Grace Covenant Church

Grace Covenant Church
2101 East 50th Street, Texarkana, AR

Monday, June 25, 2012

Women in the Church, the Minefield


Sermon Text: 1Timothy 2:8-15

Introduction: God has blessed the modern age with many good and great Bible teachers and leaders. Theologians, pastors, authors. We have J.I. Packer and R. C. Sproul; we have Tim Keller and John MacArthur; we have John Frame and John Piper. And we could go on and on.

One of the great teachers might even be called ‘the theologian of suffering.’
This theologian of suffering did not set out to be such. Rather, this person set out to be a diver. But a diving accident left her paralyzed.
A young beautiful girl paralyzed had to confront the great issue: Did God have anything to do with her breaking her neck?
Her name is Joni Eareckson Tada. Her seminary training was the experience of becoming—at age 19—a quadriplegic with the grace of a mind and soul that had to deal with this great issue of human suffering.
Joni Eareckson Tada has been a teacher to the Church.
She is just one reminder among many of the great women who have—in our times—instructed the church through word, example, writings, and life:
Women like Edith Schaeffer, Corrie TenBoom, Elizabeth Eliot.

Today, we enter the minefield of 1 Timothy 2, verses 8 and following.
The controversy in the terms used today is framed this way:
Egalitarian Views of Women’s Roles in the Church versus Complementarian Views.

Egalitarian Views emphasize all people—men and women—being equal in regard to what can be done in the church and society.

Complementarian Views emphasize that men and women are to complement or complete the roles each has. A woman is a help meet or a helper that it perfectly fitted to complete man’s roles and needs.

The Minefield
Imagine if we were an orchestra and I as the conducted passed out our music scores to each of you. Imagine it was a piece by  Mozart. We would each be scanning the music, looking at what particulars we had to play. Violins and other string instruments at the string parts, woodwinds at the woodwind parts, and the percussion people looking at their parts.
Page 5—measure 122 and following: A jumble. A really hard and confusing set of measures. As musicians, we would be anticipating some long, hard sessions just working through the intricacies (details) of that portion.
Every musician and singer knows the experience. The exhaustingly long practice almost solely devoted to one portion of the music.
But imagine if the orchestra never played the entire piece because it was so overwhelmingly focused on page 5, measure 122 and following.
It is so easy to have a focus on 1 Timothy 2 that says, “A woman shall not…” and then see the chapter in its fullness.

Not every particular and scenario of church worship and church life is addressed here and not every Christ-centered church is going to look alike in what they do.
We have, for example, had women preach sermons in this church.
Case I am referring to, we have had a woman here in times past who would sign the sermon to a visitor who was deaf. She preached the sermon to that deaf person.
We can let our minds race to a thousand different scenarios and ask questions about them.
What about if your congregation has foreign language needs?
What if all the men were called away or taken away?
Can I, for example, preach a sermon message I learned from Joni Eareckson Tada?

It would be easy to get caught in that trap and miss the gist of a portion of God’s word that twice uses the word holy, and also mentions good works, faith, and love.

Three Overwhelmingly Presuppositions, Irreducible Elements, regarding women in the church:

1. Any viewpoint that diminishes or subtracts from women’s ability and opportunity and obligation to learn is wrongful.
The four words that would have been overwhelmingly shocking in the time and culture of this writing: LET THE WOMEN LEARN.
In regard to men and women at worship, the Babylonian Talmud said, “The men came to learn, the women came to hear.”
In contrast, you see the example of Mary (sister of Martha and Lazarus) who chose to neglect the kitchen for sitting and learning from Jesus. (Luke 10:42 etc.)
There is no distinction between the parts of the Bible for men to learn and the parts for women to learn.
There are often apparent differences between the ways men and women learn. Men tend to be more interested in abstract thought (meaning, ideas that don’t entail actually having to work) and women more interested in practical application.
Hence, a man might write a book on the theology of why bad things happen, while Joni E T writes about how to live with suffering.

2. Any viewpoint that diminishes or subtracts from women’s engagement in church life and ministries is wrongful.
In this passage, in 1 Timothy 5, and in Titus 2:3-5, there are more than enough kernels of applications for women being heavily involved in ministry.
Let us not forget that we have at many women who are working full time in Christian ministry Veritas.
There are many counseling situations where women are needed in the church.

3. Any viewpoint that diminishes or subtracts from a woman’s obligation to seek after Christ and personal holiness is completely wrongful.
Any view is wrong allows a woman to think like this: My husband does the theology, Bible study, prayer, worldview, etc. I just have to bake cookies and bread and serve my husband.
This passage speaks of godliness, good works, faith, love, and holiness: directed at women.

Two Principles Concerning Leadership in the Church:

1. Women are not to exercise the pastoral, preaching-centered, authority position in the church.
By the way, most men are not to exercise these positions either.
By the way, children don’t exercise these positions.
Churches have to work out the details of the wide range of teaching venues in the life of the church.

Are there scenarios related to church life where a woman can be standing in the front of a room teaching or delivering information to an audience containing men?
Yes.

Is there a scenario where a woman would be standing here in the pulpit officially proclaiming the Word and Doctrine in the manner that I am doing?
No.

Is there a scenario where, particularly in a larger church, a woman is on the ministry staff?
Yes.

Is there a scenario where a woman is a pastor?
No.

Is there a scenario where a woman would attend a session meet and present information to the elders?
Yes.

Is there a scenario where a woman would be asked to join the session as an elder?
No.

Consider Phoebe in Romans 16:1-2:
She may have ridden up in a green chariot, wearing a green toga, bearing the initials CPS (Christian Parcel Service) and checked the street address (Christ’s Church, 4232 Appian Way, Rome): Special Delivery from Paul to the Church of Rome.
It appears there was more interaction. You can imagine elders sitting down with this woman, asking questions.

2. It is healthy to have a disposition toward favoring, cultivating, and using male leadership in many (perhaps most) situations involving both men and women.
In other words, there are many cases where either a man or woman can take on a particular task, but it is healthy to call on a man to do so.
Male passivity is a besetting sin.
Women overworking is a besetting danger.

Conclusion:  Remember the main context of 1 Timothy 2:
This is a passage calling for prayer EVERYWHERE.
This is a passage calling for godliness and holiness.
For Good Works.
For Faith, Love, Holiness, Self-control.
This beautiful community, this utopia, this heavenly society is possible because God has placed two groups in the church. 2 groups whose inclinations and duties overlap at many points, yet at other points are different.
Two groups—each incomplete in themselves—but complete, complemented, together: 
Men and Women.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Sermon: Praying for the World (6-17-2012)

I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men....

Scripture Reading: 1 Timothy 2:1-7

I. Introduction: In this passage before us today, we have a call to prayer.
In the beginning, we are told to pray a specific prayer: For Kings. For Caesar.
That prayer is to have a particular result: So that God’s people can live quiet, peaceful lives pursuing godliness and reverence. So we can sit here safely, week after week.

Paul is writing this letter to Timothy somewhere in the vicinity of 62 A.D.
It will be the year 312 A.D. before Constantine the Emperor is converted to Christianity.

250 years between 2 events. On the one hand, Paul was not simply asking Timothy and the church in Ephesus to pray for the emperor to be saved.

This look at prayer reminds us of two things:
First, our prayers have the long term in mind: Thy Will Be Done. Our prayers have a 250 year plus range.
Second, we are the living answers to prayers reaching back 250 years. For Americans, that goes back roughly to the events known as the Great Awakening. A series of revivals that swept across the American colonies.  Great preaching and preachers: George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards. And great prayer.

Prayer is not subject to objective tests. Prayer is not subject to scientific study:
          Group A prayed 3 times a day.
          Group B prayed 10 times a day.
          Group C was given a placebo. Their "prayer" was actually, a Dr. Suess story.
          Group D did not pray at all.

And yet, prayer is a vital part of the Christian and the church’s life.
And are the results we see in life and history just coincidence?
In May 1989 at Leipzig, in the historic Nocolai Kirche (St. Nicholas Church) where the Reformation had been introduced 450 years earlier, a small group began to meet.
They were reading the Sermon on the Mount and praying for peace.
The group grew and had to move to larger and larger rooms.
They moved to the nave of the church, which filled up.
The Communist authorities got concerned. They began threatening attenders, jailing some, and blocking roads to the prayer meetings.
October 9, 1989, some 2000 crowded in to pray for peace, with another 10,000 outside.
Soon the Berlin Wall came down.

Right here in the central part of 1 Timothy is an exhortation to prayer. Largely a whole chapter devoted to prayer.
1 Timothy and 2nd Timothy are teacher manuals, seminary guides, doctrinal handbooks.
Teach, instruct, train are recurring words and themes. Doctrine and specifically SOUND Doctrine is the motif of these letters.
“Timothy, here is how you are to get into the minds of your congregation.”

And yet, this is a book calling for prayer.
As we look at these verses today, we will be able to look at the immensity, the greatness, the vastness of what our prayers are to focus on, and then we will look at Paul’s personal explanation of how he…and by extension, each of us, then tackles the world.
II. The Universal Scope of Our Prayers1 Tim. 2:1-2
1. It is good for us to have the more local, individual prayers on our church prayer list. Jobs, marriages, babies, sicknesses, travel, and more are things to pray for.

2. Four words or phrases are used to expand upon what we more easily call prayer.
Supplications:
Prayers:
Intercessions:
Thanksgiving:

The Scriptures are a literary text. Rich in literary devices; not just barebones instruction.
Multiple words are used often for several reasons: 

     i. To show different aspects of a thing to be done. Housework: cleaning, cooking, ironing, dusting.
     ii. To show the richness or multi-layered nature of a thing: You are my mentor, friend, guide, brother.
     iii. Often it does both. Easy to see the difference between thanksgiving and supplication, but not so    easy see the difference between prayers and supplications. To focus on definitions would be misguided. Rather we are to be hit by the richness of the fourfold testimony.

3. We are to pray for all men. At least 4 times in this text this word ALL appears. All men is not the same as all who are in authority.
All does not always mean every.  Usually, it is better seen as all types. 

As you think through the 4 alls (all men; all who are in authority; and the all who God desires to be saved and the all for whom Christ was a ransom), pray on the larger side of this.

If you are hung up in a theological struggle between this passage and verses from John 10, read Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God if you wish. Do the study of issues relating to predestination and the free offer of the Gospel,

But for now, for all times, pray expansively.
Children are often at best theologians in the church: Pray for God to heal all the sick people in the world.

Philip Graham Ryken tells of his experiences some years ago at the Gilcomston South Church in Aberdeen, Scotland.
Every Saturday night—for 2 hours—the congregation gathered for prayer.
They had a large board listing the names and locations of ministers and missionaries sent out by the church.
They prayed their way around the city of Aberdeen.  They prayed for Scotland and the British Isles.
Someone would mention a continent and prayers would follow for the countries of that continent.
They prayed for the whole world.

Pray expansively: World, US, Texarkana. 

4. For kings and those in authority: Pagans, in their case. Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, Washington insiders, establishment figures, etc.

III. The Universal Reach of the Gospel
In the essay, “Epic as Cosmopoesis” by Louise Cowan, she talks about the characteristics of epic literature.
One of those characteristics of the great epics—like The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost—is the penetrating of the veil between gods and men, immortals and mortals.

Right here: Paul gives us the easy answer to the epic question: Where is the veil separated between God and man:
In Jesus Christ, in Jesus Christ alone, in Jesus Christ only.

Prayer, Paul’s topic, becomes a focus on Jesus Christ.
Prayer focuses us on a Christ-centered life.
One Mediator between God and man: the Man Christ Jesus. The Man—Christ’s human nature. The Christ—the messiah, the one who is coming. Jesus—One who saves.

IV. The Specific Application
The universal prayer—All men, all the world
The universal answer—Jesus Christ
Specific application: Paul appointed to carry the truth to Gentiles.
GCC: appointed to proclaim the Gospel and minister in Texarkana.
Prayer focuses us on Christ. A focus on Christ sends us out to let people know.
V. How do we further apply all this?
1. Application for a sermon on prayer: Pray. Pray more. Pray better.
2. Attend at least one of our prayer times this week.
3. Go through the shelves at home and pull out that book on prayer that you read years ago or never read or read and did not apply.
4. Pray in an uncomfortable or unfamiliar setting. Embarrass yourself if necessary. Pray spontaneously.
5. Pray bigger, more Christ centered, evangelism centered, and specific.
The world, the message of Christ, those, like Paul, who carry the message of Christ.