Retracing Our Footsteps, Part 2

When looking through the lens of God's Word, are there any true differences between men and women and their roles? It isn't an American problem. It isn't a Cretan problem.

It's a problem with humanity. Both Adam and Eve were made in the image of God. Adam's headship in marriage was established before the fall of man into sin.

Distinctions of masculinity and femininity are enhanced. They're ordained by God as part of the created order, which means they echo out there in every human heart. Most people today have concluded that things like traditional family roles are outdated and irrelevant in modern culture. Problem with that belief is that God's view of family roles isn't based on culture.

God's Word transcends culture and doesn't change with the times. What's your view on the role of women in the home? Do you think that mothers should stay home with their kids? Should they pursue a career?

Today, Stephen Davey tells us what God's Word has to say on the subject in a message that he's calling, Retracing Our Footsteps Home. I thought it was interesting to read the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. They've been conducting a one hundred million dollar investigation. They've tracked one thousand one hundred children from birth through preschool to track and identify behavioral issues and maturity, developmental issues and all of that for those children that have been in daycare at the level of 30 to 40 hours a week.

They found that over 30 hours brings on significant issues. But here's a secular organization writing. And I quote, We have found that the total number of hours a child is without a parent, primarily their mother from birth through preschool, the number of hours away or without a parent matters. A hundred million dollars to find out it matters. I would have been willing to tell them that for only one million dollars. Paul is teaching what even even a secular society can pick up on.

Your priority is first and foremost, the home, especially when it matters most. There's another study I came across dealing with college age girls. They're tracking now developmental issues going all the way through high school and into college. This article a couple of years ago was published in Psychology Today. So, you know, it's got to be right.

It caught my attention. It talked about the pressure young girls are facing concerning their image. And they write, and I quote again, a secular source, Deprived of an internal compass, girls are competing to be everything. Because they saw their mothers trying to be everything. They're turning colleges into incubators for eating disorders and numerous unrealistic self-imposed expectations. Now get this, and I quote, those who are not mentored by parents are not inoculated against peer pressure and wind up turning to their peers and the media for guidance. And then the article quotes from an article from Harvard University which says, quote, it blames a girl's image obsession on the culture of neglect.

Kids, they write, are effectively raising each other. It sounds like there are some people in our culture that are beginning to say the emperor has no clothes. But the culture at large continues to disparage homemaking and motherhood. And Paul tells these believers in the first century and the 21st century the opposite. In fact, he says what we need to do is we need to focus a spotlight and stop a little bit to applaud and praise these subjects called motherhood and marriage.

What we have to do is retrace our steps back home. Paul goes on to refer to not only the priority of these young wives and mothers in the home, but their mentality. He has this mentality to pursue in the middle of verse five, simply drops in another attribute. It's the word kindness. It comes from a word that can be translated and often is in the New Testament, goodness, Jesus of God. It's a goal, obviously, for these women.

All of these are goals, just as 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 are goals for godly men. In our language, you could understand this word to refer to good heartedness. It means that her desire is to do whatever is good for her children, to do whatever is good for her husband.

Her mentality then has this filter. She asks herself the question, is this good for my children? Is this good for my husband?

Is this good for me? Is this a good thing to do, a good thing to say, a good way to act, whatever, a good way to provide? This is her mentality. It's geared toward goodness, which is an attribute of the character of God. Now Paul goes on to refer not just to her priority and her mentality, but I want to spend the balance of the time then with her humility. He writes further in verse 5, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored. In other words, a secular culture knows that someone who claims to be a believer, a believing wife, who dishonors her husband, can lead them, knowing how she ought to be acting, to dishonor the word of God.

It's kind of interesting. Paul is saying the world is watching us, and it is. But what you need to know here is that Paul is using, in the original language, what's called the middle voice for this verb, and that's significant. Because Paul is not telling men, this is your new theme verse for marriage, he's not telling men to go home and command that they be subject to you.

It's the middle voice. What that means is he's telling the women to voluntarily be submissive to their husbands, and he's commending them to do it as a God-ordained role. So you could render this phrase to continually place themselves under the authority of their own husbands.

Now, if you've been a believer for any period of time, you know that Paul expands on this idea, bringing men into his list of subjects. In Ephesians 5, in his letter to the Colossian church, and he refers to the wife as the church, in his analogy. And she is to respond to her husband as the church responds in submission to Jesus Christ. And then he also tells the husband to be a loving representative, in fact, to act toward her as Jesus Christ acts toward the church.

He is to love his wife as Christ loves the church. And I can tell you from personal experience that my wife would also have a much easier time submitting to me if I acted more like Jesus. But still this idea of submission, that there's some kind of order and arrangement, it's like drinking sour milk today.

But I want you to think for a moment before you throw the milk out. Everyone in a well-ordered society is submitting to somebody. In fact, Ephesians 5 tells us all to submit to each other in unique ways. We submit to one another. But God has ordered arrangements for that kind of authority and submission. Think of it this way, children submit to parents. Students submit to teachers. Basketball players submit to referees.

Citizens submit to town councils. And when you drive out of here, there's going to be policemen out there on Tryon and out here on Holly Springs Road and they're going to wave their hand at you. And you're going to more than likely, I would hope, submit to him.

And it will not have anything to do with what kind of person he is. You're not going to roll down your window and say, you know, why should I follow your direction? I'm the one who just came from church.

You skipped. We paid him to skip church, so don't get onto him, okay? Your obedience doesn't have anything to do with who he is. It has to do with what kind of authority he's been given. It has nothing to do with he's a better person than me or he's superior to me. He just happens to have authority that I don't have. And it's a good idea to submit to him. And by the way, authority isn't a privilege to be exploited to build up your ego.

It's a responsibility to be carried out for the benefit of those under your care. And authority happens to be the arrangement of God for all of life. According to God's design, the wife is under the authority of her husband.

He'll ultimately give an account for her. The husband is under the authority of the elders, as well as everyone else in the family, the church family. The elders are under the authority of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is under the authority of God the Father. Jesus Christ is equal to the Father, Philippians 2. In essence, equally divine, yet he subordinates himself willingly to the will of the Father. So you read about him in the Gospel saying, I've come to do the will of my Father. Paul wrote to the Corinthians this way. He says, I want you to understand that Christ is the head that is the authority of every man. And the man is the head of a woman. And God, the Father, is the head of Christ.

1 Corinthians 11, 3. Now part of the problem with this concept of headship and submission runs counterculture to everything women may have been raised to believe, which is why Titus needed older women to practically teach younger women, wives and mothers, as new believers in Christ. And part of our problem, I don't know what was going on in the first century, but I know part of our problem are the buzzwords that are created. Buzzwords like equality and equal rights. Without giving any thought to it, I mean, we've got to say, we've got to have equal rights. Listen, I don't have an equal right to live in the White House. If I wanted to, I couldn't.

They would throw me out. But I'm equal in essence. But I'm not equal in that authority. The word equality can be deceptive depending on how you're using it. In fact, Erwin Lutzer points out in one of his books on this issue of feminists have extended the definition of equality beyond equal treatment and equal value to now embrace equal roles for men and women. That is, the place of women should be interchangeable with the place of men. Whatever men do, women should be free to do, and all gender-based roles should be abolished, end quote. Even the church now is growing more and more divided on whether or not a woman can preach or pastor. Surely they have equal rights to the highest level of authority in the body. I mean, aren't we all equal? So we've got to take the prohibition that Paul delivers to women and not teach men. That's got to mean that's something back then. Or maybe just as a reference to them teaching their husbands.

I guess that means they can't sit in the audience. But aren't we all equal? Yes, we are equal in our essence. We are both male and female created in the image of God. We are equal in the plan of salvation. We are equal in our individual priesthood before God. A woman doesn't need to pray through a man to reach God.

We are equal in our accountability before God. Adam will not be there saying, well, let's talk about that woman again. No, he tried that one time.

It didn't work. Eve isn't going to say, well, what about that snake? No, we are individually and entirely accountable to God. But equality in essence does not mean equality in function. Or I could move into the White House. What we've now inherited from 40 years of worldly feminism and about a decade of evangelical feminism is not only the fact that we're losing the God-ordained structure for the home and the family and now the church, but a tragic failure to glory in and embrace the distinctions of men and women and define contentment as we submit to the Holy Spirit in his arrangement and contentment and satisfaction in what he's created and ordered.

The lines are all just sort of you color now wherever you want to color. But you need to understand it. I want to spend a minute or two on the fact that this problem isn't just 40 years old.

You've got to go all the way back to the original home. It began in the Garden of Eden. And if you want to look, you can turn to Genesis chapter 3 verse 16.

We're going to spend just a moment here. But I want to show you this because this is where it all started. It isn't an American problem. It isn't a Cretan problem.

It's a problem with humanity. Both Adam and Eve were made in the image of God. Adam's headship in marriage was established before the fall of man into sin. In fact, it wasn't until Adam ate the fruit.

You go back and look at it. It wasn't until Adam ate the fruit that their eyes were opened. Her eyes weren't opened until he sinned because he's her head and authority. Distinctions of masculinity and femininity are enhanced. They're ordained by God as part of the created order, which means they echo out there in every human heart. They echo because it's been stamped on their heart that a man ought to act like a man and a woman ought to act like a woman. But the fall of man in sin introduced distortions in relationships. It distorted and twisted sexual relationships. It distorted and twisted and diminished the marriage and every other relationship. Part of the curse that God pronounced on Adam and Eve had to do with their own relationship and every marriage that would come after them. And so before they were exiled from the garden, God told Eve that now as a result of her sin, as part of her fallen nature, that she would have this desire for her husband.

Now that sounds like a good thing and the men go, that's a great thing. Well, we're given a nuance of what that means because it appears for the first time. It appears again in Genesis chapter 4 verse 7, which helps us understand what the Hebrew language means. It's repeated as God is warning Cain, who is about to murder his brother, Abel. He says to Cain, listen, sin is crouching at the door and its desire is for you.

Same phrase. And you must master it. In other words, Cain, sin wants to control your life. Sin wants to dominate your life.

It wants to master you, but you must master it. So God is telling Eve, before she's exiled with Adam, and the daughters of Eve, by the way, which includes every female in this audience, that a woman now, because of the fault, will need to depend upon the Holy Spirit and the power of God because by nature, which is now fallen, she will have a desire that will no longer naturally default to willingly delight in responding to the leadership of men, especially her husband, but her natural default will now be to manipulate him, to dominate him, to master him. And then God turns around and talks to Adam, the last part of verse 16, and he says to Adam, before Adam is exiled with his wife, Adam and you, because of the curse now upon the fallen human race, you will rule over her. What he means there is that Adam's default desire will no longer be to provide loving, nurturing leadership, but exploitation and self-centered, self-promoting, self-pleasing rule over the woman. See, God created Eve to be at Adam's side, pictured by the fact he created her from one of Adam's ribs. But Adam is now going to have the natural fallen desire to put her under his feet. And you go to a culture, ladies and gentlemen, without the gospel, and that's where women are.

They're under the feet of men. And the woman is going to do her utmost to not just get back to Adam's side, but to rule over his head. So the battle began back in the garden. And that's the reason we have the battle today, and we have to submit to the Holy Spirit. Now comes along a new body of believers, though. Now comes along the gospel. I mean, this is the New Testament. That was the Old Testament. That's Adam and Eve's problem.

What about us? Paul says, Titus, go teach the older women and teach the younger women that the gospel, what the gospel does is return you to the kind of relationship that God intended for you to have before the fall of man, where man picks up the woman from the dust under his feet and places her at his side and leads her and cares for her and provides for her by the power of the Holy Spirit. And she, by means of submission ultimately to the Holy Spirit, lovingly serves him and respects him and follows him.

This is the restoration of relationships. This is the gospel. This is what the world is watching to see if we can do, if God really does make a difference. Are there really distinctives that God has ordained?

Are there roles? Or will we like them, diminish them, and twist them, and distort them, and deny them, and rewrite them? No, what God wants is in many ways a return back to the original home that he intended where men are men and women are women, where men are superior to women in being men. And women are superior to men in being women. And the differences and the nuances and the distinctives are enhanced and enjoyed and reveled in as we honor the unique creation of God in man and woman. Our 24-year-old daughter is currently serving as a missionary in Santiago, Chile, and she's teaching five-year-olds, and she had on her blog, came across it, and I thought I'd use this as an illustration as we wrap up, but she's teaching these little boys and girls in a different culture, and she's learning Spanish as fast as she can, and the distinctives have become very apparent to her between the boys and the girls probably because it's a different culture. But she says it's fascinating how transcultural these distinctives are. And she's just listed a bunch of them, and I thought I'd read them to you.

I've edited them for time's sake. She said this. The boys in my classroom, and she's speaking in general terms, the boys want to color pictures of superheroes, and if it isn't a superhero, it's a dog or a big, scary animal. Girls want to color pictures of castles and princesses and flowers and rainbows. Boys dodge my hugs but pick me endless amounts of flowers. Girls pick flowers to keep for themselves, but they hug me throughout the day. Boys take their schoolwork like a competition. Girls want to offer help to whomever needs it.

They're not supposed to look at each other's papers, which made the assessment test this week very interesting. Boys flex in the bathroom mirror and try jumping the furthest off the bench as possible. Girls pose in front of the mirror and use the bench for twirling. Boys want to play ball with the older boys on the playground and truly believe they could keep up. Girls hover around the swing set, not giving a care to the loud ball game going on a few feet away. Boys always want to be first and fastest.

Girls hold hands and walk around together. Boys play in the dirt on the playground and always have to be reminded to clean up. Girls play with the dirt on the playground and volunteer to wash up. While playing at their play center inside the classroom, the boys always go for the big cars and trucks and make car sounds and railroad tracks out of anything they can find. And the girls find the princess and the prince in that big minivan. And while the boys are creating railroad tracks and battlegrounds, the girls are rearranging the insides of their dollhouses. Boys stick with the same thing for maybe 10 minutes and are bored and ready to conquer something different.

Girls can do the same play activity the entire afternoon, simply perfecting it or changing it all up. Boys tell me that I'm pretty. The girls ask me why I'm not married. Because of her father, that's the answer. Why are they in general terms that way? Because of the one who made them that way.

Now, these are obvious generic distinctions, and I'm speaking in general terms. I know girls that can beat the socks off guys in basketball and golf. I know some guys that can arrange flowers and cook. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, I grew up next to a girl named Susan from toddlerhood till we went away to college, same age.

And on a rainy day, I mean, up to the age of 13, 14, you could find me in her garage with her playing Barbies. It was a secret until now, but don't tell anybody. I mean, how creative is that stuff?

That was great, the doors open, you got little hangers, you got all kinds of stuff, and I was absolutely fascinated by the creativity of all of that. Didn't want anybody to know. In general terms, in fact, these general terms are wanting by our world that is so twisted to be erased. But God has arranged them for our benefit and our well-being, and when we, he writes at the end of verse five, live like this, the word of God will not be dishonored. In other words, the world is watching. Like the German philosopher Heinrich Hein who said this, he said, show me, in the 19th century, show me your redeemed life, and I might be inclined to believe in your redeemer.

Are you really different from me? If we don't strive to live like this, if the Christian doesn't care about the word of God, if we don't follow his word, if we rewrite his word, if we deny his word, if we ignore the implications of his word, why should they out there? We as Christians, I mean, we're here together, right? We love the assembly, we love the worship, we love the joy we share as we approach God together.

We love his word. And even the reminders of how totally fallen we are and how entirely dependent we are upon the Holy Spirit to get anything right, even these reminders of a redeemed priority and a redeemed mentality and a redeemed sense of humility, we, beloved, are all over again encouraged to submit to the Spirit of God who pulls us and prods us and pushes us and pursues us back to God's created design. By his strength, we are literally, as we follow him, retracing our steps back home, the kind of home he intended. Thanks for joining us here on Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey.

Stephen's working his way through a series entitled Family Talk. The message you just heard is entitled Retracing Our Footsteps Home. If you joined us late or if you'd like to listen to this lesson again, you'll find it posted to our website, wisdomonline.org. You can listen to the audio of this message or you can read Stephen's printed manuscript. Those resources are available free of charge on our website, wisdomonline.org. You can send Stephen a card or letter if you address it to Wisdom for the Heart, P.O. Box 37297, Raleigh, North Carolina, 27627. Please join us again tomorrow as we continue through this series here on Wisdom for the Heart. MUSIC