What are the roles of women in the church?

To begin, I would like to thank you. For those of you who have been praying with us over this past week, I left here for Texas Thursday a week ago and had the joy of ministering at the Great Trinity Church in San Antonio for their four services last Sunday. They have three morning worship services starting at eight o’clock, and by the time I got to the third one, I didn’t know whether I’d make it through or not. I didn’t know what I’d said or what I hadn’t said or whether there was enough reserve strength left to get through. And then, of course, I ministered again that evening. It seemed like we turned around and went home and turned back to church almost immediately. But it was a wonderful day of blessing.

This past week, we’ve been at the Mo Ranch Spiritual Leadership Conference with about 250 pastors. Lay friends who were there, Pastor Jerry Fry, Floyd McClung, and Brother Andrew Cain, were all other speakers. It was a tremendous and powerful time, a special time for me as well as from me, and the opportunities I had to minister God dealt. I think very prophetically, and I know this is almost an overdone word among Christians today, but there was a real sense of the rema of God concerning the day in which we live.

It was a tremendous day of blessing. I don’t know how you’ve taken care of your situation this day, but early this morning, I placed a long-distance phone call to a lonely little lady in Sharon, Pennsylvania, to say, “Thanks, mom.” And we had sent flowers, Anita, and I yesterday, representing both us and our children. My mother carried me under her heart. Someone has written loved me before I was born, took God’s hand in hers and walked through the valley of shadows that I might have life. She bathed me when I was helpless, clothed me when I was naked, gave me warm milk from her own body when I was hungry, rocked me to sleep when I was weary, pillowed me on pillows softer than down, and sang to me in the voice of an angel. She held my hand when I learned to walk, suffered with my sorrow, laughed in my joy, glowed with my triumph, and while I knelt at her side, she taught me to pray.

Through all the days of my youth, she gave strength in my weakness, courage during my despair, and hope which filled a hopeless heart. She was loyal when others failed, and true when tried by fire. She was my friend when other friends were gone, prayed for me through the days when flooded with sunshine or the day saddened by shadows. She loved me when I was unlovely and led me into a man’s estate to walk triumphant on the king’s highway and play a manly part in life. Though we lay down our lives for her, we could never pay the debt we owe to a Christian mother.

I know some of us have mixed emotions on a day like this. I’ve frequently told you that the lady who began this whole thing, Mother’s Day, was Anna Reeve’s Jarvis, a Methodist minister’s daughter. She started it as a simple thing to honor her mother, who passed away in the year 1905. She gathered a few friends together, and it caught on. In 1914, Woodrow Wilson made it a national holiday. But Anne Jarvis lived to hate the day that she started Mother’s Day. In 1920, she wrote in a major article that a printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy, you take a box to your mother and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment indeed. She said the grafters of Mother’s Day had taken the coppers off of dead mothers’ eyes. She grew to be a recluse and an eccentric and never knew that she was maintained by the florist industry that she so hated until she finally died in 1948 at 84 years old.

One writer expressed my feeling on the mixed emotion of Mother’s Day. He said, “Mother’s Day, the phony commercialism, the shallow sentimentalism. I resent being directed by admin and conmen to appreciate a special person by the numbers of a date or day. But my mother coming around the corner seeing me in a fight with another boy, not knowing whose fault shouting from half a block away, give it to him. Bob gloriously blindly prejudiced in my favour. Unconditional love. My mother speaking in a contest whether I won or lost, she thought I was the best. Reality problems, pride problems, but what it means to have someone think you’re the best. Loyalty that laid a deep hold on me. My mother driving me on dates when I was too young to have a license, having olives and peanuts when I came home from college on vacation because she knew they were a treat. Accepting my wife as a daughter, letting me go to be a husband, wanting to be remembered, appreciated, valued, sometimes hurt at being taken for granted, not realizing that she built into my bones whatever confidence in myself I have, whatever capacity to trust, whatever strength of being, my mother, hidden health of my life. ”

It’s interesting that this Mother’s Day, 1980, finds us in the midst of a series of messages on the book of Philippians. This is the eighth message, missing only one Sunday, which was last week. And of course, Pastor Bill Gads ministry to you from the book of Nehemiah on the Holy Spirit’s restoring and rebuilding personality was a very important interruption in that series.

But our scripture this morning is from Philippians 4:1-9. Would you turn with me to that passage, please? And I’m going to ask you in a moment to stand. If you don’t have your own Bible, there’s one right there ahead of you.

There are ten verses here that I would like to read. Would you stand with me now, please? And as we read the word of God, these ten verses from Philippians chapter four, beginning with verse one:

Therefore, my brethren dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved. I beseech Euodias, and beseech Syntyche, that they be of the same mind in the Lord. And I entreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which labored with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellow laborers, whose names are in the book of life. Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice. Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.

What a fantastic grouping of words. Just keep your Bibles open as you’re seated. First, I want to give a general introduction to the passage, and then a specific introduction to today and the book of Philippians. This intimate little epistle between a man and a church that loved each other, a rare combination in spiritual leadership. I think we all know intimate involvement between the anointed, appointed leader, and the people can be dangerous. In this intimate letter, born out of his own suffering, he has taught us so much about the mind of Christ. And in chapter three, we came to the ultimate desire of Paul, which he means to be a mirror for us: “that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.” This knowledge of Jesus is not a boyish, childish Sunday school, even Evangelical, born-again, knowledge of Jesus, but a knowledge like sexual intimacy, a knowledge that enters into the bedroom experience, we would say biblically, the Holy of Holies experience, which so few believers pressed to–a knowledge which supersedes, which is super-excellent above all other things, and which would cause any man to give up any self-righteousness or past remembrance, any human spiritual achievement. Paul says is dumb, it’s a waste in reference to really knowing Christ.

But the second major desire of the Christian life is found in the warmth and reality of correct interpersonal relationships among believers, especially when we have played some role in their conversion. And those two things war against each other. There is no doubt that the knowledge of Jesus and the joy that one might know in that kind of intimacy is often challenged, interfered with, or defeated by the relationships we have with other people or lack thereof. In verse one, in the general introduction, Paul talks about the problems of this and tells them that they are to learn to stand fast. The Greek word “stuck” means like a surging battle, where a soldier has to set his feet and stand fast to keep from doing wrong or compromising. He calls these brethren dearly beloved and longed for, and he says that his only crown or joy will be found in them. That’s that intertwining between a Christian worker and those with whom he works.

In this chapter, Paul says three things in the first few verses that we are to stand fast in the Lord, be of one mind in the Lord, and rejoice in the Lord. As I said in the last message, in the presence of some people, everything about you is compromised, but in the presence of other people, especially standing in the Lord, you are led to be the very best possible.

That’s the general introduction of this passage, but I want to give a more specific concept. Obviously, Philippians four introduces us to what we’ve been studying about all the book, and that is that there’s a serious issue in this Philippian Church. In the very first chapter, he began talking to them about their behavior and about being lowly in mind and holding forth unity, and he held up the example of Jesus Christ.

Now we come to a specific understanding of that general issue, the issue of division in the church of Jesus Christ, and we are introduced in this chapter to the cause of this problem, two prominent and important, but factious ladies in the Philippian Church. I don’t think it can be just incidental that we’re on this passage on Mother’s Day. I do have some specific things toward women that I wish to say, but I also wish us each to understand and recognize that this chapter has the greatest advice in the Bible concerning how we can walk out a joy-filled Christian life, not only in any circumstance but in any fellowship, not only in any trial, but among any particular group of people.

And that is for most of us the most difficult thing of all. Some wag wrote some years ago, “To live with the saints in heaven is bliss and glory. To live with the saints on earth is often another story.” There is no question that we continue to understand how very vital and important this is. I want to talk first of all about the women and the issue involved here, and then I want to talk about the wider application, and I suppose those are the two basic points that I’ll be ministering to you about today.

First, I want you to look with me at these ladies, who they are, and what specific thing is being said. Euodia and Syntyche are two names that imply something, and sometimes it’s good to just use a pencil or pen and scribble in your Bible. Some things God would have you know. Euodia’s name, for example, means either prosperous journey or sweet fragrance, either of which are very positive expressions. And in this day and age in which these women were named, naming was a very important thing. A prosperous or sweet journey in a sweet fragrance. Syntyche means fortunate or affable, what wonderful names they had, and they were prominent women. They were women who the next verse says had labored in the founding of this church.

Incidentally, Macedonia, where the city of Philippi is, is probably one of the only areas in the whole known world at this time in which women played a very prominent role. In fact, the Philippian Church was begun by the conversion of one very prominent businesswoman by the name of Lydia, who though that wasn’t her home, she was from Thyatira across the bay in what we now call Turkey. But she was set up in business and had a large home and a staff of persons involved in this area. Looking at these two women and then the other person who follows, because there’s another person named here, the Yoke Fellow. Most people firmly believe that that is not a title but probably was a name, the Greek name Zenos. And many scholars believe that this was a strong, involved person in the Christian Church who, when he was baptized, had accepted that name. So we have these three people being talked about: two women, very prominent women who had by their own personal differences divided the church of Jesus Christ.

There are two significant facts about this that I think you need to understand with me. The first is that when there was a quarrel in the church at Philippi, Paul mobilized the entire resources of the church to mend it. Paul thought it no effort too great to maintain the peace of the church, and I think you and I need to hear something clearly. A quarreling church is not a church at all because a quarreling church is a church from which Christ has been shut and to which he is not given access. No man can be at peace with God and at variance with his fellow man.

This church, Peninsula Christian Center, at least in the 10 years of ministry we’ve had here, has taken a very strong stance on the issue that we are not alike, that God has not called us into some kind of monotonous sameness, that we have different convictions and attitudes towards different things. And in the 10 years I’m here, at least twice a year, someone starts circulating another issue that’s meant to further divide the body over some personally held conviction. I would rather be thrown in a pit of rattlesnakes than be involved in an issue that questions or brings division within the body of Jesus Christ.

One of the beauties of the Christian Center principle is that we don’t have to be the same. The Bible says to be persuaded in our own mind and hold to our convictions, yet honor one another and receive and respect the fact that not every believer holds or harbors the same conviction. If you need a fellowship where everybody cuts the mustard the same way and has exactly the same attitude towards the same issue, an authoritarian structure in which you are told what to wear and where to go and how to act, this is the wrong one.

These two women in Philippians obviously differed probably over some very spiritual thing. I’ve never known anybody in the church to differ over something that wasn’t spiritual, have you? And generally, they write the scriptures under and they give very great reasons for why they hold to that specific thing and why everybody ought to be like they are in reference to that particular thing.

Two significant facts of this story are that Paul mobilized the entire church on this issue. People who’ve been here for 10 years know that there’s nothing that brings the pastor off of the seat of ease with people faster than anything that threatens unity in the body of Jesus Christ. That’s the moment where this very gentle, tolerant, understanding, loving pastor becomes extremely angry because I realize that we in this fellowship could go about a thousand different ways. In one Sunday, if we would allow individual differences to divide the unity of our body, these women needed to learn that lesson.

Secondly, there’s a grim thought in this. The second significant thing is that all we know about Euodia and Syntyche is that they were two women who quarreled. They were prominent, godly, important women. But the thing that is left in the teeth of the Christian Church about these women is that they had divided the church. Suppose your life was to be summed up in one sentence. Suppose you were to go down in history with just one thing known about you, what would that one thing be? Clement goes down in history as a very important yoke fellow in the founding of the church, but Euodia and Syntyche go down in history as people who broke the peace. What would the one sentence of your life be? Some of you might say, “I don’t think that’s fair.” Okay, but by a grievous spirit, Euodia and Syntyche are remembered forever in the heart of a work of God, simply by the division they caused and the strife they brought to the church.

Well, that’s the first part of speaking about women. I have one other thought here from this passage, and it’s a thought that God has burned into my heart. If ever I have had a Rhema word in my spirit, it has been this. I’ve taught the book of Philippians for many years. It is my key book. I think this is the second time in 10 years we’ve gone through it almost verse by verse in this congregation, the third time actually remembering. We taught it in the school program on a Wednesday night for a period of time.

But God spoke to me, and he always does. His word becomes alive from a particular verse here. Look at the third verse with me of the fourth chapter. “I entreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which labored with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellow laborers, whose names are in the book of life.”

There is a specific thing you and I need to understand. Euodia and Syntyche are authentic. They were not grandstanders or dilettantes who take a little religion for the sake of appearance to make them feel good. These were women who had worked, fought, sacrificed, and suffered alongside Paul in the work of the gospel. They have not counted their own lives dear unto themselves, but now this feud is bitter enough that the Apostle Paul must turn his attention specifically to their situation.

If you don’t know this, let me make it clear to you. We do not check our personalities at the door of the church when we come in. We carry everything that is in us into our worship of God and the service we have for Christ. And that includes things in us which are not loving and which are not lovable. There are some very specific things that I think need to be said today that emerged out of these words too.

Because for the first time in reading this passage, I’ve always seen here as, of course, anyone does by reading it, that these two prominent women have caused a memory of their name to be grieved by their act of division. But for the first time came this strong, solemn word that Paul, whether Zinzagos was his name or whether he was by the name Yokefellow, a leader, an elder among elders, one who had leadership in a special, unique way.

The point is, he says to them, “I want you to help the women.” 65% of the full-time missionaries sent from the United States, and I’m not talking about wives, are women. That amounts to 55,000 women who are in principle jobs of missionary involvement around the world. Women always respond quickest, most openly, most responsibly to the work of the Lord. But the word has some unique things to say about women and about the responsibility the church has to them.

It’s interesting. I am often taken on this subject because I guess I’m daring enough to say anything about women. The general attitude in the church today is, “You better ignore the subject period. That’s the only safe way.” In fact, it’s interesting having come back to my office for the first time this morning, I quickly went through some correspondence.

I generally open the ones that do not have return addresses first because I have a smell for that kind of writing. And I have had a letter addressed to me from a lady who was in the last place I had ministered in Southern California harbor. True, because I had said some things about ladies in that service.

She was going to tell me that I was the most generous preacher she had ever heard, but I hadn’t gone far enough and she wanted to set me straight about some things I needed to know. Three pages worth of typewriting, incidentally.

Well, with all of that, I’m gonna do it anyway. All right. This word has more specific direction to leadership concerning women than any category of people within the body of Jesus Christ. Widows. You want to take one category, just take the phrase widows and isolate the scriptural commands concerning the church’s responsibility to widows.

And there are far more verses on that subject than there are speaking in tongues and the gifts of the Spirit in.

There are specific words about younger women who are to receive specific kinds of headship and instruction. In the church, there are specific words addressed concerning husbands and their relationships with their wives. The one thing that stirred in my heart out of this passage was something that I know is not there by direct statement.

But it is there if you put verse three of Philippians four in the context of the New Testament. And what I’m gonna say now is controversial, but I want you to hear me. I believe what Paul is clearly saying is, had the men of the church been living their relationship as God commanded, this problem would not have happened.

The specific words to the Yoke fellow are both words of rebuke as they are words of instruction. You need, he says, to establish with these women immediately an answer to this problem. One Peter three, seven has always been an interesting verse to me. Husbands are to dwell. Likewise, your husbands dwell with your wives according to knowledge.

Giving honor to the wife as unto the weaker vessel and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers be not hindered. I understand both my failure as a husband in this arena and I understand my failure as a male in leadership in this arena, and I want to say to you this morning that I believe so.

The key to understanding is that God gives the husband and the spiritual leadership, be they elders, pastors, a specific responsibility in reference to the women of the church so that this kind of thing does not happen, that women are under proper headship, and that does not mean, as it is so arbitrarily assumed, some kind of arbitrary submission in which men rest the Scriptures to come out with some kind of dictatorial rule over females.

In fact, the word submission means to stand under, and there is a simple, clear, biblical word that says women are uniquely in a position to need proper concern and headship. And when that concern and loving headship, loving in the sense that Christ loved the church, loving in the sense that Christ laid down his life for the church, is not there, many women simply driven by a love for the Lord go on to do what they know they must do. But without that proper covering, they open themselves to unique attacks.

But whose fault? The word is pretty clear. The fault is with headship, and I believe even in our own assembly, God would speak a specific word. In fact, the word “help” here is interesting. I would like to have a whole morning to talk to you about it. The original word means to seize or to lay hold of these women, but it’s with the word “soon”. The Greek prefix “soon” means together with, in association, and companionship with. What is really being said is you should be concerned enough about these women to enter into the details of both the very abstract, it may seem abstract generalizations of what a woman is in terms of emotional, and in terms of the specifics of this situation. You, yoke fellow, get hold of this and enter into this situation that it may turn to good for you. And I believe in my own spirit, at least, there is a tremendous concern to know what I am to be as a man, not only in my own household, but what I am to be as a spiritual leader in the church in providing the kinds of protection that the word speaks.

A kind of funny thing was brought to my attention. You know, in Texas, if they wanna say something weird, they say, “this happened in California”. But in California, I think if we wanna say it’s weird, we say, “it happened in Texas”, and this did happen in Texas. Incidentally, I understand in the midst of a meeting, a young convert, kind of a hippie-style young kid who had been saved off the streets and was filled with more, bigger than he was, jumped up to give a prophecy and said, “thus say God, as far as I know, I have nothing against the pastor who was concerned about the message said, ‘we all love Dear Jerry, praise the Lord for Jerry. If you knew Jerry’s background and knew what he had gone through, you could appreciate that not everything Jerry says is from the Lord’, and at that, Jerry stood up and said, ‘thus say of the Lord, it was to me’.

I hope that God, in looking over your life, can say, ‘as far as I know, I have nothing against you this morning’. But I hope also that there is an openness and willingness to understand the uniqueness of this message to us. Paul enters some things that most scholars say were addressed uniquely to these women, and I think in their primary sense that is true, but they are also general important characteristics. It’s as though Paul was saying to this yoke fellow, now here are some specific things that need to be addressed to these women. But in the course of so doing, because the last verse I read to you, Paul said, ‘I’m instructing you in things which you have seen in my own life. And you know, these are a part of my experience and I commend them to you’.

So there’s a general application and there’s a specific application. I’d like you to look with me, beginning in verse 3, in which he is specifically instructed to tell these women that the Lord is at hand. Now that’s an interesting phrase because a lot of us want to believe, and I think part of the implication is that this is the second coming, that he is saying Christ’s coming is soon.

But most scholars believe that that is not what is being said here at all, but it’s dealing with the intimacy of the involvement of Jesus right now in our lives. In fact, the Phillips translation, which I love so much and use in my own devotions, constantly translates this, “Never forget the nearness of the Lord.” You tell these women, tell them not to forget the nearness of the Lord Jesus.

We used to, in the days when it was popular to have plaques with Christian messages – I know it doesn’t fit into the decor of our homes these days, but there was a day when every home had some kind of message in every room of the home. The one that I used to love – I can’t give it to you, but I’m sure you’ve all seen it often enough to remember it – is about Jesus being the unseen guest, the silent listener to every conversation, the unseen guest of every meal. There were several phrases in that little plaque that just said, “Jesus is present.” That’s what I was saying. When you come into this house, when we sit down to eat a meal, Jesus is at that meal. When you are sitting talking in the living room, Jesus is in that conversation. That’s really what Paul is commending to them – an understanding of that.

I heard a story that came out of during the Stalin days in which 30 peasants were meeting illegally to worship God and the Russian secret service suddenly burst into the meeting where they were meeting. The leader ordered his men to take down the name of every Christian that was there in this little assembly. And when it was done, he read out the names of everyone just to make sure. And an old man said, “There’s one name you’ve left off.” And the officer said, “I have them all.” He said, “Believe me,” he said, “there’s one name you’ve left out.” Impatiently, he remade a count. He counted the names on his list and he counted the people standing there, and there were 30. And he said, “Again, there’s a name you’ve left out.” And the officer said, “I told you there were 30, there are 30 standing here, and there are 30 names written on this list.” There are 30. He. And the old man said, “No, you’ve left one out.” The officer said, “Then who is it?” And the aged man, with a reverence that matched his courage, said, “The Lord Jesus Christ. He is here.” “Ah,” retorted the officer searingly. “That’s different.”

There is a sense in which that fact is either true in your life or it is not. There is a sense in which you either understand that, so that a word begins to be spoken, and there is a presence that says, “I don’t think that word should be spoken.” Maybe it’s even a true word, a reporting of something that’s happened to me several times this week. I was this week with some friends who I haven’t seen for some time, and I began conversations and was checked in my spirit – good things or things that could have been said that were true reporting of events. And yet the spirit checked, because the presence of Jesus so often changes the way you would say something or the manner in which you would do something.

I think it’s very important, also from a positive sense, that we understand that He is present. Now, how do you practice that? Look at verse four: “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice.” Please underline the word “always.” It is not always a time word. It is always a circumstance word. You are to rejoice in the Lord in all the circumstances of your experience.

I don’t know how it is with you, but critical people that I’m around are generally people who have been exposed to negative experiences. And in the words of Hebrews chapter 12, when chastened by the Lord, a root of bitterness has sprung up in their life. Rather than becoming broken and moldable and developed out of that experience, they’ve become bitter and hardened, and they begin applying that bitterness towards others.

And when the Word speaks, they are generally people who have failed to be able to rejoice in the circumstances of their life. It’s the greatest quality of a believer’s life. It’s a joy that is to practice the continual presence of Jesus, and it’s a joy that’s ultimately independent of anything on this earth.

Rejoice in the Lord during all experiences and at all times. Then look at verse five: “Let your moderation be known unto all men.” Oh, here’s a word that’s almost untranslatable from the Greek language. “Epieikes” means patience or softness or forbearance or gentleness. In fact, one writer said, it means let all the world know that you will meet a man more than halfway. The Greek said about this word, it is justice and something better than justice. People who don’t apply the strict letter who understand mercy beyond, who understand graciousness and gentleness have a reputation for gentleness. This is the paraphrase of the Greek that the Phillips translation uses. Let me just give it to you with one word: yieldingness.

This word is specific. Are you defending your rights? There’s no joy in that. Are you conscious of what other people owe you? There’s no joy in that. Are you holding a list of qualifications and saying, “I’m the wife, here’re to treat me this way,” or, “I’m the husband, this is what the Bible demands,” or, “I’m the father, mother. This is what you ought to be,” or, “I’m the son or daughter, this is what I deserve”? There’s no joy in that. And there could be no joy in the Christian life who does not understand the principle of yieldingness to one another.

And then he says in verse six, “Be anxious for nothing.” Isn’t it interesting how the same circumstance will bring out, in one person, beauty and, in another person, ashes? This has been an interesting week for me in that a young couple, that I was involved with in their wedding some years ago, a young couple that the young man of which I’ve known since he was in high school, in fact, there were two brothers of a minister’s. And they were so close to Anita and me, we stayed with them many times. Not only when we were ministering, but just needed a place to stay on the way through the valley. It was that kind of openness. We were like, in a sense, two more members of the family. The one brother who I was particularly close to went backpacking one day, was an expert backpacker into the high Sierras, and was never heard of again.

That was about 12 years ago. His body was never discovered. The other brother Phil grew up, went to school, became a doctor. It was his wedding that we were involved with. Very close to us, but I haven’t seen Phil for many years. He has a very successful practice down in the valley.

I was to discover this week that Phil and Elaine have one child, a 12-year-old boy horribly and severely brain damaged at birth, who they must be with 24 hours a day. He cannot be sent to school. He just demands their life and their concentration. They had Eric with them this week because, of course, the only way they could have come to the conference was for Eric to come along.

It is so interesting as I watched the character of those two because I have another friend who has a very severely retarded child in their family. In that family, it has brought strife in the marriage. It has brought bitterness. It has brought a lack of joy at other people’s enjoyment and success.

But in Phil and Elaine, it has produced sweetness and gentleness. It has produced acceptance, understanding of God’s love. Be full of care about nothing. Watch what anxiety does in your experience, Paul says, and perhaps the answer is given in this fourth thing that in everything with prayer and supplication, the place of prayer, the understanding of standing before God.

And then notice the fifth thing with thanksgiving, gratitude, but above gratitude, submission to the will of God. And then the sixth thing, the peace of God shall stand sentry. That’s the Greek word there. It will stand guard over your peace of God will surround you. It will surround your spirit. It will surround your emotions.

And the seventh thing that is called to their mind in verses eight and nine is what they are to think. Now look at these just a moment with me. Rejoice in all circumstance, be yielding to every man. Notice the absolute there. All circumstance, every man. Careful for nothing, in prayer, by everything with thanksgiving, in those four senses are absolutes.

The moment you find an exception in circumstance, an exception to be anxious for, an exception about something not to be grateful for and to receive with thanksgiving, or an exception in a person you can’t yield to, the moment that happens, the joy is broken. It is like the leak in a great flow of water that is meant to be beautiful and refreshing, and instead, there’s just a little pinprick back there in the hose, a little hole, and the water bursts through that place, and the water doesn’t come to the source it’s meant to be.

These are Paul’s specific words. In this seventh thing, he talks about a mind that is to only hold to certain things. True. And that means things that are not deceptive and elusive. How many things are you holding to, whether it has to do with self-image or something else? They’re not true things, but they’re things you want to hold to. You demand holding to, and it robs you of victory. You’re honest things. This is a word that describes a person who goes through life looking on things as filled with dignity, treating others and experience as having dignity, just, which is a man who gives to God and man that which is due to him. The word duty is a good explanation of that word, pure. The fourth quality not only speaks about things that are morally pure and that are not defiled, but above that, it’s not just speaking about sins of the flesh. It’s dealing with a life that puts preeminent things in their place.

And then lovely Moffitt says, “Winsome, the Greek is the thing which calls forth love.”

It’s not just thinking of lovely things, but thinking about the things which call forth love out of a life and things of good report, which means fair speaking. You know, so many believers that I am familiar with are not necessarily so, but they are very willing to listen to things that are not of a good report.

I find preachers particularly guilty of this and allowing their life and their mind to be filled with things like, “How is this person doing?” or “What’s happening in that church?” or “Did you hear what happened to so-and-so?” Now in these six qualities of mine, Paul is directing a seventh warm quality that keeps the Christian life on.

Now, I’m going to finish by being very specific. You cannot contextually read Philippians four without knowing that these are uniquely necessary in the life of women. They are things that are uniquely addressed to this problem. And there are certain things in understanding the characteristics, the energies, the directions, of women and yet the weakness that God calls specific and unique attention to. But as well as being addressed to them, they are addressed to all of us. Here again is something that I think we need to really come to grips with in our Christian experience. Will and are you in your life desiring to move on?

One of the questions that I was seriously confronted with in the course of had to do with that issue myself. At what point do you come to the place in your Christian life where you say, “I’m sorry. This is the way it is, this is the way it’s gonna be. This is who I am and it’s not going to change.” At what point are you open in your Christian life as God helps these women?

I hope they were open when the true yoke fellow of the Christian began saying, “Look, this is the most serious thing that’s happened. We’ve received a letter from the apostle Paul who says, this cannot go without correction. It’s our fault that it’s happened. We have not provided the proper direction in headship, and we’re gonna change that.”

But there are some things in your lives that must change. How many of you, is that true in my life? Is that true? Are you, are you even kind of a little bit open to it? But there are some requirements of the Lord, some things of the Lord that he would like to do in your life, but it demands change. It demands rethinking.

When I read these absolutes out of this passage, I am first of all convicted and then I am marvelously assured. These are such truths. If there’s an exception in any one of them, then the moral and the fiber of your spirit is compromised. If there are circumstances you can’t rejoice in, if there are brethren or sisters you can’t yield to in the name of the Lord Jesus, or if there are things that fill you with care that you cannot surrender to God, you are anxious over them. There are issues you are not giving to by prayer with thanksgiving. There are areas of your mental control that will not change, and rather than the true, the honest, the just, and the good of good report, there are other areas of concentration in your mind than my dear lady or my dear sir.

According to that leak in your life, there will be the loss of joy, the loss of God’s presence, the loss of God’s peace. The passage ends with the peace of God, which is yours. It is the peace of God which will stand sentry over your spirit. I don’t think you and I have any idea of what the next months and years will bring to pass in our world and culture, and I have no idea of what you and I are going to walk through.

I had no idea, enjoying the happy celebration of Phily Elaine Opperman some years ago, that God would require of me the walking through of a circumstance in their life as they have walked through in these days. And my dear sir, there is no promise about what the circumstances will be, but there is a formula by which the peace of God reigns in spite of the circumstance.

That’s what God wants you to know. I think God speaks to us today about some really clear messages. To men and women, to all of us in general, and to some of us in the specific roles that God wants us to understand. And I’d like you to bow your heads with me just in this moment as we close the service. First of all, I want to talk to men because this has been such a rema in my own spirit.

Some of you perhaps here are as guilty as I am in failing in these areas. Perhaps some spiritual leadership is scattered here, some of the deacons, some of the elders, some men that God has raised up in staff positions in this church. I see many husbands here, and God is wanting to say a special word that rather than criticizing some of the experiences that we have, when wonderful vessels of God break forth in some area of problem, that we see our own responsibility.

I’m gonna ask you, is there a commitment under God that you be the covering spiritually, physically, socially, mentally, that God wants you to be? I think of the multitude of single women, especially these single parents, these single mothers uniquely raising children. God needs to speak a very clear word about responsibility in this, but secondly to women here, are you a little bit tired of rationalizing those things in your personality that are not Christlike?

Are you a little tired of just excusing? Because there isn’t yielding this to all men. There isn’t rejoicing in all things and to all of us. Would you let the Holy Spirit, is there a hunger in your life for the Christ character to be manifest? I’d like you to reach out and take the hand of the person beside you, just in this moment.

Father, I thank you for these two women who helped found this church and syndicate, and I am convicted, Lord, by the loss of their testimony because of the emergence and breaking through in their life of things that were not pleasing and revealing of the Lord. I do ask that you continue the work of speaking to this man and to every man in this.

And that you speak to women here, especially godly women, concerned women, vital women, and that you establish within us, Father, a unique desire for the Christ spirit to reign in our life and our experience. I thank you, Lord, for the dealings of the Spirit and we respond and accept that. In Christ’s name, amen.

God bless you, friends, you’re dismissed. There is a communion in the prayer chapel. The elders will be there for those who need prayer, and there’s a time of fellowship out here in the patio if you’re visiting. God bless you.