Women in The Pulpit, Part 3

Greetings, friends and new listeners, and welcome to The Sound of Faith. I'm Sharon Strickland, and But hetero means the opposite. It means different. If you're in a heterosexual relationship, you're different from your partner.

You're male, he's female, or vice versa. So here where it says other doctrine, it is different doctrine. Different doctrine than what we have been teaching. And he wanted him to stay there and confront these people. And we know from reading Acts 20, that Ephesus also was made up of many house churches. And I say this because in Acts 20, Paul said, I taught you daily house to house. So he visited all those different houses. That's how a lot of churches got started.

Somebody's house, and then it grew. Amen? And so he's urging Timothy to do this. So the best interpretation of this passage is we've got to understand he was addressing a specific situation at Ephesus, and somehow it was involving the women. He may be speaking of a particular woman, a particular woman who was propagating this other doctrine. Because if we look in 1 Timothy 2 verse 9, in like manner also that women, how many see women plural, adorn themselves in modest apparel with shame, face, and sobriety, not with broided hair or gold or pearls or costly array, but which becometh women professing godliness and good works.

I am not going to get on this again. You've got to understand the key to this verse is the word modest. That's the key. What is modest is what we should wear. Amen? It doesn't mean you can't braid your hair. It doesn't mean you can't put barrettes in your hair. It doesn't mean any of that.

It means you have to be modest and not dress like the world, immodestly. Amen? So that's all I'm going to say about that. But I want you to see in verse 9 he says women plural. Do you see that? And so it carries over in verse 10 that he's talking about women. We see it, women that profess godliness. But when we get to verse 11, which we have read, he changes. He changes from women to the woman.

In verse 12, he talks about a woman. Why did he change? Why did he go from plural to singular?

Amen? So it's like he's doing a switcheroo here. So if we instead, because he went to singular, the woman and a woman, remember the same Greek words, gune and aner, right? So he went from plural, meaning all the women in the church, to dress modestly. And now he's talking about teaching, and he goes down to a singular women. So why don't we just take that Greek word that means the same thing and read wife and husband?

Let the wife learn in silence with all subjection. That matches what we just read in 1 Corinthians, does it not? But I suffer not a woman, I suffer not a wife, to teach nor usurp authority over the husband, but to be in silence.

Are you taking this in? If you put husband and wife there, it's the only way that it can make sense without contradicting the other scriptures that women can prophesy. And the word prophesy does not mean you say, thus sayeth the Lord, coming down from heaven is judgment if you don't straighten up. The word prophesy means to flow forth. You could be prophesying, you could be preaching, teaching, you could even be singing.

Elisha used to call for them to come and play music that he would prophesy to. Amen? So we have to understand that. Now let's look at the word silence.

Because you know, that is hard. If he's talking about all women and he's not talking about wives, that we have to be silent in the church? What's the point of coming?

I can stay home and listen to CDs. I can sing and worship at home, but I can't when I come to church. I've got to be silent. What does the word silence mean? It's a Greek word. Of course, you knew that.

Hesuchia. And I want you to just look up at verse two. Look at verse two while we're here. First Timothy, verse two of chapter two. He's saying we should pray for kings and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. See the word peaceable there?

See it? Same Greek word. Hesuchia. Oh, so we should lead a quiet and silent life. Oh, I know you think the word quiet would be the one, but it's not, folks. Get out your lexicon. Peaceable is hesuchia.

Quiet is another word altogether. So don't you see here? He's saying, and he's talking to all the saints. He wants all the saints in the church to have a peaceable life.

Do you see that? And that means he wants them to have a life that's free from turmoil and a life of tranquility, which we don't have today in the world. We've got just the opposite. We've got so much division and unrest.

Well, you all, I don't even have to describe it. So he's saying pray that you won't have that going on. Amen? So it cannot mean silence. It didn't mean that you're mute.

It means that you have a peaceable, calm environment, not that you're silent and you cannot speak, because it's the same word as peaceable in verse 2. Now he says, or usurp authority. OK, I'm going to throw this out and see what kind of answer I get. What is the Greek word for authority? I hear exousia.

How many are in agreement it's exousia? Behold, I give you power. But he said the word is not power. It's exousia, and it means authority.

OK. So we would expect that he's saying we don't want the wife to usurp authority. We would all assume that's going to be exousia, because exousia is used over 100 times in the New Testament. And that's what it means. It means a normal exercise of authority. It actually means delegated authority. In other words, someone who has the authority to give you authority gives it to you. I have authority over Satan, because Jesus gave me authority to use his name. It's delegated by Jesus himself, who crushed the head of the serpent under his heel.

And now he says, I give you authority over all the power of the enemy. But in this verse, it's not exousia. It's another word altogether. And that word is authentic, authentic.

And guess what? It's only found in this one verse in the entire New Testament. Where we would expect to see exousia, we see authentic. And what does it mean? It speaks of someone who's acting on their own, their own authority in such a way that they are trying to get the upper hand and control.

A good word, this English synonym would be to domineer, to domineer. In ancient literature, because remember, it was only used one time in the Bible. So when something is only used one time in the Bible, what Bible scholars do is they go outside of the Bible, and they look at the writings of that day and see how words are used in secular literature. It gives them an idea of what maybe was meant, because it's only used one time in the scripture. Because you know, scripture interprets scripture. And when you read a certain word and you read it in many, many, many scriptures, you get the whole meaning.

But if it's only there one time, so what they do is they go look outside of the Bible in Greek literature, and it means somebody who's trying to gain control and can even go, not always, but in extreme cases to the point of violence. We see the word authentic. We see auto right in there, auto. And we all know that means self, right?

Auto. Autobiography is the story of your own life. You wrote it yourself. So what is being said here is this person is acting in their own authority.

They're trying to usurp authority. Now, let's look at this two ways. Number one, we'll go quickly to the husband and wife theme. God does not like wives who try to usurp authority and control their husbands in a domineering way. Now, before you get your feathers ruffled, women, remember he said husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. Do you know God never told wives to love their husbands?

You'll never find it in the Bible. You'll never find women have to love their husbands because we just love. We're just love. We just love, love, love. But he tells the husbands, people say, can you command people to love?

God does. He told his Old Testament church, Israel, love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy might, with all thy strength. He commanded them to love him because love is not a fuzzy feeling.

Amen? When you love somebody, when the fuzzy feelings are gone because the honeymoon is over and you've been married so many years now, you decide every day that I love that person. I want to be with them because I love them for who they are, not only what they can do for me. So getting back to our point, God does not like women who control their husbands. I'm talking about saved husbands.

We understand that, right? Saved husbands, of course. We're not talking about sinner husbands who beat you up, drink all your money, blow it on drugs, and run around with other women. We ain't talking about them kind of husbands. They don't love Christ. They're not under submission to Christ, so that means that their wives don't have to be under submission to them. And that's a whole other message I'm not preaching today. We also need to understand that because he went to the singular, let's just look at the word woman in the singular, we have to understand that there very well may have been a woman teacher in that church that was teaching this other doctrine. Now let me tell you briefly something about Ephesus. I'm winding down.

How many are still with me? The city of Ephesus was the center of worship for the female goddess Diana, also known as Artemis. So if you go to Google it later, you might Google Artemis and get more information than if you just do Diana. But we know in Acts 19, we know how that for two hours they said, great is the goddess Diana. And they believed that her image fell down from heaven. And so they worshipped it, and she had many, many breasts.

She was a sexual goddess, no surprise there. And of course, we know it was the silversmiths that made up that myth so that they could sell lots of idols. And we know a riot broke out in the city because Paul had come preaching the gospel. And they said, great is the goddess of Diana. And these people come in trying to tell it, turn us away from that worship. And we know it ended up that they brought all of their books and their occultic things and things they did spells with. And they had a big bonfire, and they burned it all up because they really got born again, amen?

But you've got to understand that this goddess worship dominated the Ephesian culture. Now here's some of the things that they said. I'm going to give you a couple. Are you still with me? They said that she could have a baby without a man. Mm. What does that sound like a pollution of?

Are you following me? And that she gave birth all on her own without a man. And archaeologists who have dug these areas have found evidence that these stories about Diana and Artemis were being mingled with the Bible stories, especially the book of Genesis.

How many have heard of the Gnostic gospels? OK, well they found a lot of evidence that in the Gnostic accounts that did not make it into our Bible because they're false, that they look at the creation in Genesis and they mix their myths about their gods and goddesses in with the Genesis account. So they say that Eve was Adam's teacher. She was the one who gave him life, that she was a virgin without a husband, and she gave him life.

Now this is a horrible distortion of Genesis, is it not? But this was what was pervasive in Ephesus. So Paul is apparently combating all of these false doctrines, these other things. And so it is very possible that here that Paul is speaking about the woman.

I would not suffer the woman to teach this. And she was very bold because she usurped authority. She controlled people and she took over authority. Listen, she was just a modern day Jezebel. I know you think of Jezebel.

You think of eye shadow and eyeliner. No, no, no. She had her poor husband jumping every time she said frog. Her husband Ahab was the king. She got him to murder somebody to take his vineyard. Aren't you a man?

Aren't you the king? He won't give you the vineyard? He won't sell it to you?

Just go kill him and take it. And that's a spirit. So when we talk about the spirit of Jezebel, I'm not talking about batting your eyelashes with eyeliner or whatever, mascara. I'm talking about that spirit. And that's what we had here in Ephesians. And so he was addressing this other doctrine that was being propagated by women at this Ephesus church. And I just have to throw this in.

This is just my opinion. But if you've got houses, OK, not just one big congregation, but churches in all these different houses, oh my god. And you've got women in all these different houses going from house to house?

That's why he said in another place is you need to stop these women from going house to house with all their tall tales, and their gossip, and their busy bodies. Come on, women. Let's just say amen. You know it's true. I'm not saying you, and I'm sure you're not saying me, but we know how women are.

You get us with a bunch of women, and before you know, we will talk about anything. Now, if we're sanctified for the Holy Spirit, whatever we get on, it'll be for a remedial reason. It'll be good, amen. We won't get off.

And so when we see our conversation is derailing, and it's getting over here, we just need to cut it off, change the subject. Know the devil's trying to get in the mix, but I want you to see what was going on here. Let's look at verse 13. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. The fact that Paul threw this in right here, and that he's in talking about the Church of Ephesus, where they have this doctrine of worshipping this goddess who claims that she is the one who gave birth to Adam and taught him, that right there points to that.

How many see what I'm saying? It points to it. So he is talking about this false doctrine being propagated by this woman at the Church of Ephesus. Was it referring to women in general? Was he referring to wives and husbands?

In either case, it does not mean that women cannot speak in church, or he would contradict all other scriptures that says they can. I'm out of time, so I'll just reference you. It's too much to read anyway. You can read it later. Romans, the 16th chapter, his final chapter in this letter. And he is thanking everybody.

It's a thank you. And he's naming all of these wonderful saints of God that have helped him in the ministry. He specifically names about 16 people. Of the 16 people that helped him in the ministry, 10 of them were women.

I'm just saying. And we see it in the church today. And I'm not trying to insult men, but we see that the women basically are the ones that do a lot of the things that go on in the church. And when he named these 16 women, some he didn't name, he just referred to as women or his sister.

The two that he did name, though, that jump out, one was Phoebe. She was a deaconess. That meant she had authority.

Amen? She had authority. And I don't think she was a deaconess just to women. He said she served with him and helped him.

Then another one that is very curious is he talks about apostles that helped him. And he names them, and one of them is named Junia, J-U-N-I-A. And Junia, the ending I-A, is a feminine ending and only a feminine ending. It is never used for a man. If you want to name the counterpart of Junia for a man, you would name him Junius.

How many follow me? Just like we have some names like that, there are some, you know, we might say, you know, we'll take men's names. Say the father just has a bunch of girls and you can't name him Junior. So case in point, your dad's name is John. And what's your name? Janice, OK? So they named her Janice.

And we see that all the time. They take Albert McAlberta, Robert McRoberta. Anybody want to help me? Michael, Michelle, even Michaela, Thomasine, Josephine. How many get the point? Junia is a woman's name, never a man's name, never. And he called her an apostle. Well, I got cold chills just then. He called her an apostle that worked with him.

And he said, salute her, honor her. I know this was not a message that preached to you to edify you personally. I understand that. But how many know sometimes we need to know why we believe what we believe? Amen. And perhaps some of you, even though you don't have a single problem, maybe on your job when my name comes up and they say, oh, you got a woman preacher? Or you got a woman pastor? Oh, and you feel like you're on the defensive. You don't know what to say.

Now you have some ammunition. Amen? Because it happens.

It happens. My daughter, Sarah, on her job, she says when she mentions her mother's a preacher. She's a woman, and she's a preacher.

So we need to know why we know what we believe. And I'll probably never preach this again. It's the first time I've preached this. And I've been preaching 45 years anyway. So it also helps me to get my, not convince me that I'm doing God's will. But when I have to answer these people who throw out all of these theologians' letters and words, and it seems like, oh, well, you can't understand what we're saying here. And I feel, too, that too many people just take what's been handed down to them, and they don't look at what the scripture says.

Because it's obviously not that hard, is it? Especially if you just get straight on headship. Women, men, husbands, wives, Christ. You get that straight, it straightens everything out. Amen? So let's give the Lord a clap often for his word.

Amen. I hope you're being encouraged by our message, Forget, Reach, Press. In his letter to the Philippians, written from a Roman prison, Paul wrote of his great joy in Christ and his secret to his successful ministry, I forget those things that lie behind. I have known scores of Christians who get stuck in depression and failure because they keep looking back and lamenting about the past. Only when you let go of the past can you embrace the present and reach out for daily victory in Christ. As citizens of heaven, Paul said we are pressing towards the mark of the calling upon high, the rapture resurrection. We should be pressing for the goal aligned with our eyes on the prize.

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