Women & The Gospel, Part 3

Greetings, friends and new listeners. Welcome to The Sound of Faith. I'm Sharon Otz, thanking you for joining us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Our message today, Gospel Game Changer for Women, chronicles the revolutionary changes Jesus made in His ministry, too, and dealings with women. He not only recognized their unique devotion, He elevated them to equality with men in Gospel Game Changer for Women. Jesus said to the Pharisee, I have something I'd like to say to you. He said, say on Lord.

And then Jesus proceeded to give him a very simple parable. He said, there was this instance where there were two debtors. They were both in debt to the same creditor, but one owed the creditor 500 pence and one only owed the creditor 50 pence. But the fact is, neither one could pay the bill. So He said neither one could pay the debt. So the creditor forgave them both, stamped them both, paid in full.

You're off the hook. He says, now, who do you think would have loved him most? And the Pharisee answered and said, well, I suppose the one he forgave the most.

And Jesus said, you have judged rightly. When I came into your house, you did not kiss me. How many know that it's the custom in the Middle East that you kiss on both cheeks? It's just a custom.

You just do that. It's like our handshake is their kiss on the cheek. And so He said, I came into your house. You didn't kiss me and you did not wash my feet. This was the most least of all the practices of hospitality that you would do for a visitor in your house because they didn't have sidewalks and asphalt roads. They had dusty, dusty streets and they wore sandals. And when they would get wherever they were going, their feet would be dusty. If they left the house with clean feet, by the time they got to where they were going, they would be dusty. And what you did is when you came in, they would take their shoes off and the host or someone, a servant at least if he was rich, would wash the feet of the visitor.

This was common courtesy. He said, but you didn't wash my feet and you didn't anoint my head. But this woman, though her sins be many, see Jesus never whitewashes sin. He said, though her sins be many, since I have come here, she has not ceased to kiss my feet, to wash them with their tears, to dry them with their hair and to anoint my head with oil. And I say to her that though she has many sins, her sins are forgiven her because she that is forgiven of much loveth much.

He was giving him a sermon, basically saying you self-righteous, judgmental, religious zealot. You haven't done the most common things. It's just courtesy and hospitality. And you sit there and judge her. You don't love me.

You haven't shown me respect, much less love. But I tell you this woman, yes, she's been a great sinner. But her motive in coming and doing that was because her heart was under conviction and she was coming with the motivation of repentance. And Jesus saw it as such. And he said, woman, go thy way. Amen.

Because she that is forgiven of much loves much. Okay, now let's go to the other anointing. This is the one you're familiar with, but they get mixed up. The other one, the one we just did took place up here in the north at Galilee. Now the other one took place down here in Bethany, which is like a suburb of Jerusalem.

Okay. So now this one takes place in Bethany and it takes place at the house of Simon the leper. Now I know what you're thinking.

I think the same thing. Okay, lepers belong in leper colonies. They can't be around people. So why would he be going to a lepers house?

I can only think of one good reason. He obviously healed him. And I'm going to tell you something else.

And it's really just a side thing and you can read it later. But Simon the leper was the father of Judas Iscariot. And when I give you the scriptures, you'll find it out for yourself. So he goes to Simon the lepers house in Bethany. And there were a lot of people there. The Bible says it was a lot of people. And amongst those that were there was Lazarus, who had just been raised from the dead, his sisters, Mary and Martha. So you know that Lazarus was probably the star that day.

Amen. Because the Bible says many people came wanting to see Lazarus because they heard he was raised from the dead. So this was a party. This was a celebration celebrating probably the fact that Lazarus had been raised from the dead. So in the midst of all of this celebrating, here comes Mary, Lazarus' sister, Martha's sister.

Now we have the name of the woman. Mary came and she was not a sinner. This is Mary to whom Jesus had many times come to her house, Martha and Lazarus' house, many, many times and spent many times with them. Mary comes and now her motive is out of extravagant gratitude because Jesus had given back her brother. She came with her alabaster box and she broke it open and she wept in tears of joy and washed Jesus' feet, dried them with her hair and took the ointment from the alabaster box and anointed his feet.

And while Mary was doing this, Judas Iscariot was there because it was his father's house. And he said, huh, this ointment is worth 300 pence and that equaled a year's wages, a year's wages. Obviously she was saving it up for something special.

I'm going to go out on the limb and presume maybe for her wedding. And she was saving it for probably many years. He says we could have sold this for 300 pence and given the money to the poor.

Do you see the conversation is completely, completely different from the first one. And the Bible puts a little side note in there and says he said this because he held the bag. That means he was the treasurer for Jesus and the 12 disciples. And he was a thief. And so he thought, wow, we could have got 300 pence for that.

And that means I could put it in the bag, but I could put a little bit in my own pocket. And so he said we could have sold this and we could have spent the money on the poor. And what did Jesus say?

Now, remember, completely different situation. He said, let her alone. He said against the day of my burying, has she kept this? In other words, Mary did not realize all the years that she was saving up that alabaster box of ointment. She had no idea what she was really saving it for, for the day of Jesus' burial, that she was saving that all that time that she could anoint Jesus.

He said the poor you will always have with you, but me you shall not always have with you. So we see here two different anointings, one a sinner, one a godly woman. But in both cases, Jesus allowed them to come and to touch him and to administer to him and rebuke those who wanted to rebuke them because Jesus came to tear down all the taboos against women. While we're talking about Mary of Bethany, the reason why I say that she was a godly woman, and by the way, I told you I'd give you the scriptures. The first anointing of Jesus by the sinful woman is in Luke 7, 36 through 50. The second anointed by Mary of Bethany is in three gospels, Matthew 26, 6 through 13, Mark 14, 1 through 9. And my favorite is John 1 through 12. And it's in John you'll see that Judas Iscariot was Simon's son.

Okay, now go to Luke, the 10th chapter. Mary of Bethany was a godly woman. And we know that she had a real hunger and thirst to learn the things of God. She was a very spiritual young woman.

Let's go to Luke 10th chapter and read verse 38, and we'll see. Now it came to pass as they went that he entered into a certain village and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word. But Martha was cumbered or Martha was very busy about much serving. And she came to him and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?

Bid her therefore that she help me. And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, Martha, thou art careful, or thou are anxious, or thou are upset and troubled about many things, unimportant things. But one thing is needful. One thing is necessary. One thing is important. And Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her.

I've always, you know, zoomed in on the fact and I think it's the most obvious fact of the story that we see the dichotomy that Martha was more worried about cooking dinner, serving the table, making a beautiful, wonderful dinner for Jesus, having the placemates out with the napkins and the silverware and all that. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's what God created women to do.

And we love to do that because it just makes us feel good when we can do that. But what Jesus was saying is, there has to be a balance. And I'm not going to make Mary and come in there and help you when Mary realizes this is an opportunity that's not afforded. Remember what we said women were not allowed to learn the scriptures, and especially not in the presence of men. When it said Mary sat at Jesus feet, we can't just, you know, skip over this and just think, Oh, yeah, she was sitting there in her humble humble way.

Oh, no, no, no, it means my much more than that. You see itinerant rabbis, which what Jesus was itinerant, meaning traveling from town to town and city to city and stopping in people's houses to stay and to teach. And Jesus was one. And whenever he was in the area of Bethany, he would go to Lazarus, Mary and Martha's house. And the custom was that the visiting rabbi would come, he would stay there. And then there would be a time during his visit when he would sit either on a pillow or a very small pillow.

Or a very low stool. And all the men would sit on the ground around him while he taught. And so the same sit at his feet became an idiom, meaning that you learned from a rabbi. Remember what said of Paul, when he was given his credentials, he said, I sat at the feet of Gamaliel.

Remember that? He meant he was my mentor. He was my teacher.

I was personally taught by him. So when it says that Mary sat at the feet of Jesus, she was sitting there with all the men, with all the guys and equal, being allowed to hear the teaching of Jesus. I am so shocked that it takes a man to get happy about that.

I can't believe the women aren't happy. My God, this is my favorite part of everything I've told you. The fact that I as a woman can sit at the feet of Jesus. I can read the Bible. I can study the scriptures. Hallelujah. This book is not forbidden because I'm a woman.

I can learn. I can sit at Jesus feet. And I hope some of you women that never read the Bible are under conviction. I hope you are.

You should be. Because this is a privilege, a privilege. We think it's a privilege because we live in America and we have a Bible and we can do these things. I want you to know before there ever was America, women were subjugated and were not allowed to have the Bible to study and to read. And they would have never been allowed to sit at the feet of a rabbi with the men. Never happened.

They would have had to been in the kitchen at best trying to eavesdrop. And because of that, because of that, most women were not inclined to want to do that because it was forbidden. But Mary said, oh, oh, this is my opportunity. Jesus is not like the other rabbis.

He's not like those guys that go to my synagogue. Jesus lets me sit right here and I can hear his words firsthand. Amen. Jesus elevated Mary being equal with his 12 disciples to let her sit there and hear the word of God to be preached. He said, Martha, Mary has chosen the good part.

I wonder how many women here today have you chosen the good part? Are you more worried to make sure that every piece of lint is vacuumed off your carpet and make sure that everything is shining and you can see your face in it. You've got the cleanest, most sparkly house, but you don't have time to sit down and study the word of God.

I know I can say this because I used to be like that. Before I hurt my back, I had the cleanest house in Baltimore County. I'm telling you, I was a fanatic about everything shining.

I cleaned, I shined, I polished it. Oh my goodness. But when I hurt my back and I couldn't do those things, and my house went from the cleanest to, I mean, you talk about depression setting in, but you know what? There was nothing I could do about it.

All I could do is lie in bed. And since all I could do was lie in bed, I figured, well, I just may as well read the Bible. I read the Bible front to back over and over again. Now I had been reading the Bible my whole life, but I never took the time to read it straight through from Genesis to Revelation.

I'd never done that. You know, read this, read that, read this. But I took the time to read it straight through. I saw things I never saw before. I saw them in the context.

I saw things that hooked up and pointed to other things. Amen. And I said, this is the good part. It's not how clean your house is. Now, let some of you think that that gives you an excuse because you're just lazy.

And because you don't, dirt doesn't bug you and dirt doesn't bother you. I'm not giving you that excuse. I'm telling you, there's got to be there's got to be a balance. Amen.

But shame on you if you don't crack that Bible open every day, because it's a privilege that women never had until the gospel came and said there's neither male nor female. All right, I'm going to close with this. I've been munching on this message all week. And you know, I didn't really have it all put together.

But Saturday night, I should say Saturday morning, that would be Friday night going into Saturday morning. So that's not last night, but the night before about three to four in the morning, I had a dream. And I want to tell you the dream because I feel that the Lord gave it to me specifically to confirm this message. In my dream, I was in a room.

It was not this church building. I don't recognize the surroundings. It was a huge room and it was packed with women. And the thing about it is, do you know how you've had dreams? And all these people around you, but you don't really see their faces.

So you don't know really who they are. That's how the dream was. All these women and I only saw one woman's face.

And I'll tell you about her in a second. But I was in this room and the women were seated all around and I was standing and I was teaching. I knew I was teaching. The women were very excited.

I mean, I could feel electricity in the air. It's like they were sitting on the edge of their seats and they were just pulling it out of me. Now, here's the thing. I had asked the women a question. You know how sometimes I'll throw it out and I want you to give me an answer? I had asked the women a question, but the dream didn't start until after I had asked the question. But you know how in the dream you know that something took place? I knew that I'd asked the women a question, but because the dream didn't start to that point, I never heard the question. I don't know what I asked them.

Here's the bizarre part. I knew the answers and it was a two-part answer. I knew the answers I knew the answers to a question that I had asked that I didn't get to hear what it was and I didn't know.

And so I had thrown this question out and I was waiting for someone to answer because I was just open, you know. I did not see her face, but I distinctly recognized her voice. I knew it was Sister Shirley and she yelled out, the curse is broken.

I don't know what the question was, but the first part of the answer was the curse is broken. And I said that's right. And all the women were happy and they were clapping and everything. And I says, all right, okay, who knows the second part of the answer?

No volunteers, no one's saying anything. And you can hear this buzzing, buzzing, like everybody's trying to think out loud. But nobody said anything and no one, you know, shouted out anything. And finally, after a little bit of a time, I said, okay, I tell you what, I'm going to tell you the answer next time. All the women were like, no, no, tell us now.

What? We want to know. I said, no, I was teasing them.

No, no, no, no. I'm going to tell you later. Okay. Now, while I'm teasing them and saying, no, I'm going to tell you next time, because obviously we were going to meet again.

And so I said, I'll tell you next time. And while I'm teasing them, all of a sudden one person's face came into focus. Because remember, their faces weren't focused.

I didn't know who they were, but way back somewhere, someone's face came into focus. And when I looked, I saw clearly it was Stephanie Beasley and she was smiling. You know, her smile that we all know, Stephanie, a beaming smiling, but I specifically noticed what she was wearing.

She was wearing a long sleeve men's white dress shirt. And it was impeccable. It was crisp. It had no wrinkles.

It was perfect. I remember the collar was just so perfect, like starched and just perfect. And she also was wearing a men's tie. But the thing about the tie, it was covered in beautiful purple and white flowers.

It was a men's tie, but it was very feminine. And then I woke up and I looked at the clock and it was about four o'clock. And I thought that was so unusual.

And I'm thinking about this and I'm thinking, what does that mean? You know, it's what Stephanie was wearing. And before I fell back to sleep, I heard in my spirit, Stephanie represents all women. And it represents the fact that women have the same position and the same authority that men have. That they can sit and hear the word of God. And they had the same because she represented with the men's attire, but it had that feminine flowery thing going on there.

She represents all women and the fact that women had the same position and the same authority to sit as Mary of Bethany did at the feet of Jesus, the Holy Ghost, whoever the speaker may be, and receive the word of God. And I'm telling you, those women were eager. They were, like I said, they were so excited. Well, then I fell back to sleep and I slept until morning. Now, I knew what the second part of that answer was.

I knew what it was. When I woke up, I was hoping I would know the question. I still don't know the question. I don't think it matters. I really don't.

And you'll see why. So when I woke up, I just kept thinking about that. I couldn't get it off my mind because, okay, the first part of the question was the curse is broken. The second part of the answer was speaking in tongues. So I'm thinking, well, what does this mean, Lord? What does this mean?

It means something. Again, in my spirit, I was prompted and I heard the Holy Spirit telling me, okay, the curse of being a second class, inferior, subordinate for women is broken in Christ, is broken in the body of Christ, is broken in the church where there is no male and no female, just like there's no Jew and Gentile, no slave and no set owners and masters and slaves. In Christ, all can learn and teach God's word.

But I said, but what about the speaking in tongues? And then I heard the Spirit say to me, and we already read this, on the day of Pentecost, they were all together in one place, in one accord, in prayer and supplication, the 11 disciples, Jesus' brothers, specifically naming Mary His mother with the women. And they started off with 500 people. So there were a lot of women there.

There was no separation of men and women. And when the Spirit came, He fell on all of them at the same time instantaneously. And they all began to speak in tongues at the same at the same time. And what had Jesus told them prior to that? In Acts 1 and 8, He said, and ye shall be endued after the Holy Ghost has come upon you, you shall receive power, you shall be endued with power from on high, and you shall be my witnesses unto all the world. And the Lord was saying to us that just as we have the authority to read, to understand, to learn the word of God, we have the authority to witness, to preach, to teach, and to declare.

Amen. Because the Holy Ghost didn't just follow the men. And when they all began to go out into the streets, speaking in many languages, probably a minimum of 70 languages, because the Jerusalem was filled with visitors, because it was the day of Pentecost, it was one of the feast where the men were required to go up to Jerusalem.

Every hotel and motel was running over. The place was packed with people. And these were people from other places that spoke other languages. And they all heard the gospel in their own language. The wonderful words of God in their own language.

God anointed the men and the women, and they were preaching the gospel. Amen. And I want the women in this church to know it's time to rise up, the women of God. It's time to rise up.

Amen. And I'm not telling you to take over the church. I'm not telling you to go bossing people around.

I'm not telling you to bully your husband. All of that is unscriptural. I'm telling you to take the God given a privilege that God has given you and use that and dig into the word of God, because God is going to hold you accountable. And if you never knew or understood it before, you know it now.

All the women look up. Jesus took your picture. And then you need to realize that when you get in church and in the body of Christ, wherever the body of Christ is in action, if God is anointing a vessel, whomever it may be, you have to respond to the anointing and not to the gender. Amen.

Because if you don't, you're going to be disobeying God and you're only going to hurt yourself. And if there's been any men here that you've just had this little, you just something in you, it just doesn't feel right. You know, it's not, but you just got this thing. You need to get the victory. You need to get the victory today. Amen. Cause I'm not going to shut up.

I'm not going to sit down. Amen. Satan launched an attack against women as maltreatment of women escalated over the centuries. But when the seed Messiah came, he changed the rules of engagement again. Jesus was the game changer who broke down barriers of race, gender and cultural classes. The gospel is the great emancipator, elevating women to the same level as men.

This teaching walks you through the centuries since the Garden of Eden to the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit empowered God's sons and daughters for His divine service in the gospel. This message, Gospel Game Changer for Women, can be ordered on CD. Request offer SK197, Mail to Sound the Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203, or go online to soundthefaith.org. You will also receive a free CD of the message, Women in the Pulpit. But to order by mail, go to P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203, send your love gift of at least $10, and request offer SK197. Until next time, this is Sharon Notzain, Maranatha.