Our Egotistical Quest to Be In Charge.

Ego makes people seek prominence and with it to seek the responsibility to prove their power. But such responsibility, take my word for it, is not always a welcomed friend.

In his sermon series titled, God's Holy Calling for Women, Dr. John MacArthur does a wonderful job of using the scripture to help break down the biblical role for women in the church.  This kind of sermon is probably not something you hear very often in churches today, because of it's cultural ramifications, but God's word was not meant to co-exist with the culture.  It was meant to cut through the culture and point to something greater than man's depiction of how things ought to be.  It takes humility to embrace this stuff, but seeing and savoring God's design in creating men and women offers not only a freedom from conflicts, but also is a very clear picture of the Gospel as well.

I highly recommend the entire series, but I want to call out a few significant pieces from part 4 of this series, because they point to some of the most significant battles facing men, women, culture and the church today.

Here's what pastor John  said:

Ego makes people seek prominence and with it to seek the responsibility to prove their power. But such responsibility, take my word for it, is not always a welcomed friend. Frankly if you want to know the truth, subordination and subjection is the condition of the greatest peace and the greatest happiness, the greatest contentment, the greatest safety and the greatest protection because somebody else is doing all the caring for you. So don't live under the illusion that you can really know a great experience in life if you could just get on top of the pile and control everything. I say to women who would seek to do that, stay where you are under the loving care and nurture, nourishment, strength and protection of your husband and of the leaders of the church and that's a much happier place to be, the burden is much lighter. Subjection, my dear friends, is not a punishment, it is a privilege...it is a privilege that someone should care for you and that's by God's design.

And speaking of God's design, let's go to our next point...their design...their design. And here to support what he has just said come these two wonderful verses, 1 Timothy 13-14. Here is the root of the role of a woman in the design of God. Verse 13, "For Adam was first formed, then Eve." Now that is so clear. Woman's place was ordained in the order of the creation. Adam was made first and then woman. First [protos] first in rank, chief, he is ish, she is isha, in the Hebrew. In 1 Corinthians 11:8, "For the man is not of the woman but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman but the woman for the man." And that's why she ought to recognize his authority. In creation, God made man first.

Now keep this in mind, man was made for God and woman was made for man. Eve was made for Adam. She was made to be his helper. Genesis 2:18-25, she is his glory. Man is the glory of God, woman is the glory of man. She is made to be the helper of man. She is to follow his lead, live in his provision, find safety in his strength and protection in his courage. A tendency to follow was built into Eve until the Fall and then came the curse and in that curse the tendency to rule and then the conflict.