Sunday 02 • 10 • 19

First Corinthians eleven two through 16. Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I deliver them to you. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ. The head of a wife is her husband and the head of Christ is God. Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. But every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head since it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head. For a man ought not to cover his head since he is the image and glory of God, But woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman but woman for man. That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels. Nevertheless, in the Lord, woman is not independent of man nor man of woman. For as woman was made for man, so man is now born of woman and all things are from God. Judge for yourselves. Is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is a disgrace for him. But if a woman has long hair, it is her glory. For her hair is given to her for a covering. If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice nor do the churches of God. — 1 Corinthians 11:2-16

For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches for they are not permitted to speak but should be in submission as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. Or was it from you that the word of God came or are you the only ones it has reached? If anyone thinks that he is a prophet or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I'm writing to you are a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. So my brothers, earnestly desire to prophesy and do not forbid speaking in tongues, but all things should be done decently and in order. — 1 Corinthians 14:33-40

The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Let's pray together. Father, I pray that the words of my mouth, the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. You are our rock and our fortress and our Redeemer. We pray these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.

How Do We Interpret What We See?

A movie in 2014 called The Wolf of Wall Street was directed by Martin Scorsese and stars Leonardo DiCaprio. It looks at the greed of stockbrokers and bankers on Wall Street, and yet it's famous for being controversial in how people understood the point of the movie.

Leonardo DiCaprio said this about it: "The film may be misunderstood by some. I hope people understand we're not condoning the behavior in the film, that we're indicting it. Ultimately, I think if anyone watches this movie at the end of The Wolf of Wall Street, they're going to see we're not all about condoning this behavior. In fact, we're saying there's something that's in our culture that needs to be looked at, it needs to be talked about."

What's funny is the criticism of that film—that it's a satire but it sort of glorifies greed—was the same criticism for a movie two generations before, Wall Street, which was an Oliver Stone film starring Michael Douglas. There's a line in that film: "Greed is good." Michael Douglas says it, and it sort of became the banner statement about the baby boomers of the eighties. And again, it was supposed to be a satire.

I think it's a funny case study because I want to ask this question: How is it that twice, almost 30 years apart, the same movies about the same subjects were so misunderstood by American audiences?

Well, at root, the question is one of hermeneutics. Now you may not know that word. Hermeneutics is simply the study of how we interpret, how we understand what we're supposed to take from a piece of literature, from art, how we understand the message that's being communicated.

Today, as we look at these two passages—First Corinthians 11 and First Corinthians 14—these are notoriously difficult passages that are about understanding hermeneutics for us this morning. How do we interpret what is being said here? There have been a river of ink spilled on these passages. Forests of trees have died as people have debated and talked about these things.

But I'll say this: as reformed Christians like our church, who believe the Bible is God's word, one of the criticisms that's often been levied against pastors like me is that we sort of like to cherry pick through the Bible. We like to hunt and pick for our favorite passages and ignore other ones.

And what's sort of ironic about that is that being a pastor of a reformed Christian church that believes in God's word, I don't get that luxury. One of the challenges is I have to preach through all parts of it, even the parts that fit our cultural context more or are in line with that, and some which are really unpopular.

So today we're going to look at all kinds of hard questions about hermeneutics. How do we interpret as we look at these two passages? At the end of the sermon today, I know that nobody is going to agree about this. My goal is not actually that we all agree on these passages. My goal is that you would be able to understand and respect our church's position with regard to how we understand gender and authority in our church. You'd be clear on that even if you disagree. You'd be like, I understand where you get this.

So here's my outline for you this morning: One, it's sticky. Two, head coverings. Three, headship. Four, affirmations and denials.

But before I do so, can I just say this? I know that it's really hard, even as you heard these passages read, to hear a man teach on this. I just want to acknowledge that that's an odd thing. That's a hard thing. I do want to acknowledge that a lot of my material for this sermon today has come from a woman, has come from Kathy Keller, and her book, which I would recommend: Jesus Justice and Gender Roles. It's really helpful. She's a pastor's wife in our denomination who's done a great deal of writing, and she's the editor for Tim Keller and all the Redeemer churches and their publications. So I would highly recommend that to you.

It's Sticky: Gender and Culture

First, it's sticky. Today I want to talk about gender and culture because we can't get away from culture when we talk about gender. Even though gender doesn't come from culture, gender is always expressed in cultural norms. Let me say that again: even though gender doesn't come from culture—we talked about it's creational—it still is always expressed in culture, and it's mediated by culture. Gender comes in cultural norms that vary from place to place.

So I want you to think about this like a candied apple like you might get at the state fair. Gender is like that. Gender is the apple. Culture is the candy coating. And depending on what time and place in history, that apple might be swirled around in something that tastes a little bit different in various places and times, and yet it always has the coating.

And this is where my analogy breaks down, like most of my sermon analogies, because unlike in nature, you can't get gender without a candy coating on it. We live in culture. It's always mediated by culture.

This is why the gender specialties that I talked about last week—remember these? From Genesis chapter two: securing, giving rest, firstborn promoter, initiator—all of those are expressed in radically different ways in different cultures and times and places, and God just seems kind of actually tickled at the variety of that. He seems to delight in that.

But doesn't that make things confusing? It makes things confusing for us when we talk about gender because gender is always expressed in culture. And so it can especially be confusing when we talk about the Bible with this. Every culture and time and place, because of common grace, has parts of the culture that are more in line with Scripture and parts that are less in line. And so we need to think critically about what it means that we say gender is mediated through culture and how we understand the Bible.

Scripture is always both enculturated and timeless. I want you to hear this. So what does it mean that Scripture is enculturated? Well, the Old Testament is written in what language? Hebrew. The New Testament is written in Greek, which was the common language of the Roman Empire. Jesus spoke Aramaic. God revealed Himself to Abraham in the middle of Ur. There's all of what we receive in Scripture comes through culture. There is a culture that this is being mediated through.

And yet, here's the lazy thing. This is what I find is really common, particularly on social media. We have a lazy way of approaching the Bible that is like: whatever I like that's in line with my cultural preferences, that's good. That's what we keep. The things that aren't in line with my culture or my preferences, we get rid of that. We do away with that.

And the most famous person who did this—their hermeneutics looked this way—was Thomas Jefferson. So if you go to Monticello today, you can see Jefferson's Bible on display. I saw this years ago at the Smithsonian, and it looks like lace because he went through with a pair of scissors and cut out the parts of the Bible that he disagreed with. The parts that didn't fit his preference or cultural moment.

And the thing is, we have a tendency to do that today. That's a very common thing. We may not be as honest about it as like putting it on display, but this happens all the time. What I don't like is that's culture. No. No. No. All of it's enculturated, but we also believe it's also all timeless. This is God's Word. His authority comes from His Word. I want you to think about this. Have you ever noticed that Jesus received the Bible, the Hebrew Old Testament, entirely as God's authoritative Word? He doesn't say disregard these parts. He says all of it comes from God. And like it or not, our hearts have to find some way to be obedient to what we're reading here. To say yes, it's enculturated, but it's also timeless. And I need to find ways. We need to find ways as a community under His authority, under His Word, where we say, how am I going to be obedient? Not whether am I, but how do we obey this?

So let's test this out this morning. Two case studies. First Corinthians 11, head coverings. First Corinthians 14, headship. Let's look at both of these together. How do we apply this?

Head Coverings

Let's start with first Corinthians 11. What does Paul think about long hair on women? Or short hair on women? Should we care what Paul thinks about those things? What does he mean in saying verse 15? Pull out your bulletin. I'm going to make you work today, right? This is not an inspirational milk sermon. This is a meat sermon. You better come ready to chew. We're going to work today. If you're late service, you've had coffee, you better be ready to dig in.

What does it mean? Look at your bulletin, in verse 15, long hair is her glory given to her for a covering. Does that mean Paul would go if he went to Africa and visited with the Wodaabe tribe, where women have shaved heads and men have long hair and wear makeup, would he go to them and say, you're out of conformity? Would he have confronted Hudson Taylor, who was the famous missionary to China, who wore a long braid down the back and wore scholar's robes, looked like he was wearing a dress? Would he have said, knock it off, Hud?

See, Paul argues, and I want you to hold up your bulletin. He argues in this passage about what is proper. What is a disgrace? Now this is fascinating. Look at verses 11 and 6. He uses the term disgrace there. Verse 13, proper. Those are uncommon terms for Paul. Here, they're best translated as failing or succeeding to meet expected norms. So this is about decorum. This is about cultural conformity. Look at verses 5 and 6. It's a statement where he's talking about what is in line or what is embarrassing in that cultural moment. It'd be like him coming to our church today and saying, you know, guys shouldn't wear skirts to church. That's embarrassing if they do—unless you're in Scotland, right? Come on. Hang with me people. I know this is serious, but hang with it.

So he's coming and pointing out a practice, verse 16. Head covering practice, as he's showing us, was common. Long hair was common in gendered patterns of the Roman Empire. See, verse 13, he calls them—use your own judgment, judge for yourselves. What's the basis of that judgment? Verse 14, doesn't the nature of things teach you? Now he's not talking about biological nature. Let's think about biological nature. If no one interfered with their hair growing, men and women, most of us—present company excluded—would have long hair. Right? Most of us would have long hair, but he's not talking about the biological nature of things. He's talking about the nature of things or the natural feelings that people practice in contemporary culture.

He's not going against Numbers chapter 6. Numbers 6 describes how Nazarites can grow their hair long for a religious vow. In fact, we know that in Acts chapter 18, Paul himself grew his hair long as part of a religious vow on his way to Jerusalem. He's not saying long hair on men is always wrong, short hair on women is always wrong. Rather, this is where we need hermeneutics, principles for how you interpret. And we're going to use the same ones throughout this sermon. I'm going to give you three of them. You can write these down.

The first one is this: intertextuality. That is, Scripture is the best interpreter of Scripture.

Second one is this: the clear interprets the unclear. You look to places where things are more clear, and that helps you understand where things are less clear in the Bible.

And third is this: Is there a deeper theological point that Paul or a New Testament writer is pointing to that goes back to other parts of Scripture, other parts of theology that's really significant?

So let's test it. Let's test all those things here.

So first, intertextuality. Is there anywhere else in the Bible where we read about long hair being really important or short hair being really important? No. This is the one place he talks about that. Second, the cloudy and the clear. Is there something that clarifies this passage? No. And third, is there some larger point that he is making theologically? And again, no.

See, what we find here is in line with what we understand of first century Roman culture. There was a writer, a Roman writer named Epectacus who wrote of this that short hair was out of fashion for women in the first century, long hair was out of fashion for men. Of course, Paul is not like, hey, just do whatever the culture says. You know that if you've read anything in First Corinthians 10 or Romans 14 about sacrificing meat to idols. He's not just like, hey, do whatever. Instead, Paul is showing us that your appearance is important for how it communicates about gender.

Yeah, there's a saying we have today, clothes make the man. Now that may not be true in a fashion sense, but it means that your outward appearance in our culture to this day still communicates something about whether you're male or female. People use clothing to communicate about identity and personhood. That's why unisex clothing stores, even in this super gender fluid society, still don't catch on. People love gendered clothing. And Paul is pointing us to this: wear your gender distinguishing clothing into worship. Wear it into worship because this is part of what God has made the universe in—gendered patterns.

Now again though, we're applying this as a principle, not literally, because there's hermeneutically no reason to apply this in a literal way. So we take this like "greet one another with a holy kiss," another of Paul's exhortations in the New Testament. We don't smooch on Sundays, very many of us, but we warmly greet each other. So, would Paul have gone to Hudson Taylor and said, knock it off for having a long braid? No. Would he have gone to the Woodhaw tribe and said, women, you can't have shaved heads? No. He's saying you live out your gendered practices in your culture with the way you appear in worship, with your clothing, the way you outwardly appear.

The Bible wisely never says, hey, dresses are for women, pants are for men. That would not play in Shanghai. So what do we do? We obey this passage. How do we obey this passage? We say, we're going to wear our gender outwardly. And we teach our children the same thing. Hey, look like how God has made you. Because gender is real and important.

See what I'm doing with those three principles? So let's try them on another passage, on First Corinthians 14, on headship. That was head coverings. Now to headship.

Headship and Women Speaking

So First Corinthians 14, again, look at your bulletin. Let's start with something obvious here. It is clear that Paul is forbidding some practice in that church, some practice with regard to women and speaking. Look at verse 34:

The women should keep silent in the church. They are not permitted to speak but be in submission. — 1 Corinthians 14:34

And it's clear that Paul is not just addressing a particular cultural situation here. Look at verse 33. He says this is, quote, as in all the churches, this is the practice. So Paul is denying something as a practice for all churches today.

So question, what do we do with this? How do we think about this? Is this a culturally bound practice that we obey as a principle, or do we obey this in a direct way in our church today? Let's think about this. So let's start with what we know it can't mean. Again, hermeneutical principle number one, intertextuality. It can't mean that women didn't speak at all. It can't mean that. And we know this because you just read First Corinthians 11. Look at verse 5:

Every woman who prays or prophesies, this is in the context of worship, with her head uncovered dishonors her head. — 1 Corinthians 11:5

So clearly, there is some speaking and praying that women were doing in the church, and that was good. Look at chapter 11 verse 2. He praises the Corinthians for maintaining the traditions. The Corinthian church was right in having women involved in a public way in worship in some way. So we know from intertextuality that women were involved in what's called prophesying in the church.

On the day of Pentecost, in Acts chapter 2, Peter stands up and preaches for the congregation. He says, the Spirit's gonna be poured out on your sons and daughters, men and women will prophesy. We know from Acts chapter 21 that Philip had four daughters who prophesied in the church. We know from chapter 11 here that women were praying and prophesying with head coverings. Clearly, women were not supposed to be involved in no speaking in a public way in the church.

So let's move on to the second thing. Let's talk about what we know culturally from the context.

Let's start with what you know from this fall. If you were tracking with us this fall, we preached through the book of Leviticus. Leviticus is an Old Testament book describing the law of God and mediating the practices of temple worship and tabernacle worship. There's been a great deal of research on first century Judaism, and it's very clear in the Bible that the worship of the first century church was not based on the temple. Let me show you this because you already know this. If you hung in with us through Leviticus, you know this.

Class, in the New Testament, what is the temple of God? You're right. You are. You're the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Let's try this one. Class, in the New Testament, who are the priests of God? You are. Right? All of us. Priesthood of all believers.

Class, let me try another one. What is the last and greatest sacrifice? Jesus is. Right? And the only sacrifices we bring are two things in the New Testament: sacrifice of praise and our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God. Right?

That means that when we come together, this is not an altar. I always correct people when we talk about coming to the altar. This is a table. We're eating on this table. Right? That's what we do here. This is the connections between Old Testament temple and New Testament church. There's analogy, but there's not correspondence in a direct way. Rather, this is what we find: synagogue was the model for early church worship, not temple.

The Synagogue Model

Neither synagogues nor early church gatherings had trained permanent clergy, but only occasional traveling rabbis who were invited to speak. You see Jesus visiting the synagogue. The temple was in Jerusalem in the first century. People went there for the sacrifices, but synagogues were in all the little towns all over Israel and the Roman Empire, the places where the Jews came together to study Torah, to study the Old Testament scriptures. You see Paul and Jesus going to visit these synagogues and speaking. Those are very common occurrences.

They would have itinerant speakers or even people within the congregation who would prophesy, who would stand up and speak. The elders of the synagogue would sit on the front row and they would respond to what was being taught. They would either respond by saying, "Amen, amen," which meant what that speaker just said is to be copied and appropriated for yourself, or "no." The elders of the church would guard the teaching and say that is not to be obeyed or that is to be obeyed.

Now what was fascinating about Jesus is Jesus would show up in the synagogue and do you remember what he would say? The Sermon on the Mount: "Amen, amen, I say to you." This is what was scandalous about Jesus. He would show up in places and take that authority that the elders had for himself. That's why they said He teaches with such authority because he showed up in this.

The early church adopted the practices of the Jewish synagogue and for the same reasons. They didn't have trained professional clergy and they also didn't have an authoritative compilation of New Testament teaching yet. That was still in seminal form—those were letters that were being passed around. Elders would sit up in the front row in the early church and do the same practice: amen, amen, or no.

The biggest error in the first century early church was false doctrine. You see this over and over in the New Testament letters. And so it's really important to have the elders express their vote of confidence or no confidence in what was being taught.

First Corinthians 14, which we're reading this morning, has a heading. If you go back and read this at home in your Bible, usually it'll have a little heading like mine says, "Orderly worship." Paul's laying out for the Corinthians here what makes for early church worship, what makes for orderly worship. You see several things here. He says things like, if you have someone who speaks in tongues, there always has to be an interpreter. He says here:

If prophecy is limited to two or three people. Two or three people can get up and prophesy. And then the others weigh what is being said. — 1 Corinthians 14:29

The elders are then saying yes or no, right, with this.

It's at this point—hear me clearly—it's at this point when the prophets are being judged that women are told to be silent in the church. It's not no speaking ever. It's at this point that they could be silent so the elders can judge.

So how do I know that? Well, let's turn to principle number two: the cloudy is interpreted by the clear. There's another passage in the New Testament, First Timothy 2:11-12, where Paul writes:

A woman should learn in quietness and in full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man. She must be quiet. — 1 Timothy 2:11-12

This is the other passage in the New Testament where there have been rivers of ink that have flowed and forests of trees that have been killed for our benefit. And Paul, again, is speaking here of a type of teaching that is authoritative in the church—that it's combined with authority. There's teeth to it. It's more clear in 1 Timothy 2 than it is in 1 Corinthians 14. So what's being forbidden to women is not all teaching, not all speaking, but authoritative teaching.

The work of the elders is to evaluate the teaching of the church. That function is reserved for the elders alone, those men who are tasked with judging personal and churchwide faithfulness to the apostolic doctrine. This kind of teaching is authoritative for two reasons. One is it's for the final judgment of truth versus heresy, and second, it's combined with the power of discipline. Who can come and be part of God's people, come to the table or not?

So Paul affirms headship also by male elders only in the church when in 1 Corinthians 11, where he ties it back to creation. We talked about this last week, that gender specialties—not gender gifts. Not men are better at leading or men are better at speaking. That is not at all what's in view in the Bible. There's no statement of better. But the gender specialties of men being firstborn, that's what God sets apart to say: This is who will lead among My people. This is who will lead in the church.

But let me say this very clearly: that doesn't mean that women are less moral, less good, less gifted, less filled with the Spirit, more prone to temptation, more foolish—any of those things. God designed gender for relationship in the church. He designed gender for relationship in the church. And he gives us a complementary view of gender, again, for the good of his people. It is a gift.

Now, this is the question I always get as a pastor, and I've gotten this for twenty years as a pastor: Why did God do it this way? Why male only elders and pastors in the church? And the honest answer, to tell you the real truth, is I don't know. If God had wanted uniformity, He would not have given us the gift of gender, and He would not have specified things in Scripture. I don't know why men get to be the elders and women don't. I mean, if it were the other way, I guess we would have men who would be saying, that's not fair, instead of women.

But remember, God isn't interested in symmetry. God loves equality, asymmetry, unity, and diversity. He loves those things, and He purposes those for us, for our good, in our relationships, in our church.

Trajectory Hermeneutics

Now, let's talk about the most common objection to this. I want to handle the biggest objection, and we can talk more about this privately later if you want to. But the biggest alternative to this that I read about regularly is what I would call trajectory hermeneutics. I started off in seminary at Princeton Seminary before I went to Westminster. I got a lot of this back in the mid-1990s. And everything I've read since then on egalitarian roles in the church has had some flavor of this argument. So I'm going to give it to you so you can understand where this is coming from.

Trajectory hermeneutics goes like this: Well, we used to think that slavery was okay in the Bible. But as God has given us more light, we're able to see an arc redemptively where that is not okay. And we can see where that goes. And we know that that's wrong. Same thing with polygamy. We could see in the Old Testament practice of polygamy, but we see over time there's been an arc where this goes, and we know that that's not okay. You know, we have more light now to understand that.

We look at women's roles. And we used to think women are subservient to men, but we look at the arc of Scripture and we look out, we see where this is going—this trajectory—and we say, See? See where this is going? We do the same thing with homosexuality. We see like where it began in the Bible, but we see the arc of where this is going outside, and we see the endpoint of where this is traveling.

Now, that is a very compelling argument. It's a very compelling argument. But there are a couple of problems with it. And I just want to be really transparent about it—I wish that could work. Here's why it can't.

Revelation 22 is very clear in warning us about adding to or taking away from God's word.

There's some really stern warnings about adding to God's word and taking away from it. And saying, "There's a trajectory that I can see outside of this that this was all pointing to"—that is adding on.

The second problem with this is that it says the authority for where this endpoint goes, eventually, is really me in my cultural moment. Me in my cultural moment. Who determines what enlightenment means? I become the arbiter of what where the Bible is actually going. And there's no real place to stand in that.

See, what you end up in that moment is Thomas Jefferson who says, "This is cultural and I dismiss it. This is timeless and I keep it." Instead of saying, "All of it's cultural and all of it's timeless and I've got to find a way to listen to and be faithful to obey what I read in this book."

Ultimately, it also says, "God, You're a terrible communicator." Because as you read this, it's really hard to move past the face value of what Paul says. We don't like it, but you're saying God could have put in more clarity on this if he wanted to change this. I just want to be honest about those things.

But let me end here and I just want to say: look, I know that this sermon makes me about as popular as a guy who farts in an elevator. Everybody's just like, "I just want to get away from you right now. I don't want to look at you. This is awkward, right?" But I think it's really important—not just what we believe, but how we hold it as a church. This is really actually where the rubber meets the road.

So I want to give some affirmations and denials. If you disagree with every other part of this sermon right now, that's okay. But I want you to hear this part really clearly.

Number one: Sexism is always wrong. Jokes, jabs, glosses, statements—it's always wrong. And I just want to acknowledge, maybe you're a woman in this congregation who's been deeply hurt by someone in my position, and you've never heard somebody say this to you. I'm just going to say this to you because I want you to hear some pastor say this: I am deeply sorry. There has been so much damage done to women by the church who have held these things in a way that puts down women, makes less of their gifts, even uses women in ways that are really degrading. And I just want to say I'm sorry on behalf of pastors and churches.

Second: We want to be in our church as liberal as Scripture is liberal and as conservative as Scripture is conservative. On the one hand, we just can't erase passages like this. I have to figure out a way to teach on this and do so responsibly as one of your pastors here. But at the same time, we're not just a Southern traditionalist church that's like, "Let's do what everybody else does unthinkingly." We don't have elders doing everything in all parts of our worship just to be safe—leading liturgy or reading Scripture or serving communion. We don't want to be more free than the Bible's free, and we don't want to be more conservative than the Bible's conservative. It was actually the Pharisees who were critiqued by Jesus for being overly careful with God's Word in order to make sure that everything was safe. We don't want to be in that role.

Third: CTK holds to the NOM principle. That is, a woman should be doing everything in our church that a non-ordained man—NOM—should be doing in our church. Leading music teams, discipling others, teaching a class, leading a small group, leading liturgy, working alongside our elders on our shepherding team, leading key ministries, overseeing outreach programs, counseling on staff. We have women leading liturgy as a regular practice on Sundays in our church because we're trying to capture what we see in the New Testament of women prophesying. That's one of the reasons we do that.

Now we are very careful to guard what's happening right now. What happens when there's preaching from the front combined with the sacrament, the Word's Table—we say this is the place where there is authoritative teaching. It's connected. It's authoritative for two reasons. One is it's agreed upon according to the theology of our church. And the second is it's backed up with what we do every Sunday when we take the Lord's Supper, where we recognize who's in and who's not. So this is where we exercise this teaching with authority in 1 Corinthians 2 and 14.

So let me say it this way: Our officers are ordained men. Our priesthood is all believers. You hear me? Our officers are ordained men. Our priesthood is every person in this room.

Number four: CTK affirms women in all their gifting and value. We don't just want—we need the voices of women in our church. We need your gifts. We need your leadership. We need your insights. We need your knowledge. We need your perspectives. Look, just because we believe that there are gender specialties doesn't mean that we believe men good, women bad. And if men and women are interchangeable, it wouldn't matter. But we're saying we really need all the gifts of all the people.

Number five: We're going to continue, like I'm doing this morning, to use the contribution of women in sermons. You hear me quote women. Do research. There's a lot of valuable scholarship and teaching that have come from women.

Six Affirmations and Four Denials

Number six, we live in peace with other churches who disagree with us on these passages. I can be and am friends with women who are pastors. I don't go and confront them and say, "You're sinning." I'm serious. I'm not confronting. I disagree with them. I think, hey, I disagree with your interpretation of these passages. But as God holds out for us, it's really important that we live at peace with people who agree with 99% of the rest of the doctrine of Scripture. We better live in peace with them. We better promote and encourage other churches and be about the unity of the body and celebrate that and love that.

It is a signature sin of our denomination that we're so right that we actually tend to be kind of isolated and unkind toward churches with women pastors. And that's just wrong.

Denials

Number one, we're on the slippery slope to liberalism at CTK. Nope. There's no slippery slope when a group of people are trying to obey God's word. That's not a slippery slope. We're trying to be faithful to God's word.

Number two, we're sexist. I pray not. One of the things we most look for in elder candidates is men who can carry on an intelligent conversation with a woman, who can look women in the eye and respect them and honor what they have to say and listen really well. That's so important to us.

Number three, we're ignorant. Nope. This is not popular teaching, and it's not something that we've come to because we refuse to read everything else. I've read a ton from this series. I've read a ton over years. And we are always wanting to learn. But this isn't happy ignorance.

Number four, this is unjust. I hear this a lot in regard to male-only eldership. I understand. I just want to validate that for many women, this feels unjust. And I understand exactly why you would say that. And yet, justice is whatever God decrees. So whether or not you can see the justice in divinely created gender and gender specialties largely depends on how much we trust God's character.

Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? — Genesis 18:25

Can we define justice as anything other than God's design? And if we do so, using what as our guide?

Anne Voskamp in her book 1,000 Gifts puts it this way: "God gave us Jesus. Jesus gave him up for us all. If we have only one memory, isn't that enough? If trust must be earned, hasn't God unequivocally earned our trust with rough wood on raw wounds, thorns pressed into the brow, and your name on his cracked lips, how will he not also graciously give us all things he deems best and right? He's already given us the incomprehensible."

As I said at the beginning of the series, I think gender is a gift that the modern church would rather return to God and say, "Hey, thanks very much. Can you take this one back and exchange it for something better?" And yet, it is a gift. Gender is God's gift to you. The way He's made you, the way He's designed you, that is not accidental or purposeless. And we as a church want to celebrate that and rejoice, even where it's hard for us to say, "Why? Why is it this way?"

God is good and he gives good gifts to his people. And I pray that we can live together in peace as a community that knows how to love and celebrate His Word and one another. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.