ALL ABOUT WOMEN

 

Dr. W. A. Criswell

 

7-13-58

 

1 Timothy 2:8-15

 

 

And, the title of the sermon is: All About Women.  I have scoured in vain for any man, in any generation, in any era, in any period who has preached on that passage.  I cannot find a single illustration or instance.  They all skip it.

I would have skipped it too, except that I'm preaching through the Bible, and it would have been very noticeable, had I skipped it.

All About Women.  A fellow facetiously said, "No man really understands women, no matter how young he is."

Now, when we enter into this discussion about the Apostle Paul and what he thinks about woman, we get the wrong idea, mostly because of a lack of ability to put in the English language the spirit, the finesse, the courtesy that a man would write in using the beautiful Greek language.  Now, we start off.  And, this message tonight is an exegesis of this passage.  I don't know what else to do. I'm afraid to do anything else.  So, we're just going to exegete the passage.  This is what Paul said.

Now, he starts off in the pericope here that we've just read—he starts off with how it is we ought to worship the Lord.  So, he says: “I will that men everywhere pray—that is, in Dallas, in Fort Worth, in Hong Kong, in Calcutta, everywhere—that, when they gather together for their public services of worship, that men pray, “lifting up holy hands without wrath and”—you  have it translated—“doubting”.

He's referring there to the Jewish custom of lifting up the hands.  They did it when they took an oath.  They did it when they blessed.  And, they did it when they prayed. 

Several times in the Psalms, you will find reference to the psalmist, who says: “I will lift up my hands unto the Lord and pray.”  So, he says, in these public assemblies, men are to pray without doubt and dialogismos.  You have it translated "doubting."  Dialogismos means disputing, debate.  He is referring to angry, contentious developments in those early churches.

And, it is hard for us to realize that all those people back there that were called saints were just as pestiferous and contentious and recalcitrant and incorrigible and obstreperous as they could possibly be.  That's the reason I know there were Baptist churches back there.

Now, he's talking about when we come to worship.  He wants us to leave off our anger and our contentiousness and our disputations, and, in reverence and holiness, in peace and in quiet, to pray to God.

Then, that leads Paul to talk about how women are to come to church.  In like manner, as these men are to come to church and pray without wrath and disputation and contentiousness—in like manner, also, he says, the women, when they come to church, the public services of the house of God.

How is a woman to appear?  How is she to dress?  Now, the reason Paul wrote this—and we shall emphasize this several times tonight—the reason Paul wrote it is on account of these little churches were peculiar things in the days of the Roman Empire.  They had never seen anything like it in the history since the dawn of the creation of the world.  And, they were watched.  And, what they did and what they said and how they acted and how they dressed and everything about them was very, very noticeable. 

And, Paul was eager—with all of the things that overwhelmed those little churches—their divisiveness, the Judaizers, the Sophists that came, the Gnostics that came, the philosophers that came—oh, they had an endless succession.  We've had 2,000 years experience in guiding the destiny of our church.  They were new and composed of people from every faction and section and race and creed of life.  And, they were subject to endless controversy and disputation and contention.  So, Paul is so eager for those little churches, that, in everything, there be amongst them and in them, beautiful decorum.

So, he's going start talking about the women that come to church: “In like manner”—that is, when the women come to public worship—

… that the women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly array, but which becometh women professing godliness with good works.

Now, let's see what he says there about a woman's dress.  First of all, he says: “In like manner—as the men come to church, and the women come with them to worship—the women adorn themselves in modest apparel.”

Now, that word there—he's got three words there, by which he describes how a woman ought to dress.  The first one is used twice.  The word translated "adorn" and "modest" is the same word in Greek.  The one is the verbal form, and the other is in the substantive form.  Then, he's got a second and a third word.

So, let's look at those three words.  Now, when the woman comes to church, she is to adorn herself in modest apparel. Now, the Greek word translated adorn there is kosmeō.  The word “cosmos” comes from that.  And, the word “cosmetic” comes from that.

The word kosmeō means to put in order, a thing that is orderly arrayed. And, when the ancients looked at the universe, it seemed to them that it was beautifully arrayed: these planets swinging around the sun and all of the glories of the heaven.  So, they gave it the word the kosmos, the orderly arrangement of God.

But, it was an ordinary Greek word, meaning to array in beautiful, seemly order.  Now, the substantive there that is translated modest apparel—kosmios—means “seemly, orderly.”  The woman is to dress orderly, seemly, acceptably.

She has to adorn herself.  Now, that word means adorn.  And, you don't dress nearly so much to cover up yourself as you do for adornment. 

Did you know that? If you were just interested in covering up yourself, why, any old bag or any old sack would do.  Most of the time, we dress according to an adorning.  A man wouldn't have a suit without a lapel, and he wouldn't have a lapel without that little notch right there. 

Does anyone of you male members have a notch in your lapel?  I don't know any earthly use in the world for that notch in the lapel.  But, no man would be seen in public without that little notch there.  All of us are slaves to fashion. And, it is for adorning that we dress.

The way you cut your hair, and the way these men will just brush and put axle grease on it and comb it back—Now, he says that's fine.  He says we are to do it.  We are to adorn ourselves orderly, seemly.

Then his second word there is aidos, which means “modestly.”  The woman is to be dressed—she is to adorn herself, in seemly apparel, modestly—aidos.

And, then, that word translated “sobriety”—sōphrosunē—actually means “soundness of mind.”  She's not to dress like an idiot.  She's to dress as though she had some sense.

Then, he describes that sōphrosunē—how a woman with some sense is to come dressed: Not with gold all embroidered into her hair, plaited hair, plaited strands of gold, gorgeous, motley array.  He says: “But that which becometh a woman in the church with beautiful manners, wonderful courtesies, warmth of spirit.”

Now, Paul is just saying that good Christianity is good taste.  When you see a woman come into church, and she's got ornaments dangling from every joint and every suspension, and she is gaudily arrayed, like Mrs. Astor's horse—And, when she comes by, people says, "Well, there goes Mrs. Christmastree herself."  She just ruins everything.  She ruins the services.  People quit listening to the preaching and start looking at her hats and all those dangling things around. 

Good taste is acceptable anywhere.  Any woman of sōphrosunē—of “sobriety,” it's translated there—soundness of mind, moderation, is a woman who is always acceptable.  And, he says: Her adornments are not to be these outlandish, braided, golden hair, and all of those things that those women did that day, and what some of them tend—try to do today—gaudy pomposity, a sparkling ostentation. 

Oh, it's easy to see, when a woman breezes in and the way she's dressed, she's trying to do just what you know she's trying to do.  It's easy to see that.  He says: The finest woman of sōphrosunē, the soundness of mind, is a woman whose charm does not lie in her ornaments, in her braids, in her gold, and her costly habiliments and embellishments.  But, it lies in the warmth of her spirit.  It lies in the graciousness of her manner.  It lies in the works, the good works, the gracious things that she does and says. 

That's all Paul meant there. And, I submit it to you that Paul is just saying a fine thing that could be repeated in any fashion magazine.  You could put it on the front of Vogue, and say that's how a woman ought to dress.  But, when you come to church, that's the way Paul says you ought to adorn yourself: Put on your finest smile. Put the love and warmth of God in your heart.  Put an interest in somebody else, a sympathy in your soul.  Come in a gracious spirit, and it'll be the most adornment, Paul would say, that a woman could ever choose.

Then, he begins to speak about the services.  When you have church services, how are your services to be conducted?  Now, he starts again, after having spoken of her apparel: “Let the woman learn in silence”—hēsuchia, “in quietness, in tranquility, in ceasing from altercation and contention.”  Hēsuchazō means “to cease from labor, to cease from quarreling and altercation and contention.” 

So, the woman is to learn in hēsuchia, in abstinence from contention and raucous quarreling, in quietness and tranquility.  For, he says: “I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in hēsuchia.

Now, what he's talking about is this: We go back to the kind of services they had in those first Christian churches.  Those first services must have been bedlam.  Everybody stood up and they would quarrel, and they will say things. 

If you want to see how those churches were, just read what Paul says in trying to quiet down that church in Corinth.  The churches were filled with contention.  They were filled with quarreling.  They were filled with people getting up and interrupting everybody else.  And, everybody had his idea, and everybody wanted to have his way.  Paul would say: “Everybody has a revelation and everybody has a prophecy and everybody and on and on.”  And, they were having bedlam in those churches.

Now, there is a reason for that.  I want us to look at it.  These churches were, I repeat, a brand new thing in the world.  These churches had everybody in them equal: the man and the woman.  For example, Paul would say:

In the church, there is neither bond nor free. There is neither Greek nor Jew. There is neither barbarian nor Scythian. There is neither male nor female. But we're all one in Christ.

For the first time in this world, there was a pronouncement that a woman was to be received in the same way, as equal to the man.  That was an amazing development and revelation.  The world had never seen anything like that.

The Greek woman—all over the Greek world, the Greek woman was just a little higher in her frame than the woman in an oriental harem.  The Greek woman was nothing other than a domestic slave.  She ruled over her own household in her quarters.  But, she never dared to get beyond them.

She was not educated.  She was not given an education.  You look at the history of Athens.  In all of the glory of Athens, in art and science and literature and history and oratory and law—in every field—there is never one single Athenian woman who ever achieved the slightest distinction in any of them.

Now, the woman is Judaism is an anomaly.  She's a paradox.  The woman in Judaism was accepted like any man in the covenant of God.  She was saved and was a part of the congregation of the Lord. 

But, I couldn't illustrate the difference between a Christian church and Judaism than in how you get into it.  You become a Jew by the circumcision of the male.  The female has nothing to do with it.  But, when you join a Christian church, the woman is baptized just like the man.  Both of them come alike.  Both of them are received alike.  Both of them are in the household of the faith alike.

Now, that was a new thing and a sparkling and an unusual thing here in these churches: these women, liberated and free for the first time in the history of the world.

Now, Paul was so eager and anxious that the services in the house of the Lord be conducted with great decorum and order and sobriety and worthiness. And, yet, there they were in the middle of those frightful contentions, and the women on the inside of them.

Well, I don't know how to describe it.  When you have a situation like that, Paul says two or three things.  One, he says here about speaking in tongues.

Over here, in the eleventh chapter of the Book of Corinthians, he said how a woman ought to dress when she prays and when she prophesies in the church.

Then, over here in the fourteenth chapter of the First Corinthian letter, in the middle of this great chapter on speaking in tongues he says:

Let your women keep silence in the churches; It's not permitted unto them to speak in a tongue; they are to be in obedience… .

And if they want to learn anything

—about  the furor and the prophesying and the talking in tongues that's going on—

… let them ask their husbands at home

—but, not to speak in the church.

Now, he has two reasons for that.  One of them I named first.  One of them is: those little churches were built in the presence of pagan idol temples. There, in Corinth, just up there, that tremendous Acro-Corinth, overlooking the city, was a great world-famed temple to Venus.  And, up there in that temple to Venus, the men went up to worship the god of love, and they did it with women who were dedicated to her service.

You would call that prostitution.  They called it the worship of the goddess of love.  It was an orgy of vice and of sex.  And, when those women went up there and they worshiped Venus in all of those rituals and orgies, the women were carrying on and they were talking and they were singing and they were doing all those things that enter into the worship of the goddess of love.  And Paul says: “And a stranger walking by, look in there and see your women carrying on like that. They'll just say, Well, I see we've got another little Aphrodite shrine here.  I see we've got another little Astarte right here.  I see we have another little Venus right here.”

Paul says: “When that's going on, your women are to keep silent.” He says: “I think your women ought to keep silent about speaking in tongues.”

He said: “I'd rather speak four words with my understanding in the church of God, that by words of understanding might encourage people, than 10,000 words in an unknown tongue.”  But, he says, “If you are bound and determined to speak in an unknown tongue, then do it one at a time, and only when an interpreter is present”—And, I haven't seen that in my life that I thought it was legitimate.  And, Paul says: “And, it's no good. Let's leave it off. Let's leave it out.”

So, that's one thing about women speaking in the church.  Now, the other thing was in those churches of contention, of quarrelsomeness—he said, “It is just better—when you're having a hullabaloo free-for-all, it adds to the decorum, if the women don't enter into it.”

Well, you get to thinking about that.  Contention: that's an awful thing.  That's an awful thing in the church.  That's an awful thing in a business.  That's an awful thing in a house and a home. 

This husband and this wife sat down, side by side, to eat supper.  They were just as mad, and they didn't say a word.  And, after supper was over, they were seated in front of the fire, and his face softened a little.  Then, he turned to her, and he said—he said, "You know, my dear, I've just been thinking."

She barked at him, "What you been thinking?"

"Well," he said, "you know, I've been thinking.  You're right after all.  I'm on your side."

She retorted: "Not going to do you any good. I've changed my mind."

A new preacher was talking to a little group of boys.  And, he said, "Who's the first man?"

"Adam," they all chorused.

"Who's the first woman?"

"Eve," they all chorused.

"Who's the meekest man?"

"Moses," they all chorused.

"Who's the meekest woman?"

Blank stares at one another.  One little fellow held up his hand, and he said, "Please, sir, there wasn't."

The last thing we ever want to do is to get in a dogfight.  And, the last thing in the world in a dogfight is to get our women at one another's throats, pushing and pulling and mad and angry and carrying through personal war.  All of those things enter into the decimation of the church of God.

So, what Paul says is this: In the public worship of the Lord, the woman be in quietness: “I do not suffer a woman to teach men or to usurp authority over the man, but to be in quietness and tranquility.”  According to the Word of the Lord, the public worship of God is to be conducted by men.  That is the plain, unvarying revelation of the Word of God.

That doesn't mean a woman cannot pray in public.  In the eleventh chapter of First Corinthians, Paul describes how the woman ought to appear when she prays.  Doesn't mean she shouldn't prophesy, that is, to speak—speak forth.  If she hears a message from the Lord, it doesn't mean that she cannot speak her message.  God says that the conduct of public worship is to be always in the hands of men.

A woman can teach women.  A woman can teach little children.  A woman can share in the service of the Lord, in the public house of Jesus.

But, the authority of the service, the organization of the church in the Old Testament, in the New Testament is always the same.  The high priest is a man.  The Levite is a man.  The people who offer the sacrifices, the actual offerer, the sacrificial offerer is always the priest, who is a man.  In the New Testament, the apostle is a man.  The pastor is a man.  The deacon is a man.  The authority of the house of God is always invested in the man.

And, if you have a strong church and a worthy church and a church that has in it the best and finest possibilities of the blessing of God upon it, you will have a church where the women are happy to see their men in the forefront.  Lot of times, a woman's got to push him.  Lot of times, he's got to keep a hatpin back of him.  Lot of times, she's got to do a lot of private praying.  But, the best and finest services in the house of God are always those where the women are seeking to encourage and to bolster up and to strengthen the hand of their men.

Now, he gives a reason for it.  Paul says: “For Adam was first formed and then Eve; Adam was not deceived, but the woman, being deceived, was in the transgression.” 

Now, that may be a little unusual kind of reasoning for us today, but it was cogent for Paul and, therefore, for us.  In First Corinthians 11:9, Paul says that the man was not made for the woman, but the woman was made for the man.  And, he quotes back there from Genesis 3, and I think it's verse 16 or 15 or 14—in the middle of the chapter, Paul's account says that: “God said, It isn't good for the man that he live alone.  And he made for the man an helpmate, meet for him, adequate for him.”  And, the woman was made in order to be a helper, a strengthener, an encourager to the man.  She was made for that purpose.

Then he gives another reason in that story: “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.”  Adam knew exactly what he was doing.  When Adam took of that forbidden fruit from the hand of his wife, he chose to die with her.  He knew what he was doing.  Eve was deceived.  Satan attacked one of them.  He attacked the woman.  And, she gave herself in gullibility to the innuendoes and insinuations of Satan.  And, being deceived, she took of that forbidden fruit.  Adam knew exactly what he was doing.  He was not deceived.  Eve was.

I read where one of these feminists was ranting and raving before an audience, and she said, "I ask you, where would the man be without the woman?"  And, there was silence.  And, she repeated again, and said, "I ask you again.  Where would the men be without the women?"

And, when she stopped the second time, a fellow in the balcony hollered out and said, "I'll tell you. We'd be in the Garden of Eden."

I don't know.  All I do is just read the story.  And, the story says that Eve was deceived.  Satan hoodwinked her.  Satan led her into a trap.  Satan slew, and, when Adam saw that his wife was to die, rather than live without her, he took of the forbidden fruit, that they might die together.

I would submit another thing.  I don't think you'll find a finer thing in recorded in history than that—and, that's been true ever since: A man give his life for a woman that he loves.  That's been true through the ages since.  A man rather die by the side of the woman he loves than to live without her.

He knew what he was doing.  Eve was deceived.

Now, he is saying that man is the leader over the woman.  And, he refers back here to one of the parts of the curse:

God said unto the woman, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

That's one of the parts of the curse of God.  Now, when that is used, the superior strength—physical, at least—of the man, and the opportunity of the man to crush the woman, it is a tragic thing.  But, you can't change it.  It's true in history. And, it's true today.  These women who are borne down by a godless, drinking, fierce, unloving, unsympathetic husband.  It's a part of the Fall.  It's a part of the depravity of human nature.

I was moved to tears a week ago as I heard one of our men out at Truett Chapel.  Knocking, he said, at the door of a home out there right next to our chapel.  And, he said the nicest, modestly-dressed, clean-dressed little woman  came to the door.  And, she had a black eye.  And, she apologized for the way that she looked, for she said her husband had just beat her up.

Those things happen all the time.  They happen everywhere.  It's a part of the Fall.  It's a part of the depravity of human nature: A man takes advantage of the lesser strength of his wife.

Oh, how Christianity has given her a break in the church of God.  “There's not any male; there's not any female. We're all one in the Lord.”  Then, Paul pays to her a great tribute.  And, it isn't quite, I do not think, like you'd get the idea, as you read it here in this English translation: “Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.”

Now, when you look at that thing in the Greek, it looks altogether different. This woman that he's talking about, who's been made subservient to the man: “Notwithstanding,” you have it translated, “she shall be saved in childbearing.”

Now, that thing in Greek is dia tēs teknogonias—dia tēs.  And, that article tēs is very, very prominent.  She shall be saved in the childbearing, teknogonias, in the childbearing.

Wonder what he's talking about: the childbearing?  Well, I know what he's talking about.  He's going back there to that same third chapter of Genesis, to which he's made two allusions already.  He's going back to the time when God said to the woman: “And thy seed—and thy seed shall crush this serpent's head.”

She shall be saved in the childbearing: the seed not of the man, the seed of the woman.

Then, lest anybody think that just in childbearing she would be saved, he adds that word: But they also must believe.  Even a mother must believe—Faith, charity, holiness, sobriety.  Paul pays there a great tribute to the woman.

Now, give me time, just for a second, to summarize all of this.  Paul, as we read the Bible—Paul gives a picture of the church, as God founded it and as the apostles fashioned its line. 

And, one of the things that you will see from the life of that early church is that the women had a tremendous part in it.  They were very prominent, very prominent.  That's why they're spoken of and referred to so much.  So, Paul says: “When the woman comes to church, she is to come dressed in the finest of taste.”  And, you honor the Lord when you come to God's house in good taste.

All you may have is a cotton dress.  But, make it real clean, and iron out all the wrinkles.  And, look nice when you come to the house of the Lord, not ostentatiously to parade down the aisle, not to be dressed gaudily, emptily, vainly, but to be dressed in the finest of taste.

 

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