God's High Calling for Women, Part 3
1 Timothy 2:11
Let's open our Bibles together to 1 Timothy chapter 2‑‑1 Timothy chapter 2. A couple of weeks ago I was reading a very interesting biographical sketch of a rather famous family. Some of us remember the name Beecher as a family in American history. Surely you know the name Harriet Beecher Stowe, a great American novelist. Harriet Beecher Stowe was one of thirteen children. The oldest member of the family was Catherine Beecher, she was the oldest of the thirteen. She was one of nine children by her mother and there were four other children born to a step‑mother whom her father married after her mother had died. Catherine Beecher particularly grew up having a natural love for children. She found great joy in the duties of raising children. She loved to care for infants. She loved to care for little children. When Catherine was only 16, and all of the rest of the children born to the mother, nine of them, were younger than she was, her mother died. So she was left really to mother eight other little children. Her mother had been very skilled in domestic hand craft and spent a great amount of time teaching Catherine how to take care of the home. And so she was quite good at that by the age of 16. Into the home came an aunt and the aunt was to be the replacement for mother. And the aunt was remarkable for her neatness and her order and her ability to deal with things on an economical basis. Later on, she was replaced by a step‑mother who was expert in all matters of administration in the home. Under them all, Catherine‑‑with experience and the tutelage of these women‑‑by the age of 23 had learned all that was to be learned about domestic life and decided that the state of women in the United States was so severe that she needed to do something very dramatic to train women for domestic responsibility.
So, she founded the Hartfort Female Seminary, the design of which was to train women to be lovers of their husband, lovers of their children and keepers at home. She and her sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, not only founded the Hartfort Women Seminary but a couple of years later they founded the same thing in Cincinnati, Ohio with the view to training women for domestic responsibility. At that same time, around 1869, they wrote a book entitled The American Woman's Home. Let me read you just a little of it. "Women's calling embraces the care and nursing of babies in those critical periods of infancy and sickness‑‑the training of the minds of children in the most impressionable years of life, childhood. It involves the matter of meeting the needs of her husband so that his life is enriched and his home a haven. It involves the responsibilities of the economy of the house for the benefit of family and all others who grace it. These duties are as sacred and demanding as any given to man. Yet, where is her preparation? And what body certifies her as duly prepared to give the best to her calling?" End quote. As a result of that desire to give to women training so that they could be capable at their domestic responsibility, they founded the two seminaries and they wrote this as their purpose, "The purpose is to teach women how not only to perform in the most approved manner all the manual employments of domestic life, but to honor and enjoy them."
Now the reason I read you that is just to kind of give you a little idea of how far we have come in a few years. The cigarette commercial that said, "You've come a long way, baby," is indeed true. If anybody imagined to start a female seminary to train women today in domestic responsibility, they would become the instant laughing stock of the whole United States...if not most of the world. It would be absolutely bizarre for anyone to attempt to gain society's approval for such an effort. Can you imagine the kind of ridicule that would come upon someone for doing that? To endeavor to train women to be lovers of their husband, lovers of their children and keepers at home would put a person in direct opposition to everything that's happening in human society.
By the way, such a seminary, or such training similar to that seminary is the goal of the Master's College and soon you'll be hearing about our emphasis in that area. We are in a day today when role reversal is really high priority for Satan. It would be one thing if it was occupying itself with the world, but it is even more tragic when it occupies itself with the church. And the church today has definitely lost its sense of perspective and balance in terms of what a woman's role is to be. I'm amazed month by month to see more and more traditional evangelical Bible believing people begin to change their view of the woman's role under the pressure of the society around them. The sad part is that they are then instructing women to deny a God‑given and a God‑ordained pattern for life which would bring them the highest joy. And that's sad.
It was a problem in the day of Catherine Beecher, it's a problem today and I would like to add it was a problem in the day when Paul wrote his first letter to Timothy. And as you look at 1 Timothy chapter 2 verses 9 through 15, you will note that Paul is dealing with that very problem. He is identifying here a problem of women who were asserting themselves and trying to overtake the role of men in the church. They were acting indecently in the church. They were acting shamefully. They were violating their God‑ordained place, defying the divine standard. And so Paul writes to Timothy encouraging him with this corrective in verses 9 to 15 to set things in order in the church at Ephesus where Timothy is located at the present time. So, they had their own problems in that time as we have the problem in this time.
Now in verses 9 to 15, a very concise passage, there are seven verses there but they're very brief with the exception of verse 9, so there really aren't a lot of words here, but in a very few words there is a very comprehensive treatment of the role of women. That's why it's going to take us the past two weeks, this week and at least one more to get through these verses because they open up to us such a wide‑range of understanding that must be explored in order to get the full teaching of Scripture. But in these brief verses there is a presentation of six elements related to a woman's place in the church. Now we're not talking about the home here, we're not talking about secular society here, we're just talking about the church. In fact, we're talking about the church when it comes together to worship. We're talking about the order of the church, behavior in the church.
These six elements with which Paul deals are their appearance, their attitude, their testimony, their role, their design and their contribution. And he emphasizes all of these things in a way that is sort of building to a climax that comes in verse 15 which we'll look at next week. And I'm telling you, I can hardly wait. It's so wonderful.
But let's be reminded in verse 9 of their appearance. "In like manner, also, that women adorn themselves in proper apparel with godly fear and self‑control, not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or expensive clothing." Now the first thing that occupies the mind of Paul, as we saw a couple of weeks ago, is that women are to dress in such a way that they are fit for worship. They are dressed in such a way that they draw attention to their devotion to God and not to themselves. They are not to flaunt their sexuality. They are not to flaunt their wealth. They are not to flaunt an attitude of insubordination to their husbands. They are not to make other people look at them with envy. They are not to create sexual enticement in other men. All of these things are bound up in what we saw in verse 9. Their appearance is very very important. Obviously some women were coming together in the assembly of the redeemed saints and calling attention to themselves for their own passion's fulfillment and their own selfish desires.
Secondly, we looked at their attitude. Their attitude was to be one of godly fear. That word really has as its root the idea of a sense of shame. They are to have a proper shame about themselves. That doesn't mean a woman is to be ashamed of herself. That doesn't mean she's to be ashamed of her beauty and hide it. What it means is she is to have a sense of shame that says I would never want to do anything to cause someone else to be illicitly attracted. I would never want to do anything that would cause someone else's attention to be drawn away from God to me. Her attitude is one of a sense of shame, that she should ever be the cause of someone else's sin.
Secondly, self‑control...and the word is related to controlling her desires and controlling her passions and not being in a position to cause others to have wrong desire. So, their appearance then ought to be fit worship, and their attitude as well.
Thirdly, their testimony in verse 10 is a part of his discussion. A woman who professes publicly godliness should prove that confession with good works. So, you have not only appearance and attitude but you have her action, or her activity. That which she does, that which she says should indicate the legitimacy of her claim to godliness.
Now those three then brought us to the fourth, and we're going to look at it again today, and that is their role. And now you come to the real heart of this text in verses 11 and 12. The role of the women is given in these words, "Let the women learn in silence with all subjection, but I permit not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man but to be in silence."
Now you will notice that verse 11 begins with being in silence and verse 12 ends with being in silence. And so that brackets the whole idea here and becomes the dominant thought. The dominant thought is that when the church comes together for worship, the women are to be in silence. And in the middle of that he sort of speaks to that very issue.
Now as we looked at this role of women given by God and created in women by His creative power, we first of all and last week emphasized the opening statement of verse 11, "Let the women learn." And I hope you understood the major point that I was making is that on the spiritual level men and women are equal. They're equal. And as a result of that, they are equally entitled to be involved in the learning process. And we suggested to you that there were, no doubt, people in the church at Ephesus who came out of a Jewish background or people in that church who came out of a Greek background, both of which diminished the role of women, both of which held that women were inferior and both of which would assume that it wasn't important or even necessary that women learn anything. And so this, no doubt, had filtered into the church and Paul is saying let the women learn. Let them‑‑manthano is the verb, we get the word "disciple" from it‑‑let them be disciples, let them be learners, let them be in on the process of grasping understanding and applying divine truth. And don't let the influence of Jewish culture or Greek culture which diminishes and denigrates the role of women speak evil of them and hinder them from learning the truth of God.
And we went to the Old Testament, you remember, and I told you that the law was given for men and women. And the rules about the Passover were given for men and women. And God personally appeared to both men and women. And the service of God involved both men and women. You come to the New Testament, and men and women serve the Lord. And men and women are responsible for all the commandments. And they are given all the promises. And they are promised all the blessings. And they are warned about all the curses. In other words, in terms of spiritual life and blessing, all are equal. There's no question about that.
But that does not mean that their role is the same. You can have spiritual equality and have all different roles. To put it another way, you and I are spiritually equal. You and I have the same spiritual responsibility before God to live to His glory, is that not so? We have the same responsibility to obey the Word of God, the same responsibility to pray and to teach the Word of God and to witness and to live a Christlike life and we have the same promise of blessing, we have the same fruit of the Spirit, we have the same hope of eternal life. On the spiritual level, we're all equal and yet obviously in a role situation, you're there and I'm here. And we should be comfortable with equal spirituality and differing roles. I don't know why we want to make a battleground out of that. For all the women to demand to have equal roles with men would be like all the congregation demanding to have equal roles with the one who's preaching, and you can understand what that would do. These are just roles that God has designed for us to play to fulfill His will.
So, we see then Old Testament and New Testament equality of spiritual life. But we do not see equality of role. And you remember, as we looked at the Old Testament last time, I told you that there were no women priests, none. There were no women holding on‑going prophetic office. There were some women who were called a prophetess, namely four of them, the wife of Isaiah was only called a prophetess because she was going to give birth to a child whose name had prophetic meaning, not because she said anything. But Miriam, Deborah and Huldah are all three called prophetess and all we know about them is that each of them in the Bible is recorded on one occasion to have given a message from God. We don't know that they had any on‑going prophetic ministry, certainly not like the major prophets, the minor prophets, Elijah, Elisha, Moses. We have no such woman leaders. Deborah appears in the list of judges in Judge 4:4 to have been in a position of giving some wise counsel in the life of Israel. But she is far and away the exception and we really don't know when and how and how many times she was used by God to give wisdom. There are no women kings in all the history of Israel. And somebody would no doubt ask me what about 2 Chronicles 22:12 where it says, "Athaliah reigned..." It does not call her king or queen, Athaliah‑‑you'll remember‑‑was the mother of Ahaziah. When he died she wanted to rule, so she massacred the entire royal seed. The only one she didn't get was Joash, you remember, he was protected and later became the king. But she usurped that throne and was not and is not to this day listed among the kings of that land. No woman kings, no woman priests, no woman with on‑going prophetic office. Ruth and Esther are named after women but were not written by women. So they had no on‑going role of leadership in the normal course of life, in God's economy in the Old Testament, though some of them were used by God here and there to speak a word for God and many women prophesied, according to Psalm 68, a great host are the women who published the good news. That doesn't mean that women couldn't speak for the Lord. Of course not, they should speak for the Lord. But they were not given the roles of leadership within the nation of Israel either in political life or religious life, both of which were the same in a theocracy rule by God.
You come to the New Testament and you remember that there's neither male nor female in Christ, Galatians 3:28. And we know we're all equal spiritually and yet it's very obvious in the New Testament, there are no women apostles. Although there were women who accompanied Christ and the twelve, they are not included in the twelve. There are no women prophets. There is Anna mentioned in Luke 2 and said to be a prophetess because her husband had died seven years after their marriage and she for over 80 years had stayed in the temple waiting for the Messiah. And anyone who came in the temple she would tell them about the Messiah coming and what a joy it was when she met the Messiah even as an infant. But she really is a hold over from the Old Testament and she was a prophetess in the sense that she spoke about the Messiah to anyone who came along.
And then you look in the New Testament again and you do see that the four daughters of Philip did prophesy, they did speak for God but a lot of women speak for God. We don't know anything about it, they're not called prophets. That would be after the church began and they're not called prophets, it just says they prophesied, they spoke forth for God is implied there. There were other women, 1 Corinthians 11, we'll get back to that in a minute, who also prophesied, spoke forth for God, but as I said, there are no women apostles, no women called prophet, evangelists, pastor‑teacher, elder.
So, both Old Testament and New Testament make it clear that though there is equality on the spiritual level, there are differing roles. And all of that was just a review of what I gave you last week, so if you want the fill in on that, get last week's message and you'll have all of it.
But that equality of learning which is given here in verse 11 is qualified at the end of the verse. Let's go back to it and I want to speak the rest of the time this morning on the last half of verse 11. "Let the women learn," and here comes the qualifier, "in silence with all subjection...in silence with all subjection.
Now you have to understand what's going on in the culture to get an idea of what's going on in this situation. Now remember that you have in the church at Ephesus a Gentile culture as the basic culture in which the church exists. Asia Minor which is modern Turkey was a Gentile place. And women were ranked in Gentile religion very low...very low. In fact, if you were to go to the temple of Diana of the Ephesians in Ephesus, you would find hundreds and hundreds of priestesses there called "melasi" whose primary function was to act as prostitutes for the male worshipers. They were chattel. They were to be used and discarded. Furthermore, any respectable Greek woman who was not some kind of prostitute, some kind of street walker led a very confined life. She lived in her own quarters into which no one but her husband could enter. She had not even the privilege of appearing at a meal unless she was invited to be there. She never at any time appeared on the street alone. She never went to any public assembly. And still less did she ever speak or take any active part in an assembly. So you can understand that when some of these women were converted, boy, they began to feel their oats‑‑to put it in the colloquial expression. And they would read that concept that we understand, male and female equal as one in Christ, and they would say, "Boy, we're going to take our place now." Other women were coming out of a Jewish background. We know that because there are indications in 1 Timothy that there were Jewish influences in the church at Ephesus.
So here you have some women coming out of a Jewish background which was very much the same terms of suppressing women and keeping them in a sort of deprived situation in terms of learning, and now these women have come to faith in Jesus Christ, perhaps in some cases they're growing faster than their husbands, and so they too begin to feel the surge of the desire for prominence and to get out from under this abusive kind of chauvinistic tradition that they have known. And so there's pressure applied in the church as these women begin to assert themselves. Now you add to that that this church was a sinful church and there are not only those pressures that come because these women are overreacting to their liberty in Christ, but you add the sinfulness of the culture around them which obviously would militate against the things of God and you've got loose and immoral women in the church who are coming to church flaunting their sexuality, flaunting their wealth, trying to entice and allure other men. You've got women who are trying to surge into positions of teaching and surge into positions of leadership, women who don't want to subordinate themselves to their husbands anymore, they want to take over the authority in the church, the authority in the relationship at home. And the church is in great great need and great great danger. And so, as chapter 3 verse 15 says, this whole section is to set things in order in the church. The second thing he wants to set in order after the prayer passage in verses 1 to 8 is this matter of the role of the women because it's all out of whack. And he calls, basically, for them to learn in silence with all subjection.
Two things there, they are to be silent and subject. The word "silence" means just that, hesuchia, it just means silence. We have to define what that is intended to say by the context. The word "subjection" is from hupotasso which means to line up under. In other words, to get in their proper line and not rebel. They're not to be unruly, they're to get in line in their proper place. So women are to learn in silence and get in line in their proper place.
Now it's obvious the Bible says that, no one's going to equivocate on that. It says let the women learn in silence. Well, you say, "What are people who believe in women preachers going to do with this?" Well, they're going to take the word "silence" and they're going to say it doesn't mean that. Silence means a meek and quiet spirit. What it means is that when you do preach or teach, you do so in a quiet spirited way. All right. There are those who want to advocate that. There are others on the other hand who are hard line and they say when it says let the women learn in silence, that's exactly what it means. No women should ever talk in church under any conditions...not to the person they're sitting next to, not on the way in, not on the way out...you know, the real hard line thing...total silence. Women never give a testimony. Women never pray. Women never speak...nothing.
Now which of these two or what other option do we have? The answer is very simple. You always define terminology by context. And all you have to do is look at the context to figure out exactly what he means by silence. Verse 11, "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection." What do you mean, Paul? I mean, I don't permit a woman to...what?...teach, that's the silence issue. Nor usurp authority, that's the subjection issue. He defines exactly what he means.
What he means by the silence of a woman is that he does not permit a woman to take the role of teacher. What he means by her subjection is he does not permit her to rise to usurp authority over men in the life of the church. He doesn't mean that the woman can't sing a song. He doesn't mean that in an appropriate place the woman cannot pray a prayer. He does not mean that she cannot offer praise to God at an appropriate time. It does not mean that she cannot participate in worship, it doesn't mean that she can't even ask a question when a question is called for in a proper spirit and a proper way. What it means is she is not to be the teacher and she is not to rebel against the role of submission which God has designed for her in the life of the church. So, silence then is in relation to teaching. And it means she's not to be the teacher. We'll get into that in more detail next week as we see what the phrase in verse 12 actually means. The subjection is easily understood to mean she is not to rebel, she is not to desire to overturn the divine pattern.
Now we need to understand what this means. Let's...okay, we've got the church, we're looking at the church, we're saying, "All right, a woman is not to be the teacher." That's plain and simple, we're not to have preachers and teachers standing up in church before everyone, mixed congregations of men and women who are the official teacher of the church and the official preacher, giving the message, the sermon, the lesson. That's right, that's very obvious.
But there are other passages that broaden our understanding of this and we need to look at them. So let's go back to 1 Corinthians chapter 14 and you're going to