"Roles of Men and Women Within the Church"
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Over the past few years we have see more confusion in our world over many issues. So, let me begin here by reminding us of what Paul said in 1 Corinthians.
33 For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints,
God is not the author of Confusion and God’s Word dispels any confusion that we may have. However we also know that Satan is the author of confusion and will get many people to be confused sexually, about their gender and about their roles and male and female.
There has also been a lot of confusion on the topic of men’s and women’s roles within the church. There are many churches that desire to be more and more relevant. We hear the familiar slogan, “Times are changing and so must the church.” But should we? Does the church change just to fit or stay up with the surrounding culture? The resounding answer to that question must be NO!!! In all matters we need to run to God’s Word to see what he has to say about all matters and for the matters of leadership within the church we go to His Word.
There is a wonderful saying that goes like this, “all good theology starts in Genesis. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, so we really see how God started everything. From the very beginning God designed things in the garden perfectly. There were no problems, no Covid, no deadlines, no cheating, no political problems or scandals, because there was no sin. Everything that God made and did was good.
31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
When we come to Genesis chapter 2 we see the creation of man and woman. Man is the first to be created.
7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
After the creation of man we see he is alone and the situation was not good. He did not have a helpmate, so God steps in and does something beautiful about this issue.
18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.
21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
I want you to see How God designed man and woman for a reason. Because once we understand these first few chapters of Genesis and how God put together Adam and Eve with sexual differences and this special union of marriage in the natural order of the created world, as well as the fall, everything else we see in God’s Word about being a man and woman and everything that goes with this will make more sense.
Here are some really important things we need to see from Genesis 1-3 about manhood and womanhood.
1. Man and woman were both created in the image of God.
1. Man and woman were both created in the image of God.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Men and women are very different from the rest of creation, because we are image bearers of God. As God’s image bearers we need to understand that men and women possess equal worth and dignity. Eve was not a lesser person or creature than Adam. She was not an inferior being. Although God has shown us through His Word He reveals himself in masculine language like father, king, and husband we know that God is neither male or female, He is Spirit. We should still refer to God in these terms. However my point is that being a male is not a higher order than being a female. Both men and women were made to represent God in our great big world.
2. Man and Woman were given joint rule with different tasks.
2. Man and Woman were given joint rule with different tasks.
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Men and Women were given joint rule over creation and together they were to come together and fill the earth and subdue it. However we see in the garden Adam and Eve doing different jobs. God took man and placed him in the garden to work it and keep it. Adam was created outside of the garden but charged with cultivating it and protecting it including Eve.
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
Adam was given the job of cultivating the garden and protecting it. He even was there to protect the woman God gave him. On the other side of this we see the responsibilities for Eve. Eve was created within the garden. Her creation mandate was to fill the earth and subdue it. Of course this refers to both sexes and ultimately it is through God that man and woman can produce children, but there is this wonderful capacity to bring about new life that is fitted specifically for women.
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
3. Man was given the task of maintaining holiness in the garden.
3. Man was given the task of maintaining holiness in the garden.
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,
17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
It was only to Adam that God gave the command, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not.” As Adam was given the responsibility to work and keep the garden, he was also responsible for establishing God’s command on the earth by guarding the moral boundaries that God had given him. As Adam would obey this God would bless him but when he disobeyed it would bring or mean death. This is what eventually did happen to Adam when he willingly choose to disobey God.
4. Man was created before the woman.
4. Man was created before the woman.
Here in Genesis we see of course that man was designed or created before Eve was. The Apostle Paul really grounded his prohibition against women preaching and teaching in the church based on this divine order.
12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.
13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve;
But what does this mean? Was Paul this male chauvinist that had an issue against women? Of course not. The idea here is not that the first is the best or man is better than woman. Please hear me today because the order matters because it shows us that Adam’s position in creation was as a priest and protector and Eve’s position was coming under the man’s protection, made from his side and for his support.
5. Woman was given as a helper to man.
5. Woman was given as a helper to man.
22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
Eve was created from man. She was created equal in worth and she was also created for man, and yet different in function.
20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.
We see that Eve is given to Adam as his wonderful helper. Being a helper did not mean that this was any kind of diminished worth or status because we know throughout the Old Testament God is sometimes called the helper of Israel. (Ex. 18 and Psalm 33.) So, just like God would come alongside His people to help them so this role of the woman in the relationship to her husband is that of a helper. This is how Paul sums it up in 1 Corinthians.
8 For man was not made from woman, but woman from man.
Now I also need to say this that is was not good for man to alone because by himself he could not be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Here again we see this beautiful divine complementarity of male and female. God could have given Adam some wonderful male friends to help him with all the work in the garden but none of them would have been a helper fit for the crucial task of producing and then taking care of the children. If mankind is to have dominion over the earth, then there must be a man to work the garden and a woman to be his helpmate.
6. Adam is recognized as the head and representative of the couple.
6. Adam is recognized as the head and representative of the couple.
As we have already seen, Adam is given the initial command regarding the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,
17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
What this means is that even though Eve was tempted and then deceived by Satan first and commits the initial crime, Adam is actually addressed first.
9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”
Where are you Adam? Where are you designated leader of your family? In Romans chapter 5 Paul makes this indisputably clear when he says this.
12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—
In other words, Adam and not Eve was the federal head.
7. Man and Woman experience the curse in different ways.
7. Man and Woman experience the curse in different ways.
Eve who was deceived into sin, did so acting independently of the man, because Adam abandoned his responsibilities as a leader.
6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
Adam stood by passively and idly while Eve sinned. He never stepped in and said we are not going to do this.
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden,
3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”
4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.
5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
In fact, Adam followed her right into the sin and then he did not blame Eve for the wrong and sinful choice he blames God for giving him Eve in the first place.
12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”
Adam’s sin was not only in disobeying God’s command but also in not protecting his wife and stepping up in his responsibility as the family head. Adam was the coward here, and followed his wife’s influence instead of obeying the voice of God. In the end, both Adam and Eve were punished for their disobedience.
First let’s look at how Adam was punished:
17 And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
For Adam’s punishment working the ground would be cursed. From then on Adam would have to deal with thorns and thistles and he would live by the sweat of his brow.
Now let’s look at Eve’s punishment:
16 To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”
From then on after the fall, Eve’s punishment would come in that of childbearing. The miracle and gift of physical birth will come with pain and suffering. The bottom line is that after the fall both men and women are subjected to frustration in their unique places of responsibility.
What we have seen from the first several chapter of Genesis is some wonderful and divine patterns and assumptions for manhood and womanhood. The man’s primary job is naming and taming and dividing and ruling. The woman’s primary job involves filling, glorifying, generating, establishing communion, and bringing forth new life.
I feel over the past several years that godly and biblical manhood and womanhood have gotten a really bad wrap and some of that is because of self affliction. However I also believe that just as God created everything in the garden for his good and for a divinely fitted order. He designed us to help each other, for protecting and flourishing, for leaving and cleaving to one another and for fulfilling the earth and subduing it. God made men and women not only to worship, serve and obey God, but to worship, serve and obey him as men and women.
(Pray and lead into Communion)