True Womanliness

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 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 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 is 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 um 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 if 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 irrevocable 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 ballgame 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 to 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 ms 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 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 young 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

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Length: 31min 0sec (1860 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 09 2020