the woman as Christ is the head of us and God is the head of Christ, then help us to act in a way consistent with that. Father, may the men of this church be men as men ought to be, giving spiritual leadership and direction, taking responsibility for support, nourishing and cherishing their wives, protecting and saving and delivering them from harm and danger, encouraging, supporting and strengthening them in their spiritual life. And Lord, may the women be women. May they bear all the grace and loveliness and beauty of womanhood. May they enjoy all the spiritual privilege, promise, blessing, and instruction. May they be on the front lines in prayer, on the front lines in speaking forth the word of truth, and understand that in that role that is designed for them, there is complete fulfillment. We thank You that You've given to the church teachers, men, godly men, who can stand in the place of Christ as His representatives, bearing His glory before the congregation. We pray that we might always be faithful to that design, that we might see that the place of men is in the overt leadership of the church, the teaching, preaching, praying, decision-making, ruling authority of the church, and that the role of the women is to learn everything they can and come alongside in submission so that they can be prepared for that immeasurably profound and far-reaching task that is theirs within the home. And Lord, may the combination of the men who lead in the church and the women who powerfully, profoundly, and for life influence in the home, build a godly seed for the praise and glory of the Savior in the generations to come.

Back to what John was talking about before the lesson. We have great opportunities to minister to people around the world who need encouragement and hope from God's Word. If you'd like to partner with Grace To You in that ministry, get in touch with us today. You can make a tax-deductible donation by calling us at 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. Again, we believe these are strategic days for making biblical truth available on radio, on the internet, through free books and booklets that we mail out every month.

Many opportunities to strengthen God's people with truth and to bring the gospel to unbelievers across the globe. Supporting your local church comes first as always, but if you're able to support Grace To You financially, just know that that will translate into lives reached with biblical truth. Our website, again, gty.org, or you can call 800-55-GRACE. And to let us know how God is using these radio programs in your life, tell us your story. It will encourage us more than you know. You can use email for that. The address there is letters at gty.org, or you can write to us old-school way, Grace To You, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson with a question. If someone told you there's a stigma attached to women because Eve was the first person to sin, how would you respond? Consider that tomorrow. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace To You.