Rhythms of Grace

S10E11 - How Do Women Fit In?

This week, the Rhythms of Grace team asks the big question: How do women fit into ministry, society, and God's plan for His Church? Is ordaining women a slippery slope? How do we look at gender in the context of Scripture? Join us in tackling this big question on this week's episode of Rhythms of Grace.

Duration:: 58m
Broadcast on:: 09 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

well hello and welcome to Rhythms of Grace I'm Christine and I'm here with Nate bright-eyed and bushy-tailed hello and some hey I appreciate that saying you're like I don't need to come up with anything yeah just hey is good hey is good I literally rolled up to the studio a minute ago so yeah you can hear me clang in my coffee cup around yeah we all have our coffee this morning so hopefully we will come to life as the episode progresses that's right it's gonna be a slow slow ramp up we're gonna ease our way into it this morning although we're using our way in with kind of a big topic so one of I mean you know they're all big topics I feel like that we've been talking about but for me this is a big one so some what are you yeah and for some others too that I know that listen so today we're going to talk about women in ministry which revolves around ordination and being a pastor and preaching and but it's also that that's in the modern church context but like overall there it's a broader discussion so and like I know I I grew up my dad was a Presbyterian minister and I grew up in a tradition where women were not allowed to be not only pastors but even elders or preach on a Sunday they might teach a Sunday school for kids but not for adults yeah what was the traditions that you grew up in yeah I also grew up in that not Presbyterian but in a similar tradition where yeah we had a youth pastor and then like the children's director was a woman and then once we had a female youth pastor she was the youth director because of the kind of that that and yeah and yeah no no female elders although apparently right yeah the denomination I grew up on maybe a shifting question what what tradition did you grow up in Southern Baptist okay which I guess now ordains women do they or allow them to lead and it's been a very hot topic I see there's like a lot of debate anyway yeah because Rick Warren left or got kicked out of the Southern Baptist church because he ordained a woman pastor yeah Saddleback church that was yes so my my seminary is actually kind of Southern Baptist because it's from Saddleback but it's Rick Warren's kind of strain so anyway it's very like hot topic wow I don't remember what the official like position was in either of the churches like school that was associated with a church or my actual church I don't actually remember to be totally honest okay I do know that for for a while oh actually this is helpful when I was in the vineyard church it there was a time is probably like late 90s 2000 where the issue of ordaining women was hotly hotly debated yeah they were like people were like writing position papers and it was like a whole thing yeah I don't remember where they landed I just remember that apparently they must not have ordained women or else it wouldn't have been a strong discussion at that point yeah it's interesting because some of the debate around this issue and I have people I've had people say this to me because they they say well if you start ordaining women you're liberal that's one label that that's given to you and that you must be denying inerrancy or something regarding the Bible and then they will go as far as to say once you ordain woman that is a slippery slope it went to other theological liberalism and whether it's you know sexuality issues or any other issues next thing you know it's almost like you're gonna deny the authority of the Bible etc etc so that that's where some of the argument goes and I know for me when you know I felt the call to ministry when I was in middle school and I was trying to figure out what does that mean grew up with in yeah very conservative view of what women could do in the church yeah and then in college I went to a church where there was a woman pastor and my experience was they didn't believe in the inerrancy of scripture or that Jesus had risen from you know it's like oh that's a metaphor and all of these things and so for me I was like oh my parents were right like it is a slippery slope and so I feel like it's really easy to sometimes yeah see those examples and be like oh sure are these that are these correlated actually it actually reinforced the conservative yeah interesting it kind of put yeah it put off my journey toward seminary and all of that I think even more because I was like I don't know can I really believe this and and still believe in the inerrancy of scripture so that was something I had to really wrestle yeah yeah and those two things are usually associated yeah if a church is gone that we'll call it progressive that's not a great term but where they lose the kind of theological moorings of saying you know like for like for example there's a person here at this church who left a certain denomination and at a local church in the in the area and she said and this is true of a lot of the churches in that denomination she said it's almost like they were afraid to talk about Jesus yeah and it was more stories testimonies and and social justice and not like scripture or even what we call preaching and again that the there are associations but that is not a causation or correlation so oftentimes that position is quote-unquote guilty by association yeah it makes sense I feel like that was that's a good description of my experience of this church that I was okay so yeah and then for me growing up in a in Asian family I mean just reinforces the hierarchy of male and female and the quote-unquote division of labor because women were in the kitchen men kind of did work that was true in the church as well too in the Korean church my dad is a pastor it was a after church they had lunch together every single Sunday and it was all the women in the kitchen because this is what was reflected at home and it was the men in the fellowship hall talking waiting for the food and it was always the men who ate first in fact I remember after about five years into our marriage my parents were visiting us we were living out in Philadelphia at the time and after dinner my both my parents go out into the living room and I get and then Amy started doing dishes I got up and walked into the kitchen and started doing dishes and my dad innocently innocuously said what are you doing and I said I'm helping Amy in the kitchen wash the dishes and it was just like oh okay and was funny was years after that my mom was like yeah after your dad saw that you're doing that he started doing that too at home which again there's a lot of cultural embedding in there and so this isn't to indict like Eastern culture or anything like that that is not the point but they're just just to know that all of us are swimming in the sea of our culture yeah right yeah that's that's a good it's a good thing to remember how how strongly our theology can be sort of unwittingly like directed by cultural things that we don't even realize are sort of embedded in yeah our experience etc and so having grown up growing up in a church not only in the church I grew my dad's church but even in college the church I went to was very strongly and the word is complementarian meaning that men and women complement each other but they they don't share the division of labor you know women can do certain things and call do do certain things men others so most of my life I grew up complementarian and there was always and most of my life I just went about it not really thinking about it I mean back when I was growing up women a whole issue of women weren't wasn't as forefront as it is now probably especially not in the church that you were part of right you weren't even in a spot where that was even like a regular conversation right but then I would see things happen like that like okay well a woman would become a youth director or even when I went to seminary most of the women in seminary and this is years like 20 years ago were there to get a masters of arts not a masters of divinity and it was usually around counseling versus like a pastoral track and so that was really common women were in seminary but they they want to be counselors or social workers or things like that and so again there was a very clear division a compliment between men and women but never kind of on the same track but then it was but then as I got older and as this issue started to come up especially in churches you start to see some what I would call discrepancies of theology and practice okay so and the debates would get honestly really really a trivial so it was like well women could teach Sunday school but not if there's men in it or they could teach Sunday school with men but that's not preaching so it was like splitting hairs over things that I'm like I'm even then even though I couldn't have articulated it was like what is the like what what is it is this what Paul was talking about right right like about Sunday school classes and yet then we would send a usually a single woman overseas yeah like to the mission field yeah and she was called to preach and even started church which which also I mean again like we're deep deep deep in the waters right now but that even has sort of like racial it does in turn colonial yeah colonialism it sort of says like oh well you know these are second-class citizens so of course it's okay if she preaches to them yeah yeah so that that was so my experience growing up and I mean I have friends on both sides and I would say and I'll say this right off the bat like I see both sides so my complimentary friends it's not that I don't see their line of argument because I was that growing up throughout my growing up years in college and it wasn't till I think seminary or post seminary that the issues start to really come up actually I wrote a paper on this in seminary and I think that's where I start to change my mind so interesting yeah we had when we when we started I was a part of a church plant again right around 2000 2001 in Metro Detroit and as we were sort of writing like the you know the bylaws of the church or whatever this issue actually did come up because the planter was very much the the opposite of complementarianism is called egalitarian right yeah so he was very egalitarian but we were a very small church planting team and there were people on the team who were very very opposed to sort of saying that like in our like bylaws that a woman could be ordained as pastor and so we oh my gosh I just remember like we would meet at restaurants or whatever just hours of going back and forth and talking around and what if we said this and what if we said this and what if we said this and it was just you know I it was it was a huge it was like a deal breaker on both for both of these people to have it not go the way that they really believed yeah I think we actually found some like compromise language that's sort of like kick the can down the road I think that's what the the SBC did is their statement doesn't affirm women but it is a women will not be barred from yeah yeah yeah becoming yeah leaders yeah leaders in the church and it's interesting because it's like some of the other discrepancies is like well we are all called to evangelize and which actually in the New Testament it is like it's not just evangelizing it is pronouncing good news which is actually preaching in the in the vocabulary of the New Testament and yet yeah but what if you're meeting on a Sunday you know in the sanctuary right you can't yeah so yeah so it's interesting well I'll bring up one piece of scripture which will kind of run throughout this episode and probably even next is we could kind of dive deep into this but Paul says there's no longer slave and free neither male and female and he I want to be clear he is not erasing any kind of distinctions you know he's not saying oh no no you know there's no such thing as slaves no such thing as free people I mean because there were he's not saying oh there's no such thing as men and women there are but he's saying when it comes to Christ in the church when it comes to gender it no longer matters when it comes to your status or lack of status you are all equal yet radically unique so that that was his big thunderbolt when he made that statement the thing that I always observed in this passage specifically was that he is referencing it like an overclass and an underclass yeah those pairs is that and what he's essentially saying is like look that distinction of there being a specific underclass that no longer exists yeah yeah that's really good I mean that's a really key insight and a common prayer of the Jewish man was God thank you you didn't make me a Gentile or a woman Wow and what is that what is that reference that you were just quoting some oh the male female saver yeah hmm yeah oh oh from Paul yeah Galatians that's what Galatians 328 I thought you were testing me on the oh well that prayer there's a similar version of that in I think the gospel of Luke where a religious leader goes in and a destitute person goes in and the religious leaders like oh God thank you didn't make me like oh yeah this person yeah you know poor or whatever yeah yeah yeah yeah the three the three comparisons Paul makes is Jew and Gentile which again you know speaking that would be in hierarchy yeah that'd be a hierarchy there a slave or free male or female all of them have an underclass that he's sort of saying that's existing yeah I think the other thing to consider too and again this is taking into consideration we'll get to the XYZ principle if you haven't if you don't know what that is come go back a couple episodes because I think that's really key in understanding a lot of these big questions but we also have to remember and sometimes the Bible gets criticized for this in our day and age but again you're looking back to a culture that was actually very progressive and forward looking when it comes to the Bible but we have to remember that the Bible was written in a male dominated patriarchal society and so throughout scripture they'll say oh man right when and now we all often say oh humankind right and again I think for those of us who may criticize the Bible for that like that's just another form of chronal what C.S. Lewis calls chronological snobbery that just wasn't the the culture of that day just like we talked about I think we did went with slavery right like even as much as progressive of as Lincoln and Washington were in trying to free slavery they were in this liminal period where it was still progressive it was still the the actual belief versus the practice was still kind of lagging and so I do think the criticism around that though can can sometimes come from again if you're if you're going to advocate that you have a like a literalist understanding of the of the Bible around some of the laws etc then it does become a valid it does become a valid criticism to say sort of like or or it's fair to point out the hypocrisy of sort of like picking and choosing and saying like oh well I I believe that the the Bible is the inerrant word of God and everything should be taken literally and then people say well you know what about the fact that it only speaks about men and that women are like this like you can't have it both ways so I appreciate the criticism you know of sort of why why people take issue there but I think what we're trying to say is there's another way to look at that which is to sort of say broadly from a cultural context this word meant something different when it was written yeah so Christine Sherlow a bit about your journey then so you grew up in the southern Baptist church and now you just graduate seminary and you're a pastor I know I have my MDiv which yeah when my mom was trying to get her masters to divinity she had to like look and look for a school that would let her take a preaching class you know which because they barred women from a preaching class yeah because again Baptist Church and so she ended up going to seminary with a different denomination so yeah it has been quite a journey yeah when I was growing up I remember it's like okay I feel called to ministry I was talking to my parents about it and my my stepmom has been a missionary overseas and she was like well you can go to missions and and and that kind of like yeah I you know pastoral work here not really an option but you could go to you know women are good enough for overseas work yeah which I yeah I guess there's just again all of those subtleties that if I think to to take the complimentary and stance you have to like draw all of those lines in the sand because there are so many exceptions in scripture yeah and that was something that yeah as I was kind of wrestling out for myself actually in coming to grace I started like really deeply wrestling with this idea of well yeah where where am I called I don't feel called to overseas missions right now and I don't really like kids like little ones and I was like so where do I kind of fit into this yeah into this picture of ministry and yeah I remember seeing all of these images of like women being an active part of ministry whether it was evangelism or you know teaching up Apollos or whoever it might be and I was talking about that with my godfather who has been a egalitarian my whole life and he was like Christine if God can make a donkey a preacher in the Old Testament like why wouldn't he speak through women he's like Jesus says if you don't proclaim you know the glory of God like even these stones will cry out or if you silence these people even the stones will cry out right and I I think that was like one of those I don't know kind of shifts in mindset for me so anyway that was kind of the beginning of my journey yeah and it continued with a lot of yeah trying to see like how do you see the the full picture of the role of women in in scripture yeah so when it comes to let's go to the complementarian view because I think there are a couple levels of that one would we could call hard complementarianism and another would be soft so hard complementarians would believe that that it was God's original design from the beginning that men and women were to be separate in that way that for example then then the wife must submit to her her husband in in all things you know there's no sense of mutuality there and she has to submit to male leadership in the church again in all things and she is to not to find her way into leadership in any way and a hard complementarian would say not only leadership in the church but leadership in society so that God pretty much ordained men to be in leadership right so they're good you they would like never vote for a woman president right right okay and again there was there there's that sense of like well women there are places in the home so there's not even a question of whether they should work or not now that's pretty hardcore yeah soft patriarchy soft complementarian so was that a forefrighting slip they would say that the they would say that that the context in which the Bible talks about it might be cultural but the principles are permanent and therefore we need to find a 21st century analogy to that in our context and so they would say they would firm the importance of submission and gender roles but they could they would say well women are free to work outside the home you know that her at the same time they would also affirm that a woman's primary role would be as a wife and as a mother and that it would be therefore still inappropriate to have any kind of leadership in the church so you can see a subtle but very significant distinction between those two yeah and I think I don't know even yeah it's hard because obviously I pursued a masters of divinity and I am working as a pastor in a church but I think there are elements of complementarianism that are I think I don't I think I'm a little too complementary and for my egalitarian friend and I'm too a egalitarian for my family yeah what I mean and I think even as you were reading that one I was like there are elements of that that I think are hard to ignore for me in Scripture not all of it obviously yeah yeah again yeah yeah yeah I think this is where sometimes I feel like it's helpful again to think of like the XYZ principle that we talked about in a previous episode let me let me explain I have a very we have a very non-traditional arrangement in my house so Amy is a photographer and she's the one that actually like earns all of the actual money now the farm does earn some income and I would argue that and I work full-time on the farm and that it encompasses a huge range of all sorts of things that also like support her business and whatever but I for years I've had we just recently changed this primary responsibility for all of the cooking and we always prioritize Amy's need to work and that's so I it feels like if somebody looking at that from the outside would be like well that's absolutely you know bass-acquards like like who who doesn't but but where I've landed is that I you can't be married to Amy without believing that God gifts women with extraordinary abilities in leadership entrepreneurship like she's amazing at running a business and managing her employees and being visionary like you just can't you can't ignore that especially if you look at the fruit in our lives and that's where for me a lot of it has developed if the larger question is what type of relationship with my wife what sort of context for our home being a place of peace and joy and hospitality where God's you know name is glorified and where we're living in harmony the sort of the more that she is able to freely pursue areas of leadership and entrepreneurship like the the better we do mm-hmm but that's not a part from me like we are very much so all right here's a story about song go for it yeah you'll remember just heard to tell it sung in Amy and me and my wife Amy we went to Mackinac Island for like a for like a conference for like a pastor's conference when I was on staff and whenever I go to Mackinac Amy and I always get a tandem bicycle and ride around because it's just really fun we just do it so so we do it we go all the way on it's like an eight mile loop around the island when we get back sung in Amy are like we hated that you will never ride a tandem bicycle ever again but Amy and I would just realize oh like we're tandem bicycle people like we just we do everything together we work together all day like we talk about her business together like we plan for the farm and while we certainly have different skill sets in that like we are very much riding a tandem bicycle yeah in every way and so it's it's like a weird balance where she has a ton of leadership and I look to her for a lot of some of the vision around her business or around like new ventures on the farm that's just the way she's wired but it's not apart from like we're still working side-by-side it's just so much more nuanced than sort of like well who's the authority who gets the right say I'm like yeah that doesn't it's not at all how our marriage works there isn't a time that one of us like really puts our foot down and says you know my way or the highway neither of us really have that power in a relationship yeah so it's again it's from from one perspective it looks super like different but then in a lot of ways it's not that at all it's not that she's running everything so it's just nuance yeah and that makes me think of a couple things but one was you know I think a couple weeks ago we talked about like wives submit to your husbands and husbands love your wives and that idea that like oh that was why was like hey we need to get to the point where like you know it's a safe place to submit because you are loved and cared for and and that was like a vision for that mutual submission and love and care and support that hopefully we are moving past like that kind of having to have that be a command right anyway yeah and I think a bet so more than the word egalitarian I think a better way to describe would be like mutuality yeah because I've seen other people like use a egalitarian to say that almost go the other way a hard egalitarian to say well you know well because you can't it's almost like because she's a woman you have to give her the right to do this despite whether she's skilled at it or not or like or like a like a dissolution of authority or something like that like I can totally see that and I just want to speak really clearly to say that what I was trying to communicate in my overly long story was not that Amy and I are doing it perfectly but just to say that the way that an openness to egalitarianism allows relationships to look really really different for different people and again for me that the core is always like what is what is bringing the like the fruit of the spirit into your life and if what if what you're currently doing is not that's probably a good sign that there should be a different sort of arrangement yeah yeah so let's do this this the rest of this episode which we've very gone for like half an hour let's look at women I know people want us to want want to jump to like some of the New Testament passages which we're gonna do next episode because that that's a whole episode in itself but let's look at the story from the Old Testament because again if you take the XYZ principle you have to start with the story of the Old Testament so for those who missed the XYZ principle first go back and listen to it because I'm gonna give a really brief summation or Nate will no no no you do it and so it's not gonna make sense unless you listen to the entire episode so X is kind of I forgot you do it Nate okay X is the culture within which the the passage of the Bible was written why is sort of like the forward both culturally and theologically principle that's often revealed in the scripture what's after why see Z is us sort of is like the isn't it like the ultimate revelation of those type of things and so you sort of are looking at this sort of linear spectrum of God revealing himself and so it's important to be aware of those three places and sort of say where does where do we fall on this line are we looking backwards at why are you know so there's a lot to it that you really need to hear the whole episode to catch all the nuances but that's basically it yeah so when we read certain portions of scripture it's going to the culture that they were speaking to it would seem very forward looking and progressive yeah but to us looking back it's going to look very backwards yeah but we have to understand this is a narrative and a narrative it is a moving story it is not a frozen-in-time kind of incident here right we often find ourselves between Y and Z so it can feel like we're looking we have to remember in some ways we're looking back at scripture that at the time it was written from the X perspective was actually very very progressive but all of it is pointing towards Z which should be our ultimate sort of goal yeah if you're more confused go back and listen to it so I think let me start off with the overall story of the Old Testament and women and I think what we're going to see is we see throughout scripture throughout the Hebrew scripture Old Testament women are prophesying they are leading they are teaching they are apostles they are deacons they are co-workers and Paul's mission like important co-workers they are the first ones they are the last ones it's Jesus on the cross to the first ones at the tomb men were just too stupid were not just not just were but still are and at minimum they they in the biblical story they were exceptions to the dominant story of the culture in that day and age so again it while it may seem backwards to us the the Middle Eastern ancient Near East culture there it would have been pretty earth-shattering and so even when you start in Genesis chapter 1 to 3 you see the entire story of men and women is reshaped compared to ancient Near East culture right first there is the fall of humanity where it turns women and men against each other and their oneness Adam and Eve their oneness becomes broken and God says here in Genesis chapter 3 after the fall to the woman this is for a 16 your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you so this is a prediction of what life will be like for those living in outside of the oneness oh my gosh I'm so glad you're saying this right now outside the oneness of what God originally designed because when you cherry pick this verse yeah people say like look the Bible says that this is the role of women yeah and you lose the context of like oh this was God's curse yeah like wait a minute that's what we're supposed to embrace as like the as like the biblical standard for relationship right and the curse of the man is you know you will work by the sweat of your brow and I do and the original design was not that right the ultimate in both those stories is there will be equal mutuality in the new heavens and new earth neither will dominate or rule over the other and we will work with sheer pure delight there will be no frustrations there will be no thorns or thistles no weeds you know so again the curse is a part of the story that is yeah like you said if you cherry pick this it's really you take it out of context yeah yeah I mean again like even just like reading the verse before that where he says I will make your pains in childbearing very severe with painful label you will give birth to children I don't I have I have yet to find a woman who experiences that the pain of childbirth is being like live any guy I remember years ago I had a woman really saintly older woman we're talking about this and she said and this is somebody who's been in the church for decades like 30 40 years remember I remember we're talking about Genesis the curse in the fall and she said and she particularly she said specifically oh you know women the women's role is in the home in the kitchen etc and then the re rationale was because God cursed the women in Genesis chapter 3 and I said no no no no God if you read it God curses the ground but he never he doesn't use the word curse yeah cursed is the ground because of you yeah so again I think a lot of times Christians will kind of quote scripture maybe things that they've heard from their pastors or the friends or whatever and her narrative was oh God has cursed Eve and therefore the narrative was women were subordinate not only in value but function to men and so clarifying like yeah so that's where even some of those kind of off the cuff remarks really you you really have to examine yeah oh go ahead I was gonna say and this is where like the XYZ principle changes the way I would read this passage because I think traditionally yeah I would have heard it or read it through that view of like oh this is what God said is gonna be true on Earth yeah and therefore this is the reality one way or another yeah instead of like oh but yeah this was the starting point reality of X is like okay the fall happened this is X but what that means is it's not see and if you know the journey of the Christian life is to seek to bring God's kingdom or you know live out God's kingdom here on earth then we're trying to journey out of X yeah right yeah well and Genesis one I think verse 26 or 27 you have that name a real quick that this this statement here in the Hebrew narrative would have turned the entire world upside down compared to Babylonian and an Akkadian creation myths God created mankind in his own image the image of God he created the male and female he created them male and no other myth no other creation story would have said that what what would they have said that that it was only men who were created in and actually they wouldn't even say that humans were not created in the image of the gods right Babylonian mess especially and that was not dominant narrative there it was and it's so interesting it's called the Anuma Alish the creation story the Babylonians humans were made because of the misery of the gods because the gods had to do all the work so they created humans to be slaves to the gods and so humans weren't even created with any sense of dignity they were created as slaves and so the Hebrew narrative is not only did God make human in humans in his image meaning they have invaluable worth yeah but so that's lightning rod number one lightning rod number two is it's not just men which is the patriarchal society but it's men and women together so men are incomplete in their reflection of God without woman and so that would have been a second lightning rod so we read that and we go like yeah yeah okay you know it's just even real whatever right right but in that day and age that was a huge lightning bolt and so the point being before we get to Genesis chapter 3 which again so my neo-reformed friends always love to be like oh you're sinners we're all you know total depravity we talked about this a few episodes ago but yeah or did you read chapter 1 original glory before original sin this is this is the narrative this is the story this the hero's journey where the crisis happens but just to say the Genesis 3 is not the permanent original design just like what does this has me thinking of is like from an agricultural metaphor like we would never say like oh we need to let the weeds grow because that was part of what God's plan in Genesis chapter 3 we don't have enough thistles in our field like we should really make this a lot harder like that's not we literally see our goal is to be like no the the way that we like manage and steward the ground is like we're moving it towards redemption we want there to be less weeds in thistles like we want there to be more production we want it to be easier to do and know where would we say that that is like running counter to God's will yeah yeah yeah and so just like I'll come back to this the original design in Genesis 1 marriage and we talked about divorce and you know and this is where I would even say Paul seems to be quote-unquote more lenient than even Jesus which is not the usual narrative about Paul usually people hate Paul they love Jesus but Paul he was jerk right misogynistic jerk he seems to be more lenient on divorce but again and even the places where Jesus says oh Moses allowed this right but again why because the original design and intent of marriage was in Genesis chapter 1 of mutuality love oneness that is God's intent and so even divorce today right like yeah it happens and it is a hardness of our hearts but and again we you don't judge you don't judge the the people right but at the same time and people will ask me that right like what do you think about divorce and and you know in all times it'd be like well you excommunicate that right it's like well you know I just say I don't think that was God's original intent right at the same time we are all wayward in our original intent as well too and so the journey is one of greater and greater in terms of following Jesus and so with that we'll peek low into the New Testament 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17 we've talked about creation and God's purpose in it 2 Corinthians 5 17 I'm really so I got to say I was a little bit nervous when we were going into the Old Testament because I was like man no one in the Old Testament makes women look good or or men right yeah yeah everyone is awful so glad to be moving out so we're gonna come back we're gonna look at like Rachel or I was like we're gonna come back to other women in the Old Testament but we're not out of the woods yeah all right we're there somebody read it you said 19 right so 17 17 okay therefore if anyone is in Christ the new creation has come the old has gone the new is here so what is that saying as it relates to Genesis 1 and 3 it's it's sort of proclaiming a return to the original glory yeah yeah yeah yeah and there's theologians call that the already but not yet which is which means the new creation has come it's already come it's fully here but it's not fully here like it's fully here in terms of your status as a follower of Jesus in the new covenant it is fully here but then in the world around us and humanity it is not yet here and that will only come at the end of this old earth and so Paul makes a correlation here the new creation has come in you transformation has come the old meaning the fall has is gone affects affects on you and the new creation you're you being a pointer to God's new creation is now embedded and embodied in you that's a sound of thinking so to bring it back to like our original sort of topic we would sort of be saying that this is a return to men and women being the image being the image of God sort of like pre yeah and the mutuality the mutuality yeah so it breaks the curse if you are of Genesis 3 yeah I see I see not completely well sort of right it that's that's the tension of like the the principle you mentioned which is the here and the not yet which is like well it we live in the midst of both and depending on sort of like what God is doing and how we're engaged with the life in the spirit like we can sort of find ourselves more to one side than the other but the potential for realization is realization of the new creation is is there for us yeah I also it was interesting that this is right before the passage about reconciliation you know God was reconciling the world to himself and he is committed to us the message of reconciliation which I often hear cherry picked out for different messages with but it's interesting just to see like yeah that that image of we are called to be like agents of reconciliation I think that can look a lot of ways which is why this verse is cherry picked but yeah just that idea of like reconciliation I guess what struck me is a lot of times we use that to be like we should already be at Z and so we're called to like pull people to Z but reconciliation often looks like going back to why and like walking people forward yeah I mean reconciliation is a process not not an event exactly yeah and so just that idea of even throughout scripture like yeah Paul was like okay we're we're here this is the reality so I can't just say okay you should be at Z I have to take you know take you forward one step and just the fact that's the journey we're called to mm-hmm yeah and even the Galatians passage that we looked at at the beginning right the way Paul says that there's neither June or Gentile neither slave nor free nor is there male and female for you are all one in Christ Jesus it's interesting the whole and we are less literary in our culture than they were in poetic than the Hebrews were yeah in their culture but Paul is making a reference here to the Genesis chapter 1 verse 27 when he says male and female and the word one evokes that whole not only the oneness and male and female from Genesis chapter 1 that together they reflect the image of God but even humanity there the oneness also reflects the Trinitarian nature of God himself yeah I feel like that's a helpful I don't know just a I guess metaphor that that God has given us where it's like oh yeah you wouldn't say like the Holy Spirit and Jesus and God are all the same but you also wouldn't I don't know they they share responsibility and power and there is that unity right but there are distinct I don't well yeah well and I would say I think you're right in a sense of right if somebody were to say like okay who's the boss the father the son of the spirit it's kind of like that's the wrong question yeah right like they don't think of it that way and I don't think that's the right way to think of the Trinity that way in fact while the son says like oh I only do what the father is doing right and it might and even the term father son might connote some sort of authoritarian kind of relationship but that is we talked about this before right being called the son of God wasn't because he was birthed out of God the father but the Romans called their Caesars sons of God because that equated to divinity right and so just to say like if you don't understand the Trinity welcome to the club yeah for real I read this I was reading yesterday in this one guy said and he was like and it was a great point he was like to think that we even understand God you have to understand we probably understand and he went point zero zers and kept going on yeah so many zeroes yeah one percent of God and I remember thinking like I know God no I don't and then he said and this was an imperfect analogy it's like it's like a third grader trying to explain quantum physics to a bunch of Ivy League physics professors which again he was like that's not even the you can't even like that that you could quantify yeah but that's us trying to talk about God or I've even heard it described as like imagine a two-dimensional being tried to understand a three-dimensional be yeah it's like you there's literally no framework for it there's literally no framework for yeah so one thing I will say is if they're if that is the fact that Paul is declaring this now in the New Testament then if there is any place in the entire world where mutuality should be restored or reconciled or demonstrated it should actually be in the church ironically but in a lot of places it could be the least redemptive or movement toward redemption during the whole week yeah so at the same let's let's let's we oh man we've been at this for a while let's a couple couple women in the Bible Miriam she is a spiritual leader along Moses Moses is the law giver Aaron is the priest Miriam is the prophetess so right there and then in Exodus chapter 15 after the the Israelites are freed from the bondage of Pharaoh and the Egyptians its women it's Miriam who is prophesying through this song found in Exodus chapter 15 and now now again like we have to understand we have a very narrow view of preaching preaching is standing behind a pulpit you know we have to understand like what Miriam is doing in singing is she is proclaiming good news of freedom from bondage to the people that's what she's doing they don't have such a thing as a pulpit yeah right she is singing this and celebrating the good news of redemption and she's a prophetess which a prophet is or prophetess both of them are people who speak on behalf of God yeah I mean I don't know how you minimize that and even in the prophet Micah he says God says I brought you up out of Egypt I sent Moses to lead you also Aaron and Miriam so at least the Sun Baptist are there now yeah I mean there's part of it that that can almost also be seen as us thinking too highly of ourselves that we would imagine that for example men are close enough to God to understand him like better or more completely versus sort of saying like now we are all we are male and female we are so far down the ladder in terms of our understanding that there's a there's literally no difference in terms of how little we understand yeah of God but but if you think of yourself as sort of being highly favored you know you can see where you start to feel like oh well so obviously it's like my job well and speaking of highly favored that's exactly what the angel gods us through the angel to Mary in the New Testament which we're not there yet but we'll get there but another woman is Deborah in the book of judges she was a judge right yeah so you have Miriam who's a prophetess then you have Deborah who is like almost like this presidential leader in a time when all the men around her were cowards yeah weren't the judges essentially like the the authority figures in the culture at the moment yeah yeah and so they were not only the the societal but also spiritual okay authorities there and so she is a judge which is like national judicial decisions political kind of military connotations there and we see like she exercises leadership over the entire social and spiritual sphere of Israel so she's like there's no man above her yeah she is the whole one leading and so let's not pretend her task was just social or secular can I am a man we've gone so long but I have questions about this because this is one where I've heard people describe it as like well that was an exception the only reason she was there is because God couldn't find a man to do it I have also heard that okay so I'm not crazy Christine like why do people say that oh I don't know I mean so she she is the only female judge which has always been kind of a question mark in a very patriarchal society that's true that's true so even the fact that God would mention and use Deborah which was unthinkable unthinkable in some ways what we're saying is that the exception like proves the rule yeah simply so far outside of what would be considered normal yeah that it's sort of like oh you have to assume that there was something wrong with normal mmm right even Matthew chapter one Jesus genealogy the passage that most people just skip over because there's a bunch of names yeah every single woman first of all women were never mentioned in genealogies secondly every single woman from your eyes wife Beth Sheba to every single one of them there was some sort of scandal if you will around the women and so even the fact that Jesus names women but these were women of sometimes ill repute and Jesus saying hey this red scarlet thread that I'm painting includes all these people that society would never it literally rat Ram eyes would be like which shut it down because this can't be of God then like it's that serious yeah interesting well I don't know what would you do with the fact that in the middle of this story Deborah like the king is like a total coward and Deborah's like well then a woman is gonna do it and you're gonna be embarrassed like God is gonna use this to your shame yeah so that I think is also part of the like narrative of oh this is the exception this is what God is using to like shame this king right well and if you read through the book of Genesis what God does and this is another huge thing and maybe a parallel example is he chooses Isaac not he saw yeah he chooses Joseph he chooses the younger mm-hmm not the older and there's a theological tone for that I don't remember it offhand but but God is reversing the cultural narrative all through Genesis like every single patriarch of the Bible that we know is not like is somebody who is like not only far from perfect but far from favored David is the youngest he's the runt you know so that's that that theme runs through and through and through and so when Deborah comes it's the same theme yeah it reminds me of the the verse in 1 Corinthians 27 God shows the foolish things of the world to shame the wise God shows the weak things of the world to shame the strong God shows the lowly things of this world and the despised things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are and so what you what you see in those examples again what we would consider exceptions proving the rule the rule that they prove is that this is what God does right this isn't like everything was going great you know everything was going as it should be and then this woman pops up it was literally God saying like no you need to understand that my entire plan for humanity you know from beginning of to the end of time is that we do these the small things are the things that are the transformative yeah the humble things are the things that like speak the truth to power it's all of like all everything is backwards yeah yeah yeah so that again if you understand the XYZ principle this starts to make more sense right you don't have to go like oh man like Old Testament is really down on women actually it's it's it's the reverse and especially when you see the whole Bible as a progressing narrative of redemption yeah so who man thanks for sticking with us for that we're gonna go we're gonna we still have more to cover right yeah the new testament now okay wow okay so I think we will do that next time yeah yeah we hope to see you then (gentle music)