The Young Christian Woman #2

Thanks for joining us on The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello again, I'm Bill Wright. Today Don continues with our series titled, Living as God's People, with a message titled, The Young Christian Woman. Have your Bible open and ready as Don teaches God's people God's word from The Truth Pulpit. Look at Proverbs chapter 31 verse 25 with me. Proverbs 31 verse 25. Proverbs chapter 31 verses 25 through 37. Ladies, this is a high calling.

This is what God calls you to in verse 25. Strength and dignity are her clothing and she smiles at the future. She opens her mouth in wisdom. And the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. She has an optimistic disposition. She's not lazy.

She's wise. She's feeding off of God's word in one way or another. And so this is the life to which God calls a married woman.

I realize that there are some teachers that would try to go and regulate it more specifically than what I'm saying here and say you can do this and you can't do that. Beloved, that's kind of missing the point from the start. What you need to see, what you need to grasp are these fundamental spiritual virtues, this fundamental direction of the word of God in your life.

And as you do that, God by the Holy Spirit will shape the attitudes of your heart that will help you make the right decisions as you work in concert with your husband in life. Scripture deals with this preeminently at the level of principle, not in do's and don'ts. But we can at least say this much, ladies. And in teaching Titus 2, you say things that offend the world and in Titus 2 you say things that are sooner or later going to affect and offend ladies who claim the name of Christ. This needs to be said. What I'm about to say needs to be said. Godly women with children do not arrange their lives so that childcare centers or other family members bear the primary weight of raising their children.

They do not have the right to love your children and to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And that in itself, that's a full-time job. That's day-to-day training over time. And so we need to be aware of this. We need to be mindful of this. And for those ladies, those young women that in our church that do this, and I know that you've arranged your lives and some of you have given up careers and don't exercise your giftedness in order to have the time to devote to your children, I respect that and I affirm that greatly. And we just need to understand that this is the calling of God. Your husband and your children, ladies, are your responsibility before God. I'm going to be rather explicit in what I'm about to say because I believe this needs to be said and it is in perfect keeping with the spirit of the text that we're looking at in Titus chapter 2 verses 4 and 5. Ladies, those of you with children, you need to understand and you need to think like this.

I say it gently and I say it as discreetly as I know how to say. Your pro-creative activity brought those children into the world. As a result of that, as a result of your activity, those children are now your responsibility. They are your responsibility to raise and to nurture and to care for. It just follows. It's not the place of a godly woman to delegate that.

She embraces it. These are the children God has given to me. A godly woman, especially in the day in which we live, says I have the high privilege of being a shield against the wicked designs of the world trying to groom my children for another agenda. I have the high privilege of being able to defend my children against that, to train them so that they won't be sucked into that satanic evil activity that the world has their designs to set them upon. That's a high, high calling. That is a great, great privilege and the godly woman sees that. This isn't just something that Scripture imposes externally. This is what a godly woman says.

That's what I want. That's a high and lofty calling. Now, continuing in application here and in things that I just think need to be said.

Ladies, young ladies in particular, you need to do this. You need to pay close attention to the voices that you let influence you. Because not everybody, even within the walls of a local church, are going to encourage you in this direction. You need to be mindful of the fact that there are worldly people even within the church of Christ.

Worldly people who would look on you in your difficult marriage and say, you don't deserve that. Who does he think he is? You need to assert yourself.

I wouldn't blame you if you left him. You can hear stuff like that and if you search hard enough for voices, you'll find someone to tell you what you want to hear if that's what you want. But let's not play games and pretend that just because it comes within the walls of a local church that it's godly counsel.

You have to evaluate what the substance of the counsel is and you can screen it all with Titus chapter 2 verse 4. Is this person telling me to love my husband? Is she telling me how I can do that better? Is she encouraging me in the direction of being faithful and patient with my children? Or is she telling me something else?

Look, if she's telling you something else, put your fingers in your ear and as you're walking out of the door away from her, go, blah, blah, blah, I'm not listening to you. Speaking metaphorically there. You've got to pay attention to who it is that is influencing you. And ladies, it's always going to be harder at the start to listen to an older godly woman who is calling you to biblical sacrifice.

It's always going to be more difficult to the flesh to do that. And let me just go further. Ask me about this message at the leadership development class in September. I'll be there.

I'll be leading that one. Ask me about this message and I'll talk more about it at that time in response to a question if someone asks me about it. But ladies, this is another thing that I need to say. I'm a pastor and I have responsibility for the souls in front of me. And I have an earnest responsibility before God to help, to encourage, to warn, even to admonish at times on points like this because it is right here. Right what we're talking about here can be the inflection point for the way entire families unfold. And so yes, as a pastor I'm going to say things without regard to whether it offends somebody or not. I don't care.

I'm more concerned to protect souls than I am to offend somebody who is stung by the application of the word of God to their heart. Young ladies, young married ladies, you need to understand and consider this. Be mindful of the fact that your peers may not be the best voices of counsel. The mere fact that you're in the same position of life does not mean that that's necessarily the best place to find counsel on how to develop and how to respond to difficulties in your life.

Maybe yes, maybe no. Understand and look to the fact in Titus chapter 2, look at it again there with me, Titus chapter 2, that God assigns the responsibility for that counsel to an older woman, an older woman who's been there, who's been through it, whose life you can look at and say, you know, did she come out reasonably godly on the other side? Does she speak from experience in these things? And is she calling me to love my husband and to love my children? Scripture calls you to look for older women who affirm biblical principles to you, even if it's hard to hear.

And beloved, that means, that means something. You know, Scripture did not give this prerogative, this responsibility to women in their 20s to be telling teenagers how they ought to live. That's not the pattern. I know, I know that there are arrogant young women who would try to do that. I know that full well and would try to say, I'm older than you, therefore you need to do what I tell you to do. You young ladies, look at life and think about what you're doing and understand that if you're in your parents' home, you're a teenager or something, the voice of authority in your life comes through your parents, comes through your elders, not through some young woman that maybe got saved two years ago and is calling you to things that are not even biblical.

You just have to be discerning and consider, who is this that is seeking to influence my life? So, godly mothers understand that Scripture defines their priority. It's not about finding a career. It's not about having girlfriends as your primary focus of life. It's certainly not about other aspects of life and social media and things like that as what your world revolves around. It revolves around your relationships, Scripture says.

Now, so much more that I wish I could say, but time is already failing us. Let's go to a second priority here for young women here, and that's the priority of righteousness. The priority of righteousness, Titus chapter 2 verse 5 says that they are to be sensible and pure. Purity here is a positive expression of the Spirit against adultery. In 1 Timothy 2 verses 9 and 10, you can turn back just a couple of pages in your Bible to that.

We looked at this last time as I recall. Understand that the call of Christ to godliness to a woman is internal in the way that she thinks and what her virtues are internally. It manifests itself on the outside as well. Paul says, likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works as is proper for women making a claim to godliness. The idea is don't dress in a way that calls attention to yourself.

I'm not going to talk about skirt lengths or neck lines or anything like that. The call of Scripture is more principled than that. Don't dress in a way that calls attention to yourself. Be sensible about it. Be pure. God calls you to cultivate virtue in your life, not to present yourself in a worldly appearance.

And ladies, again, you young ladies still in high school, what an opportunity to cultivate this now in your heart and to look for ladies, look for those who model this for you as an example to follow rather than taking your cues from your immodestly dressed friends. These things need to be said. There's a priority of righteousness there, priority of relationships. Thirdly, you see the priority of residence, the priority of residence. The Bible calls, Christ calls a Christian woman to make the home her priority in life. Look at it here in verse 4 and understand that this is not me saying this. This is what God says in His Word. If you don't like this, you need to understand who it is that you're objecting to and let that define the terms of the debate in your heart because it's the Bible that says, it's God that says in verse 5 that older women are to encourage younger women to be sensible, pure, here it is, workers at home. Workers at home.

The center point, the fulcrum around which your life operates is your home. That's what Scripture says. As I said earlier, in light of Proverbs 31, it's too much to say that she can only and exclusively be at home. We don't want to say more than what Scripture says, but friends, beloved men and women in Christ, isn't it obvious as you look out at the world around us, you look at employment trends and all of that, isn't it obvious that our threat today is not Christian women being home too much? That's not the threat to our society. That's not the threat to our church.

The threat today, speaking broadly, speaking beyond the walls of Truth Community Church, just speaking generally, the threat is that they're home too little. They're not home enough. They've bought into the lie that quality time can make up for absence six days a week. They've bought into the lie that we can just kind of pigeon hole a time where I'll instruct the child. It's not the way child raising works. The most strategic times of child raising occur in unscheduled moments when a kid blurts something out of his mouth and all of a sudden you've got a moment to influence them for Christ. I'm grateful that we have women that realize that and make it their priority.

As you consider the priority of residents, you realize that it's not just being at home. Verse 5, look at it there again with me. To be workers at home, to be kind, being subject to their own husbands.

This is completely counter-cultural. This is contrary to probably the majority of teaching and what professes to be the evangelical church. Women are to line up under the authority of their husband to recognize his leadership and to honor it.

Ephesians 5, verse 22, Colossians 3, 18, 1 Peter 3, verse 1. Be submissive to your husband. Be submissive to your husband. Submit to your husband. Understand, men, that a wise husband listens to a wise wife.

Here's what she has to say. Part of the love that the husband gives to his wife is to consider her feelings, to give her opportunity to speak, to weigh that maybe she's got better ideas on some things than you do, and to calculate that in. But ladies, the call of Scripture is on you to be subject to your own husband. To your own husband, not to every man in the world.

The wife follows the authority of her husband. And another thing that I want to say to you young ladies, unmarried ladies, and I'm speaking as your friend. I'm speaking as one that is utterly on your side, looking to protect you in this moment in which I'm about to speak here. Ladies, young ladies, beware. Beware of a man who tells you in your dating relationship that you are to listen only to him. Beware, because that is manipulation.

That is control. That is someone who is trying to insulate you from the biblical voices of counsel that might caution you against going into a relationship that would prove to be to your ultimate harm. Listen to the older women in your lives. Listen to your parents. Listen to your godly friends when they say, I'm concerned about this. Don't break off relationships because someone says I love you enough that I'm concerned about you.

What kind of fool acts like that? I ask you. You see, Titus 2, ladies, Titus 2 assumes that young women will be receiving this counsel from outside. Listening, having a teachable spirit, having the humility to realize maybe I don't know everything here.

Maybe I'm vulnerable. Maybe I need to pay heed. If I could get a young woman of marriageable age to listen to anything that I said on a practical level about life, that would be it. I would plead with them to listen to that and to heed it. I know too many stories of how it turns out when that counsel is rejected.

And I love you enough to tell you. You know, and I realize, let's be pastoral here. I realize that for some of you, maybe, you've been bruised by young men who abuse the very point that I'm talking about. And you carry some scars over that. Maybe even having sinned with him in ways that you now deeply regret. Ladies, understand that the grace of God comes to you. The grace of God can restore you.

Christ can heal and restore your heart in these things as you come to Him. But let the fact that you laid your hand on the stove and your hand got burned, let that be the object lesson that says, I don't want burned like that again. I'm going to be more careful next time. And you parents of teenage girls, you've got an opportunity and you have an absolute right and prerogative to speak into their lives about these things.

And you should. To protect them from men that you should see if you're paying attention might bring ultimate harm to your daughter. Priority of residence. Fourth and finally, the priority of revelation. Paul gives the motivating reason for this instruction at the end of verse five.

Ladies, you love Christ. You want to glorify Him with your life. All of these things of which scripture points you to is for that ultimate end. For the word of Christ incarnate and for the word of Christ written. Look at the end of verse five. So that the word of God will not be dishonored. There's a priority of revelation here.

Point number four. The revelation of God. Ladies, ladies, what Paul is saying here is that this is the kind of life that honors Jesus Christ. This is the kind of life that makes the gospel of Christ distinct and makes it attractive to those who observe. And you honor the word of God by this kind of lifestyle.

And so, again, I'm just speaking bluntly today. A godly woman like the one that we've described here today from scripture testifies powerfully against today's lesbian mindset. That hostile, angry mindset that's at odds with the world.

That wants to fight with everybody. This godly, reverent, kind, sensible, loving life shows that there's another way. Shows that there is a better way. And testifies and upholds by their very lifestyle the living word of God. Dear ladies, dear ladies in Christ, based on scripture, I call you to this life. I call you to Christ if you do not know Him. I call you to model this from your heart and in your life decisions. A godly wife calls the world to repent by her very life.

Ladies, I can make you one human promise here. As you live this way, Truth Community Church will be here to support you as you do. And more importantly, Christ Himself will attend you and watch over you with His grace as you seek to obey Him in this way in response to His saving work in your life.

Now it's up to you to decide what you do. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, with part one of a message titled The Young Christian Woman here on The Truth Pulpit. Now just before we go, here again is Don with a closing thought. Well, my friend, I just want to thank you for listening to The Truth Pulpit and also to extend an invitation to you. If you live in the Cincinnati area or even if you're just visiting in the area, perhaps as a tourist or something like that, let me invite you to come and visit us live at Truth Community Church for one of our services. We meet each Sunday at 9 o'clock a.m. and Tuesday evenings at 7 p.m. And I'm usually in the pulpit during those times. You can find our address at thetruthpulpit.com.

That's the church address for Truth Community Church at thetruthpulpit.com. And if you come, please come up and introduce yourself to me. I would love to meet you.

Say hello and see where you're from and those kinds of things. Again, visit our church, Truth Community Church. Find our meeting address at thetruthpulpit.com. Thanks, Don. And now for Don Green, I'm Bill Wright, inviting you back next time as Don continues to teach God's people God's Word from the truth pulpit.