Keyser, Keith: Biblical Manhood ~ Gen 1v 26

Good morning. Good morning. Let's turn in God's word to Genesis chapter one. Genesis 1, verse 26. Genesis chapter one verse twenty six. Genesis one twenty six, reading from God's word. It says there, then God said, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. Then God blessed them, and God said, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And then we go ahead to verse, uh, sorry, to chapter two, Genesis chapter two, verse seven. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Man became a living being. Verse fifteen: Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. And the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him. Out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called, excuse me, whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper comparable to him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, he made into a woman, and he brought her to the man. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, and she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. Now, in our day, there's a great need to get firmly fixed in our mind and to remember the teaching of God in his holy word regarding our being, regarding us as human beings, and that gender is not a social or a societal construct. It's not something we decide for ourselves or that's in keeping with how we feel about the matter. Gender is something that God has created. God has made mankind, and mankind is composed of two components, male and female. They are, of course, in Bible teaching, as no doubt you heard from Brother Dennis a few weeks ago. They are equal, and yet they are different, and that reflects the glory of our God, because God has made humanity this way. He's made human beings this way, male and female, for our good. And I don't need to tell you there's a great deal of confusion in our world today about the roles of maleness and femaleness, and about, uh, what people are to do. And unfortunately, when we look out there in the world, we see, as with every other aspect of God's teaching regarding human beings, man has perverted it. Man has twisted God's teaching, and it's not helping. Society is breaking down. The family is breaking down. Education is breaking down. Government around the world is breaking down because human beings don't understand the first principles of why God put us here in the first place and what he made us to be. Now, the Bible is clear that male and female are necessary components of humanity. We can't do without one or the other, but it is also equally clear that God has given different roles to male and female. So oftentimes, Bible teachers nowadays will refer to this teaching of scripture as complementarianism. In other words, males and females complement one another. Now we find in the world today, again, the culture at large doesn't understand this. Typically, if you even see an advertisement, I can tell you what the family's going to be on the advertisement, if it's even humans. There was a phone company a few years ago that made a, a sort of you could put who you wanted in your phone circle and call it family, so they had a hamster and a goldfish and, and other people, you know, and so we see all kinds of weird things, people dying and leaving their estates to their dog, and, and I love it. We have a dog, I love the dog, but I'm sorry, she's not in the will, okay? And and you get people treating animals like they're people, right? But they're not, because Genesis one makes a clear distinction, and Genesis two implies it as well, that man is different, that man, unlike the animal creation, man is made in the image of God. When I say man, I'm saying male and female are made. Thank you so much, brother. That they are made in the image of God. There's something higher about them. There's something different about them, not only in their rationality, not only in their intelligence, but spiritually, that they can interact Godward, and they can worship the Lord. And our Lord Jesus, of course, became a man, didn't he? He became a human being. There's one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, uh First Timothy two four tells us. And so we have to go to the word and get fixed anew. Uh, if you see a commercial nowadays, I started to say, you know, often you can always tell the husband he's the idiot, okay? He's the guy who has no clue. And usually it's not even the wife anymore. It used to be we had June Cleaver in the wider culture, but poor June, she- her ship has sailed, you know? Uh, she's not around anymore in the culture. When you see the, the mom, the mom isn't even fully aware. It's the kids. They know, you know? The kids are, are the smart ones, and they're technologically advanced. Now listen, there's nothing new under the sun, and this is a very old notion that some of the ancient philosophers had this kind of idea too, and even some of the more modern philosophers in the, you know, two, three hundred years ago talked about the noble savage, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau talked about man being a tabula rasa. We're a blank slate, and the problem is we go away to school or we get in the family and and society puts all these rules on us and messes us up. So we're not inherently bad, it's just we've gotten bad education. Now, there are a lot of philosophers in our culture today, because somebody gets hauled in for DUI, and he tells the judge, now, your honor, the reason I drank, you know, a case of Molson and went out on the Garden State Parkway, uh, when the state trooper pulled me over, thank God I didn't kill anybody, but the reason was, you know, I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, and I had poor role models, and I had all kinds of terrible examples. Now, no doubt, where we live, where we grow up, what family we come from has an influence on us. But at the end of the day, the Word of God says we have to be responsible for ourselves. And, uh, what the Word of God teaches us also is that children aren't born perfect. They aren't born inherently righteous. David said, in sin was I born and shapen in iniquity, and children don't take long before they manifest that sin nature. So, in contradistinction to the culture around us, it's not the children who are going to lead us to a better, brave new world. In fact, Isaiah, when he wants to prophesize about societal breakdown and things falling apart, he says women and children are their princes. Now, that's no slight on children. I love children. I was once a long time ago. That's no slight on women. Some of my favorite people are women. I live with five of them, okay? I have that right? Yeah, five of them. Three daughters, a wife, and my mom. They all live in my house. They're all wonderful. They're all excellent. They all bring things to the table. I need them all. We need them all. So I'm not denigrating femininity, but I'm saying society's got things upside down here, that God made male and female, and he made males first, and that is going to be something that the New Testament writers are going to come back to. First Timothy two is going to talk about Adam being formed first and then Eve, and First Corinthians eleven is also going to make reference to that, because Adam was put here in a position of responsibility, a position to be under God, of course, under the authority of God, but to exercise leadership in the world and to do that for the glory of God. Now, Adam couldn't do it alone. He needed a helper. Genesis two says it. So what did God do? God took a rib from the man. He didn't take dust, like, you know, he made man out of the dust in the beginning, right? He didn't just take another bit of dust and say, no, I'm going to make... Oops, I almost lost my mic here. Excuse me. Put that back on the... I don't bring a yo-yo into the pulpit, just so you know. This was the microphone apparatus, which I hope I didn't bump the button. Let me try this. I'll take my coat off, and maybe I won't knock it out the next time, but no promises. We'll just hope for the best. In any case, God didn't make woman from the dust of the ground, as if she's going to make man two point oh, you know, the next operating system. Male was kind of, well, that was maybe the first edition, but the next one's even better. No, this is coming from man. So woman is integrally a part of man. Man can't do without her. First Corinthians eleven is going to make that point as well. Um, but on the other hand, she's distinct from man because she's not been created in just the same way, and she's given as a helper to the man. Now, it's interesting, and I apologize for maybe thousands of years of bad preaching that goes back to the fall in Genesis three and makes it sound like it's the woman's fault. It is not the woman's fault. The Lord holds Adam responsible. Adam is the place where the Lord comes to look and say, what is this? And First Timothy two reaffirms that because it says the woman was deceived, but Adam not being deceived was in transgression. Now, that is not, again, denigrating women's intelligence or women's understanding. It's merely a historical observation that in the garden, when Satan, in the person of that serpent, came and tempted Adam and Eve and said, did God really say you can't eat of all the fruit of the garden? And and when Eve went and took that fruit, Genesis three actually says she gave to her husband there with her, and he ate. I think the implication is that he was probably nearby, maybe right beside her the whole time, and he didn't stop her. And certainly after she did it, First Timothy two makes it clear, Adam understood exactly what had happened. He understood this was a serious capital offense because it was not about fruit, it was about the word of God. And the penalty for disobeying God's word, the penalty for not submitting to God's authority, not obeying God, is death. Not just physical death. They didn't drop dead, after all, when they took the fruit. That process is true, began working in them, and it was going to take hundreds of years to really come to its final end, for them to physically die. But immediately, what they did experience was spiritual death. What Ephesians two refers to in verse one, ye who were dead in trespasses and sins. Before a person knows the Lord Jesus Christ, they are in a position of spiritual death. Their sins separate them from God. It's not that the omniscient God doesn't know they exist, of course he does. It's not that he doesn't know every particle and sinew of their being, every bit of their DNA code. Of course he does. He created them. But the sense is that there's no relationship between God and lost man. That's why we have to come through the Lord Jesus Christ and say, my God, save me a sinner, male or female, it's the same thing. We have to come and say, I need to be in Christ. And in Christ, we find out in that salvation, as Galatians three points out, when we think about that position before God in Christ, there's neither male nor female, there's neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither slave nor free. All of the demographics and distinctions within humankind fall away in Christ when we talk about the means of salvation. But when we talk about roles in the home or roles in the church, those distinctions are different. The work they have to do is different. Now, as I say, Adam was created to have authority over the earth, to have dominion over the earth. The garden was really a training school. Think of it as the Rutgers University of its day, okay? Or if you went to Princeton or somewhere else, you know, put your own alma mater in there. But the garden was basically a training ground for Adam to learn how to tend and keep what God had made. The earth wasn't made of fully developed. It was somewhat inchoate. It needed development, and it was going to be man's job to go out and to bring the earth to its full fruition. You ever been over there to Longwood Gardens or someplace like that, you know, and you start to see, we had a Christian brother and a friend who did a master's degree through the University of Delaware. He was from England, but he came over and did a master's in whatever, horticulture or something like that. And as part of the master's program, they, he did an internship at the, uh, at the Longwood Gardens there through the Dupont family. But in any case, it's amazing when you go there, all the things that human beings can figure out to do, all the configurations, all the arrangements, all the things they can do with different kinds of trees and plants and flowers and all of those things. Now, you, you take into account not just the, uh, the zooal- the biological life, like the plants and stuff like that, the horticulture, but you take into account also zoology, all the different animals, and here Genesis two shows Adam involved in that important work of nomenclature. In other words, he's assigning names to the animals. Now, just ask Linnaeus, that's a very hard job to do. You know, that man spent a lifetime putting Latin names on different a- animals so that scientists could classify them, and it occupied him all his life long, and every year they're still kind of refining that system. So think of Adam there, tremendously intelligent and tremendously important work, and he and Eve were to go out and they were to fill this earth with human beings who would rule over the earth for God's sake. Now, did that happen? No, it didn't happen. You know why it didn't happen? Romans five twelve says it succinctly. We know that by one man, sin entered the world, and death by sin. Because Adam sided with Eve and not with God, because he, with eyes wide open, knew what he was doing, knew it was wrong, knew he was disobeying the word of God, knew there wasn't any kind of advantage, knew it wasn't the end justifies the means. Because Adam sinned, death came into the world. And instead of the world being a peaceable kingdom, as the artist would call it, it's more like what the poet said, nature red in tooth and claw. And we see the predatory, predatory instinct come into the animal. We see fighting and strife among the animals, and we see it among human beings too, don't we? We see human men, instead of ruling over the planet for the good of all creation, much less for the good of humanity, we see strife and struggle and fighting and war, right? And it all comes from sin. It all comes from being out of a right relationship with God. Well, the wonderful thing is the Lord selected woman to be the vehicle, as he would even tell Eve in Genesis three fifteen, that it would be of the seed of the woman. Woman would be the vehicle for the one who was going to be the solution, the savior to this problem. For the one who would come and be a man, male, not just human, but male, and the male who was going to fulfill what Adam did not and could not fulfill. Because Adam was there, and what is he associated with? He's associated with sin and condemnation and death. But if you study Romans five and you study First Corinthians fifteen, the Lord Jesus is associated not with sin, but with righteousness, not with condemnation, but with justification. And not only that, he's associated with life, not death. The last Adam, you see, is going to bring to fruition everything God meant for the world. That's why prophets like Isaiah talk about the desert flowering. Now, I lived in Israel for a time. I have great respect for the modern state of Israel and the folks there, very smart people. I admire their drip irrigation that many other countries in the world have picked up, but sorry, Isaiah wasn't thinking of modern Israeli drip irrigation. When he talks about the desert blossoming, I mean, baby, it's going to be the Sahara and the Gobi and the Mojave and all the big deserts of the earth are going to fully flower. The whole earth is going to be like what the garden was someday, when the Lord Jesus Christ comes to rule and reign in his millennial kingdom. That, of course, is after the church age and after the tribulation, so it's still yet in the future for us, but it's good to know that in spite of the failure of males, in spite of the failure of human men, the perfect man who was God manifest in the flesh, the last Adam, whom First Corinthians fifteen calls the second man, the Lord Jesus, who's the Lord from heaven. He's going to bring totally what this world needs. Now, on the practical level then, what is the man supposed to be in the home? Well, there are so many scriptures, but let's just go to Job chapter one for a moment. Job chapter one. The book of Job chapter one. Job chapter one. And we'll read at verse number four. Job chapter one and verse four. And his sons would go and feast in their houses, each on his appointed day, and would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. So it was, when the days of feasting had run their course, that Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, it may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. Thus Job did regularly. Now, what we see Job doing, and there are many Bible students here that think he was roughly contemporaneous with Abraham, probably about the same time as Abraham. We also see it in Abraham. I mentioned yesterday about Abraham, that the altar was one of the symbols of his life. So Abraham was a worshipper of God and one who taught his family to worship the Lord and passed on the promises that God had given him verbally to his son Isaac and to his grandson Jacob, and then to Jacob's twelve sons. And eventually these things would be written down in the days of Moses. But here we see Job, likewise, he is getting up and he is acting the part of the intercessor on behalf of his family. He is leading them in worship. He is praying for his sons and daughters, and he is concerned about their relationship with the Lord. Now, the phrase family altar, I don't believe is in our Bibles, but the concept is certainly there. That our homes, and you can see this all throughout Israel's history. Someone mentioned to me yesterday in one of the breaks, Dan- uh, Deuteronomy, excuse me, Deuteronomy chapter six, where it says there that the Jewish men especially were to think about the law when they walked in the way, and they were to think about it in their house, and they would think about it when they sit down and when they rose up. A- and it later goes on to talk about them teaching God's law, teaching what we call his word to their children. And you can get this as well when you come to the time of the Passover in Exodus, and in Exodus thirteen when God is telling them about how later they're going to celebrate the Passover, and they're going to celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread. In years to come, they're going to teach their sons why they're doing this, and their daughters presumably as well. But it posits the scenario in Exodus thirteen. It says, and if your son asks you, why is this night different than other nights? You know, if he asks you, why are we doing this, pop? Well, what is this with having a lamb and having the bitter herbs and all these things and the unleavened bread? And the instruction comes back, then you tell them what the Lord your God did for you in Israel, how he redeemed you, how he saved you out of Israel. Now, that is a responsibility of a man that goes beyond gifting. I understand that Ephesians four and uh, Romans twelve and other passages as well will talk about the gift of teaching. It will talk about teachers in Ephesians four. So there are men that God gives that gift to use in the church. I understand that. And you say not every man has that gift. Uh, totally agree with you. You say not every man, uh, really wants to be or ought to be up on the platform speaking. You know, if you, if the Lord gives you another gift, use your other gift. I mean, do what the Lord wants you to do. There's nothing about this gift, about teaching the word, that is any more, uh, any greater, in a sense, for the person doing it. I- it's just what God gives one to do. You know, we're not higher than other people. I know I'm three steps up. That's probably for convenience, so you can see a short person like me. But all the gifts are important. All of them are necessary. In Christ, we are all priests. We can approach God without a human intermediary, again, with the exception of God incarnate, the Lord Jesus Christ. He's our mediator. But in the home, it is so essential that the men be showing their children a love for the word of God, that they be showing them what the truths of scripture are, at least the fundamentals, at least the gospel. It's a tragedy that in many churches that I go to, and my home church would be, uh, within this case, that a lot of the families, we've seen many of our children go on in life and not receive the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, let me just stop a moment and say, nobody can believe for their child, okay? We can't ensure our children will get saved. Roman, uh, sorry, John one tells us it's not of the will of man, not of the will of flesh, not of blood, right? But the question arises, okay, we can't believe for our children, but are we putting the gospel before them? And this applies, of course, to grandchildren and to great-grandchildren. And one of the great formative testimonies in my early life, I will say straight out, were my grandparents and my grandmother especially, often speaking to me about my soul. So the home is to be this place where the word of God is opened and read, and you don't have to be Charles Haddon Spurgeon or J. N. Darby or whomever, Billy Graham. You know, you, you just have to faithfully read the word and what it says there and faithfully put before your family the truths of the gospel and what God is doing. And we can see this all through the patriarchal era. We can see this in Job. We can see this e- even later in Israelite history. And it's certainly true that as Christians on the ground that we're on, uh, we're to be doing this as well, to be worshiping God in the home and to be putting his word before our children. Now, of course, there is that aspect that, let's go to First Corinthians eleven— of headship, of God speaking about man being the head of woman. And of course, that's a amazing responsibility. It's something that ought to sober every man who's in the position of being married, but even single men. Uh, we're gonna see that there is the idea of having the responsibility in the local church of leading the congregation audibly, leading verbally in prayer, leading in the opening and reading of the Word of God, and in teaching it and preaching it and, and worshiping and so forth. But we come here to First Corinthians eleven verse two, Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the traditions just as I delivered them to you. But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ. You see where it starts? It starts with man. It doesn't start picking on the woman, so to speak. Uh, yes, there's teaching for the woman, but it starts with man. The head of every man is Christ, and the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. Now, let me just stop there a moment. This obviously shows us we're not talking about equality, because when you talk about the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father, they are co-equal. He could say, my Father worketh hitherto, and I work. I'm doing the same work as my Father. He could say, I and the Father are one. He could say, uh, before Abraham was, I am. He has the same attributes. He has the same qualities, the same abilities, the same position. He's co-equal with the father. So when we talk about this idea of headship, it's not the idea of value. It's not saying man's more valuable than woman, males are more valuable than females, so they're the head of the woman. No, because the Lord Jesus is of the same value as the Father in one sense. And yet the Lord Jesus, for all that equality, he took the position of making himself lower than the Father positionally, didn't he? He did a lot more than that. Hebrews two tells me he made himself a little lower than the angels. Isn't that extraordinary? I mean, if God the Son had left heaven's glory and become Gabriel or Michael or in a body like theirs, that would have been extraordinary. Usually when people saw angels, they didn't look like Roma Downey. Uh, you know, usually people would fall on their face. Okay, no touched by an angel fans. That's good. You- you're more spiritual than that. But anyway, you know, he didn't come and be an angel. In the Bible, angels, when they showed up, people often fainted. They often fell on their face. They often thought, we're going to die. Think of Samson's father, Manoah. He says, we're going to die because we've seen the angel of the Lord. Now, I realize that was a Christophany, that was a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ, but coming in angelic form. That brightness, that glory, and yet the Lord didn't do that. The Lord came down as a human being. He came down as a male, and the Lord took that lower place for the work of God, in order that the Father's work might be accomplished, in order that the Father might be glorified. And you read through John how many times the Lord talks about the Father sending the Son, the Father sending the Son. Now, with that in mind, uh, before he ever talks about our leadership role, us being the head over woman, he first tells us we have a head. The head of every man is Christ. So listen, it's not that you're the owner of the corporation. You're not Jeff Bezos over Amazon, and you can do whatever you want because it's your company, right? No, it's saying you're under God, and your headship, your leadership, the role you exercise is with responsibility to God. What does that come from? Of course, that comes from creation. He's going to talk about that as he goes down through First Corinthians eleven here, a- and he talks about creation in verse eight, for man is not from woman, but woman from man. Remember that rib taken out of man? Verse nine, nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man, and so forth. Now, God created man and put him in that position, but man is accountable to God. That's why people today in our society fight against Genesis. They attack it. They fight against the doctrine of creation because they know if we've been created by someone higher than ourselves, then we're beholden to him. We are responsible. We have to ask ourselves, why did he make us, and what does he want us to do? Well, here he's telling the man, yes, I've put you in a position of responsibility, but remember, it's not absolute power. You're submissive or ought to be submissive to Christ. And yes, the woman's under man, but the leadership that she is subject to ought to be exercised in relation to Christ. Now, this is a famous passage, but let's turn over to it anyway. Ephesians chapter five. Ephesians chapter five. And I just want to say, this is such a massive subject that there's no way one message does it justice, so you'll have to just take these little bullet points I'm giving and put flesh on the bones, you know, search the scriptures and add to it, because there's so much more in the word of God. But when we come to Ephesians five verse twenty three— uh sorry, we'll start at twenty two. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. Ah, my flesh says, well, I'm your husband, you got to do what I say. You know, you remember that sage who wrote so long ago, it was Bill Haley of Chester, Pennsylvania. Get out in that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans. Roll my breakfast 'cause I'm a hungry man. It's good thing Mark's not here to hear that, but it's not high poetry, I admit, but, you know, men can get that kind of attitude. You've got to submit to me. You've got to do it my way. Oh no, says the Word of God, verse twenty three. For the husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the church, and he's the savior of the body. Therefore, just as the s- church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives. What's that look like? Just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her, that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word. Now, you see that, that what he's talking about here, this leadership, this headship that we are to exercise is not only to be under Christ, we're realizing we're under the authority of the Lord Jesus, who in turn is under the authority of God the Father. So already we've got two layers of authority above us, God the Father, God the Son, and it is he that is over the males. And the females say, well, I've got the male over me. Oh yeah, but they've got God the Father and Son over them, so they better mind what they do. And when it comes to the leadership they're exercising in the home toward their wives and toward their families, it has to be with the attitude of Christ. Well, how did Christ show his leadership? Well, he was one who said, am I not your Lord and Master, and yet I'm among you as one who serves? You see, the Lord Jesus would come and pour out his life for his church. Is that how we approach our marriages and our families? That this doesn't exist primarily for me. It's not just about my satisfaction and my pleasure and what I enjoy, but number one, it's for the glory of God. It's to honor. And number two, it's to build up and help my wife. The Lord sanctified and cleansed the church by the washing of water of the word. Am I using the word with my wife to help her grow in the Lord? Are we going to the scriptures together? Are we praying together? Am I concerned about her spiritual well-being? Now, mind you, when I say that the Lord serves, you remember there is authority. The Lord also commands us as the church to do certain things. So, as men, we have to stand up sometimes and say, this is what we're going to do. We have to make a decision. We have to make, on times, very difficult decisions. And we do that, I trust, seeking the Lord's help, saying, Lord, I need wisdom. I need help. I'm not sufficient for these things in myself. I need you to come and work through me. That's what we're thinking about when we talk about the man of God in the home. Now, unfortunately, time is hastening on, so we've got to get to the man of God in the church for our last five minutes. We go over to First Timothy chapter three. And again, there's a lot of salient portions. We could think about First Timothy two. that talks about a woman not being per- permitted to teach or to usurp authority over a man. It's the province of men in the church to teach the word of God and to exercise authority. And in First Timothy three, you'll notice that we come to this idea of leadership and service in the church. We have first the overseers in the first seven verses, and then from verse eight through thirteen, we have the deacons. And he talks about overseers, uh, King James and New King James will call them bishops, but that's really not rooted in the Greek language. That's a holdover from seventeenth century England and the church government that the translators were under at that time. Really, the idea here is an overseership. I think Darby translates it, this is a faithful saying, if a man desires an overseership, he desires a good work. An overseer must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of good behavior, hospitable, able to teach, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous. Now you say, oh, well, I'm not an elder, so I'll, I- I'm glad because that's a pretty tough list. You know, I'm just an ordinary Joe or ordinary Bill or Jim or whatever your name happens to be. I'm just an ordinary guy in the church. This doesn't apply to me, right? No. The whole point of the elders, uh, one of the main things of this overseership is not that this is a corporate governance above the church that kind of arbitrarily makes decisions, but the idea is, as First Peter five will bring out, that they are under-shepherds, that they are accountable to the chief shepherd. And so, uh, what they are, first of all, in the qualities they exhibit in their life, and secondly, in the ministry they exercise, is with the goal of showing the believers, male and female, how we ought to live. So, should any Christian, for example, should any Christian, uh, be one who is not blameless? In other words, is it a good thing as a Christian to have the reputation that you're very shady in business and that someone shouldn't turn their back on you. You say, no, we all ought to be blameless. We all ought to have a reputation for integrity. Well, what about the husband of one wife? Literally, one of the passages, Titus one or this one, I forget which, says a one-woman man. We know that part of what has given a lot of fuel to the modern movement of feminism and to the homosexual movement, actually, is the abuse of their role by men. And what I'm thinking of now is especially, uh, the molestation, the rapes, the different things like that that have been going on in places of power unchecked. That's absolutely wrong. For a man to be this sort of lecherous, adulterous, unchaste individual, that is horrifically damaging to the testimony, right? Not to mention against the commandments of God. So we would say as Christians, well, no, just because we're not an elder, we can't be those who are out, uh, playing the field when we've entered into a marital coven- covenant, and if we're talking about single people, nor can we engage in fornication. We've got to be temperate, this idea of self-control, sober-minded, of good behavior. See, this is applicable to all believers, and this is what elders are to exhibit. Now, unfortunately, sometimes men aren't this way. Sometimes men exhibit the very opposite of this, and it makes people despise the truth and say, well, this is why we ought to have women leaders. No. The answer to fix the problem is not to have another wrong. Two wrongs don't make a right, right? You've got to get back to the scripture when there's something wrong. We've got to say, well, if the men aren't doing what they, uh, should be doing, you know what is called for? Repentance. Perhaps church discipline. And we go on with the deacons, and and the women are mentioned in connection with the deacons in verse eleven. Likewise their wives must be reverent. So it's not like the women don't have a part. Believe me, the spiritual temperature of an assembly in large measure is going to be determined by the women. Because I've seen brothers who wanted to do a lot of good things for the Lord, and their wives hold them back. Or I've seen single men who probably would have done more, but they haven't had encouragement from the godly women. Now, just by word of testimony as I close, I can say that hasn't been my experience. I can say I'm standing here today because there were godly women and men too, but the women were very prominent when I was a little boy. They were the ones who came to me and told me, we're glad you're here, Keith. We're glad you're at meeting. And when I started to give out a hymn at the Lord's Supper, I really appreciated that hymn. I'm praying for you, Keith. My oldest daughter has the middle name of Inez, after a woman named Inez Stevens, who was such a godly woman that without ever stepping out of her God-ordained position in the church, she had as great an impact as any of the saints, because she could go, if people were quarreling, she could go speak to them, and she could bring them to a peaceful resolution. She could encourage somebody who was downcast. She could bring a verse to somebody who needed it. And when the Lord took her, we all felt like we were spiritually poorer, poorer for it. Now, of course, this all coalesces because First Corinthians three says, talks about the man having his house, his children in submission, because it says in verse five, if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God? And it's a very important principle. It's got to start at home. We say charity begins at home. Well, so does godliness. So does obedience to the Lord. So does leadership. And the way up in the church is not to climb and clamber over people, it's to submit to the Lord and to follow his word. And when we're doing that, then that's going to overflow, and that's going to give us credibility and standing, and God will open up avenues of service, maybe make us an overseer or a deacon or use us in some particular work, and it will be because we're doing what God wants us to do. Well, much more could be said, but I commend you to study before the Lord for yourselves. Father, we are thankful for thy word, and we pray indeed that we take it to heart. These are evil days, and there's much confusion about things that one would think would be obvious, things that are biologically evident, and yet man denies them. And yet we realize that it's part of this massive rebellion against our Creator. And when we think of the Creator himself coming into time, coming into space, coming into this world to die on the cross for us and save us, we thank thee for the perfect man who lived among us, the Lord Jesus Christ, and showed us what men ought to be, what a real godly male is. We thank thee for his peerless example, and we thank thee for the godly sisters, Father, and the way thou art using them. We just pray that these two different sections of humanity would work in a complementary fashion to advance thy work and to build up thy church. We pray it in the Lord Jesus' name. Amen.