1 Timothy 2 8 thru 15

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“Respectable and Proper Worship,” 1 Timothy 2:8-15 (Eighth Sunday After Pentecost, July 15, 2018) 8 I

desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling; 9 likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, 10 but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. 11 Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15 Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control. PRAY We are studying 1 Timothy on Sunday mornings this summer, and if my philosophy of preaching meant that I sat in my office and tried to come up with the most inspirational or practical sermon I could preach each week, or certainly if I were shooting for the easiest sermon, I would never, ever choose to preach on these verses. The only reason we are studying these verses in chapter two is because we are committed to teaching the Bible verse-by-verse. We are committed to teaching the whole Bible and not skip the more difficult or potentially controversial parts because we want you to know the whole counsel of God. We believe that all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, even the verses that, on their face, look really difficult and discouraging. So what we will do this morning is take a very careful, deliberate look at these verses. In this passage the apostle Paul give us instructions to prevent distractions in worship. The context of our passage for today is the church. The first half of chapter two, which precedes these verses, is all about prayer. Virtually all of chapter three, which immediately follows these verses, contains instructions about elders and deacons. This passage is not about life outside the church. This is an important point to keep in mind, and we’ll come back to this point later in the sermon. When the church gathers for worship, the focus should be on God: who he is, what he has done, how he loves us, how he has saved us, how we can praise him and adore him, how we can follow him. We get one shot a week at this as a group, so because it’s such an important time we must not allow anything that distracts from God as the focus. What does Paul want us to know about distractions in worship? Three things: first, how men can keep from being distractions in worship. Second, how women can keep from being distractions in worship. And I know the very idea of addressing the genders separately like this is controversial today. Our society wants no distinctions made between men and women. How we talk to one another in American culture is coming under scrutiny, and one question women are asking more and more is: “Would you say the same thing you just said to me to a man? Would you ask a man what you just asked me or make that kind of comment?” Those are legitimate questions. When

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Hillary Clinton ran for president (both times), there were all kinds of comments about her appearance that were not made of either Barack Obama in 2008 or Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in 2016, and they were made because she was a woman and they weren’t any many thought that wasn’t fair. So, third, we’ll look at why Paul feels the need to address the genders differently at all. First, how men can keep from being a distraction in worship. It’s worth pointing out that this text, so infamous in some circles for what it says about women, actually begins with instructions about worship for men. Paul says, “I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling …” 1 Timothy 2:8. We don’t know what the men in Ephesus (that was where Timothy served as pastor) were quarreling about. But Paul points out something all people, especially women, know is generally true about men. Men tend to argue. Why? Because we want to be seen as experts, as competent, we like to hear ourselves talk, so we argue and put forth our ideas about politics, or the best way to repair the thing-a-ma-widget, or the highway that will get us there the fastest. Back in 2008 Rebecca Solnit wrote an essay called “Men Explain Things to Me.” Ms. Solnit is a journalist, a writer, an editor, she’s authored numerous books – she’s scholarly, gifted, very intelligent. In her essay she writes how she and a friend of hers named Sallie were at a swanky cocktail party outside of Aspen about fifteen years ago when the host, a wealthy, influential man in the area, struck up a conversation with her. He said, “So? I hear you’ve written a couple of books.” She replied, “Several, actually.” Then in what she described as a very condescending manner he asked what they were about. Solnit told him the subject and immediately the man cut her off and said, “And have you heard about the very important book on that subject that came out this year?’” Now she was perfectly willing to entertain the possibility that a second book had come out the same year on her subject and somehow she’d missed it. But after the man held forth for several minutes about this very important new book, a book that Solnit should have known about for her work, a book that if she hadn’t incorporated into her research would mean that her book was incomplete, her friend Sallie interrupted him to say, “Uh, you’re talking about Rebecca’s book.” She had to say, “That’s her book” three or four times before he finally took it in. And then it turned out he hadn’t even read her book, just read a review of it. He was embarrassed for a moment, but then started talking about a new subject and acted like an expert on it instead. This essay struck a chord with a lot of women in our country because it mirrored their experience, and a new word to describe this male tendency entered the English lexicon as a result of it. The word is “mansplaining.” So women, when the men in your life begin to do this with you, now you know what to call it. Paul tells men that when you come to church do not “mansplain.” He says, “I know you want to feel like you’re important and competent, but worship is not the place to draw attention to yourself. Worship is the place to draw attention to God. Don’t argue about the Bible, or

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theology, or anything else. Do whatever you have to – come into worship with duct tape over your mouth if necessary – to keep from talking too much and being a distraction.” Let’s be clear: it’s not that women never do this (of course, they can do this, too), but they didn’t in the first century. In the Greco-Roman world women did not address men in public unless the man was their husband. Men could address women, never the other way around. But even today this is more of a male fault than a female fault. All the research tells us that in mixed-group settings, whether in business or academia or small groups at church, men are far more prone to talk than women, to take over women and dominate discussion, and women feel more reluctant to speak up than men do. But then Paul does address women, and he tells them, second, how they can keep from being a distraction in worship. 1 Timothy 2:9-10. Paul writes, “I desire … likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, 10 but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works.” Women couldn’t address men in public but they wanted be notice and to feel important, too. Since they could not use their words, they used their appearance to draw attention to themselves. In the first century having a fashionable hairstyle for women meant wearing your hair up in, as one commentator put it, “elaborate arrangements with braids and curls interwoven, piled high like towers and decorated with gems and/or gold and/or pearls.” You can see examples of this in sculpture and literature that have come down to us from that age. It was all the rage among the aristocratic class. Christian women in Ephesus, wanting to draw attention to themselves, wanting to feel important, copied these styles and wore them to worship. And it caused a huge distraction. They highjacked the attention the worship of God deserved for themselves. Now, today, braiding your hair or wearing a bit of gold would not cause the same kind of distraction for worship. But I do think women would be well-served to ask themselves as they prepare for the day, especially as they prepare for Sunday: “Am I dressing to draw attention to myself – am I dressing so that other women will notice me and compliment me and tell me how great I look, or am I dressing so that men will notice me and I can feel the power that comes from having attracted them – or am I dressing modestly?” And what does it mean for a woman to dress modestly? It is very dangerous a man to speak on such things. I won’t go into any specifics – that’s something the women at Grace must work out for themselves, plus I know next to nothing about women’s clothes. But here are some principles: to dress modestly doesn’t mean that you have to cover every square inch of your skin – a burka does that, but for a woman in our culture to wear a burka to worship would be a distraction. To dress modestly doesn’t mean you have to dress shabbily. And, as I’ve already mentioned, in our culture it can mean that you wear jewelry and braid your hair. It’s really a heart issue – am I trying to draw attention to myself, or do I go to worship to help everyone, including me, put the focus where it should be: on the God who loves us.

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It’s not that men don’t have this problem of trying to draw attention to themselves by their appearance. Men want to feel the power that comes from having women admire them. I don’t think all those college guys running down West Jackson without their shirts off do it solely because it’s hot outside. I never see a really big, hairy guy trudging down the street with his shirt off. You won’t see me running down the street without my shirt on. But it is harder for guys to dress immodestly in worship, because we still wear shirts with sleeves (either short or long) and generally wear pants to church. It’s still the fashion for us, but less so for women. Now we get to the really tough verses. Paul continues to address women, he wants them to keep from being distractions in worship, and he writes, “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” 1 Timothy 2:11-12. I think it’s best to approach these verses by talking about what they can’t mean first. These verses can’t mean that women have to remain absolutely silent when the church gathers. We know this because in 1 Corinthians Paul allows for women to pray and prophesy in public in the church. “Prophesy” in that context included at least some element of instruction. Nor can these verses mean that women, under no circumstances, can teach men. We read in Acts 18 that Priscilla, a woman, taught the Bible to Apollos, a man. Some pastors try to qualify this by saying, “Yes, but Priscilla’s husband, Aquila, was there, so Apollos was under his authority.” Maybe, but you still have an example of a woman teaching a man, even if her husband is present. Clearly, women can speak in worship and they can at least in some circumstances teach men the Bible. So, what is Paul saying women cannot do in the church? He is saying that women cannot be the ones who determine and, primarily, deliver the authoritative teaching in a local church. “Authoritative teaching.” What does that mean? We can agree to disagree on many points of theological doctrine and Bible interpretation and still all be members of the same church: we can disagree on infant baptism, we can disagree the details of the end times, we can disagree on the length of the days of creation in Genesis 1, and so. We certainly disagree on politics and other matters of wisdom. But there are some areas of doctrine where we can’t agree to disagree and still be members of the same church. We can’t agree to disagree about how we are all sinners. We can’t agree to disagree that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, fully God and fully man, who died on a cross for our sins, was buried, three days later he rose again, he ascended into heaven, and he sat down at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and he will return one day to judge the living and the dead. We can’t agree to disagree on whether or not salvation is by grace through faith, apart from any works we could ever do. If you disagree on those issues you can’t be part of this church, because you are outside of Christ.

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But whose responsibility is it to exercise the necessary authority to make sure these truths are esteemed at Grace and held dear at Grace and contrary doctrines aren’t taught? The answer is: the elders. The ordained men at Grace Bible Church. These ordained men are responsible to exercise this teaching authority given them in the Scriptures by making sure that on Sunday mornings and in core seminars and in Bible studies right doctrine is taught, by shepherding the members of the church through lots of conversations and care to make sure none go astray into false doctrine, by speaking with potential members about these core beliefs before the join, and, when necessary, confronting anyone who teaches in this church something contrary to the Bible. Now, practically, what does this mean women can do at Grace Bible Church? It means women can do anything an unordained man can do. Women can teach in small groups, in Bible studies, and in core seminars. Women can serve on staff in the church. Further, there is no reason why a woman could not teach the entire church in a Sunday morning worship. This would only rarely happen, as I think it would be an abdication of the elders’ responsibility to teach if we weren’t the ones filling the pulpit the vast majority of Sundays. When the elders do let an unordained man preach, it’s always been with the view of giving him the chance to test his gifts for a future ordained ministry. But I could envision a scenario where a woman teaches the entire church on a Sunday, and that teaching would be at the invitation of and under the authority of the elders. I think 1 Timothy 2-3 is one of the many places in the Bible where the chapter divisions really trip us up. Remember that when Paul wrote 1 Timothy there were no chapter or verse divisions. Those weren’t added to the Bible until hundreds of years later. Chapter divisions are great to help us find where we are in the Bible, but they often blur the context of any given passage, and in Bible reading (as in all reading) context is king. Think with me: what does Paul talk begin talking about immediately following these verses where he addresses the women in the church? He starts talking about elders, and their qualifications. It’s as if Paul realizes, “I’ve just addressed women and told them to be silent in the church. But obviously I don’t mean they can’t speak or that they aren’t able to teach at all in the church. So I’m going to follow up these comments directed at women with my comments on elders, so that everyone can see that when I write about women ‘remaining quiet in the church,’ I’m speaking only about authoritative ministry, and not anything else in church life.” Now I can imagine some of you listening to this sermon think I’m too liberal in my interpretation of the passage and if so, that’s fine. Many outstanding Bible scholars would agree with you. But the beauty of this understanding of Paul’s view is it keeps you from drawing arbitrary lines about what women can and can’t do in the church. Even if you disagree with my conclusion so far, you’d probably still agree that women can teach little boys in Sunday school. But then you’ve got to draw line somewhere and say, “Once boys become 16, or 18, or 21, or 25, women can’t teach them anymore.” Wherever you draw the line it will be to some extent arbitrary, because the Bible won’t mandate it being drawn at precisely that point. You’d probably agree a woman could at least “help” lead a mixed-gender small group, but how do define “help”? But then you’d have to draw a line somewhere between “helping” a small group discussion to behaviors that lead to “exercising authority over” the men in that group. It’s true that sometimes in the

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Christian life you have to make judgment calls and draw seemingly arbitrary lines, but it seems prudent to me to avoid them whenever you can. I am more concerned, though, with addressing those who think I am too conservative because I think the Bible allows for gender roles at all. Third (and to me this is the key question) why does Paul address the genders differently in the first place? Not because Paul hates women! That’s the answer floating around in some circles in academia and it’s certainly the pop culture answer. Several years ago a blockbuster movie came out and one of the main characters in it was named Paul. He was contemptuous of the women around him, and another character in the movie said to him something like, “The apostle Paul couldn’t have said it better himself – he hated women, too.” Paul’s misogyny is assumed by many today. However, no one could possibly read the entirety of the New Testament in its first century context and come away thinking that. In the ancient Greco-Roman world, Aristotle’s and Plato’s view of women dominated. They held that women are inherently inferior to men. Women, they said, perhaps could be educated, but they were incomplete males and should be thought of as a deformity. They could never be given important tasks. And it was into that world that Paul said, “28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28. Paul taught the equal value and inherent dignity of men and women, served alongside women, and started churches with women. In a world where men did not speak to women in public, Paul addressed dozens of women in his thirteen New Testament books. At the very beginning of his conclusion to his letter to the Romans, Paul writes, “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Cenchreae [SIN-cree-uh], 2 that you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints, and help her in whatever she may need from you, for she has been a patron of many and of myself as well.” Romans 16:1-2. Do you realize what these verses probably are saying? That when Paul wanted to make sure the church at Rome received his letter, which is without a doubt one of the most important letters ever written and in which Paul expounds the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ like nowhere else, he gave it to a woman for delivery, perhaps because there was no man around him at the time whom he could trust to do it. Paul didn’t hate women, and anyone who argues he did is ignorant of the New Testament and the first century world. So why does he address the genders differently? Because men and women are different, and these differences are innate. Now it’s hard to talk about this because the Bible never comes out and says precisely what the differences are. There was a book that came out over twenty years ago, very popular, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, detailing some research in the area of gender differences. The Bible does not have a Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus chapter in it. I have often wished it did – it would make sermons like this one so much easier, but it doesn’t. It’s also hard to talk about gender differences because for most of its history the church has confused cultural expectations for the genders with the innate gender differences, and the result

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has often been the oppression of women. We must recognize that the church, like basically all of human culture over the millennia, has gotten it wrong when it comes to gender differences. But because of modern social science we can say some things confidently about the differences between men and women. It’s not just our bodies that are different. From birth, our emotional lives are different. Our sex drives are different. Our psychological make ups are different. For example, numerous studies over the decades have shown that little boy babies, when they crawl up to an obstacle, will try and knock it down. Girl babies will go around it. In 2016 researchers at the University of London published a study involving babies from 9 to 17 months old, and even at that young of an age, the boy babies overwhelmingly chose to play with cars and shovels, while the girl babies chose dolls and pink teddy bears. These differences carry over into adulthood as well. Carol Gilligan, Harvard professor, feminist, not a Christian, wrote a book several years ago called In a Different Voice. Her research showed that that men tend to see themselves as maturing and successful as they separate themselves from everyone else and make decisions as individuals. Women, however, are far more likely to want group decision making and to define success as a team accomplishment. And all the research suggests these differences are hardwired and no amount of conditioning can drive it out of us. They’ve actually tried to drive it out of children in Sweden. Since the midnineties the government-funded preschools in that country (and virtually all Swedish children go to these preschools) have been gender-neutral. They’ve worked to keep the children from separating themselves by gender and from exhibiting only the behavior typical of their gender. The New York Times reported on this back in March. In this preschool they’ll get the boys to massage one another’s feet (which I guess is what girls do in Sweden, I don’t see much of that here) while they’ll get the girls to run outside barefoot in the snow and yell at one another. They are trying to reprogram all these Swedish one and two year olds. The first kids that came through this program are now in their mid-twenties, and you know what they’ve found? Their efforts at social conditioning have not changed the typically male and female behaviors in Sweden one bit. Women still prefer “girl” things, and men “guy” things. And friends, these differences between men and women exist for our good. If you believe that human beings are a product of God’s creative activity, then there must be a purpose behind everything he made. God didn’t have to make us male and female. He could have made us unisex creatures. Why didn’t he? The Bible’s answer is that God made us with genders to communicate something about himself. Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” The Bible says there is unity and diversity within God. God exists in three persons: Father, Son, and Spirit, each person fully God, yet there is one God. You will never even begin to understand God unless you understand that. Likewise, the Bible says, there is unity and diversity in the human race. Male and female, each distinct from the other, yet both fully human, and only both together can accurately reflect the image of God – masculine and feminine.

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Because this world is broken, we must to a great degree ignore these differences between men and women and treat one another as if we are interchangeable. It’s not safe nor is it right to say, “OK, you’re a woman, so you are suited for this kind of work or this kind of pay or this kind of education, but not these kinds over here. These are for men.” We can’t do that – it’s led to too much oppression of women. Everything in the Bible drives you to the conclusion that in most areas of life – in education, in politics, in employment, in finances – men and women should be treated interchangeably. Same opportunities, same responsibilities, equal pay for equal work. Most areas, but not all. If in all spheres of life we treated the genders as interchangeable we would miss something important about who God is, so we don’t do it in the church. That’s the point of 1 Timothy 2:13-15: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15 Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.” 1 Timothy 2:13-15. I simply don’t have time to unpack those verses. It would take too long. If you have questions about them, talk to me after the service or later in the week. But their main point is clear: in the church, men and women have different roles grounded in creation – women are not to try and take up the mantle of authoritative teaching in the church themselves (that would be a distraction in worship), but instead it is the responsibility of men. Men must take on this responsibility (even when they’d rather not, because it’s hard work), and women must submit to their authority (even when they’d like to have it for themselves). The bottom line is that we don’t know exactly why God gives men authority in the church instead of women. It is a mystery. But in playing our roles in the mystery, we learn things about who our God is. C.S. Lewis has this great essay where he says “the kind of equality [between men and women] which implies that the equals are interchangeable [as if they were cogs in a machine] is, among humans, a legal fiction. It may be a useful legal fiction. But in the church we turn our back on fictions. One of the ends for which sex was created was to symbolize the hidden things of God … With the Church … we are dealing with male and female not merely as facts of nature but as the live and awful [as in the sense of ‘awesome’] shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge.” Kathy Keller writes, “In a fallen world there will be sinful men and women who oppress and even despise one another for their gender. That is why the ‘legal fiction’ of unisex, interchangeable voters, citizens, employees, and the like, is a safeguard. But in the home and church, we have access to both repentance and forgiveness, crucial tools if sinful men and women are to resume their glorious mantles of difference and live together as God’s people – fallen, redeemed, forgiven, and forgiving.” Jesus, Justice, and Gender Roles, 38. In case someone out there says, “But you know, it’s not fair. Men get to have authority in the church, they get the glamorous positions, and women don’t.” Friends, there is nothing glamorous about being an elder or a pastor in a healthy church. It is hard work to do the shepherding required of an elder and once you’re in it the temptation is to try and pass the responsibility off to someone else. To the extent there is anything glamourous about being an elder (and I’m not sure there is), it’s being able to be up front and teach. And women, as we’ve established, can do that.

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Many of you will know who Elisabeth Elliot was. She often addressed this objection. When at one point she was a professor at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, and during one lecture she “announced to her class of both men and women that she had better gifts for being a pastor than most of the men in the class, possibly the entire seminary. She knew the Bible in multiple languages, had vast experience [teaching] it, had the maturity bought through suffering to speak with compassion to others, and on and on. ‘However,’ she said, ‘God has not called me, as a woman, to exercise those gifts in a pastoral role. I am called to use them, but why should they only be valuable if used in one particular role, the ordained ministry?’” Kathy Keller, Jesus, Justice, and Gender, 35. We have so many gifted teachers in our church, men and women. And my prayer is we would use our gifts to build up Christ’s church. All of our brightest don’t need to go into medicine, or accounting, or law, or politics. We need men and women to use their gifts and teach in the church, to serve on church staffs, to write curriculum, to teach at the college and seminary level, to serve as missionaries. I’ve got two boys and two girls, and I want all four of them – especially my girls – to know that if they feel so called they can do what their Daddy finds so satisfying, studying and teaching the inspired Word of God. PRAY

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