Real Men and Real Women: 3 Sessions Combined

ligonier ministries the teaching fellowship of rc sprole presents a harmony of differences real men and real women with elizabeth elliott this message is entitled the ancient idea [Music] i want to thank you for being willing to listen to what an old lady has to say about a subject that has really been a matter of a lot of controversy over the past few decades and as far as i can tell it hasn't abated very much i've given to my three talk series the title of real men and real women and what we're dealing with is a mystery it is a deep and unfathomable mystery i'm told that just before freud died having spent his whole life studying the characters and personalities of men and women his question was what do women want what do they really want and i doubt that any woman could possibly answer the question let alone a man and of course we women would say what do men want what do they really want and we don't understand each other and i really don't believe that god ever intended that we should understand each other perfectly and i'm very aware of the pitfalls i feel as if i'm a toddler blundering into a minefield when i start talking about this subject and it's not my purpose to be controversial to put anybody down but i would certainly hope that i will be able to help some who have been greatly confused by this issue and perhaps belong to a generation that bought a lot of what seems to me to be just cheer balderdash about the differences between men and women or the lack of differences between men and women i would hope that perhaps we can clarify our perceptions of what the ancient idea was behind them and that is the mystery that i'm going to try to talk about in these brief talks now given the fact that i am dealing with the whole subject of masculinity and femininity the question is raised and a legitimate one as to why i go by the name of elizabeth elliott when i have a husband whose name is not elliot and of course it does lead to some confusion on one occasion lars was setting up his book table and an old lady was setting place cards on the banquet tables she said what's your name and he said well he said i'm an elliot too just facetiously he said they've been joking back and forth and so she said you are she said are you the speaker's husband and he said yes and she said well that's funny i thought they told me that the speaker had a different name and he said well really my name is gren spelled g-r-e-n but he said you know i get called mr elliott and i'm mr elliott iii and but he said i am her third husband and she said oh my goodness i've only got one place card can you imagine and he said well i think you can relax because the other two are dead and i don't think they're going to turn up but the truth is that there is a lot of confusion about this and so i do want to explain it and i want to simply say that because i wrote my first book under the name of elizabeth elliott and have been writing under that name since and because of course for very good reasons publishers take a dim view of authors changing their name that is the name that i would be recognized by by perhaps more people than the name of mrs lars gren but i am very thankful to be mrs large grin and at home we do go by that name so having gotten that out of the way let's think about what is the meaning of real men and real women now we all know that real men don't eat quiche and real women don't pump gas right true of course but there's nothing more fascinating and i think to some of us at times infuriating than this fathomless mystery it's often delightful but it is admittedly perplexing so for the title of my first talk for those of you who are note takers and i see that some of you are let's give it the ancient idea and the first thing that i would like to try to do is to obey what we're told to do in romans 12 2. paul says there that we are to surrender or yield our bodies present our bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable unto god and the body that i have to present happens to be a female body and the body that some of you have to present happens to be a male one but we don't have a choice about that do we it was god's idea and the second verse goes on to say don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold but let god remold your minds from within and then you will be able to prove that the will of god is perfect it meets all his demands and moves toward the goal of true maturity i think i'm quoting fairly accurately there from jb phillips translation and i love that word don't let the world squeeze you into its own mold and i'm sure that all of us have let the world squeeze us into its own mold about many things and the most difficult thing in the world is to swim against the tide and that's what christians have to do christians are people whose lives don't make any sense except in terms of another of another world another level another master another motive that's my purpose in life not to let the world squeeze me into its own mold but to let god remold my mind from within and i have spent two decades thinking and pondering and studying about this mystery of masculinity and femininity and i take my cues certainly not from my own temperament and i would hope that any of you would realize even in these few minutes that you're not looking at a woman who was born submissive or a woman who is a shrinking violet and needs to be told what to do and wants to be told what to do not a bit of it in fact there isn't in me one atom of submissiveness naturally speaking i take my cues from this book and it's to this book that i go back over and over again and with this book that i think you would have your quarrels if you have any quarrels with the things that i'm saying today i expect to be challenged i expect to be challenged whenever the things that i say don't line up with scriptures so let me give you three points i'll try to tell you what i'm going to say and then i'll try to say them and then i may remember and have time to tell you at the end what i've said but these three points number one the sources of confusion number two archetypes and number three the harmony destroyed now there have been many sources of confusion over the past couple of decades particularly we might go back to the last part of the 19th century but serious confusion i think has arisen because of a movement that was dedicated to erasing eradicating or at least smudging the differences between men and women a very powerful movement there have been freedoms so-called freedoms which women have gained in the last half-century century or so the pill being one of them making it possible to have almost total freedom of sexual activity in or outside of marriage without a whole lot of risk the amazing rise of divorce and careerism and i think there's a relationship between all those three things the pill divorce and careerism there probably wouldn't be nearly as many divorces if women hadn't gone out into the workforce and had many opportunities to play around and things like that and the movement that i referred to and also the equal rights amendment emphasized rights rather than responsibilities and i'd like to read what my old mentor c.s lewis says in screwtape letters no man who says i'm as good as you believes it he would not say it if he did the saint bernard never says it to the toy dog nor the scholar to the dunce nor the employable to the bum nor the pretty woman to the plane the claim to equality outside the strictly political field is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior what it expresses is precisely the itching smarting writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept and therefore resents yes and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others denigrates it and wishes it annihilation think about those words nobody who ever says i am as good as you believes it it always comes from those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior now the reasons why women have felt inferior are many and i'm not going to attempt to get into all of those but i hope that before we finish that we will make some clear distinctions between inferiority of worth and subordination there's been an effort to eradicate the traditions and what people have called the stereotypes and stereotypes of course can be very damaging they also have their advantages the stereotype of what women's work was supposed to be as opposed to what men's work was and when i lived with a tribe of indians in the south american jungle it was very interesting to me to notice that the distinctions between men and women were absolutely unmistakable and unarguable for one thing they didn't wear any clothes and there can't be any argument about who's who in a case like that there can't be any doubt even from a distance and when i asked the obvious question that any foreigner would ask once i learned the language why do you wear that piece of string it was just a string it wasn't it was not a g string they looked at me with shock and horror and they said well surely you wouldn't expect us to go around naked would you so let's just get rid of all the distinctions and we'll all be not men and women not masculine or feminine but persons well my personhood is intricately bound up with the fact that i am a woman and i don't know any persons who are not either men or women and this whole protest for equality is not a new thing do you remember the story in the book of numbers in chapter 16 where a man named cora started a rebellion against moses and aaron because he accused them of putting themselves on a pedestal he said aren't we all the lord's people and korah actually belonged to the same tribe as the tribe from which the high priests came who do you think you are is what he was saying in effect to moses and aaron putting yourselves up there in a position of authority moses we're told was a very meek man and don't you ever confuse the word meek with the word weak there was nothing weak about the figure of moses was there but meek in the sense that he recognized his place in god's economy and he was meek enough not to get into the ring with cora and his crowd of rebels he said you meet me here tomorrow morning and we will ask god about this question well to skip over a lot of the amazing details and it would be worth your while to check number 16 and read the whole story they did meet the next morning and the ground opened up and swallowed korah and his family and fire fell from heaven a fairly convincing proof that korra was wrong and moses was right moses and aaron had not ab arrogated to themselves a position of authority they had been assigned that position so those are some of the sources of confusion are we all equal well we need to think about that some more second the second thing i want to talk about is the archetypes an archetype is the original pattern from which all the other things of similarity are made a model the the words the original words from the greek come from the two words meaning first stamp the archetype is the first stamp and obviously the archetypal man and woman were adam and eve and there were some equalities that we might cite about adam and eve they were both made by god they were both made in the image of god and they were both placed under moral responsibility the responsibility to rule the earth be the ones in charge of all god's creatures and the responsibility to be fruitful and multiply clearly a command that neither could have obeyed without the cooperation of the other but in the second chapter of genesis we find some very glorious differences the differences in design god created the woman in a slightly different design from adam she was very much like adam as opposed to the giraffes or the clams but she was gloriously different and she was made from the man we're told that she was made specifically for the man god saw a need in adam that needed to be fulfilled and could not be fulfilled by any of the creatures that he had up to that point made and so as you remember the remarkable way in which god made the woman it wasn't out of the dust it was out of adam's rib he put adam to sleep and brought her then to him after creating the woman out of this rib so she was made from for the man she was made from the man she was brought to the man and she was named by the man and adam's willingness to name her as he was assigned to name all the animals was his acceptance of responsibility for her and for those animals each creature the man and the woman was given divine assignments each to bear the image of the earthly under a different modality this female body is made in the image of god and it bears the image of the earthly under a separate modality from that of you men and each we must remember is necessary to represent the image of god in human beings and here's a mystery right here i can't begin to explain to you why it was necessary for god to create male and female in order to represent his image but we have a glorious harmony of differences i like to call them glorious inequalities but if inequality rubs you the wrong way then let's just say a harmony of differences operator and co-operator one was the operator one was the co-operator one was the leader the other was the follower one the initiator and the other the responder now i don't know how to dance but i love to see a man and a woman who danced beautifully together not long ago my husband and i were in vienna and we had the privilege of watching that beautiful waltzing that isn't done very much anymore but to a strauss waltz played by an orchestra here was a lovely young couple just sailing floating around that floor and it was very obvious that one was the leader and one was the follower and if both had insisted upon leading there wouldn't have been no dance right or if both had insisted on following what would it have been it would have been chaos so it was god's idea that there should be this power and passivity ebb and flow and we see this in all of nature god created the moon to rule the night a lesser light and the sun to rule the day and he called it greater and lesser but i don't think that god loved the moon less than he loved the sun loves the sun so all these wonderful original ancient ideas of gods have to our great poverty been defaced and even destroyed and here we come to the third thing that i want to talk about the harmony destroyed we've talked about the sources of confusion about the archetypes or the original patterns adam and eve and how that harmony that god created for our joy and our delight has been defaced now what did go wrong with the original archetype with man and woman well for the arc for the architects designed to work certain things must be done and certain things must not be done i don't know whether there are any architects listening to me today but you know and the rest of us could certainly know that an architect's design has to it if it's still work then certain things must be done and certain things must not be done and god said be fruitful rule and in the second chapter of genesis we get into the forbidden thing there were the positives in chapter one and there was one negative god said do not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge so the tempter came along that was his opportunity and the tempter's first temptation i believe was not particularly the fruit it was the basic idea that god was trying to cheat them god was trying to cheat eve out of something which was her right and so he persuaded her that she could upgrade her lifestyle and eve bought the whole package it was pride that was the first sin her unwillingness to be just a human being because satan said to her did god say that you will die you not only will not die but you will be like god the tree of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil was not created for man's good man was not created to bear that kind of burden that weight that is the burden of the god but adam and eve eve first decided that she wanted to know and she wanted to find out check out god's word she was too proud to be just a human being she wanted to be a god and then she usurped the position which belonged to her husband that of being the initiator and what did adam do adam abdicated his responsibility as the initiator he was made to be responsible for eve to protect her and if he had dug in his heels and said no way are we going to touch that fruit the whole story might have been different surely must have been different but instead of that eve became the initiator adam became the responder the roles were reversed not equalized but reversed and we've been in a terrible mess ever since he was convinced that she was trapped and that there was some injustice in this does this ring any bells with some of the things that we women have been told were supposed to believe in the last couple of decades she believed she had been cheated of the one thing necessary for her happiness now have you ever spent the whole day giving your little children a wonderful time at the zoo or at the carnival or someplace and you've given them all the cotton candy they want and all the hot dogs they want and you're driving home at five o'clock in the afternoon everybody absolutely exhausted and one of the children sees a mcdonald's and says hey mom can we have a milkshake or can we have a mcdonald's and mom says no and what does the child say you never give us what anything now who talks like that nobody but us isn't that the way we talk with god god answers ten thousand prayers and he says no to one prayer that he knows will destroy us for the same reason that that mother says no to that little child it's not because she hates the child it's because she loves the child and she says no we're going home and eat a sensible meal and god said don't touch that tree and eve felt she was being cheated of the one thing necessary for her happiness deprived of the possibility of fulfillment that word that all of us women have been told we've got to have and the only way to be fulfilled is to become equal with your husband if you've got one get out of the house don't do all the dirty work get an eight-hour day job and you'll be fulfilled of course you men could have certainly told us a long time ago that that is not very fulfilling is there anybody that's ever found fulfillment in a job it really breaks my heart the way women will often come to me and say oh it must be so exciting to do what you do one little girl said i believe god's god has called me to do exactly what you do and i say well what's that well write books and speak and travel around i think it must be so exciting i'm not going to tell her that i'm suffering and that it's really a tough job and i hate it and all that that's not true but i do want to tell her that my fulfillment does not lie primarily in any particular piece of work whether it's ironing a shirt or writing a book my fulfillment lies in doing the thing that god wants me to do at that moment and i think it's just as important that i iron the shirt when it's time to iron the shirt as it is that i write a book or stand up in front of an audience and talk we want to concern ourselves with the why and the how of things instead of the what god is not going to tell us why or how he is going to fulfill us but fulfillment lies in obedience in a yes lord whatever you want to give me i will receive whatever you do not want to give me i let go of i relinquish for your name's sake so eve usurped the thing that was not given and we women are being tempted constantly to was to use serp a position that god never created us to fill and depriving of the glory of god in the work that he gives to men depriving men of the glory which lies in their assignments in other words the manufacturer's instructions have been ignored you know what it's like if you buy a gadget and you try everything in the world you can think up to make the crazy thing work and it doesn't work and when all else fails what do you do read the directions well i think a lot of things have failed in these relationships between men and women why the phenomenal rise in divorce well because men and women really don't understand the divine assignment the mystery that god has given to each one of them instead of being concerned with lord what do you want me to do which was paul's first question on the road to damascus we want to say but lord how are you going to work this out for me lord why do you have this happen to me that's the hunger for the tree of the fruit of knowledge instead of for the tree of the fruit of life so when they sinned and took the forbidden fruit what happened well adam ceased to husband eve the verb to husband means to care for to cherish to protect to provide for animal husbandry caring for animals adam ceased to husband eve and he had been assigned to be her husband he failed to protect her he failed to be the leader he capitulated to a woman's whim and i've seen marriages fall apart because of men capitulating to women's whims i've also seen them fall apart because of men lording it over them in a way and we're going to get into these specific ways in which husbands and wives are to relate to each other but just simply to say well if that's what the little woman wants well let the little woman have it you know because men don't want to get into the ring and argue with screaming women and i don't blame you for that who wants to get into an argument with a screaming woman and some of them can be very shrill and very loud indeed but eve said in effect my will be done and that's the rule of hell thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven the rule of heaven is thy will be done she took the initiative she usurped the responsibility that god had laid on her husband adam and he became the follower now rule and submission and union these three things are inextricably bound together rule submission and union they are principles of the universe in fact they are principles of our relation to god pt forsyth said subordination is not inferiority it is divine the principle has its roots in the very cohesion of the eternal trinity to recognize no lord or master is satanic i insist on the christian principle drawn from the very nature of god and essential to the masculinity and femininity which he has made without the spirit of subordination there is no true piety no manly nobility and no womanly charm no true piety no manly nobility and no womanly charm and with all my heart i want to do what little i can do to restore those three things to a world desperately in need of it so we've talked under the heading the ancient idea about the sources of confusion about the archetypes and about the harmony destroyed ligonier ministries the teaching fellowship of rc sprole presents a harmony of differences real men and real women with elizabeth elliott this message is entitled true womanliness [Music] this is the second talk in my series on real men and real women and i've entitled this one true womanliness true womanliness what is it what did god have in mind when he made this glorious harmony of differences let me read to you again what pt forsyth says about subordination the principle has its roots in the very cohesion of the eternal trinity subordination is not inferiority it is divine and i would remind you that in hebrews 2 verse 9 at least one of the modern translations says that jesus was made inferior to the angels a little lower than the angels is the king james version but obviously he was not worth less than the angels so let's try to modify our uh if we have objections to this idea of inferiority or think of it as in some way an admission of inferior worth i would hope that perhaps we'll modify that idea in as we look at the things that i have to say in this particular talk paul says very straightforwardly and it's not just paul that is accused of being a male chauvinist pig but if people knew their bibles they would also be calling peter the same thing because peter says it just as clearly and unashamedly as paul does that wives must submit to their husbands in that wonderful fifth chapter of ephesians which follows the fourth chapter the both in both of those chapters paul is talking about strong warnings against worldliness and against letting secular thinking infect our thinking as christians have nothing to do with them have no part with them don't be like stupid men walking in the dark understand what the will of the lord is on and on and on about these solemn warnings not to be taken in by what the world tells us and the more popular an idea is in my experience uh the more suspect it is the less likely it is to line up with the straight edge of scripture and this is my straight edge without a straight edge you can't tell how crooked you are so let's give some thought to why wives are supposed to submit to their husbands now i am very fortunate in having been married to three different men and i want to make it very clear that i didn't deserve any of them i didn't get any of them sometimes people say to me how did you ever get three husbands you know i never even had a date yet and my mother taught me two things when i was about 12 years old she didn't go into details much on the whole subject of sex but she did get across two ideas which have stuck with me and which i still believe work and i've given them to many many young women she said never chase boys and number two keep them at arm's length well women are chasing boys i have a young nephew he's not very young anymore he's about 33 or 34 very handsome single very talented and all of this kind of thing and he gets a lot of phone calls from girls but he does have his head screwed on straight to a certain extent because i asked him what does he say to these girls who call him up and ask him for dates and he said i have a very simple standard answer i just say thank you very much i appreciate you thinking of me but when i go on a date i like to be the one that does the asking now of course some women would be furious at that they want to push his teeth down his throat and say he's a male chauvinist or something but where does this deep-seated idea come from that men should be the initiators well i hope if you were listening to what i said in my first talk that you know where i think it comes from god did not create us to be the initiators and so my mother had good strong ancient reasons for saying don't chase boys and as far as keeping them as at arm's length that makes real sense too and when a young woman tells me that she somehow or other got pregnant by mistake and she doesn't really know how it happened then of course i have to point out that she does know how it happened somehow or other she put herself into a position which was a dangerous one she didn't keep them at arm's length if you keep them at arm's length you're never going to find yourself pregnant by mistake so these principles where do they come from in first corinthians 12 we have the metaphor of the human body used to teach what spiritual relationships are in the body of christ and paul says a body is not one single organ but many suppose the foot should say because i'm not a hand i do not belong to the body it does belong to the body nonetheless suppose the ear were to say because i'm not an eye i do not belong to the body it does still belong to the body if the body were all i how could it hear if the body were all ear how could it smell if the hole were one single organ there would not be a body at all now that certainly ought to pull the rug out from under the arguments for equality and interchangeability we're not meant to be alike we're not meant to be equal and interchangeable god did not design us human beings that way but in verse 25 it says verse 24 god has combined the various parts of the body giving special honor to the humbler parts so that there might be no sense of division in the body but that all its organs might feel the same concern for one another if one organ suffers they all suffer together if one flourishes they all rejoice together so we women can't say to you men we don't need you and you men can't say to us women we don't need you and i would hope that you understand that the things that i'm saying apply to single men and single women as much as they do to married men and married women married people of course have an intimate relationship in which the dynamics are extremely different different from singleness and we need to have special instructions which is what we're going to get into today but most of my life still has been single even though i've had three husbands still have my third husband thanks to god for that and we both hope that there isn't a number four waiting in the wings someplace but i have spent most of my life single and so i've thought about this a great deal i want to be as womanly as a woman is supposed to be whether i'm married or single so we need to think about the archetype and i'll give you three things that i'm going to talk about today on this under this subject of true womanliness the first is the archetype the second is woman's work and the third a woman's fulfillment well we've talked about eve as the archetype she was meant to be the mother of the race now let's talk about the one who did not say my will be done that little mary and i say little i assume that she was just probably a teenager mid-teens perhaps humble girl from a poor home in a little village nowheresville called nazareth and that girl was fit to be a mother because she was fit to be a bride and i would like you to think of that in both the spiritual and the physical sense she was as you remember engaged to a man named joseph and had accepted her womanliness her femininity in the willingness to be a wife and certainly in most of human history there has never been any question that if a woman is willing to be a wife she's willing to be a mother that's another one of the ideas that has become greatly distorted because of the things that we were talking about earlier the pill and divorce and careerism and all the rest of it these are things which have greatly influenced the structure and the sanctity of the family and i think influenced to our great debt detriment and poverty but mary was fit to be the mother of the lord because she was fit to be the bride of god or the bride of christ and what was it that suited her to be that bride it was her spirit of total unreserved irrevocable surrender when the angel came into that humble home with his incredible staggering message that she had been chosen to become the mother of the son of god mary didn't start talking about her own plans wait a minute how do i feel about this what's joseph going to say what are the people in the town going to think who's going to believe that i have not been unfaithful to him this might mean for a jewish girl of course fornication of the people thought that she was a fornicator it would mean being stoned to death and so she had a lot of things she could have said by way of objection but what was her answer behold the handmaiden of the lord let it happen as you say total unreserved and irritable surrender and that is what fits any and all of us of being the bride of christ and i'm talking to men as well as women here because let's remember the bride is the church and the church comprises both men and women as c.s lewis says god is so masculine all creation is feminine by comparison and that's true the soul has always been seen as feminine whether the soul belongs to a man or a woman and the earth has always been seen as a mother the son being the god acting upon the earth that is the mother well let's let's not get into ancient mythology and all of that but these are deep-seated concepts which human beings have always understood god is the initiator and our only possible response is to be responders to say let it happen as you say thy will be done so eve brought evil into the world by setting her will in opposition to the will of god mary brought the savior into the world by reversing that primal sin the first sin in the garden was reversed in mary's saying here i am now don't misunderstand me i'm not saying that mary is the savior of the world but it was mary's cooperation with god that brought the savior into the world it was mary's willingness to let anything at all happen here i am lord all of me for you forever do anything you want with me at any cost and it might have meant as far as she knew breaking her engagement it might have meant a probium from the people in the village it might even have meant death by stoning behold the handmaid of the lord her will utterly surrendered to the will of god by fulfilling the essential destiny of the human soul and that is the essential destiny of every man and every woman a real man is a true man a real woman is a true woman and we cannot be true unless we are surrendered to god that is what fulfills us that is what fulfills our destiny as human souls all of us men or women alike should be saying as mary did behold the servant of the lord the handmaiden if we're women the servant of the lord i'm available lord anything you say and so she became through that surrender the great model of motherhood self-giving self-sacrifice self-abnegation love is always fruitful our love for god brings forth fruit here in the earth mary's love for god qualified her her simple surrender out of love qualified her to become fruitful by the overshadowing of the holy ghost tremendous mysteries that we're just barely touching on for a second here we women are meant to be lovers first lovers of god in any marriage it's usually you marry somebody because you fall in love with them but from day one after the wedding you must love them because you married them and that is a whole different ball game as anybody that's married can tell you so as we love god and become makers in cooperation with god doing god's work here on earth because these hands are the only hands that god has my lips are the only lips that god has here in the world he has assigned us to be his ministers and so we share with him in the work of creating new and immortal beings by witnessing and we're getting into very deep water here much too deep for the short time i better be careful here i need to get on to the second point but the archetype i hope you understand i'm talking about mary as the archetype the spiritual archetype because she said my thy will be done where eve the archetype of the race said my will be done and you and i have that choice don't we one or the other and i don't think there's any middle ground and the archetypal mother mary was modest and quiet and humble now may i see the hands of those of you women who were born modest quiet and humble i've never met anybody that claimed that it's not natural it's a work of god a work of the spirit of god so what is a true woman i want to be a true woman i want to be modest quiet and humble so let's think about what god has assigned to us as our work a woman's work and in the new testament we have two definitive passages first peter first timothy 5 10 and titus 2 3-5 and i'm going to just zoom through 11 things that i have found in these two passages you can look them up for yourselves later on first timothy 5 10 and titus 2 3-5 women's work according to the new testament pattern is faithful marriage the care of children hospitality washing the feet of god's people supporting those in distress presiding over a home being reverent in our bearing not scandal mongers or gossips not slaves to drink setting a high standard and the eleventh thing is supremely important schooling younger women and i find so few older women today that have even given five minutes thought to schooling younger women i think of miss dottie hill to whom i just introduced the studio audience she was one of my teachers at hampton dubose academy in orlando florida 50 years ago and she's still going strong she's single miss hill has never been married she is one of those archetypes to me she is a model of real womanliness and she has schooled hundreds of younger women primarily not by teaching history i sat in her history class and i didn't learn very much because i had a mental block against history and miss hill did everything that could have possibly been done to teach me history but she taught me many other things just by what she was and i do believe that this number 11 in titus 2 5 or 3 to 5 is of supreme importance for every one of us women we are responsible to school younger women and the word school there doesn't mean to teach them by a seminar a bible class or a lecture it means primarily to teach by example and i could point to dozens of older women who have schooled me in that way my mother being the primary one in my life now what are we to teach younger women to do well there's a b c d e f and g under this 11th heading in my notes to be loving wives to be loving mothers to be temperate chaste kind busy at home now can you imagine an older woman nowadays teaching younger women to stay home i have been attacked for doing this and i just go back to my straight edge it's in the book it's not elizabeth elliot's idea i am responsible as an older woman to teach the younger women to stay home if at all possible and of course we can't get into all the possible exceptions and if you have exceptions in your case you take them to god you don't have to defend yourself to me and the last thing is to respect the authority of their husbands now we are given in this list a pattern of what womanliness involves and when i meet women who especially the older women who have raised their families and their families are now gone and the world is telling them it's your time to do something for yourself do your own thing go back to school go on a cruise get teach teach yourself underwater macrame or some useless thing and uh you owe it to yourself well i can't find any place in the bible where i owe anything at all to myself except to lay myself down lay down my rights and everything else but i want to say to these older women it's fine to go back to school and get a degree and learn macrame but do you have time to do that and school the younger women to be loving wives to be loving mothers why is there so much divorce older women are not teaching the younger women how to love their husbands older men are not teaching younger men how to love their wives we are given a particular share in the work of god in the world we as members of the body of christ are to fulfill the divine assignments we are cooperators with him for the redemption of the world and we women have a particular responsibility because we were created to be mothers and you men have a particular responsibility because you were created to be fathers and if god does not give us physical children he expects all of us single or married to be mothers and fathers for the life of the world and to be a mother and a father means sacrifice it means renunciation in first john 3 16 we read if christ laid down his life for us we are to lay our lives down for each other we are to be in other words broken bread and poured out wine that is a woman's work and every christian must learn to think of the work that god has given as being more important than his own well-being now a mother does this naturally doesn't she she knows that her children are more important than her own well-being i saw that in my mother i grew up in the depression and there wasn't a whole lot to eat on the table very often it was macaroni and cheese and if there was enough for seconds mother never cared for any that's what she said no thank you i don't care for any now i'm sure she would have cared for some but she was being perfectly honest because she didn't care for any if anybody else wanted anything a mother automatically knows these things this is a deep-seated perception of any woman we are called to be mothers and that is what femininity means i think that should be at the very top of the list of every one of us no matter what our career may be no matter what other work god may have given us to do in the church in society in the home let's never forget that we are created to be mothers and we women have a monthly reminder of that this is what it's about it's a visible sign of an invisible reality and my whole view of the world and life is that it is a visible sign everything in this world is a visible sign of an invisible reality my femininity your masculinity is a visible sign of an invisible reality even the physical body of a man is obviously made to be an initiator the physical body of a woman is made for receiving for bearing for carrying for nurturing and again i say this applies to singles even if god doesn't give you the privilege of becoming a mother or father in a physical sense he has made you men responsible to protect the world to provide for us to keep us from going off from tangents the way eve did and he has made us women mothers the world is desperate so a woman's fulfillment where does she find it this is point three if you're lost number one was the archetypes number two woman's work number three a woman's fulfillment mary's again what was her fulfillment it was in the glad acceptance and receiving of what was being given her by god and you remember that glorious song of praise my soul doth magnify the lord and my spirit doth rejoice in god my savior and she goes on and on praising god for what he has given her but she had to be willing to receive it and god wants to give us fulfillment but it lies nowhere except in the will of god i get many letters from people asking for help i have a radio program as some of you may know and people expect me to be ann landers and all kinds of psychiatrists and everything else and so often the question that comes boils down to is it your will that you would really want more than anything else in the world or is it god's will if it's your will i can tell you you will not find fulfillment there if it's god's will i can promise you that you will the willingness to receive that which is given and to relinquish that which is not given it's always a temptation to us women to make ourselves the triumphant rivals of men and i know very well deep down in my soul that kind of competition i've always been competitive i was a debater in both high school and college and i love that i love to be able to argue men down and it's been an area that god has had to deal with over and over and over again and all three of my husbands have scraped off a little bit more of the of the sharp edges if you think i've still got sharp edges you should have known me back then before the first one started to work on me anyway i'm grateful for the things that god has taught me through becoming a wife i am to be a wife a helper a housewife a mother not in prideful competition with my husband and we're going to be talking about a husband's responsibility in my next talk my body tells me that i'm made to be a chalice a vessel a life bearer and c.s lewis says about this business of equality it is a quantitative term and therefore love often knows nothing of it authority exercised with humility and obedience accepted with delight are the very lines along which our spirits live i hope you'll remember that one authority accepted with humility and obedience accepted with delight are the very lines along which our spirits live rule submission make a union and my submission to my husband lars is not because he's taller better looking a whole lot stronger and a whole lot smarter and a whole lot more spiritual than i am now he may be all of those things and he is all of those things in some measure but he is not always right but i am to be submissive to my husband why first of all because my submission to christ requires it and secondly because of this glorious harmony this complementarity one is the initiator one is the responder one is the operator and one the co-operator that word hupataso the greek word that means to submit refers to an arrangement under it's god's arrangement and that's what makes the great difference there is a mystery and it is the mystery of christ and the church what do i as a woman represent the church what do you as men represent christ it's a pretty awesome responsibility isn't it the church is to be the body of christ providing sympathy comfort help encouragement and life with a capital l for the rest of the world and it was jesus willingness to be obedient that gave him a name above all names and it was mary's willingness to say let it happen as you say behold the handmaid of the lord be it unto me according to thy word it was that surrender that made her the most highly exalted among women so the essence of femininity as you will perhaps have concluded by now is surrender the essence of femininity is surrender and if that word has been an odious word to you up until now i hope that when we've talked about the husband's responsibility the man's responsibility in the world you will understand that surrender is a glorious thing jesus exemplified for us exactly what it is and remember that even in the holy trinity itself there is this order the holy spirit witnesses to the son and the son witnesses to the father order even though theologians tell us that the three persons of the trinity are co-equal co-eternal and consubstantial to be most profoundly womanly we must bear deep down inside us the mystery of charity the mystery of charity which was exemplified in mary so true womanliness we've talked about the archetype we've talked about women's work and our fulfillment may god help us to be true women and true men for the glory of god ligonier ministries the teaching fellowship of rc sprole presents a harmony of differences real men and real women with elizabeth elliott this message is entitled a real man is a true man this is the third talk in my series on real men and real women and the title of this one is a true man let me change that the title of this one is a real man is a true man i don't know if any of you ever heard gert behanna she was a wonderful old lady with a gravelly voice that had an incredible testimony she hadn't become a christian until she was in her 50s i think and it was when she was in her 70s that i heard her and she gave a great talk way back before the feminist movement began called women be women and i remember very vividly very distinctly how she turned from talking to the women in the audience to the men and she said and now i want to talk to you men you lambs and i thought well that's that's kind of the way i feel too men men can be very overbearing and overpowering and there are other times when they can be such lambs and we women want you to be more than just lambs we really don't want to be wearing the pants now i think i speak for the majority of women when i say that it's the women who keep their mouth shut that you don't hear from and it's the women who are angry at men and determined to be uh competitive and make sure that we all get equality and all that sort of thing that would be angry very angry with me when they hear me say something like that but i do think that i speak for the majority when i say that we really don't want to run things we don't want to be in charge of the world and having been a single woman as i said for most of my life i am so grateful when i do have a husband which i happen to have now i'm so grateful that the buck does not stop at my desk it stops with lars he is the one who is responsible before god in the last analysis for our home and what goes on in our home i of course in response to a to god in obedience to god am to be the responder to my husband and i have a part to play in a very important part but in this third talk i do want to talk to you men who were created to be the heads the initiators the protectors the providers the fathers the lovers and the friends of us women you represent christ now where did i get that idea certainly not out of my head again back to the scriptures ephesians 5 verse 21 says to be subject to one another out of reverence for christ now every one of us has to be subject to others men as well as women we are subject to civil authorities we are subject to the boss we are subject to the authorities in the church all of us at some time or other have the responsibility of being an authority over somebody and always we are under authority as well so i think this is what paul is talking about here let's remember that those to whom we are to be subject we must be subject out of reverence for christ not because the person is necessarily a better person than we are and as i said earlier in an earlier talk i don't submit to my husband lars because he is taller and stronger and bigger and better looking and more spiritual and more intelligent than i am i am to submit to my husband because he bears an office which is assigned to him by god i probably didn't say it in exactly those words and i'd i'm going to try to be more specific now that i'm talking to you men but ephesians 5 goes right on from after all these warnings that he gives let no one deceive you with shallow arguments have no part or lot with them try to find out what would please the lord show them up for what they are be most careful how you conduct yourselves i'm reading all of this from ephesians 5 do not be fools try to understand the will of the lord and then immediately after all these warnings the first thing he says is be subject to one of to one another out of reverence for christ and then he goes on to specify the ways in which this subjection works the specific ways in which he means what he's saying wives be subject to your husbands because they are so spiritual is that what it says it doesn't say that it says be subject to your husbands as to the lord for and this is the reason why i'm to be subject not because he's smart or always right the man is the head of the woman just as christ is the head of the church it doesn't say the man ought to be the head of the woman he ought to try to be the head the woman ought to allow him to be the head they ought to sit down and take a vote as to who is going to be the head what does it say the husband is the head of the woman like it or lump it that is the fact as christ is head of the church i said earlier that a real man is a true man a real woman is a true woman and i cannot be a true woman except in obedience to christ you can't be a real man except in obedience to christ it is that universal response of the church the bride of christ let it happen as you say whatever you say lord i'll do it so the real man is the one who is utterly given over to god one with him in his purpose in his work and in love now don't be discouraged gentlemen i am not saying you have to be a perfect man now god says we have to be perfect and so i have to say we have to be perfect and yet god in his mercy takes us exactly as we are just as i am without one plea but that thy blood was shed for me and that's how we come and we have to start with one step of obedience after saying lord i receive you i accept you i take your will for my will then god is going to show you something some specific thing that you're supposed to do now don't expect god to give you a blueprint of your whole life and say now this is your work for me and these are the things in the serial order in which they are to occur very likely it's going to be something very very simple and down to earth like loving your wife in a way that you didn't love her before or being kind to your parents or making an apology to somebody at work or writing that letter that you've been putting off for three years something like that is where it begins but a man is to he is not a perfect man and yet he is a man and he is made by god made in the image of god and made to serve him and he is a man under authority i wish i had time to talk about all three of my husbands this morning i've mentioned my husband lars grinn some of you know quite a bit about my first husband jim elliott about whom i wrote a biography and one of the things that really clinched my conviction that this man whom i knew as a college student and i knew a lot of things about him he was a campus leader and a campus joker and he was a very good student and he was president of the foreign missions fellowship and he was a champion wrestler and all those things but the thing that really clinched it and i said this is the kind of man i want to marry and lord this is the specific man i'd like to marry if you've given to me was the verse that he chose to put into my yearbook when i asked for his autograph and it was second timothy 2 4. a soldier on active service will not become entangled in civilian affairs he must be holy at his commanding officer's disposal and the thing that impressed me about what that young man said was that here was a college student and this is a rare thing it was a rare thing even then and i think it's even rarer today a college student who had made a final decision about one thing and that was that jesus christ was his commanding officer lord of his life and so jim was letting me know in no uncertain terms that neither i nor anybody else nor anything was going to deflect him from that course that he had chosen the will of god a soldier on active service will not become entangled in civilian affairs he must be holy at his commanding officer's disposal now that's a real man and the three the thing that all three of my husbands have had in common people are always asking me this were they alike in any ways well not very many ways one way they all liked me which is certainly nice but the other outstanding similarity is that they were all real men in the sense of being a man's man and i appreciate masculinity and i don't know any real women who like being women who don't appreciate men who like to be men and we the more feminine we are the more masculine we want you to be we beg you to be that's what i'm here for that's what i want to tell you and only as you are a man under authority that is the authority of christ can you possibly exercise that awesome divine authority that god has assigned to you and whenever i get into discussions as i try not to do anymore but over the past years i've been in many many discussions and i've been asked to debate publicly and be on panels on this whole subject of masculinity and femininity it always grieves me no end that people don't start with the mystery forget about equal rights forget about the area of politics in which equality is a necessary evil it's necessary and it's a fiction it's a legal fiction but it is absolutely necessary that we be treated in the political realm as equals but introduce political terms into the church or into the home and you're in a slew you're in an absolute swamp of uncertainty and just a mess which i think is also one of the things that's responsible for the divorces nowadays and the chaos in the church not to mention the homosexuality and the heterosexuality and the transsexuality i mean by when i say heterosexuality not that that's wrong but the way in which heterosexuality is being exercised is not at all according to the scriptures so a man must be under authority in order to exercise the authority which represents the mystery of christ and the church this is the crucial point i've never heard it discussed in any arguments about the ordination of women about who is supposed to be the head of the house about women's roles in society never a word and when i bring it up i get a lot of people looking at me like where did you come from you know some other planet i mean who they their eyes glaze they don't know what i'm talking about this is what i'm talking about christ is the head of the church could there possibly be any confusion about that he is our authority he is the initiator he's the one who calls us and woos us and gives his name and above all lays down his life in total sacrifice for us so the husband is the head of the woman as christ is head of the church now i heard a woman one time in a great huge convention do a workshop on egalitarian marriage and her proof text was this very passage and she did some fancy footwork that would absolutely make your head spin so of course when there was a question and answer period you can be sure i had one and i said do you think it makes any difference at all she had told us of course that the roles were equal interchangeable and everything else i said does it make any difference at all how a husband is to submit to his wife and a wife is to submit to her husband are they exactly the same in your mind she said they are exactly the same i said okay may i then reverse the nouns in this passage yes sure go right ahead so i started reading wives love your husbands as christ loved the church the wife is the head of the husband as the church is the head of christ and she stopped me she said well wait a minute you can't carry the analogy that far well i said whose analogy was it what does an analogy mean the husband is the head of the wife as christ is head of the church what does that mean well i want to read to you a little story and i just got this amazing little testimony called do you love me i just got this the other day and i was reading it on the plane coming down yesterday and i thought i've got to read this passage from this man's testimony this is a man who had seven children and they lost number eight and he tells about what the loss of that baby just through miscarriage did as he held this tiny baby in his hand it changed his whole perspective on life and his what his responsibility was to his family and everything else and that's what the story is i can't read you all that but he says one of my friends when confronted at the end of his long work day with his wife's complaints about the noise the troubles and the unending housework snapped back at her in exasperation well what do you want me to do stay home and do the housework while you go off to the office you understand his point he couldn't solve her problems what did she want him to do i'll tell you she wanted him to listen to understand and to sympathize she wanted him to let her know that despite her problems her exhaustion her dishevelment and who of us wives can't relate to that he loved her to let her know that it caused him sorrow that she was suffering and that if it were possible he would change it for her that's all she wanted and yet that's everything she knew as well as he did that hers are the perennial problems of wives and mothers and that there is no avoiding them these problems can't be eliminated or even really diminished in their frequency or their burdensome character but we men can make them easier for women to bear jesus said come to me you who are tired and overburdened i will give you rest and that's what your wife wants she's tired and overburdened you can't understand why you don't know what in the world she's been doing all day long when you've been working so hard but she wants you to say come to me i love you i will give you rest a husband is the head of the wife as christ is head of the church now basically that means one word sacrifice and i choose that word rather than love because love has become a soupy sentimental feeble very much misunderstood sentiment that's not the kind of love that christ had for the church it is a total sacrificial love bloody sacrifice is what it meant for him and there will be no success in a marriage without sacrifice on both parts when the bride comes down the aisle she's not bathed in tears because she's giving up her name and her home and her independence and her autonomy and perhaps her family and her whole geography and everything else she comes down the aisle radiant with joy because there is a face down there that she loves and all these other things are trivialities by comparison i love him i will make any sacrifice that's what she thinks on the wedding day and then of course where the rubber meets the road is when she finds out that this prize package that she got is a surprise package and from the day of the wedding she has to love him because she married him and the same thing is true of you men husbands love your wives and i love what peter says in first peter 3 7 try to understand the wives you live with i dare say that that's an admission on peter's part that he didn't really fully understand his wife let alone his mother-in-law we know that his mother-in-law lived with him too but he says try now how much have you tried this this little testimony that i have here is a man of a man who just did a complete about face after i've forgotten how many years of marriage and began to try in fact let me read what he says specifically he said in that critical instant as he was looking at the infant cradled in his hands i chose the arduous undramatic discouraging path of trying to be good i began holding my tongue i started admitting my faults and apologizing i quit defending myself when i was judged too harshly as i had made myself the center of my attention for too many years already i said little about my own labors and sorrows i sought to know susan's and to help her bear them you are to exhibit the love of christ for his bride for your wife now i've asked the question why am i as a wife to submit to my husband it is because he bears an office you bear a solemn responsibility in that office it's god's assignment it's not your choice and i know a lot of men that say well you know my wife's really better at organizing things and she's much more spiritual than i am so i let her handle the family devotions and you know i don't i don't really want i don't feel comfortable being the head of the house god did not make it optional now a lot of us women are naturally manipulators and organizers in fact not to make any case for purgatory i love what c.s lewis said about purgatory as he imagined it he said i imagine it is a place where milk is boiling over toast is burning and crockery is being smashed the assignment given to women is to do nothing and the assignment given to men is to do something and i think that ever since the garden of eden this has been characteristic men much rather be laid back you know they'd rather go down and bowl and let the women do whatever they want to do even if it's against their will and the women want to get organized and fix things and you know stop the crockery from smashing and the toast from burning and the milk from boiling over god did not leave the choice with either of us he tells me to shut my mouth back off submit to my husband and he tells you husbands you are responsible who was it that god called in the garden after the fruit had been eaten not eve adam and what did adam do right away started making excuses the woman you gave me are you tempted that way gentlemen an archetype besides adam who was laid back and abdicated his responsibility the archetype in the new testament is jesus of course but let's also look at the life of joseph almost nothing is said about the character of joseph but what he did reveals quite a bit about his character surely he used the strength that god had given him not to rule and lord it over and be boss of that little mary he used it to love and to protect her to serve her we know that joseph was a laborer he worked with his hands he probably did much more difficult work than many men nowadays ever think of doing he was physically strong he was morally strong he was charged with a heavy responsibility of mothering this virgin who was pregnant by the holy ghost and then with the responsibility of fathering in the earthly sense that baby now if you ask yourself this you husbands and fathers if you were given joseph's job literally to mother the virgin mary and to father the lord jesus would you do the job differently than the way you're doing it now now jesus said inasmuch as you've done it for one of the least of these my brothers you have done it for me in other words whatever i do to another human being i do to christ and whatever i refuse to do to another human being i refuse to do to christ my plane yesterday was four hours delayed getting out of boston and they ended up finally putting us on a different plane and i have no doubt that god had a lot of reasons for that he's engineering a universe but one little glimpse of how god works things out was that i was seated next to a man who wanted to talk and i gave him this little leaflet to read since i had just finished reading it and he began to tell me that his own experience was almost exactly the same and it had come through a catastrophe in his own life and we were talking about how different he was telling me how different how differently he treated his wife and children since his business had collapsed i don't know what it may take for men in this modern world to come to their senses but so often it does take some kind of a catastrophe for us women as well we're not paying any attention as c.s lewis says pain is god's megaphone to get our attention will you think about the example of joseph then think of the example of jesus in luke 22 you remember that jesus is talking to his disciples about the fact that he's going to be betrayed and he's going his appointed way and a jealous dispute broke out about who was going to be the first among the disciples and jesus says in the world kings lorded over their subjects and those in authority are called their country's benefactors not so with you on the contrary the highest among you must bear himself like the youngest the chief of you like a servant yet here am i among you like a servant and in john 13 we have that beautiful scene where jesus rises from supper and takes a towel and washes the disciples feet and peter's reaction was just what yours and mine would have been you lord washing my feet and he said if i your lord and master have washed your feet you must wash one another's feet that is the authority the headship of christ humble sacrificial servanthood he did not abdicate the position of lord and master he said if i am your lord and master which he certainly was and i'm washing feet this is what i want you to do now jesus was on his way to the cross and we can get all sorts of high falutin and high flown ideas about what we'd like to do for god and i can imagine that some of those disciples might have imagined being crucified perhaps and legend says that some of them were but jesus was telling them one thing that every one of them could do i'm going to the cross i am going to be captured and spit upon and flogged and nailed to a cross your job this is what love is and it says in that first part of john 13 in order to show them the full extent of his love he washed feet do you love god in order to show the full extent of your love and to bear in humble obedience the authority that god has given to you as leaders fathers responsible heads in the world and in the church you must be servants you must lay your down lay down your life well a husband said to me when he was on the road to divorce she won't submit to me i said i have never found a verse in the bible that says husbands make your wives submit god says clearly to me i am to submit and i've heard wives say but my husband doesn't love me as christ loved the church how can i submit to him so what do we have a permanent standoff she won't to submit to me he doesn't love me right well we are miserable offenders aren't we we have left undone those things which we ought to have done we have done those things which we ought not to have done and there's no health in any of us and a sinful man and a sinful woman if they're going to live together 365 days a year they're going to sin again each other against each other and there's going to have to be a lot of i'm sorry forgive me your wife is weak and sinful that means you need more patience more tenderness more kindness more sacrifice the weaker and the more sinful she is you need to learn to listen to bear her sorrows to be faithful and tender and gentle and humbled yes just like jesus he said learn of me for i am gentle and humble in heart and don't ever forget that jesus is exactly like god he that hath seen me hath seen the father well this mystery why am i to submit to my husband because he bears an office because i represent the church in the deepest mystery we know anything about and why is my husband to be my head because he represents christ it's a drama being enacted in the home a theater in which the cast of characters has already been decided upon the wife represents the church the husband represents christ in glorious acceptance joyful obedience to our respective and quite different roles we will find fulfillment in marriage fulfillment in our masculinity fulfillment in our femininity a true man is a real man a real man mirrors the character of god a true woman is a real woman and mirrors the character of the bride of christ god bless you we hope you've enjoyed this series if you're interested in other series by elizabeth elliott or would like more information about ligonier ministries please call us toll-free at 1-800-435-4343 or write us at p.o box 7500 orlando florida 32854 you

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Length: 95min 4sec (5704 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 09 2020