1st Timothy 2:1-15
Randy Peterman · Jul 31, 2011
1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, No. 05
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926242252055

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

This morning we get to cover chapter 2 of 1 Timothy and I have to say that personally this is one of the more exciting passages that I've got to cover. The topics that we're going to cover this morning are going to be the fun and exciting topics that are inciting to a culture, but for a believer, much more mundane, I hope.

And so that can be a challenge. If you have the things that get the world excited and the flesh excited as a believer, you look at this and you go, okay, God has an order. What's the big deal? So as we take a look at chapter 2 of Timothy here this morning, hopefully as we go through this we'll see this in the context of first being created in God's image, and then secondly through the order that God has established in the church. I'm going to go ahead and read through this and then maybe it'll be a bit more obvious why this could be inciting.

So Paul writes, first of all then, I urge that in treaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men. for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time. For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle, I am telling the truth and I am not lying, as a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. Therefore I want the men in every place to pray lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dissension.

Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women taking a claim to godliness. A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression.

But women will be... I'm going to re-read that, and we're going to take out women, because that's improper, in my opinion, in the translation. but she will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint. Alright, so we have here lots of gender and church order issues. So we'll take a look at this and hopefully it won't be too frustrating or awkward. I do want to start out by drawing your attention on the handout there.

You'll see it says Biblical Subordination and then at the bottom there's a footnote that says 1 and then it's empty. That's my printer. I wasn't trying to play a special game with you. The link turned blue and my printer ink is out of blue. So, if you were to go to the website and click on the First Timothy Lessons, you would be able to download this handout and the link is in the handout that you can click. Alternatively, I will try to get that printed out in some form so that you might be able to take it next week if you want.

But it is up on the website already with the proper link. It is linking to an article actually that my uncle wrote for a theological, what would you call the CTS? As a conference, yeah. But it was published, they've got a journal, that's what it is, that they publish these articles.

And so I wanted to cover, this is the position that I believe is biblical, and biblical subordination is I'll just read this definition that he had. The scriptures clearly affirm both ontological and spiritual equality and functional subordination. This functional subordination is only in the context of the husband-wife relationship and the church leadership pastoral roles. To put this into lay terms, the man and woman, while having physiological differences, are not viewed before God positionally as unequal. But conditionally, in the context of the husband and wife and the order of the church, there is an order. The order is referenced cosmologically in Genesis and is not intended for abuse in the marriage relationship or within church leadership.

Gender issues that are part of the modern cultural context were real and relevant in the time of Paul's writing to Timothy, which is specifically why Paul was writing this in his letter to Timothy. So when we discuss the issues through here, I believe it is important for us to understand this position.

How many of you are familiar with egalitarianism? Which is a principle that men and women are equal in every capacity. Or generally that's the way I've seen it presented. I'm a software developer and so I think of things in a very technical, nerdy sort of a way. So let me put it to you like this. Saying that men and women are equal in every way is really degrading to women, and really degrading to men. Because I can't have babies, and that's a really big problem. That's one physiological problem.

So, when we take a look at the context of gender and the roles of gender in the Church, Paul is writing to Timothy about it, but we have to go back to Genesis and take a look briefly at Genesis chapter 1 and then we can come back here, okay? So I don't feel good about covering this without actually also taking just a quick look at Genesis because God has created an order that's in place. And really I feel like this should be like about probably six lessons if we were to go through the biblical doctrine of gender.

Yeah. The being of things. The being of things. Yeah. I directly quoted my uncle. That's why when I restated it in lay terms, I put it, the physiological differences would be kind of the way I would describe that. Our sexual organs are different. Our makeup physically is different in various ways.

But if you will join me in going back to Genesis chapter 1 and verses 25 and 26. So Genesis 1.25, he says, God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind.

And God saw that it was good. Then God said, Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds, and over the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. Continuing in verse 27, God created man in his own image, In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. And then moving forward, In chapter 2, verse 18, he says, Then the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone.

I will make him a helper suitable for him. Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called a living creature, that was his name. The man gave names to all the cattle and the birds of the sky and every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon man and he slept. Then he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man. The man said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. For this reason the man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed."

There's so much theology here that it's a little rough to say, we're going to take a quick pass back over this passage. I want to point out one important thing out of verse 23 of chapter 2, and that is, he says, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

There is a sense of unity that comes from this, that the distinction that is there is a completing distinction for Adam. This woman-ness that Eve has completes Adam and is of a quality that is unique and perfect for the needs that Adam has as a man. He's not complete by himself. He needs woman and the characteristics of woman, and particularly Eve in this case, that are really, it's a really important distinction. The difference is a blessing, not a curse or a negative in any way.

So, let's go back to 1 Timothy, and we're going to start at the top of the chapter, but as we go through this, keep in context that this is primarily in the context of God creating the earth, and then man in his image, and then underneath that, Timothy is written to which group within the history of the Bible. Is it written to the Old Testament saints or the New Testament saints? Alright. So remember, it's a New Testament context.

So this is for the body and operating within the body as a whole. And so he talks to them about needing to urge the entreaties and prayers and petitions and thanksgivings to be made on behalf of all men. Why pray for all mankind? Shouldn't believers be really more focused on one another? Go ahead, Stan. Well, it says here that God wants all men. Because God desires a relationship with about 30% of the people in the world, right? No, He wants a relationship with every single person. Why would He want a relationship with them? We kind of covered it just a few moments ago, but let's see if we can connect those dots. He created them. Yeah, the one who made him, yeah. He wants a relationship with his creation, and that's absolutely an important element of this. What is the significance of Paul suggesting we bring wants, needs, and thanksgiving before the Lord for all men? Doesn't God know everything? Why would he want us to bring these things to him? Absolutely.

It's relationship. It's an element of He's created us in His image to have a relationship with Him and now this is part of that relationship. It's the fellowship that's there. There's a... in Greek philosophy there's a concept of the one and the many that came up quite regularly as a problem. An example of this is when you open up any law records that are part of a city or a county or a business, anytime there's a rule of order, often those rules are made because one person screwed up and they don't want anyone else to do it again.

You got the one and the many. Oh, here's this thing. Oh, this person, you know, came to work drunk and late, so let's make a rule. No one can come to work drunk and late. Was it necessary? Maybe not, you know. Because you just tell them, hey, don't do that ever again or you're fired. No, we have to make a rule so that they don't sue us. Okay, fine. So we make more rules.

But the one in the many is part of the problem there, where when we pray, we bring these prayers to the Lord and He lists off people we should be praying for in particular. And He says kings, obviously here in the United States, We don't have that structure, but then Paul goes more broadly with those who are in authority. But then he says why we should be praying for the leadership, and I thought this was really actually... I'm just going to say it's a tender reason, or at least to me I see tenderness in it. Why does Paul say that we should be praying for the leadership?

Stan? I'll just write it up there. It says that they would be people in fight or flight. So I think it says somewhere else that if you do good, you aren't going to be singled out. And that's a major part of Romans 13 where he's talking about governance and how the believer should interact with or view the government. There's an element where praying for the leadership is It's value to the believer because the believer is participating in the fellowship or the relationship with the Lord, but also the Lord tells us in Romans 13 that he has established the government in place to do his bidding and to bring justice. If the government brings justice and is a just government, we as believers get to live what he describes as a godly and tranquil life.

If your ministry to the world around you is through griping about the federal government, what kind of ministry is that? Is that really a ministry? What if you could focus on spiritual things? Or what if you chose to focus on spiritual things? You know, one thing, I have made it a decision in my own life, and I'm not making this as a rule or suggesting you make this rule, I do not listen to political radio. mostly because my response to political radio is to need to take blood pressure medicine okay I get I get all worked up all those dumb and that you pick a political side anymore I don't even I don't care they're all wrong they're nuts they're you know they're selfish and we could talk about politics and I could get all worked up and you could see what I mean but that doesn't help a lot but the truth of the matter is that Paul wants for believers to have a ministry around them which is going to be a lot easier if they're not really chapped at what the government's doing, or the government's abusive, or oppressive, or any of those things.

Stan? This is during the time of Nero. Politically, in Rome, there was just always turmoil. At least from this point forward, there's a lot of turmoil. One thing I found interesting when I was taking my history class in college The professor said that by the time the Roman government had collapsed, citizens in the city of Rome had over 200 paid holidays. And what, yeah, which is, you know, you go, wow, that's awesome! Unless you're a slave, of course, then those things didn't count. Or you were not a naturalized Roman citizen. But the thing that that did is they found that they could manipulate the people in Rome and get them to pay them off basically with a day off. And they would just tax somebody else a little bit more and cover the expenses and it was okay.

But political upheaval is a problem for the church as well as the citizens anywhere. If you were worried about where your next meal is going to come from, you're going to be slightly less concerned about the gospel because you just want to make sure that you're going to eat tomorrow or tonight or whenever it is. Now that is a ministry opportunity for believers, but that's a bit of a rabbit trail. So Paul wants there to be godliness and dignity or tranquility and quiet life. Why would Paul write that we would hopefully have dignity on top of godliness?

He says that we would have godliness and dignity. I understand godliness. That's an easy one. He wants us to be like him. But why dignity? Any thoughts? I think this is actually kind of important. Is dignity a reflection of us having been made the image of God?

That's part of it. Dignity is basically a general honor or respect within the community. That's at least the way I would define it. And having looked it up last night to make sure that wasn't a bad definition, I feel like it's a good one. With dignity, you have the sense of respect for who you are as a person. This person is a reasonable person. I respect them in the community.

He's not walking around in his bathrobe mumbling to himself everywhere he goes. It's like, oh, I actually have somebody that's a neighbor that does that, and he is actually clinically not right, which is exciting. I didn't know that when we bought our house. I'm like, I don't know how safe I feel. But there's not dignity there. You don't look at that person and go, I respect that person. You go, I hope he's safe. I hope he doesn't lose himself mentally, his mind, yes.

So dignity I think is an important little nuance of this passage. Last on this section, what theological constructs may lead believers to not pray for the salvation of all men? Theological constructs, theological frameworks, systems of theology. There are those out there that actually frankly, encourage people by what they teach to not be praying for the salvation of everyone. Anybody got one? Stan?

Well, maybe I shouldn't even bring this up, but I'm concerned that Calvinism can really get into that, because you can say, you know, on a person's deathbed floor, trying to vandalize that person, and then he refuses, or she refuses, you can say, oh well, they weren't meant to be saved anyway, so I just give up, or fuck someone else. Yeah, well, and even, there are some groups within Calvinism who are, and that's the answer I was really looking for, frankly, but there are groups within Calvinism that actually believe that God has chosen who he's chosen and you don't have to worry about evangelizing them because they will become the elect and ta-da, you're done. So evangelism is unnecessary in some applications of that. I won't say that absolutely because that's painting too broadly with the brush, but there are groups within Calvinism that are just really strict about not praying, or it's not that they're strict that you shouldn't pray, but they don't, it's why do it? It's not useful within their theological construct. Alright, keeping going just so that we keep pace with things here. Why is one mediator a critical part of the Gospel message? Because Paul says we have one mediator. Do you guys want a handout? Do you want one or two handouts? Alright. So why does it matter if there's just one mediator?

There's a lot of... Christ is such a central and important figure within theology that there's probably books of answers to this question. But one mediator is important because that means that you can't hold a liberal position of, well, you just go to heaven or whatever you believe in. We have one mediator. Well, what if I believe in Muhammad? He's not the mediator. Oh, okay, well. I'm sorry? You believe in Muhammad. Enjoy hell. Yeah, enjoy hell. But the thing is that because there is one mediator, Paul can say for certain what the gospel is in the one way. to have a relationship with the God of the universe. So one mediator is an important distinction. Paul says, through the man, Jesus Christ, but I want to take a moment to ask the question, what is, does anybody know what the hypostatic union is? Is that a term people are familiar with?

Cheryl? Because he's fully man and fully God. Fully man and fully God. The term for that is the hypostatic union. When you look at what someone believes and they come to you and they're trying to tell you that you should be part of their denomination or their group or their thing, look and see how they define Christ. Because they will either have Christ as fully man or fully God or fully God and fully man. And if they don't have Christ as fully God and fully man, it's a cult.

Was Jesus fully God or fully man within Mormonism? Was Jesus fully God or fully man within Job's Witness theology? In Job's Witnesses, he's a man, he is not a God-man. In Mormonism, he is a God within many gods that took on human form. But their definition of the hypostatic union, or their description of Christ, is not the hypostatic union. It is not the 100% God, 100% man position.

So having Christ be the man here, Paul is affirming not only the deity of Christ, but also that he took on the form of man. And the manliness of Christ, which I don't mean by which, how awesomely manly Christ was, the manliness of Christ is important when we get into the latter half of this chapter.

So let's keep that. Okay, I'm going to repeat that so everyone can hear it. It's the humanity, true humanity and undiminished deity in one person forever. That's a really good definition. I'm going to have to commit that to memory. I'll have to write that down when we're done because that's good. Okay, so that's the hypostatic union.

What is Christ the testimony of? Because he says Christ came as a testimony. And all those things that Mr. referred to, that he is God in bodily form, completely. And so that covers the whole thing. He's a testimony. It's pretty simplistic, but it's right. That's what's so good about the Gospel. A three-year-old child will understand it. Yeah.

Okay, he's the truth and we left he's a testimony of God's plan and God's love and the personhood of God in in full physical form When the angels would come and talk to mankind, there was a separation and a fear factor that showed up. Except for, I think it is funny when Joshua goes out and meets the angel. He immediately stands up to the angel. Whose side are you on? Which I think was gutsy. But there's a general fear and separation that comes between God and man prior to that. Christ came and removed that separation entirely and would be able to be a federal head. So there's a lot that comes with that.

Because we're going to run out of time, I'm going to skip a few questions here, just simply because I think it's important to cover more of the passage. In verse 8, He says, therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without wrath and dissension.

The word for men there is not Anthropos, which is the general word for mankind. It is Andros, which is more of a mature male, or even sometimes referring to the husband, in a relationship. So he's going to say that there's a gender distinction here. He's not speaking just broadly of mankind. He's saying men, manly men, righteous men, lifting up their hands in prayer without wrath and dissension.

And the theology in this passage, we should have broken this up into two passages when we had to teach it. But he says without wrath and dissension, and I think that that is one of the things that in my own heart I don't like to think that I would pray with wrath and dissension, but the truth of the matter is that when we talk about politics, when we talk about governance, when we talk about sociological constructs, all of those things, it's really, really, really easy to develop in a fleshly mind superiority as our mindset rather than humility. And with an attitude of superiority comes wrathfulness and dissension. What are the opposite of wrathfulness and dissension in your prayer? How are we praying if it's not with wrathfulness and dissension? Humility and love and respect for all of mankind being created in God's image.

I don't want anybody to go to hell, not because I can keep track of how many people I've preached the gospel to. Sweet! I've got more hash marks than you do. But instead, the Holy Spirit, when he leads us to pray, would lead us to pray without wrath and dissension, and instead with a heart of compassion and love and humility for our leaders. I cannot stand the political agenda of the world around me right now, and it's not just in Congress and the White House and in the Supreme Court. It is an earthly, carnal, selfish mindset that is generally pervasive in that arena. So I'm called to pray for them, not with wrath and dissension.

Ouch. At least for me, I'm like, man, they're idiots! What are they doing? Nope, that's not the prayer of the Holy Spirit in your heart for the kings and leaders of your country. Okay, alright, Lord. Give me a tender heart to pray for these people. because I'm not going to be able to do that in my own strength in any way. But that's good. I don't want to be praying in the flesh. I'm going to be praying in the Spirit anyways.

He says, lifting up holy hands and whether or not you believe in raising your hands or don't raise your hands when you pray. The thing I think that is a distinction there is that they're holy hands. They're hands that are sanctified and set aside unto the Lord. That your hands and your body are set aside unto Him and your walk is one of abiding. and you're leading your family and you're in the church, set aside.

So, I don't care if you pray like this. If you go to Israel, and I haven't been myself, but I've seen lots of pictures, the Jewish men, they raise their hands and they pray out to God, send the Messiah. And he says, I did. I did send the Messiah. But they raise their hands and they're waiting for God's justice. It's coming. It's going to be pretty big when it comes. But for us as believers in the church, we want to have the andros, the men, be walking in righteousness.

So let's dig into the part that is not very feminist, okay? And you'll have to forgive me because I grew up with a good friend who was a gal who was very shapely and she got treated like meat all the time in high school and it drove me bonkers that people would treat her that way. And it was like, here's this gal, she's my friend, I love her, she's a believer, and she was just treated as though she was body parts that were for oogling, and she wasn't dressing immodestly or anything. But when we talk about feminism, I always remember her saying, I hate feminism, because it started leading people to treat women as though they were just biologically women, and not who they were fully in Christ. So, that gets me a little worked up.

Alright, so let's keep going in verse 9. Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making claim to godliness. So here's an important question for you.

Should women not own any of those items that he just listed off? No. Does he say you should not have them and you should never wear them ever, ever, ever, and they should never be in the church? Is that what he's saying? What is he saying they should be doing? Adorning themselves with what? What are the things that make them stand out? Adorning themselves with humility, things like this, that the face of the world that he's pointing out, this is a contrast kind of situation. And so this contrast shows, you know, what is of the world and what is of Christ.

I had a girlfriend before Jessica who was on the drill team and she was all kinds of flashy but she had no spiritual walk. She said she was a Christian but I'm not sure at that point in time she had even really understood the gospel and I was a young hormonal teenager boy. I'm just going to own up to that. she did not have the qualities that suddenly stood out when I met my wife. I met Jessica and she had questions about spiritual things. I met Jessica and she wanted to talk about heavenly things. I met Jessica and she wanted to be godly.

And it was like, whoa! I remember there's this one distinct night in the history of our relationship, it was before we were dating, I was dating the other girl, And Jessica and I went and spent some time doing something, and I came home, and my mom and dad were like, Randy, that was a mistake.

You shouldn't spend time with other girls. This is going to cause issues. And I was like, Dad, we were talking about the Bible. It was like the coolest thing ever. And I remember him probably thinking, well, I didn't remember him thinking this. I just imagined him thinking, this is not going to end well. Maybe you can add to that at some point in time in the future.

But I went up into my room, and I had a phone in my room. My parents were generous in that. And I called my girlfriend. I said, I just had the best conversation with Jessica about godly things. And it did not end well. She didn't like that at all. I was like, seriously? She was mad. I'm like, why are you mad? And we were talking about the Bible. It's the best thing ever. Nothing crazy happened.

And a couple weeks later, we broke up. And a couple weeks later, I was dating Jessica. But the godliness of Jessica was not in the way that she could dress herself. She was adorned with spiritual qualities that made me attracted to her. That was enough. I win. I remember just thinking, I better not screw this up because she's pretty awesome. But it wasn't just because she looked good to me.

It was simply the qualities that she had were there. This is a godly woman that Paul is describing who has adorned herself with character. It is not that those that braided hair or gold or pearls or costly garments are wicked in and of themselves. It is not the quality of the woman. Those are outward trappings.

So good works and things that are proper for women and modesty, important things. Now to the part where we start to get into the part that can be a little infuriating for the feminist agenda. A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. Now this has to do with, again, within the structure of the body that she's receiving instruction. The men are leading with godliness and righteous and holy hands and the women are receiving instruction from the men with godliness and with holy hands. Only they're receiving it.

Entire submissiveness here is not that there is not ever any discussion amongst a husband and a wife. How long has it been since you talked through Ephesians 5? But it's up on the website when you talk through Ephesians 5 and went over marriage things. The context of this submission is not one of doormat womanhood. You hear a submission and you go, oh no. Because I've met some real Christian jerks.

These are guys that are jerks and their wives must do whatever. Because I'm the man! But they're not manly, godly men that are raising their hands out of holiness. They're arrogant, punky men that are jerks and need to be smacked around. That's not really biblical. The Holy Spirit will need to correct them. The thing is, what you see is God's Word instructing women to submit but not an instruction to the man. Make sure she's under your thumb. Yeah, and that's why I referenced the Ephesians 5. It says, the man is to love the wife like Christ loved the church. That is complete death to self. Do you want to submit? Would you fully submit to a man who has died to himself and is not arrogant and proud? Yeah. Would you submit to a man who is Christ-like in every way? Yeah. Okay. Now here's the thing.

The issue that this brings up is the issue of singleness as well. And I've had discussions about singleness in this body. The Thursday Night Bible Study was actually born at Cheryl's house. And I remember Cheryl expressing explicitly, there's not a lot of single guys on Holly Hills that I've been able to meet. So singleness is a real issue. And I apologize for singling you out. That's now on the internet. Well, it will be shortly.

But singleness does not fit into this context of husband and wife here, but does fit into the direction of the elders teaching the body. The cool thing about the elders teaching the body is that none of the elders here at Holly Hills are using this position they have of instruction to be oppressive. And there is actually a great encouragement of discussion. The teaching style we're using here right now is to discuss things.

Let me ask you questions. Let's work through this together. This is theology. It's for our lives. Let's discuss it. So even though he says there is submission here, or there is entire submissiveness, the idea is not oppression. Let me talk about the anti-oppression. perspective of this, the opposite perspective of this.

I'm aware of someone at another church, and I have to be careful that I don't give any tells, put my poker face on. I'm aware of someone, and this is literally at another church, and it is someone, who doesn't respect the teaching of one of the elders in the church. And that person undermines the authority and disrespects the elder over and over and over and over again, and brings dissension within the body.

And that's a problem. That's what Paul is saying. Let's not have this. So receiving instruction with entire submissiveness is not with your brain turned off. It's not without ever having a discussion to ask about things. But it is a respect for the order that God has put in place. And he's going to go into the order. He says, But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.

For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. God set up man as the leader of the household, and then he created Eve to come alongside. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression. and then she brought it to Adam. So there's some complexity here because you have two full beings who are independent of themselves that represent the entirety of humanity. Eve transgressed first, but was not the federal head, was not the leader of all of humanity.

God could have put Adam to sleep, pulled out another rib, made the other rib go away, and started things over had Adam Disagreed or God could have handled it. He's gone. He would have handled it his way. I'm just coming up with a possibility but Adam took of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good evil good and evil and Then blew it himself and took all of mankind so that we're here now having this discussion So Adam Adam was first created and then Eve but then Eve fell and then Adam fell and then here's where verse 15 is absolutely one of the most contended passages in all of 1 Timothy.

So as we go through this, bear with me. When I was reading this, I said, but women, and I said, no, I re-read it. But it says, but she. Women is plural in the New American Standard, and it's italicized, which means it's not in the Greek. And the actual Greek word for will be preserved is singular feminine. because it's referring to Eve, but she will be preserved through the bearing of children is feminine, singular, and referring to Eve.

Why would that be possible? Why would that be the case? Why could I stand on that theologically and not feel like maybe I'm trying to stretch things out and make some construct that makes me feel good about things so I can go to sleep tonight? What's in Genesis chapter 3? What does God curse Eve with? What's the result of the fall for womankind?

Labor pains. Child-birthing pains. And so, Paul says they will be saved. Now, the saved is not salvation. If you're a woman and you don't have babies, you can't go to heaven. That's not what he's saying. But the salvation or the saved is more with the principle of sanctification and growing and maturing that will come through the childbirth.

That is the consequence of the Fall. But what does that childbirthing bring about in the family? Katie, are you going to have kids or something? Maybe another one. Katie's going to be going through this on a first-hand basis shortly, I think, here in the coming weeks if the rapture doesn't happen.

You're going to have a baby and then you're going to have a ministry within your home. More salvation and more ministry is going to take place in the lives of your family and in the lives of your children. So these are qualities, and listen, we have two little girls at home, that I love to talk to about spiritual things, and Jessica loves to talk to about spiritual things, and it's a tremendous ministry. There is salvation that comes about through childbearing. This is not the direct application of what Paul is talking about in this passage, but I think it's an important nuance that comes out of here. When you have children, you have a ministry of salvation that comes about in that.

But then he says that if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint. But the saved is singular, but then Paul switches to the plural. He does switch over to the plural. They continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint. Those are qualities that are to be happening within the body that tie in with the men raising holy hands. He has got this logical order of things that happened that close with the, therefore, let men raise holy hands and pray without wrathfulness and dissent. And with the women, he says, but that they are to continue on in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint.

And I've got this as the last question on there. How do these verses tie into Chapter 3? What does Chapter 3 start with? Go ahead and flip forward in your Bible if you have to turn a page. Where does he go into? He goes into church leadership. So Paul closes on godliness of men in the first part of chapter 2, and closes on godliness of women in the second part of chapter 2, and then he's going to go into church leadership. If you don't have godly men and women in the church, you don't get to pull out godly leadership from within them in the church. Paul is very concerned that your home and your family, even if it's just one person, is of the right Christ-focused life, because that's where the church leadership comes from.

The homes in the church. So, as I went through this, the thing that I kept seeing is that this was the flock operating. Paul's telling Timothy, hey, make sure the flock is operating right. Because you're not going to be able to find those elders and those deacons in these homes if they're not operating right.

So let's have these homes Christ-centered, Christ-focused, walking in faith, sanctified, set aside unto Him. And those are going to be the ones that the Lord is going to draw out naturally the elders and deacons from. But that's...my dad gets to teach on that next week. So there's a flow, a logical flow as he goes through this letter and takes us into chapter 3. Any thoughts, questions?

This is tough and I had a really hard time with, I spent almost all of my studying time proportionally on verse 15 because it's a rough one. Let me just open up the New Testament in Greek. I have a hard time even coming up with an expanded and explained on this one, I'm not going to lie. The sentence is so terse, but it feels, based on context, to me that the first part of verse 15 is directly linked into verse 14, and the second half of 15 should almost be a separate thought. Because you have the singular her-ness of referring to Eve back in Genesis chapter 3.

Let me go there and I'll see what I can do. This is going to be rough because I'm not a Greek scholar nor am I a translator. Dad, you might even be able to do a better job of this on the fly than I could. Yeah, it's rough. But she will be... I'm going to just... this is the inner linear, okay? So this is not a translation.

Don't write this down, but it's in here. but she will be saved through her childbearing, comma, if they, the women of the church, remain in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety. And that's the if clause on here is the difficult thing about translating this because you have one thing that is a thought that's tied to Eve and then you have this if condition, and that's the part where I have a hard time doing an expanded and explained on, because it's like, if what? If they do this, then what's the consequence? They will be preserved. And there's the preservation that's there. Eve would literally have her salvation be coming from her line. From her what? Her line. The woman's seed. Mary was the virgin birth, and it was through the woman's seed that that came through. And that's where that I believe is a clear tie-in and a direct theological thought that fits in and is consistent.

The difficulty for me in teaching this is really dealing with if they remain, then they will be preserved or saved too. It's a strange connection, grammatically. And that's the part where I have a hard time doing an expand and explain. Because while I have a general thought formed, I have a hard time putting it into it. I spend a lot of time thinking through this. And I still feel like I'm coming short of being able to put it clearly. And so I don't know. My dad might have some observations or thoughts on that that are a little bit more useful.

The if. The if. The if is a possibility. If. OK. It's a subjunctive sort of if, huh? Yes. It's not a subjunctive. if it is assumed to be true. Okay. How about if it refers to the children? Well, and that is something that was brought up in some of the positions, and I was afraid we'd get into this Greek stuff, because I'm not qualified to go into it. It's not an object.

It's the if-impossible, Fundamentally, I don't believe we want to walk away from this feeling like women have to have babies to be saved, and also that salvation is conditional on their lives being faithful and full of love and sanctification with sobriety. But instead that these are qualities that should be part of godly womanhood. We also have to look at, a lot of times we need to look at the word saved and we always think of it in terms of am I eternally saved going to heaven versus going to hell?

Yeah. And it's not always used with that intent. Yeah. So I'm sorry I don't have an expanded and explained on this one because I wrestled with this and I spent a number of hours looking at it and I still felt like I was going to come in this morning and have to lean on the knowledge of my dad to a certain extent because it's tough. Every commentator I looked at, and I looked at a number of commentaries, either glossed over it entirely or said these are the four or five different views that are out there.

And nobody would commit to anything. It was like, seriously, the scholarship just died off. Like, oh, we're reading through, and yeah, this is the order it got set in place, but that's it, we're going to skip 15. And then they get all excited about chapter 3, eldership, yay! And 15 never happened. So I tried to use all the resources I had, and 15 was like this invisible passage. And I apologize. Go ahead, Stan.

Well, I was just going to say, it's interesting to me that, first of all, I'm sure Eve, when she did what she did with the tree, probably removed herself from the Lord, thinking that she had screwed up. at all after that. But yet, it says here, when she gave birth to Cain and also when she gave birth to Seth, she did it with the help of the Lord. And so the relationship continued through the process of trial and burial.

I don't know if that has any relationship or not, but I thought it was always quite interesting that passage always said, with the help of the Lord and with Seth, it says, It says something different. He was with the Alpha Lord, and the Lord was mentioned in the set. So, in Kyle Bearing, she needed the Lord. And so, she was back to the Lord being most important in her life.

I don't know if that's it or not. Adam and Eve walked in faith when the Lord gave them their coverings. They walked in faith. And they walked with the Lord even though there was the separation that came from sin. When we get to their descendants, that's when they are not walking with the Lord. And the child birthing was difficult and they didn't have the context. They only had the consequence. And it seems like there was a pretty quick walking away from biblical things that were there, which is unfortunate.

This is off the top of my head, so this is not officially something to grab onto, but my understanding from my recollection from Dr. Fruchtenbaum's teaching through this was that Seth actually, the name Seth implies that Eve thought that he was the one that was going to crush the serpent's head. And that's off the top of my head, so maybe we'll even cut this off on the internet recording. But it is interesting that Eve knew that there was a savior coming. There was one that was coming that was going to crush the serpent's head.

She didn't realize it was going to be so far off into the future. That was part of the curse, was this dissension there. Well, and that's, see, that's again tying back into Paul referring to Genesis chapter 3. If you don't have Genesis chapter 3, this verse is just simply mysterious. In Genesis chapter 3 verses, let me just read 15 and 16. God is speaking at the evening.

He says, And I will put enmity between you and the woman, or, I'm sorry, to the serpent. And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel." And of course later on we would find out that's a prophecy of the Messiah.

And in verse 16, to the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth and in pain you will bring forth children yet your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you. So there's this, in the Hebrew it's a little ambiguous as to exactly what some of that nuance is. I took an intensive of Genesis from Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum and he went slowly through Genesis chapter 3 and there's a lot of nuance that's in here but he will rule over you and there seems to be a contention that comes there and that's why it would seem Paul is saying that these are characteristics that should be of godly women because they're standing out from the women who are being on their own and outside of submission to their husbands.

Any other thoughts or questions? Is that the first or the second bell? It's the third bell. Now I'm in trouble. Bob is like, hey, reign it in. We'll close and we can keep discussing if there's more discussion. Heavenly Father, thank you for the truth of your word, even if we can't understand every nuance of it on this day. We do pray that you would open our hearts and minds as we do study through this. And Lord, I pray for the men and women that are here, and the men and women at this church, and even in the church globally, that they would find themselves submitting to you and one another as your word tells us we should be doing in here and as well as Ephesians and Colossians. And thank you for this time that we have together in Jesus' name. Amen.