Roles & Conduct In God’s Family

Transcript

GR1758
03/09/2014
Roles and Conduct in God’s Family
I Timothy 2:7-10
Gil Rugh

We are in 1 Timothy chapter 2 in your Bibles, 1 Timothy and the second chapter. We have looked at the first seven verses of the chapter and Paul had emphasized the importance of praying for all men not because he is doing a discourse on prayer but because he wants to tie it to what he’d talked about in chapter 1; the wonder of the Gospel, the uniqueness of the Gospel and the power of the Gospel. In chapter 1 he gave his own personal testimony of how he, being as he characterized himself, the chiefest of sinners, the foremost among sinners, experienced the life changing power of God when he believed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

So he begins chapter 2 be saying first of all I want you to be praying for all men and why? Verse 4: “God desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth for there is one God (verse 5 says) and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus who gave Himself as a ransom for all.” We noted that repeated use of the word “all” in these first six verses, all, all, you pray for all men because God desires all men to be saved and has made provision for all men and their salvation by having His Son become the Mediator between God and men having paid the price necessary to set up free from sin and condemnation. He gave Himself as a ransom for all.

God is the Savior of all men and we looked at a passage in Isaiah. We won’t turn there but let me read it to you again. From Isaiah chapter 45, verses 21 and 22: “And there is no other God beside Me, a righteous God and a Savior. There is none except Me. Turn to be and be saved all the ends of the earth for I am God and there is no other.” And the uniqueness of God’s plan and provision for our salvation became more fully evident with the coming of His Son, His death and resurrection and now He is the Mediator and so Jesus Himself said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No man comes to the Father but by me.” Romans 5:10, we are reconciled to God through the death of His Son.

In verse 7 Paul said it was “for this I was appointed a preached and an apostle. I am telling the truth, I am not lying as a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and in truth.” And Paul was specially called and set apart by God to be an instrument that would carry the Gospel to all men. We have noted the uniqueness in this and the plan of God. Prior to this God’s focus in salvation in the world centered in one nation, the nation Israel. With the coming of Christ and the placing of the nation under judgment for a time God’s plan of salvation is now turned and focused on the Gentiles and this is the time of the fullness of the Gentiles as Paul referred to it in Romans chapter 11, a time when God’s work of salvation is focusing on all peoples, not just the Jews and Paul’s ministry while he included the Jews at the time God set them aside in Acts chapter 9 God said, “He is a chosen instrument of mine to bear My Name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel,” so now the breadth of God’s program and plan of salvation includes all men, everyone, everywhere. How blessed we are because we sit as a congregation primarily of Gentiles having experienced the wonder of God’s provision and salvation that has been provided for us.

Verse 8 you will note begins with a therefore and he’s moving on. We are talking about how God wants His people to conduct themselves. We notes chapter 3, verse 15: “Writing so you would know how one should conduct himself in the household of God which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth.” By God’s grace when we come to place our faith in Christ we were born into God’s family and as I Corinthians 12:13 says: “By one Spirit we have all been baptized into one body,” the baptism of the Spirit where He identifies us with Christ and we become part of the body of Christ, the church, the family of God and now God is giving instruction how we who are members of His household are to conduct ourselves.

Therefore, he picks up that subject of prayer that he talked about in verse 1: “I want the men in every place to pray lifting up holy hands without wrath and dissention.” In verse 9: “Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves” with proper clothing and so on.

We come into a section in verse 8-15 where Paul is going to talk about roles and how God wants His family to conduct themselves, the men and the women. And you might expect this is a controversial passage. In fact, one commentator noted there has been more written on a couple of the verses, a few of the verses in this section than in any other passage in the Pastoral Epistles which includes I Timothy, II Timothy and Titus. It has become a growing area of disagreement and conflict.

There was indication that this was coming. If you had been reading some of the commentaries that I had and since you may not have been, I am going to share it with you. I’ve brought two commentaries with me. These are probably the most recent evangelical commentaries. You can see they are nice substantial works. I love a good substantial commentary. That is great. They are about 900 pages each. They cover I Timothy, II Timothy and Titus. One was written in the year 2000, the other written in, I think, 2006; both evangelical commentaries. By that I mean in the first part of I Timothy 2, those first seven verses, they are both very clear on the Gospel, very clear on God’s provision for all men with the sacrifice of His Son who gave Himself as a ransom for all, on salvation by faith and faith alone in Christ alone.

There is an indication here that they are struggling with the issue of men and women and the roles God has given. One of these is a little more conservative than the other. One of these is written by a man whose ministry is in England and the commentaries written by those from England tend to be not quite as sound as the commentaries written here because those with that foundation have a looser view of inspiration.

Some of you are familiar with the commentaries of F. F. Bruce and his view of inspiration was, what word can I use, looser, not as strong as we would hold. But both of these men come to the same issue. In the first seven verses we talked about man. At the end of verse 1: “Prayer is to be made on behalf of all men.” Verse 4: “God desires all men to be saved,” and verse 5, especially; “There is one God and one Mediator also between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus.” I just picked out an example from each of these commentators. The more even conservative one who would even be more where we are on the roles of men and women says this and these are commentaries that use the Greek expression. You are familiar with the Greek word for man, Anthropos. So we talk about when you go to college you study anthropology, the study of man. You just take the Greek word and you carry it over into English. But how does he translate verse 5, the last statement, “The man, Christ Jesus.” The Greek is Anthropos Christos yeasus. You can hear that literally, anthropos, man; Christos – Christ yesus, Jesus. His translation is a person, Christ Jesus. The Greek word Anthropos emphasizes the quality of being human. It was as a human being that Christ gave Himself for all humanity and there is an element of truth in that. Indeed, it was as a human being Christ became human but not just human He became a human man. It is significant. He couldn’t have become a human female and accomplished redemption so we begin to make adjustments.

And this writer acknowledges that. It is difficult, he says, but acceptable to translate Anthropos in verse 5 generically as person and then he goes on to say, “Paul uses the Greek word Anthropos through the paragraph to tie his argument together and then he goes through the uses of man in this first section of verses that we have already looked at. The Spirit directs Paul to write Anthropos, man. What’s the problem of translating it man? Well, it’s not acceptable these days you know. Women may take offense at that and feel it’s excluding them. Well we may have to explain, the Bible uses the word man sometimes generically to refer to men and women. We will look at something in a moment.
The other commentary from an English background says it a little differently and comes to the same point. The thrust of the statement is to locate the mediation accomplished by Jesus precisely in His humanity. Again, there is an element of truth in that. It’s right, in His humanity. This is clear from the phrase that immediately follows the reference to humankind. He won’t use man throughout here. The previous commentary said it well work. It’s awkward but we will translate them person. This one wants to translate it human and you can’t talk about mankind you have to talk about humankind so what does he say? I prefer to translate according to the Greek order, the human, Christ Jesus. What’s the man Christ Jesus and the foundation for using the word man in a generic sense to refer to humanity has its foundation in the creation work of God.

Come back to the book of Genesis, chapter 1. Here we go through the days of creation and we come then to the creation of man and verse 26 of Genesis 1: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness and let them rule.’” Verse 27: “God created man in His own image. In the image of God He created him, male and female He created them.” So at the very beginning when God was going to create human beings He gave the title man. Then he broke it down when He created man, I will create him as male and female. So originally when God did the work of creating He called male and female, man. In fact the Hebrew word translated man here in these verses is the word we have, Adam and we think of him as the first man. The first man was given the name Adam which simply meant man. So at the foundation God identified male and female under the generic title, man and that follows through the Scripture even in chapter 2 with the creation of male and female and the order of how God did it in the special ways He created each which indicates their difference.

In verse 23 the man said concerning the woman, “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.” He uses a different Hebrew word there for man. You have it in the margin of your Bibles, “ish” and “isha.” You can see the “ish,” the man and the “isha,” taken out of the man, the connection. There are theological issues. Most modern translations are doing away with the use of man. The Bible makes a point. It is a serious issue in the fall into sin and the part man plays and the part woman plays and the man as head of the race has a unique role even in the fall and in Romans chapter 5 we have Christ as the man by redemption who provides the salvation to deal with the sin brought into the human race by the first man.

So this idea that you can just blend this all together begins to undermine the Scripture. And these are a recent origin as we talked about the world is opposed to the truth of God and the revelation of God.

Since the 1960’s there has been a major change in how even this passage that we are coming into in I Timothy has been dealt with and what happened in the sixties and in the following years when you had the whole revolution changing women being liberated and you know the denying of any differences and all of this and pretty soon we are even willing to retranslate our Bibles and we have to make them fit what is the tide of the day and there are serious theological issues involved in this.

So we want to be aware of this as we come and look at these matters in I Timothy chapter 2. So if you want to come back there. I see the issue goes back to the opening chapters of Genesis. It will mean we sometimes have to explain. He’s using man in some cases to refer generically. It is not excluding women. I would rather do that than just try to retranslate it so that it sounds like the way the world talks today. No, the creating work of God from the very beginning marked out a difference between the man as male and the female who is created from the man. So we can talk about man and refer to the whole human race or we can talk about man referring to him in his maleness, it just depends on the context. You cannot use female in that way. You cannot use female to refer to the human race generally and then male specifically. The Bible is clear on that order and these things come in subtly and not so subtly.

So you come back to I Timothy chapter 2. This book commentary which I told you is a little bit looser because of a little broader view of inspiration than we would be comfortable with. You start out this section talking about in verse 8-15. And it is amazing just on verses 8-15 there are almost 50 pages on these verses. Now he didn’t have any problem with the first seven verses. He just went through and took them at face value and interpreted them like we would interpret them. Now he slides in as I mentioned, we won’t translate man as man, we will translate it as human and humankind instead of mankind but generally he didn’t have any problem with it. All of a sudden we get here. He will have ten pages of commentary before he even gets to verse 8 explaining how difficult and how confusing this can be and we just have to try to suggest. Here’s some of what he says as you start this. Now we are not even into the commentary but we are to this section. So to introduce this section he’s got 10 pages that go like this: “Reconstructing the social and historical backgrounds of occasional letters among other types of ancient written documents is admittedly a procedure that often has to be carried out with less information than we could wish to have. It requires reading between the lines or guessing what lay in the shadows of Paul’s comments provoking them and determining their meaning and significance. Internal clues are an obvious starting place but for Paul’s letters the social and cultural realities that determine the shape of life and values of the Christian communities often come best to light through secular sources.” Now you see, all of a sudden we have to leave the Bible and maybe go to try to figure out by reading non-Biblical literature and guessing, (to use his word,) what lay in the shadows of Paul’s comments. “Yet which are relative from the secular world and how can we be sure. Piercing together the situations that gave rise to a letter of Paul is artwork or something more on the order of art restoration where the restorer must access every useful bit of information to fill in the gaps and retrieve a reasonable facsimile of the original. Without the original as a basis for a comparison any copy or reconstruction will always be a provisional rating and plausibility remains open in certain respects.” You are following this? In other words, we are in a section of Paul now we just can’t be sure what he was talking about, what he meant and how to understand. He didn’t have that problem with the first seven verses. He didn’t have that problem in chapter 1 and now we are going to talk about the roles of men and women. Oh my, just can’t figure out what Paul is talking about here. Well, just interpret it the way you did the first chapter and the first part of the second chapter. Oh, this is like artwork. This is a work of restoration and we are trying to fill in the gaps and we are going to have to go to secular literature and read what they say.

You know of all of this is? In light of the overwhelming tide of the day we don’t want to be viewed as old fashioned, out of touch, out of date people so we just can’t accept Paul. Now what we have is here a change that occurred since about the l960’s. Before that there were different views on the role of men and women even among those who claimed to be evangelicals. Some just flat out claim, Paul King Jewett claimed to be evangelical and we will just accept that claim for now but he just said Paul was wrong. He wrote out of his rabbinical background and what he wrote about women in passages like this is just wrong. Well at least he was clear but coming since the sixties in the change of things now those who claim to be evangelicals have come to an understanding well we piece this together. We will see more of this as we move through the chapter. They have come up with a new interpretation of passages like Galatians 3:28, F. F. Bruce, another commentator with an English background coming from that perspective with his loose view of inspiration. Came up with others, professor at Harvard, we can now interpret Galatians 3:28 differently, “In Christ there is neither slave nor free, male nor female.” Well that means, see, all distinctions are gone. This man says I have to use Galatians 3:28 as a foundational passage in understanding these matters and so I am going to take that passage and reinterpret it in a way that would have been foreign to almost everyone before 1960 but now we’ve got new insight into it and now we will sift everything else, Paul says, through that passage. There has to be equality and he will admit the evidence from that from Scripture is scanty. I mean we go to people like Priscilla and Phoebe but he said we really know very little about how they functioned but I have to base my approach to these other passages on the assumption that Paul was operating from a position of equality. By equality he means sameness. That’s what we deal with and you need to be aware of it because that becomes intimidating and pretty soon we think well if everybody else in the evangelical world seems to be readjusting.

I had a discussion with a man who was involved in translating work and he’s been involved in translating some of the modern translations and we were discussing this and he admitted it is the tide of the day that requires us to make these changes in the translation; otherwise they are not up to date, they don’t communicate any longer. We go that way, where does it stop?
So, we come to an important section in I Timothy chapter 2. We want to be sure we are being faithful to the Word and allowing the word to guide us in our thinking. So in verse 8 he talks about “I want the men in every place,” I Timothy 2:8 “to pray, lifting up holy hands without wrath and dissention.” He had said in verse 2 he wants “prayer to be made on behalf of all men.” Now in the household of God he wants men to take the initiative and he is contrasting men and women because in verse 9 he will say, “Likewise here is what I want the women to do in contrast to the men.” They each have their own roles and realm and things that they are to focus on. The word for man here is not the word Anthropos, it is the word Andros and he is using it in contrast man and contrast the woman rather than the generic Anthropos as sometimes can be used for all men as well as man as male. They are to lead. I want the men in every place to pray. In every place; every place, I take it the family of God meets and they are joining together in prayer. The men are to take the initiative and pray. That doesn’t mean women can’t pray silently but the audible which we understand is leading in prayer. When one of us stands up here and pray at the beginning of a service or pray before the offering or another time we are doing what? We are leading the congregation in prayer and that is a role that is to be given to the men and it’s not just a situation because they go into all these and you read page after page of what might be the special problems at Ephesus. But he is saying this is to go on in every place. This is how God’s family is to function.

Come back to I Corinthians chapter 1; this expression, “in everyplace.” I Corinthians chapter 1, verse 2: “To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” So you are joined together with believers wherever they are in every place. Same idea as we have in Timothy.

2 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 14: “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in His triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place.” Same expression that we have in Timothy, the men are to pray in every place. Everywhere we go we are making Christ known.

One other passage, I Thessalonians, just before I Timothy, the letters to the Thessalonians, I Thessalonians chapter 1, verse 8: “For the Word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place.” They say that because some try to limit the “in every place,” but this is made clear, in every place, wherever God’s people come together I would have the men lead in prayer. I would have the men to pray.

Back in I Timothy; let me say something here. In our thinking today and the practice that is carried out we tend to limit this to Sunday morning services as we perceive of them but in other places it is alright for the women to lead audibly. In the early years of my being in Lincoln I was invited to a meeting of pastors at a lunch. There were a group of pastors there and one pastor brought his wife and the man who called the meeting, we bowed to pray for the food called on the woman to lead in prayer. I realize there are certain groups I probably wouldn’t fit in. Here you have a group of pastors – well it’s not the church, it’s not the Sunday morning service. We develop para-church organizations. Well they are not the church. Well if you want to argue on that basis, you are right. They are not the church and they are not established or have any foundation in the Word of God either. We create them, they function like the church. What do they do? Well, evangelize, teach the Word, build up. What’s the church supposed to be doing? Well we create this and then we think we don’t have to follow the instructions of the Word because that just applies to the church and we are not a church. Well maybe you ought to be doing what God says is the churches role to do. We think we can go around this and we set up our own leaders but we are not the church so they don’t have to meet the requirements of leaders like will be talked about in I Timothy 3. Are we God’s people, are we God’s family or not?

When my children were at home and I got it from my dad when I was at home, he had instructions for what pertained to our family. When I walked out the door that didn’t mean I didn’t have to pay any attention to what I had been told to do. Oh, I didn’t think you wanted me to behave. I’m not in the house anymore; bad mistake. Of course you do. You are a member of our family. We have certain expectations, certain requirements and that pertained to me when I was walking inside those four walls so to speak and when I was outside those four walls. Now there would be certain things that would just be pertinent to when we were in that but here he says I want you to do this in every place. So we need to be careful. We’ve developed these ways we go around the Scripture but look, we are doing good work. We want to be careful that we are following God’s plan. This doesn’t mean that women cannot pray but I take it when men are present that is the pattern that the men lead in prayer. Now there is an issue that comes up. One of these men, if I can pull up the reference says “Because Paul encourages women to pray in public worship, I Corinthians 11:5 and because the emphasis of verse 8 on men’s holy attitude Paul is not saying here that only men should pray.” Why he specifies only men is not stated. Maybe it’s because that’s what he means. Why he specifies only men is not stated. We just said men is not saying that only men should pray. Why he specifies only men is not stated. Well he just answered his own thing, he said only men but it couldn’t mean only men. This is the more conservative man. I take it he has been clear. What about I Corinthians 11:5? We just throw out a verse. Put in parenthesis (in light of I Corinthians 11:5 where it says women pray, therefore he can’t mean that so we can move on and why Paul would say it like this we have no idea but let’s move on.) Well, let’s not move on.

Come back to I Corinthians 11 and you note the context and we are not going to go into this and if you want more details you will have to go and you can get the studies we did on this in I Corinthians chapter 11 where we worked through the details because we are not going to take time to do this. That would involve its’ own series of studies on this and since we’ve done that we won’t. But he says in verse 2, “Now I praise you because you remember me in everything, and hold firmly to the traditions, just as I delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman and God is the head of Christ.” There is God’s plan. It goes back to the creation. That has not changed. Thousands of years have gone by, cultures come and go. That hasn’t changed. This is the way it is. “Every man who has something on his head while praying or prophesying, disgraces his head. But every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying disgraces her head.” Now you will note here in both 4 and 5 praying and prophesying are joined together and as when we studied this I think that it is purposeful. We look through when we have studies I Corinthians 11 the connection we find in Scripture with prophets and praying. And I think that is the connection here. He is talking about men who prophesy and pray; prophets who will be praying; women who would prophesy and pray.

Now I take it the gift of prophesy is the gift of prophesy. It is not the gift of teaching. It is not the gift of preaching. Prophesying involved receiving special revelation from God and giving it forth. There were women who had that gift. In the book of Acts we find the daughters of Philipp who had the gift of prophesying. That gift is not any longer present so I take it that this is no longer operating. This is one of the supernatural gifts that involved direct revelation with the completion of Scripture is no longer in force. I take it the praying here is connected to the prophesying so it is not a conflict. It is not an issue that certain prophetesses so gifted would have also prayed. Some make the connection, well prophesying and receiving direct revelation would be every bit as important as being a teacher so if they could prophesy why couldn’t they teach? Hmmm, guess there is no answer to that, we’d better move on. Well, wait a minute. It is different why God would give them prophesying would be like arguing the Old Testament there are a few select women who are identified as prophetesses, Deborah, we’ll take her, was a prophetess. Well there were a lot of priests in the Old Testament that didn’t receive direct revelation but a prophetess like Deborah did so I guess that means she could also serve as a priest in Israel, right? I mean being a prophetess seems more important. You could have many priests but the role of a prophet or a prophetess is unique and Deborah was a prophetess therefore she could have also served as priest. Well that may seem like a logical connection but it’s not a Biblical one. She could not serve as priest. In fact God could give her revelation regarding the armies of Israel but she was not appointed by God to lead the armies of Israel. That was a role Barrack was to fulfill.

So I think these kinds of connections. Well, God did give the gift of prophecy to women in the New Testament. How much of that we don’t know. I Corinthians 11 said some women had that. In the book of Acts, Philipp’s daughters had that gift and with that they would pray often in connection with receiving their prophecy but when they did they had to have their head covered in contrast to a man, a man who prophesied and prayed was not to have his head covered. The woman was to indicate even though she is in a position here that could be taken as a leader of men, she is acknowledging in a visible way her submission to the men and recognizing the order that God has established and he goes on in verse 7: “The man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man. For man does not originate form woman, but woman from man; and man was not created for the woman’s sake, but woman for the man’s sake;” fiery words in our day. But it’s what God says and where does He take it? Back to creation. This has been God’s plan from creation and His plan in creating man as male and female and the roles He assigns to the man and to the woman and even the order in which they are created as we will get to, not tonight but in a future study in I Timothy 2 are still binding and govern how we carry out the roles and responsibility that God has given to us.

Alright, come back to I Timothy 2. Paul not only says he wants the men to pray in every place but he wants them to do it lifting up holy hands without wrath and dissention. They are to pray and they are to pray with a proper attitude and in a proper condition of heart and life. Now some say well you take the Bible literally, it says they should be lifting up their hands. There are a variety of postures identified in Scripture. One commentator just picked seven; standing, hands spread out or lifted to heaven, bowing the head, lifting the eyes toward heaven, kneeling down, falling down with your face facing the ground, bowing down with your head between your knees and on it goes. The indication that this is a figure representing is the hands are holy. Well the hands in and of themselves are not holy or unholy. They represent what you are doing, your conduct. We use that today. Well, his hands aren’t clean in this. We don’t mean he’s got mud on his hands. We mean what? There is guilt there. The picture is still done. Pilate used it when he was going to condemn Christ, had water come and he washed his hands. I am clean. He couldn’t wash his hands of that. We still use the picture. I am washing my hands of this. Again it’s obviously a figure of speech being used because it’s not as contrary to a literal interpretation but there is a literal significance. Holy hands represent what? A life that is lived in holiness, purity. Why fold our hands and close our eyes? We don’t know how that started. You know, we teach our children, fold your hands, bow your head, close your eyes we are going to pray. There is nothing wrong with that. We say we do it to close out the distractions. That’s just a practice that started. We could pray and people could hold their hands up and look toward heaven. We want to be careful we do things with decorum. We don’t want to do things to draw attention to ourselves and so there is a certain decorum that we say well this is the practice here. If you are going to lay, fall down with your face toward the ground you are probably going to have to get out in the aisle to do it so it wouldn’t be practical here and then somebody walking down the aisle falls over you then we get sued. You know, the point is it’s not the posture of prayer that is the point. The point is and you have it with the negative here. They are to lift up holy hands, that means without wrath and dissention. Some of the disagreements and the conflicts in the congregation without wrath denotes that attitude and disposition of anger, ill will, resentment toward other people that happens in the fellowship of believers. We are not to have that attitude.

Let me just read you Ephesians chapter 4 for time. Verses 30 to 32, written to this same congregation of believers, incidentally. “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger (there’s our word, orge, anger) and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice;” the positive side – “Be kind to one another. Tenderhearted, forgiving each other just as God in Christ Jesus has forgiven you.” So you see that attitude of spirit. If you lift up holy hands you can’t be harboring that anger, that resentment, that bitterness towards someone else. I don’t have holy hands; I’m not living a life that is pleasing to God and set apart for Him. Dissention, what comes out of that? We have anger toward fellow members of the church, the church at Ephesus, our church or the church you are a member of, what? It leads to dissention. You know you are seething on the inside, you are angry, you are upset and you resent them. This leads then to conflicts, dissentions, splits. The men are to take the lead here. They are to take the lead in bringing the congregation before the throne of the Lord. Fellow believers as they gather together before the throne of grace are not to make a mockery of it and come harboring, anger, resentment and bitterness and being part of the divisions that result from that which are contrary to demonstrate our love and forgiveness and kindness that we manifest toward one another in the body. So a strong responsibility is put on the men summarized very concisely, come with holy hands. God has instructed His people in the Old Testament, Peter repeats it in his letter, “You shall be holy for I am holy,” God says. So come, manifesting His character in our relationship with one another. You know we have that with our children, right?

I was the oldest in my family and that was great. And I was four years older than the next brother and seven years older than the next brother and 16 years older than my sister. Of course, you know, we didn’t fight, my sister and me. But my brothers? I liked being the oldest. You know you fight to see who gets the best spot. We had to share bedrooms and beds early on but I was big enough to push them out. You know, that’s alright but then my Dad would intervene. Those are your brothers, you get along. But Dad, you don’t know what they did. Didn’t you hear what I said? You get along. Well, you know there wasn’t a follow-up after the first, “But Dad, you don’t understand.” He told me it didn’t matter and better not tell him again I didn’t understand. This is how the family works. Here’s what God says, “This is how family is to work. You men are to be leading in the spiritual ministry of prayer, bringing this body before Me to pray for the things we’ve talked about in the first verses here. You come with a condition of heart and mind and life that is pleasing to me,” holy hands, a holy life. Life is not characterized by dissention and bitterness and anger toward other members of the family and then bringing division into my family as a reflection of that. We will say more about that. That can have many other lines but look at verse 9.

See the contrast here, “Likewise, here’s what I want women to do.” This is not a putdown of women but they have their focus. Men are to be the spiritual leaders. That requires godliness. Some of us as men we get the idea we are the leader. Understand we are to be the spiritual leaders. We are to be holy leaders. Now here “I want the women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly, discreetly, not with braided hair, gold, pearls or costly garments but rather by means of good works as is proper for a woman making a claim to godliness.” So you see the requirement for both. There are differences, but there is a sameness. Both have to be holy, godly so the men are to lift up holy hands. The women are to be characterized by good works, the kind of life that would be true of a godly woman. So really, they each have their different realm in the things that they manifest their godliness, their holiness; the woman here, their dress, their clothing. They are not saying likewise the women ought to pray adorned properly. Grammatically that doesn’t fit although some try to stretch that because they want to fit the sameness in here. It’s likewise I want the women to adorn themselves in this way with proper clothing, modestly, appropriately. We get this word adorn, as you are aware, kosmeo, the form here and we get the word cosmetic from it. They adorn themselves, to put things in order, arrange it, prepare themselves. They are preparing themselves. Proper clothing, modestly, discreetly, proper clothing, respectable, honorable, orderly, modest, beautiful – those are meanings if you went to a Greek dictionary you could find for this word, proper, respectable, honorable, modest, orderly, beautiful. It was used by philosophers to convey the sense of orderliness, discipline, decorum, that kind of modestly, discreetly with propriety and respect, a proper attitude in the presence of others.

Discreetly is a word that means sound judgment, good judgment, self-control. In other words, women aren’t to be putting on a show. The world likes that. We just had the Oscars. I noticed in the paper we had a lot of articles on the women there and the clothes or lack thereof. Nobody cared what the men were wearing. My mother said to us, “You men, all you do, wear that same ugly thing with a string around your neck. Why don’t you do something different?”

It’s the women who care. You know we joke about women’s shoes and all of this but men are different than women and the area that the women is showing here has to be careful and what is addressed here perhaps is drawing particular issues but they are issues that have ongoing concern. Be careful that her life and her conduct conforms to what God would have it be. Her life is to be characterized by good works. Good works would mean the works that are pleasing to God. We are not saying a women is saved by doing good works. We are saying good works are to characterize a godly women as they are to characterize a godly man, the proper kind of behavior and the doing of things.

So the woman has a contribution to make. It’s not to be the spiritual leader in prayer or in teaching or in other areas of leadership as we will see as we move through this chapter but it is, she is contributing to the functioning of the body, the family. You know God created us to balance one another, to compliment one another as male and female and that is to carry over into God’s family consistent and these things, be careful, are not just applicable to the church. We say, “Well isn’t He saying how we ought to conduct ourselves in the household of God?” Yes, as God’s family and you will note and we will see this as we move further into this but in all areas of our conduct He carries it back, for example to the creation and God’s intention from the creation. Well the idea, well this is what we have to do in church. Well does a man only have to function with a holy life, pleasing to God, not characterized by anger and division in the church? No, God’s always addressing His people because it’s assumed the people outside the family of God don’t care what God has said. In fact they are open in their rebellion against what God has said. So it’s true. God is not instructing the unbelieving world how to conduct themselves. He’s always instructing His people on how to conduct themselves. Well we need to be careful. We’ve used the example already, “well that’s just for the church when it meets in a formal setting.” Otherwise what? Men don’t have to have holy hands and what represents regarding their life and women don’t have to be characterized by good works as a woman making a claim to godliness and adorned properly and so on. That’s only in church as we talk about meeting in a meeting like this? No. We are part of God’s household just like your physical family. You know, they come home and tell you what their friends are doing, why can’t I do it? Because you are part of this family and this is how we function as family. It doesn’t matter what somebody else’s family is doing or say their kids can do or can’t do. This is our family. This is what God is saying, this is how my family functions. So we want to be careful so we don’t think well this is here we are just for the church services and maybe Sunday School could get included in it. We get outside of this, these things don’t apply. We are talking about God’s family. Now there will be certain things that apply specifically to the order of the church but he is talking about the conduct and character here that I take is broader than that.

So there is a contrast here. What he says men are to do. This is not a putdown to women. Oh, you are superficial. You say men get to do something spiritual. Women are what? Be concerned about their clothes, and their appearance. Indeed they are but that is not all there is. They are to be adorned with good works. We will talk about certain things that God does not intend for them to be doing but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other things they should be doing and are necessary to make things go.

You know, this is a rather new thing as the world deteriorates and ripens for judgment where there is such a goal that we have to obliterate any distinctions between men and women and they have to be the same. They have to be able to do the same thing. I counted three articles in the morning paper that were focused on that very thing. It may have been the Omaha paper. I brought one of them with me but I won’t take the time to read it right now. The point is, oh, the women are not doing the same thing as the men here. What are we going to do to have the women do the same thing as the men? And we have begun to equate equality with sameness and that begins to infiltrate the thinking of believers and pretty soon we are trying to adjust and think that’s the way the church ought to be. That’s the way God’s family ought to be.

What Paul is writing Timothy here is how God’s household is to function and it’s the best. It’s the best for the men, it’s the best for the women. It’s not an exalting of men. It’s not a putdown of women. It’s each has their role to function and we fulfill God’s purposes for us when we function as God intends. So the men have spiritual leadership responsibility. The women are involved in doing the works that God would have them do and that’s their adornment. It doesn’t mean they are not adorned with other things. There is nothing wrong with a women dressing up, fixing up. I sort of like it. You know, we are human but you know this idea that wow, she stands out with a goal to attract attention. There are going to be women who are more physically attractive and they can’t do anything about that. You are not called to make yourself ugly but we can all make improvements and that’s true for men as well. So the distinction here. We have saved some of the more controversial things because he will go on to say what a man is to do and what a woman is to do.

Verse 12: “I don’t allow a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man but to remain quiet;” and just what that means, what is application and how we are to function. Our concern is to be Biblical. All this of fifty pages to say well we can’t be sure what Paul had in mind here and why. Has there been anything that has been really hard to understand in what we read here? “I want the men to pray in everyplace with holy hands, without wrath and dissention. I want the women to adorn themselves properly by means of good works as is proper for a woman making a claim to godliness.”

Do we have to go through and say, Boy, I can’t figure out why Paul would have written that and we are not sure and…” You know, we go through all kinds of contortions, even claiming to believe the Scripture because we are out of step with the world. But we are out of step. God intends His people to be out of step with the world. We are not of the world. If we would, the world would love us because the world loves its own but because He has chosen us out of the world the world hates us so our goal in life is not be pleasing and fit in, in that sense. Our goal is to please the Lord and whatever conflict that brings He gives the grace to endure.

Let’s pray together. Thank you Lord for who and what we are in Christ, made new, Your family. What a high and holy calling. What an honor, what a privilege, what a blessing. Lord how gracious You have been as You have made it clear Your intention for us even in our differences men and women. It’s part of Your purpose for us. The beauty of Your work of creation so that we as men can fulfill Your purpose for us and bring glory to You and realize the blessing that comes from pleasing You. And so that each woman can know the joy of fulfilling Your purpose for her, experiencing the blessing that comes with a life that is honoring to You. Lord, we are greatly blessed to be Your family. We desire to conduct ourselves according to Your will and Your instructions for us. Bless us in the week ahead of us. Lord may we honor You in all that we do. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen