There's no women in the Old Testament who had any kind of an ongoing prophetic ministry. There are none. None of the major prophets are women. None of the minor prophets are women. There's no women like Elijah or Elisha who preach to the nation.
Not one. Welcome to Search the Scriptures. the Bible Teaching Ministry of Dr. Carl Broge. Senior Pastor of Community Bible Church in Beaufort, South Carolina.
We are continuing our study of 1 Timothy chapter 2. And specifically, what the Apostle Paul instructed Timothy regarding gender roles in the church.
Some have taken issue with what God's Word says regarding women exercising authority over men in a teaching capacity. But as we continue today, we'll see that God has an order which He has established for a reason. Let's rejoin Dr. Brogie now as he reads the prohibition put on women in verse 12 of 1 Timothy. But I do not allow a woman.
To teach Or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. Again, Paul is speaking with his God-given apostolic authority as he writes under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This is not something that Paul just simply wishes or hopes will happen, but something that he is commanding the church to practice. And so when I see a woman step up. to the plate and she tells me she quote unquote is serving God.
But she's doing it in a way that is totally contrary to this passage. It means one of two things. She's either grossly ignorant of what God has said. Or she's rationalized this passage, and in her rebellion, she refuses to submit to the truth.
Now without sounding too simplistic concerning this raging debate, I think this passage is absolutely clear in Scripture. I don't know how any thinking person with an open mind can conclude anything else than what God has plainly said and what the church has believed for almost 20 centuries. God said what he meant, he meant what he said, and God wants women to know his perfect will for their life.
Now, before I'm done this morning, I know some of you are going to have some questions that I've not yet answered. And understand, we're just going to look at one verse this morning, verse 11. And we're going to crack the door on verse 12. And next time, Lord willing, we'll look at verse 12 in detail and see how it's further explained by verses 13 through 15.
So, if some of your questions are not answered and some of the verses that you hope I'm going to address aren't yet addressed, come back next week. But verse 11 says, Let a woman quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness.
Now let me tell you why people have a tendency today to write this passage off as irrelevant and as having no application for today. It's because at the heart of this passage is the issue of submission. Men by nature don't want to submit. I mean, ladies, we want to kick against the will of God if we can. That's the way we all are by nature.
That's the way our flesh is. We're rebels. In women, When given the chance, neither do they want to submit. Add to that, you have pulpits all across America that have been feminized. I hear some of these men preach.
They sound like ladies. I mean they do. They're not acting like men. The Bible says in Corinthians, act like men. And some of these men do not have the guts to be men because they're afraid of what people will think and because they want to be liked by folks.
And so they manipulate the scripture. They twist it a little bit to be liked by other people. And so the modern liberation, women's liberation movement, have influenced their understanding of scripture rather than letting the scriptures speak for themselves. And on top of that, a natural man can't understand, he can't receive the things of the Spirit of God. And so when you talk to a lost man, about submission, whatever realm it may be.
Especially in the realm of the family and the church, they will immediately say, inequality. They will immediately say, you're speaking about inferiority.
So let me stir you up by way of reminder in this Passage of Scripture about the doctrine of submission as it's taught in the Bible. Three things we're going to learn about the doctrine of a woman submitting in the church. First, a woman who is submissive. Is not inferior. A woman who's submissive is not inferior.
You know, when God looks at His people, He looks at them in such a way that he is not a respecter of persons. Remember Galatians 3.28. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free man. Free man, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
God doesn't say, well, because you're of this such and such of race. Or because you're a man, or because you're a woman, I'm going to treat you this way. No, God is not a respecter person. In Christ, we're all one. Say amen.
I just wondered if you're awake this morning. I know it's dark outside, it's a sleepy day, but look, every race. Every background, rich or poor, male or female, are one in Christ Jesus. But while Galatians 3:28 teaches about our equal standing before God as men and women, it does not teach that we have an equal function before God as men and women. While we are equal in our spiritual status before the Lord, men and women have different roles, just as the members of the Trinity are equal in their status, yeah, they have different roles.
Just remember that equality of worth does not mean identity of function. While the sexes are equal before God, it does not mean that they are identical in the function that God has for them. Male and female are different. God made them both in the image of God. Genesis reminds us.
And God created man in his own image. and the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.
So while both are created in his image, they are not created identically. Both sexes bear the image of God, but that does not mean that they are identical. We're equal. in our spiritual status, but not in our function. But somehow, man's fallen, rebellious nature wants to kick against the roles that God has for men and women.
And there are many people today who would say that submission implies inequality and inferiority, and it is to be resisted. But let me give you another verse of scripture that affirms both equality and submission in the same verse. Right out next to verse 11, would you? 1 Corinthians 11, 3. Put out next to 1 Timothy 2:11.
1 Corinthians 11, 3. Let me read it to you. But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.
Now let's just take the last phrase in that verse, and God is the head of Christ. If you know anything about biblical theology, then you know that God's word affirms the doctrine of the Trinity, the tri-unity of God. We don't worship three gods, we worship one God manifest in three persons. There is one God, and within the Godhead, we worship God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And within this verse, two members of the Godhead are mentioned.
Now, the Bible very clearly teaches, unlike the cults in our day who deny this basic truth, that God the Father and God the Son are co-equal. They are equal in nature, they're equal in essence, equal in power, they're equal in glory, they're equal in majesty, they're equal in worship, such that when Philip said, Lord Jesus, just show us the Father, he could say, He who has seen me has seen the Father. Jesus is the Lord. And the Father are one, and yet this verse teaches that God the Father is the head of Christ the Son. Does that mean that the Son is inferior?
Of course not. The Bible is crystal clear that God the Father and God the Son are equal. But the headship of one does not mean the inferiority of the other. Don't miss that. The headship of one does not mean the inferiority of the other.
Christ, who is in heaven, who's at the right hand of God the Father, is equal, and yet the Bible affirms the eternal headship of the Father and the eternal submission of the Son. And so while we are equal, we have different roles. Just as God the Father and God the Son are equal, so the husband and the wife are equal. And just as the Son is subject to the Father, so the Bible says in this verse that the wife is subject to her head, namely her husband. No superiority, no inferiority.
That's just the way a sovereign God has designed for it to work.
So here in 1 Timothy 2:11, When Paul teaches about the church being gathered together for worship, women are to quietly receive instruction from men in a spirit of submissiveness. And again, her submissiveness does not mean she's inferior in her spiritual relationship before God or inferior to the men who are leading. I mean, think about it. If you work for a boss You better be submissive to him, or you'll be looking for another job. But it doesn't mean that you're inferior to that boss.
Or if you're a citizen, you better be submissive to the police officer. It doesn't mean that the police officer is superior to you or that you're inferior to them. If you're in the military, you better be submissive to those who are in authority over you. But it doesn't mean that the general is better than the private. And if you're a student, you better submit to your professor or you're going to flunk the course.
It has nothing to do with inferiority. And so when the Bible speaks of men leading in the church, it does not mean that ladies are inferior. All it means is that because God is a God of order, he has one thing for the men to do and something else for the women to do.
Now, please don't miss next week because Paul is going to show us in the verses that follow the high and holy calling that God has placed on women. Too often, all pulpits like this do is speak about what women cannot do, and I don't believe we emphasize enough what women ought to do in the high and special and holy calling that the Lord has given them, a calling that the world will laugh at. But God highly esteems, and it will affect an entire nation. And so when a woman thinks her way through biblical submission, she first recognizes that a woman who is submissive is not inferior. Secondly, a woman who is submissive learns.
She learns. Again, in verse 11, we read. Let a woman quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. The King James renders this verse, let the women learn in silence with all subjection. A woman who is submissive in her heart will be able to learn.
She'll be able to receive instruction from a pastor who's a man. You know, there's some women who come to a church like this and they kind of fold their arms and dig in their heels, and they say, I'm not listening to that preacher, I'm not listening to him. He's a man. You know, and he thinks only men should be pastors. Why should I listen to him?
It's an issue of rebellion. Not against me. But against God. Because when you reject God's pattern in the church, you're rejecting Him.
Now, this verb translated here, receive instruction in the NAS, learn in the KJV, is the Greek word matheneto. It's the same word that we get the word. Mathetes from, translated in the New Testament, a disciple. A disciple, very simply defined, is a learner. Paul is saying, let the women be disciples.
Let the women learn. The first exhortation given to the woman is not to be a teacher, but to be a learner.
Now, the fact that he's dealing with how the church should conduct itself. When it is assembled, gives me a big clue as to what took place in the first century church. The fact that he tells them to learn when the church is gathered for worship tells me that learning took place in the worship service of God's people. And that should not be entirely surprising to us because we learn in Acts chapter 2 that, among other things, the church did when they came to worship, they came to learn the apostles' doctrine, what today we call the New Testament. But unfortunately, it's an anomaly today.
for many people to go to church and to learn anything. Many times people go to church and they don't get anything out of it. For the most part, because the pastor's not doing what God has called him to do. He's not taking seriously his responsibility to feed the flock of God. And so sometimes people come to a church like this and they're surprised at how much the scriptures actually have to say.
But part of our worship, when the church comes together, is to learn of God through the revelation of Scripture. Don't let anybody tell you that what we are doing right now is not worship. Because it is. There are these people who say, oh, that church, the worship's really good in that church. They sing for an hour and then they, you know, they preach for about 10 minutes.
But oh, the worship is really good in that church. Look. What we are doing according to Acts chapter 2 is worship. We are learning what the living God is like as it's expressed through doctrine because God's doctrine is a reflection of what He is like. How can you even sing with any substance to your thinking unless you know what God is like?
And before we are done with these pastoral epistles, you will see and be convinced, I believe, in your own heart that the emphasis of what the church did when it gathered was to learn from the Word of God.
Now listen. The women, Paul says, are to learn. Don't send them out for the potluck, for what's afterwards going to happen. Don't let them exclusively serve in the nursery. Make sure when the women come to church, They learn.
They are to be included in the learning process. And that is a remarkable statement for Paul to make in the first century culture in which he made it. In the first century, they had a very depreciated view of the need for a woman to learn and to be involved in that process. And Paul quickly corrects that. Typically When you unfairly suppress a woman, She'll rebel.
You got a husband, and he's a tyrant and a dictator. The tendency of the lady is to rebel. And what was happening in this church?
Well, some of the Jewish prejudices and false teaching that we studied in the first chapter that are further elucidated in the book of Titus. basically depreciated the need for a woman to learn. And so some of the sisters in the fellowship were rebelling. They were teaching. They were taking the authority that God had given to the men.
So Paul gets into the details here of how to deal with this. He starts first by affirming, by commanding that the women are to learn when the church is assembled. They are to be taught. They are to be discipled. We will see that it is essential to their spiritual life and for the high calling that God has placed upon them.
And so, in this one Greek word translated with four English words, let the women learn, we find Paul affirming the equality of the sexes in spiritual blessing.
Now remember last time if you were here We laid three foundational premises that I believe are essential to dealing with this question about what is the role of women in the church. How do you answer that question? And I said, of first importance is not what ecclesiastical tradition may be. It is not what the culture is saying. It is not what the sway of what the current evangelical church is moving towards.
The ultimate question is, what do the scriptures say?
So he said, to answer this question, we must first appeal to scripture. But the second premise I laid before you is we must not only appeal to scripture, we must appeal to the whole of scripture. And as you appeal to the whole of scripture, you learn that men and women are equal in their spirituality, but different in the roles. The whole of scripture, and not just this verse, and not just the New Testament, but even the Old Testament affirms the spiritual life and blessing of men and women to be equal.
Now, in spite of the prevalent thought amongst Jewish men in Paul's day, a tradition that had developed that was a non-biblical tradition, the Old Testament did not. not teach. The inferiority of women in spiritual matters. The Old Testament elevated women alongside of men in terms of spiritual blessing. For instance, In Exodus chapters 19 and 20, where you find the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, being given.
God gives it to men and women alike. And God promised both groups. That if they would obey, God would bless them, but if they would disobey, God would chastise them. In the Pentateuch, in the law, God valued the life of a man equally with a woman, such that the sentences determined for their sin were the same. In Exodus 12, one of the greatest and highly most holy of the feasts that the whole nation could participate in was the Passover.
And the Passover was given to men and women both. In Deuteronomy 6, when God gives the Shema, hear, Shema. Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God. And you shall love the Lord thy God with all thy mind, with all thy heart, with all thy strength. God gives that to men and women alike.
And so we find in the scriptures that both fathers and mothers were to teach their children because they were both expected to know the scriptures. Proverbs says, look, children, don't forsake the teaching of your mother. The Old Testament plainly taught in terms of spiritual life and blessing that women enjoy the same equality that men have. But while they are equally responsible, They did not have the same role as men. When we say that a man has a different role in the home or in the church, we are in no way depreciating a woman's spirituality or equality.
There are many roles and functions in society, and one of the great distinguishing lines is the role of men and women.
Now we can talk about equality until we're blue in the face, but the truth is no man is ever going to give birth to a baby. And no man is ever gonna nurse a little baby.
So, even to the most limited intellect, it seems apparent, at least at times. That there are some differences. Of course, even those kinds of differences people want to eradicate in our day.
Now think about roles for just a moment in the Old Testament. There is not a single woman In all of the Old Testament, among the kings of Judah and Israel, no woman ever served as a king. Not one. Now, it seems to me that that's a fairly significant statement about leadership that God made in the nation. No woman in the Old Testament wrote any portion of the scriptures.
Not one. There are 39 books in the Old Testament. And not a single one is written by a woman.
Now two are named after a woman, Ruth and Esther, but they weren't rewritten by women. They were written by men. There is no women in the Old Testament who ever write any portion of Scripture. For that matter, there's no women in the Old Testament who had any kind of an ongoing prophetic ministry. There are none.
None of the major prophets are women. None of the minor prophets are women. There's no women like Elijah or Elisha who preach to the nation. Not one. Now people who want to advocate women preachers and pastors will appeal to the fact that there were prophetesses in the Old Testament.
And they're right. There were five prophetesses mentioned in all of the Old Testament. You might want to jot these down because you're going to face this question sooner or later. And if you're a Christian, you've been commanded to be able to teach the whole council of Scripture. The first woman who's called a prophetess in the Bible is found in Exodus 15:20.
And her name is Miriam. Mariam, as you know, is the sister of Moses, and she's called a prophetess. Because on one occasion, she led the women She led the women of Israel in a great hymn of praise, in timbrels, and in dance, whereby God gave her a very brief word of prophecy to speak. Twenty words in our English Bible, far less in the Hebrew text. God chose her.
to speak as a woman to women. For a brief moment, and she's called a prophetess. The second of five women called prophetesses in the Old Testament was Deborah. And she was certainly a unique instrument. and the plan and purposes of God.
She's called the mother of the nation. She didn't have an office, she sat underneath a tree, but on one occasion, this woman who's called a prophetess gave a direct revelation from God, just a few short words, to a man named Barak. And on this one occasion, she gave direct revelation to Barak concerning the fight that Israel was to fight. And as a prophetess, she was encouraging Barak to do that which he was going to do as a man. She wasn't going to do it.
She just had a direct revelation from God. She spoke a few sentences. Barak, this is what you ought to do. She spoke to a single man, encouraging him what he was supposed to do as a man. And there's no other occasion where she ever speaks or has some kind of ongoing prophetic ministry.
The third woman mentioned as a prophetess in the scripture is Huldah. 2 Kings 22:14. 2 Kings 22, 14. And the parallel text is 2 Chronicles 34.
Now she's called a prophetess because, like Deborah, she was given a revelation to be given to a priest named Hilkiah concerning the coming judgment on Jerusalem and Judah. God spoke to her. to one man on one occasion. A fourth woman who's called a prophetess, it's found in Nehemiah 6, 14. Her name is Noadiah.
But she's quickly eliminated as an example to follow because she's described in that text of Scripture as a false prophetess. Fifth, And she is unnamed. The wife of Isaiah. And she's mentioned only once in Isaiah chapter 8 and verse 3. She actually speaks absolutely nothing.
She's yet called a prophetess. Because she gave birth to a child whose name given by God had prophetic meaning. She never even spoke of prophecy. She simply gave birth to a child whose name had prophetic meaning. And from that illustration you can see, as found in Isaiah, that the word prophetess can be used in a somewhat general way.
From a single line of prophecy, even to the naming of a child, a woman could be called a prophetess. Five ladies mentioned as prophetesses. One because she gave birth to a child that had a prophetic meaning, another because she was a false prophet, and three are called prophetesses because on one occasion, They spoke on behalf of God. Miriam, two women. Hilda and Deborah, in each case, to a single man.
But nowhere, anywhere in all of the Old Testament is there any kind of ongoing prophetic ministry by a woman. And so without women kings, Without women praise. Without women writing scriptures, without women prophets, we learn very much about, I think, God's design and role for men and women. No woman anywhere in all of the Old Testament has any kind of ongoing preaching and teaching ministry in the nation.
Now I don't discount That there are many, many, many, many ways in which God supernaturally, sovereignly, and wondrously used women. in the Old Testament and that's mentioned all the way through. But what we are talking here is about roles. And when you come to the New Testament, the same equality of blessing and privileges is found in very parallel examples. I've already mentioned Galatians 3, but why don't you turn there?
Because it is a very, very important text of scripture that people are going to use to say that women can become pastors and teach and exercise authority over men. And again, the critical verse in the chapter is Galatians 3 and verse 28. Paul affirms there is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free man. There is neither male nor female.
For you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Now this passage has created a great deal of controversy as to how to interpret the rest of the New Testament. It's being used in our day to legitimize everything from women pastors to the ordination and the acceptance of homosexuality in the church. And those who advocate women pastors, elders and deacons, this is the key number one text that they appeal to in all of the New Testament. What exactly does Galatians chapter 3 verse 28 mean?
Well Join us tomorrow. as we'll pick up in our study of 1 Timothy. For a copy of today's message, please call Search the Scriptures at 877-787-2. seven four seven eight and request program first Timothy 005. And don't forget that you can listen to this or any of the other messages in the series at our website, searchthescriptures.org.
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