Women & The Gospel, Part 1

Greetings, friends and new listeners. Welcome to The Sound of Faith.

I'm Sharon Ottz 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. Let's begin in Genesis 1 and verse 26. And God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in His own image. In the image of God created He, Him, male and female, created He, them.

And God blessed them and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. So I want you to see right off the bat that God created both male and female in the image of God. It's very clear in the Hebrew that both men and women, male and female, were created in the image of God. And right there where it says male and female created He, them, in the Hebrew, it's very clear. So I want you to understand that Eve was not created in inferior image simply because she was not created at the time that Adam was taken out of the ground. She was created out of Adam's side. But the woman was also created in the image of God. She was no inferior to Him. As you see, He gave them both dominion and told them both to subdue and have dominion over the earth. Well, you've heard Brother Hardy preach many times that Eve was not created inferior to Adam because if she were inferior, then her seed would be inferior. And that meant that Jesus Christ would be inferior. Amen.

So how many get that without me going any further? So I want you to see that. But what happened when they sinned, the rules of engagement changed when they sinned. And the curse came in. Both of them lost their dominion and Satan usurped it. But the woman bore three consequences as a result of the fall in her sin.

And let's look at the first mention of the messianic promise and the first mention of the salvation that was to come in Genesis 3 verse 15. And God speaking to the serpent said, and I will put enmity between thee and the woman. Between thee and who? The woman and between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head and thou shall bruise his heel. It's important that you see this, that God speaking to the serpent, which we know was Satan, he said, now the woman is going to be your enemy. And I'm going to put that enmity specifically between you and women and between you and her seed.

How many see that? Because I think most of the time we just jump right to the seed. And of course we should, because that's the most important factor here, because who is the seed? Jesus Christ. If you go into Galatians, the third chapter, Paul confirmed that he said, and the promise was to Abraham and unto his seed. And referring back to Genesis 3 15, Paul said he did not say unto seeds as too many or plural, but he said unto seed as one. And that one is Jesus Christ.

Galatians 3 16. So Paul told us who the seed was. The seed was to be Jesus Christ, the Messiah. And on the cross, he crushed the head of Satan.

Amen. It's easy for us to see that he was talking about the enmity between the serpent Satan and the seed, the Messiah, Jesus Christ. But what I want you to understand is the devil didn't know who the seed was going to be.

I want you to realize the devil's not all knowing. He didn't know who the seed was going to be. All he knew is there was going to be the seed of the woman.

Amen. And he knew that he, this seed, notice it said his heel, didn't say her heel, said his heel. He knew that a seed was going to come. Singular. A seed.

Masculine. Amen. Amen was going to come and crush his head. But he didn't know who the man was. And so what did he do? He turned his enmity, his rage, his anger against the woman that was going to produce the seed. And so from that point in the Garden of Eden, Satan went after women. And from that point on, women became subordinate and under the thumb in general of men. The subjugation of women began in Eden and it escalated.

It escalated over to the centuries and it's still in existence today. It's when the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel of Jesus Christ is the great emancipation. That is when Jesus came to set the captives free and that included women. And I'm telling you that today everywhere on this planet where the gospel of Christ is not in effect, women are in subjugation. Women are treated as inferior and second class. And in many cases they are in the worst slavery that ever was in the sex trade. Little girls as young as seven and eight and nine years old.

If you go into the eastern cultures in Asia, you go to Thailand, you go to all the nations around there, you go to China, you go to India, even Japan that is westernized. The women are second class to men. They're second class. If you go anywhere under an Islamic nation, women are so subjugated that they don't have as many rights as some animals and pets have. Where the gospel of Christ is not in effect, whether the nation is godly or spiritual, even if they're backslidden and they got all kinds of sin like we have in America, the fact is the gospel set women free.

Amen. How many see that point? I'm going to show you that even under the old covenant of your Bible. If you read the Old Testament, it was a patriarchal society. Women were subjugated to men.

I'm just going to quickly go through these points. Women occupied a subordinate position in many ways. They were treated as inferior to men, both spiritually and socially. Now this differed from family to family. It differed from father to father and husband to husband to husband and even spiritually from rabbi to rabbi. It differed because some men were more controlling over their wives and daughters than other men were. And of course, a person's personality plays into things. If a man was more gentle natured and more loving and compassionate, he treated his wife and daughters better.

But in general, women were treated really like property. Listen to this Jewish prayer. It's not in the Bible. Don't ask me where it is. It's in the Jewish writings.

Listen to this. God, I thank thee that I was not born a dog. I thank thee that I was not born a Gentile.

And I thank thee that I was not born a woman. Now this was the mindset amongst God's people. Daughters were closely supervised by their fathers. They were kept mostly secluded and they were kept from any situation that was even appeared to have any potential immorality connected to it. A man was not to touch a woman except his wife or when his daughters were young, not even accidentally.

He shouldn't be that close to her. He was not to talk to any woman except for his wife or his sister or his young daughters. And he was never to be alone with a woman at any time for any reason except his wife. Now, when a girl reached a marriageable age, she was literally traded by her father to her husband to be because he would have received a bride price from the husband to be.

And if the family of the bride was well to do, or if the girl was particularly pretty, then they could demand a higher bride price. And, you know, we think about Jacob. He wanted Rachel and he worked seven years and got Leah and he turned around and worked seven more years to get Rachel because he didn't have any money for a bride price. So he had to work for it. That meant all he got for 14 years was the food he ate and his two wives.

And here's the thing about it. The girl had nothing to say about it. The man could have been 90 years old with one foot in the grave. And if the father says you're marrying him, she married him. One of Muhammad's wives was only nine years old when he took her.

Nine years old. I'm telling you the subjugation of women outside of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, once a girl was married, the role of a wife was basically this. She was a housekeeper and a child bearer with many pregnancies. The more children she had, the more she was valued. So you can understand why if a woman didn't have a child, how that was such a heartbreaker and a stigma to her. It was the only way she could hope to have any value in her husband's eyes was to give him a lot of children. Remember when Leah kept having sons and having sons and Rachel wasn't having anything and Leah finally named the one son and said, now maybe I will be esteemed in my husband's eyes because I've given him six sons.

Maybe now he'll love me. After a woman finally went through nine months of pregnancy and gave birth, after childbirth, she was considered unclean. And she had to go through a process of purification to be clean again. And long as she's unclean, she cannot be socially around other people. She couldn't go out in public.

She couldn't go to the synagogue. She could be with her family until she got purified. And get this, if she had a boy baby, it took 40 days of this purification process. But if she had a girl, it took 80 days.

What is the logic behind that? If you think of something, please tell me, because I haven't thought of anything yet. I'm just trying to show you how it was for women. If a wife displeased her husband for any reason, any reason, and you've heard brother Hardy say, if she burnt his toast and you might think brother Hardy is just exaggerating. Let me tell you something that's in the Jewish writings. It's in the writings.

It's in the writings. Any reason, such as she burnt his toast, he could divorce her just like that. But the woman was not granted the right to divorce, even if it was for something egregious like adultery or like abuse.

The woman had no right to divorce at all. And the man could divorce for anything, no matter how trivial or trite. Now get this, if a woman was suspected of adultery, I said suspected. And how many know a jealous spirit can jump on a person. It can jump on a husband and he will all of a sudden get under this delusion that his wife is unfaithful. And it happens the other way around too. But suspected of committed adultery, she had to undergo a frightful water ordeal.

Numbers five. Now, but here's the thing about it. There was no such test for a man if he was suspected. And very briefly, this is what would happen. The husband suspects his wife of adultery. So he brings her before the priest and tells the priest, blah, blah, blah. So the priest makes the woman sit down in a chair. He goes and gets holy water. He takes dirt from the tabernacle floor and mixes it in with the holy water.

And it's called a jealousy offering. And he says to the woman, if no man has lain with thee, you are free from the bitter curse this water causes. But if you have lain with a man, the Lord make thee a curse among the people when the Lord shall make thy thigh to rot and thy belly to swell.

The woman said, amen, amen, and drank the water. If she was innocent because her husband was just jealous for no reason. If she was innocent, then she would not too much longer after that, she would actually conceive. And if she wasn't innocent, the curse was on her. Your thigh to rot and your belly to swell.

That sounds gruesome. But here's the thing of it. If she wasn't guilty, it didn't matter. The guy was off the hook either way.

How many see what I'm saying here? Women had no property rights. She could not inherit from her father's estate unless and only if there were no sons.

Only if a father had only girls and no sons, then and only could a girl inherit from her father's estate. And then if she married, she could only marry within her tribe. If she was from the tribe of Judah, she could not marry from the tribe of Levi because they had to keep the property in the tribe. So that meant that she was restricted in even who she could marry. A woman could not serve as a witness in any kind of legal proceeding.

Even if she was there and saw everything in person, she could not be an eyewitness account. A woman could not share equally in any way in the worship. When David instituted the worship, bringing music into the tabernacle, which they didn't have it under Moses, but David brought it in, the women could not participate in the worship. In fact, in order to have a worship service, you had to have 10 men. You could not have nine men and one woman. You had to have 10 men. And then the men and the women were separated. The women sat on one side and the men sat on the other side. And the singing was only done by the men. Amen. So I'm glad that things have definitely changed in the music department because the women were not allowed to sing.

Now, listen to this. The women as a rule. Now, remember, every father was different and some fathers were more were kinder and gentler. But as a rule, women were not allowed to study the Torah like the young men were. Think about that.

In fact, listen to this. Some rabbis went so far as to declare, let the words of the law be burned rather than committed to women. Now, I know for a fact that there were some fathers that did not believe that because all you have to do is go to First Samuel, the first chapter, and read the words that Hannah said. All you have to do is go to Luke in the first chapter and read the Magnificat by Mary. It's filled with scriptures, filled with Psalms. So obviously there's at least two women that knew the word of God. But as I'm giving you the generalizations.

OK, now, this especially hits hard with me to think that I would not be able to read and study the word of God because I'm a woman. Well, I'm telling you, I could just couldn't even live. I'm serious.

I'm like Job. He said, I esteem thy word above my necessary food. All right. I gave you all the bad news.

Let's get to the good news. Galatians three and verse 26. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus, for as many of you as have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek or Gentile. There is neither or Gentile. There is neither bond nor free.

There is neither male nor female. For ye are all one in Christ Jesus. Hallelujah. Amen. Jesus came with the gospel and tore down all the walls, removed all the barriers between Jew and Gentile, slave and free and male and female. And now we can all claim God as our Father.

Amen. While we're in Galatians, look at Galatians four six. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his son into your hearts, crying Abba, Father, wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son. And if a son, then an heir of God through Christ Jesus.

Now, let me clear something up here. Here we are back into this son thing. So you may think, well, that doesn't say anything about daughters. I want you to understand here that the word sons here is not there for the sake of gender, because if it was, it would have just contradicted what we just read. There's neither male nor female in the same letter that Paul wrote to the same people. If it meant the male gender, he would have been contradicting what he just said.

There's neither male or female. So what does it mean? It's talking in relationship to relationship that, as I told you, only sons could inherit. Only sons could inherit. But he's saying legally, your sons, you can inherit your heirs of God.

Isn't that what it just said? You're no more servant instead of saying a son. You could say you're a legal heir in Christ Jesus. In fact, Paul said in Romans the eighth chapter, we have not received a spirit of fear again to bondage, but we have received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry Abba, Father. And listen to this, the spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Hallelujah. So the gospel is the great emancipator and brought women not just that we're heirs, but we're equal heirs. We're joint heirs and the word joint means equal.

And let me tell you something. On the day of Pentecost, there was absolutely no separation of the men from the women. Turn in your Bibles to Acts the first chapter, verse 13. Jesus had told them to go into Jerusalem and he said, wait, wait until you are in dude with power from on high.

You're going to receive the Holy Ghost that I've told you about. Now let's see who was there in Acts 1 13. And when they were coming, they went up into an upper room.

Now here we're going to find out who's there. Where abode Peter, James and John and Andrew and Philip and Thomas and Bartholomew and Matthew and James, the son of Alphaeus and Simon Zelates and Judas, the brother of James. These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus and with his brethren. So here in the upper room, we have the 11 disciples. We have Mary, the mother of Jesus. We have Jesus brothers, because he actually had brothers. Mary had more children later. They did not believe on Jesus until after the resurrection. But when he raised up, they realized, oh my goodness, he is who he said he was.

Amen. And they were there with the women. Where were they? All in one place, all in one accord.

No women sitting over here and men sitting over there. They were all in one place and one accord. And when the Holy Ghost fell, he fell on all of them and they all began to speak with tongues.

Amen. He fell on them all at the same time. Now, of course, they all emptied out into the streets of Jerusalem. They were so high in the spirit. People thought they were drunk, which was really unusual because it was nine o'clock in the morning.

And I can imagine it was very unusual to see these women acting this way, too. And they said, what is going on? And Peter stood up to give his great message acts to and look at verse 16.

They said, what's going on here? And Peter said, this is that which was spoken by the Prophet Joel. It shall come to pass in the last day, sayeth God, I will pour my spirit out upon all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams. And all my servants and all my handmaidens will I pour out in those days of my spirit and they shall prophesy.

Hallelujah. So he said what we heard Joel say, that is what you're seeing before you. And the word prophesy in the Greek does not just mean to get up and say thus sayeth the Lord. It simply means to flow forth orally.

It means to be under inspiration and it just flows out of you. Therefore, it takes in testifying and witnessing and exhorting and preaching. Amen and ministering as well as prophesying. He said, I'm going to pour this anointing out on your daughters, just like your sons and on your handmaidens, just like your servants. Now, all those points that I've talked to you about that were taboos for women under the old covenant, I'm going to show you how Jesus broke them in the new covenant in no particular order, just in the order that I came about to do it.

Okay. But you will remember from what I told you, all the taboos against women and see how Jesus handled them. Turn in your Bible to Matthew, the 19th chapter, we talked about the fact that women had absolutely no right to divorce at all for any reason. And the man could divorce for whatever whim he decided. He just got bored with her.

This was how it went. And so some of the Pharisees came to Jesus and they were wanting really to trick him in his words. They really didn't want to get a message on marriage and divorce, but they got one. But they came and they said to him, is it lawful for a man to put away? Now the word put away means divorce. Put away is old King James for divorce.

Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for every cause? And he answered and said unto them, have you not read that he, which made them in the beginning, made them what male and female? And he said, for this call shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave, cleave to his wife means to be glued together. And they too shall be one flesh where for they are no more two, but one flesh.

What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder. So they heard him say that. And they said, well, if that's the case, why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement and to divorce her? And he said unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you, allowed you, not commanded you, but allowed you to divorce your wives. But it was not so from the beginning.

That wasn't God's plan. But because you men are so hard hearted, basically just let me say he had to give her a divorce paper because if he didn't give her a divorce paper and she didn't have any paper, it was assumed that she was unfaithful. If he gave her a paper, he was saying, uh, I'm just getting rid of her cause I'm tired of her. So she could go and marry someone else.

Okay. He said, because of the hardness of your heart, but let me tell you what I say unto you, whosoever shall put away or divorce his wife, except it be for fornication, except it be for unfaithfulness and shall marry another. He, the guy, commits adultery and whoso marries her, which is the way to commit adultery.

So what Jesus did was he leveled the playing field. He says, first of all, let's get something straight. He did not command you to give her a divorce paper. He allowed you to give it to her so that she would not be branded as being adulterous. He said, but I'm telling you that God only did that because you have gotten so hard hearted the way you treat your wives and God wasn't going to let you just treat them like some property that you discard.

But he said, let me tell you the way it is. If you put her away, if you divorce her and she has not committed adultery, then you go and marry somebody else. You're an adulterer because you don't have any grounds. Only grounds is fornication. Now, speaking of adultery, John the eighth chapter, Jesus in the temple teaching and they brought to him a woman and they really made it clear this woman was caught in the act. No, he said, she said, caught in the act of adultery. Now they said, Moses said she should be stoned. What do you say? They were hoping to catch Jesus again because if Jesus went against what Moses said, they could say he's against Moses.

Amen. And so they didn't know what he was going to do. And the thing about Jesus is he didn't even mention the fact.

Where's the man? Because Moses said in Leviticus, the 20th chapter, both the man and the woman were to be put to death. So if I was Jesus, that's the first thing I would have said, why didn't you bring the man?

Since you caught him in the act, he had to be there. But Jesus didn't do that. He wasn't going to get into them with a war of words. Instead, he said, you're right.

Go for it. Whoever amongst you is without sin, you cast the first stone. And he knelt down and began to write in the dirt. Oh, how I wish that somebody would have taken notes that day. And would have written down what he wrote in the dirt.

We don't know when we have all kinds of assumptions and presumptions. I kind of like the one that allows us to write down. A lot of preachers say he probably started writing down their sins because he said, whoever's without sin cast the first stone.

And here's what I like about it. Each one of them began to walk out one at a time, one at a time from the eldest to the youngest. I don't know. It means something.

I don't know what it means, but I wish I did. All I can tell you is he wrote something down wrote down the sin of the oldest and the next one and the next one. And as he wrote down their sins or something about them, we don't know. He might've wrote their names down for all we know. We don't know what it was, but whatever it was, the Bible says convicted by their own conscience.

They left one by one, the eldest to the youngest. And then Jesus turned to the woman and he said unto her, where are your accusers? Does no man condemn thee?

And she said, no man, Lord. And Jesus said, neither do I condemn thee. Now I've got to be fair to the scriptures.

A lot of people stop right here. A lot of people that are caught in sin and they're trying to make light of it say, and you people, you're just out there casting stones. And Jesus said, if you, you cast it, you know, you're a sinner. And he said, I don't condemn you. But listen what he also said, go thy way and sin no more. He did not downplay her sin. He did not whitewash her sin. Jesus will never whitewash sin. He forgives it.

He washes it in the blood. Amen. So he did not condemn her, but he told her to go your way and sin no more. He warned her in love. And you know, I believe with all my heart that that woman never fell into that sin again. I do not think she ever, ever repeated that. I just don't believe it.

Do you? So we see that how Jesus treated women, even when they were fallen women. Amen. What an eye opening message, Gospel game changer for women. God created male and female in his image with equality and dominion in the earth. When they sin, the rules of engagement changed. And part of Eve's judgment was subordination to her husband. God also revealed that her seed would crush the serpent's head. At this, 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 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 of Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203, or go online to soundoffaith.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.