Women Will Be Preserved Through The Bearing Of Children

So last week, we were in 1 Timothy chapter 2, and we studied a text concerning Eve's sin, and how it played into Adam's sin. That she was deceived, and that having been deceived, she fell into transgression. And the simplest way I know to describe our text from last week without preaching that same sermon again, is to say that those sin didn't enter the world through Eve, because she wasn't the head, as Adam was. She sinned in eating the fruit. What she did was terrible and wicked, not only that she ate the fruit, but that she then brought that fruit to her husband, and that Satan gained access to Adam through the deception of his wife. We see in the curse that God gave to Adam and to Eve that part of Eve's subjection, which was intact before the fall, she was to...

submit to her husband and follow him before they ate the fruit. And it was a delightful and happy and perfect arrangement. After the fall, that same arrangement was frustrated by sin. That through Adam's transgression, through his sin, sin entered the world. And now the wife's subjection to the husband was not going to be an easy thing or necessarily an enjoyable thing or a comfortable thing. And that her desires were not going to be in accord with it anymore. But yet, the subjection was going to stand as a testimony to her of what Eve had done. And so last week, the point or the goal of the sermon was to say to the women first and then to the men secondarily, do you see the consequences of Eve's sin in the world? Do you see it in your own life, in your own desires still to this day to rule over your husbands? That desire...

That sinful desire is a reminder constantly to you of your first mother, Eve's sin. And it's not something to be brushed away or to be ignored simply because Adam was the federal head, the one who actually brought, you know, through whom sin came into the world. And I think it's common that we might say, oh, well, Eve did something she shouldn't have done, but Adam's the one who really, really, really did what was wrong. And I say, no, what Eve did was no less. corrupt than what Adam did. And the difference was not in the measure of sinfulness of what they did. The difference was the responsibilities that each of them had. She was to help her husband. She was to support him and to honor him and to obey him and to help him together to fill the earth and rule over it and subdue it as they were commanded to do. Her sin was no less significant than Adam's, even though it wasn't through her sin that sin and death entered into the world.

When I was reading and studying for that last week, and then again this week because our text this week is very closely related to that, when I was reading Calvin, he's just very clear in saying it's Eve's fault that sin entered the world. And yet she's not Adam. She's not the one through whom sin and death entered the world. Calvin just says it's her fault. She came to Adam. She brought him the fruit. She convinced him to eat it. He never should have listened, but she never should have brought it. And so there was no minimizing of her responsibility, no minimizing of her guilt for her own actions. And toward the end of last week, I was not wanting to stop preaching because I felt like the whole point of the sermon was to undo and show the women, to show us the guilt of women. But then we stopped. And there are often times when we are undone and we feel as though...

What must I do to be saved? Was there any hope for me? Am I beyond the grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ? Have I done something that now is so bad that I'm without hope in this world? I felt like that's the place that we came to and that's where we stopped. And that everyone had to go away going, that was awful. And what is to come of it? Well, this morning what I want to do is talk about what's to come of it. And what I want us to see before we read our text this morning is that when we see our guilt before God and when we see our sins, the appropriate question that we would ask is what must we do to be saved? What do I need to do? And this morning what we're going to come is to that answer, but not that answer generally, that answer specifically for women, the daughters of Eve. Before we read the text, I want to say to you this is certainly not a popular answer to the problem.

But it is a biblical answer and it's therefore a good answer. And it's an answer that we ought to cultivate a love and a desire and an affection for because we're Christians. It's not something that we ought to dismiss or go, well, that's... No, this is God's word to us. This is his kindness to us. And you say, well, no one's ever taught me that before and the world isn't going to agree with that. And I say, but the world's going to hell. And this is God's word to us. The final thing I'll say is this is not simply a sermon for women. And as we study this text, you're going to see the applications and the implications for the men and for the husbands. Would you please stand now for the reading of God's word? Our text this morning is 1 Timothy 2, verse 15. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. It says, but women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-control, with self-restraint. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

You may be seated. Now, I realize reading that text, what I feel like I've just done is I've just lit a wick. And now I have to answer, because as soon as we read this, it's not hard to understand what Paul's saying, right? Women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they persevere in faith and love and sanctity with self-control. And we all go, what? And then we go, well, what about the single women? Does this apply to them? Well, what about women who are beyond childbearing years? Well, what about the women who are barren and can't have children? And we start thinking in terms of the exceptions. And I will come to address those things, but I want us to think first, this is what God said. Paul is presented, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the problem of Eve's sin. And the prohibitions against women teaching, in part, as a result of it. And this is his resolution to women. This is actually meant to be a comfort to the women.

That they wouldn't be discouraged in despair and be without hope going, well, there's no hope for me yet in this world. No, Paul writes, women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint. Now, my goal is that that wick wouldn't burn up and we'd have an explosion where everyone goes, I hate this. But I do realize that there's lots of temptation in your own heart, just like there would have been in Eve's after the fall, to reject this. And my encouragement to you and my petition to you is that you would not do that. But that you'd submit to what God has said and consider why he said it and what the benefits of what he said are. That means that we're not going to spend our time saying what this text doesn't mean. We're going to rather look at what it does mean. And so the verse starts out, women will be preserved. Oftentimes this word preserved is translated as saved or brought to safety. And so it's an important thing.

And right from the very beginning, there's a way to, there's a temptation to diffuse the tension of the verse by latching onto this word preserved and saying, well, it can't mean, are you saying women are saved through having children, that that's how they come to, they're saved from hell? Is that what it means? And I say, in a word, no. That's not what the text is teaching. There's nothing surrounding this passage that has anything to do with how we are saved. And scripture often speaks of salvation in many different ways. Paul says, we're being saved. He says, we're working out our salvation with fear and trembling. He says here, women will be preserved or saved through the bearing of children. But it also says that salvation comes to us through our Lord Jesus Christ, by grace, through faith. And so what we don't want to do is get stupid.

When we're reading a text because of our discomfort and go, well, that must mean this thing over here, and it can't mean that, so I don't know what it means. But it's unreliable, so I'm not going to pay attention to it. I just want to say simply at the beginning, it's not talking about how we're justified or how we come to God or that men are saved by grace through faith, but women somehow are saved through the ability to have children. Because what would that mean for women? It means you better have children. How many? Well, I don't know. Have you had enough? We can start down this rabbit trail that's really a pretty gnarly, nasty place to go, and it's because it's not meant to be traveled down. There are those who've gone down these paths and had these discussions, and it's to their demise that they have them. It's of no benefit to have that discussion, even though I know you feel that pressure. I want you to say, okay, what does it mean, women will be preserved? What it means is that though we are saved by grace through faith, our response to that salvation

is worked out in our lives through what we do. And so this verse at its most basic level, its most foundational interpretation is this is an instruction to Christian women about what their lives ought to be about. And it's not limited to this verse. We could go into Titus where Paul instructs Titus in Titus 2 what the older women are supposed to do. They're instructed there should be keepers at home. They should love their husbands. They should love their wives. They should be pure. They should be kind. Why? So that the word of God is not dishonored. We just read in 1 Peter 3, what are women to do? They're to be submissive to their own husbands. Even if they're disobedient to the word, they're to let them observe their chaste and respectful behavior. They're to call them Lord. Why? Because he's perfect? No. Not any more perfect than Abraham was, who passed his wife off as his sister, and yet she called him Lord. So what does it mean? How does it work that women will be preserved? Well, I want us to see that...

This text and the text we studied last week are very closely related to the fall in Genesis 3 and then Adam and Eve's actions and what they did right after that in Genesis 4. When God made Adam and Eve, the first command he gave to them was to be fruitful and multiplying to fill the earth. Have children. There are other places in scripture that tell us children are a blessing, children are a heritage, they're an inheritance. Happy is the man whose quiver is full. that a woman who is like a fruitful vine and that her children will be like olive plants around her table, that they'll rise up and they'll call her blessed. Nowhere in Scripture are children spoken of as being a bad thing, a negative thing, something that should be avoided or limited or you should be afraid of. Scripture speaks of the goodness and the blessing of children.

Now I realize that there's a lot of distance between how scripture speaks about children and how our culture speaks about children. But we're Christians. And so I expect that our allegiance and our affiliation and our trust ought to be with what God's word says, not with what pressures we feel from the world. And so in the garden, when Adam and Eve sinned, one of the things we learn is that Eve needed saving. Our text says women will be preserved. Well, what's that mean? It means they need to be preserved. They'll rot. They will go bad if they're not preserved. And that's a result of Eve's sin in the garden. Adam didn't simply need salvation. Eve needed salvation. She needed to be saved. We see this in the garden that when after the Lord God came down into the garden, he saw them.

And he cursed them. What did he do? Well, he made a covering. Now, who did he make a covering for? Well, he made it for both of them because both of them needed their sin covered. They both failed and needed covering. They both had shame associated with what they had done. Eve's shame was not simply associated to what Adam had done. Eve's shame was associated to what Eve had done. And she needed a covering. She needed to be preserved. And here Paul tells us the same thing. Women will be preserved. Women need preservation. They need to be saved. And if Eve needed to be saved, then...

Women today still need to be saved. Now, I realize that it's a strange thing preaching here because I don't know, I think there's not very many people here who are just hating what I say. You might be intimidated by it or you might be like, well, that's not going to go very well at the homeowners association or wherever you might want to talk about it. But no one's sitting here seething mad at me for saying it. They're sitting here going, um, okay. But I want you to know that there's pressure put on you by our culture with regard to the holiness of women. And the way it sounds is that women are not responsible, they're not culpable, which is just a bigger word for responsible, for their actions. That if a woman does something wrong, it's not her who did it. There's some pressure or some extenuating circumstance that caused her to do what she did. And I want you to know that that's a lie. And it's a dangerous and damning lie for a woman to believe.

Because what it does is it removes from her the hope of being saved from what she's done. She says, I know I did something wrong. I think I did something wrong. And everyone says, no, you didn't. And she's left going, well, they said I didn't, but I think I did. So what am I supposed to do now? And it's much simpler and much easier and more helpful for us to say, women sin. And when they sin, they do it just like Eve did some of the time. Her deception was not a deception of ignorance. Her deception was a deception of seeing a lie and choosing to believe that lie instead of what the Lord God had said. It says she saw the fruit and she saw that it was good for food and it was beautiful. And she said, well, on that basis, I'm going to eat it. God told me that he doesn't want me to be like him. That's why he told me not to eat this fruit. But Satan said, if I eat it, I can be like him. I want to be like that. She believed a lie. That was the nature of her deception.

No one forced her to do it. No one, you know, in the garden before there was any sin or any temptation like that into the world, she chose to do something wicked. And women today still choose to do things that are wicked. And it's really helpful to be able to say to a woman, you chose to do something you knew you shouldn't have done. And you chose it and you didn't have to. Now if I said that to a man, we'd all be like, that's right, you tell that wicked man. And I say, yeah, you know what? Men are just that corrupt and they do that too, but they're not more corrupt than women. Women choose bad stuff too. And we need to tell them, you choose bad stuff just like men choose bad stuff. And what that means is that the resolution to that problem, the hope of the gospel is available not just to the men, but to the women. But for it to be available to them, the women have to say, we need preservation. We sinned. And they have to be able to say it about themselves. And they have to put a period at the end of it and not say, I did that, but.

Just, I did it. And you'll go, but there's so much more I want to say about it. And I say, I know you're in the habit of wanting to minimize and shave off the edges of what you did. It's good for your soul not to do that. In the same way that it's good for a man not to stand up and say, yeah, well, I did it, but it was the woman that you gave to me, just like Adam did. It didn't go well for him when he tried it. And it didn't go well with Eve. And she said, it was the serpent who tempted me. But the Lord God asked them, what is this thing that you have done?

And so that's the question to us in our lives. What is this thing that you have done, man? What is this thing that you have done? Another word about this preservation, this salvation. It says women will be saved. This is a promise. This is a promise. If women are not to have the salvation of the gospel cut off from them, the next worst thing you could do with it is dangle it in front of them like a carrot in front of a horse, but they can never get it. You can have it if. You can get it when. No. The scripture says that women will be preserved. This is a promise. There's not a, if you do it perfectly, then you can have the treat. No. Women will be preserved. And it's meant to comfort the women to say, there is something that's solid that I can take hold of and trust. That's not going to slide out away from me and leave me with no hope. Women will be preserved.

As the terms of the promise are met, the promise comes to fruition. And so Christians should see the value of this. That there's something solid for the Christian women to hold on to that's not based on all of these contingencies and all of these emotions and all of these feelings and all of these what-ifs. God's Word says women will be preserved. That's a positive statement. If we were to state it negatively, we would say this. Women will not be preserved if, and then we would fill in the blank, if they what. But that's not how this is spoken. Women will be preserved. You say, well, there's an if coming later. And I say, we're going to get to that. We're going to get to that. But that if is not a contingency. It's an instruction. And we'll come to it later. Women will be preserved. Christian women can take hold of the hope of the gospel. That if they give themselves to the work that God's called them to, it will end and result in their salvation and their joy. So how will they be preserved? Well, scripture teaches us that women will be preserved through the bearing of children.

And I want to draw a general application and then a specific one. This was true of Eve just as much as it's true of you all. When God cursed the serpent, he told the serpent that he was going to put enmity or hatred or animosity or tension or conflict between his seed and the seed of the woman. And then there's a promise, the first promise of the gospel, the first iteration that there's going to be a resolution to this problem. And what he says is, I'm going to put enmity between your seed and her seed. And you're going to bruise him on the heel, but he's going to crush your head. And the one who's going to do the crushing is going to be the seed of the woman, and he's going to be crushing Satan. And this was a promise, that the destruction that had been wrought in the garden through Adam and Eve's sin was not going to be maintained forever and continue to allow to just destroy. But that in God's time, he was going to send one through the woman.

to fix what they had broken. And this was a promise to them. And so Adam and Eve understood from the curse to the serpent that their children would bring about redemption. Their redemption. They weren't redeemed because God went and killed an animal and covered up their shame with its skin. Adam and Eve were redeemed by the blood of their son, Jesus Christ. Just like you and I and anyone else who has been saved. will be saved. And they knew that that hope and that promise would come through Jesus dying, through their son, through their seed. Now here's the difficulty. They get told, your redemption is going to come through children. And then he comes to Eve and says, what? Childbirth is going to be awful for you. It will greatly increase your pain in childbirth. And the woman immediately faces a conflict. And this conflict exists today. Your redemption will come through children.

And it's going to be one of the most difficult things you will do in your life. And it's because of Eve's sin that it's so difficult. So you've got a choice. Same choice that all of us have today. Children or no children? Salvation? Redemption? Or avoid all those things? That's a question. Do you think that Eve was all gung-ho about having a baby? Are you convinced that there was just no question in her mind? The Lord God had just said to her, I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing. And then... He cursed Adam. And then they got kicked out of the garden. An angel with flaming swords standing there to make sure that they never made it back to the tree of life. I'm not convinced that it was just that easy for her. I think she had to look and go, well, remember they're sinful now. There's a whole lot of pain. And there's a promise of redemption. And what is it that I want? Well, they chose redemption. The very next thing, right after they're cursed and they're kicked out of the garden, that's the end of chapter 3 in the book of Genesis.

Verse 4, chapter 4, verse 1, says, Now the man, Adam, had relations with his wife, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain. And she said, I have gotten a man-child with the help of the Lord. I had a baby. Perfect. We're done. Again, again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And so what you find in Adam and Eve, in terms of... the result of their sin was a desire for redemption. And the fruit of that desire for redemption and that promise given to them in that very seedling form was that they were fruitful. They had kids. And not just one. What would have happened if they just had one? Was Cain the one you want? No, Cain wasn't the best son, now was he? In fact, he killed his brother. So Adam and Eve took hold of...

redemption and their desire for it and the fruit of it was fruitfulness in their life. They had kids. They wanted to see what had been undone redeemed and put back together. And that desire that they shared at that time, even through the pain and the difficulty, is what we ought to feel today and we ought to share today. A desire for redemption. And you say, you mean I've got to have as many babies as I can possibly have? I'm only 25 years old. And I say, I never said that. Did I? And I've not read in scripture where it's spelled out that clearly. What I will say to you is children are a blessing. And happy is the man whose quiver is full. He will not be ashamed when they speak well of him in the gate. So what do you want? What I find is that in our society, there's a difference between men and women. In our day and age, it's more common that men want children than women. Or at least they're not as scared of it. But women are scared. Now, do the women have good reason to be scared?

Well, they have the same reason Eve had to be scared. Lots of pain. A never-ending need or draw on her life. That's what a child is. And every woman knows it well. And our culture has said, you ought not to have that kind of burden. But they have no concern. The world has no concern for your salvation. And so men say, yeah, we can have a baby. She'll take care of it. And here's the thing. Women do most of the taking care of the children. And I don't mean that to be nasty or rude or to absolve men of having to change diapers or anything like that. I simply mean to say that God has placed the responsibility of caring for children, especially when they're young, largely on the mother. And that's as it should be. Because there are responsibilities placed on the man that the woman doesn't bear. And so we should just be honest. We should be Christians and go, you know what? We're not identical. We're not exactly the same.

I remember saying to Vanessa early on in our marriage when we had, when Joseph was little, and he would be up at night. And there was this question of, well, will you get up at night and will you help? Whatever help means. And I felt this conflict inside of me. Do I want to help? Yes, I want to help. How shall I help then? And it was very freeing to me to realize that I didn't have to get up in the middle of the night to help. And that what I could say to my wife was, honey, I have to get up and go to work all day. I want you, not only can you, but I want you to be able to rest during the day with the baby. You're home, taking care of the baby. I want you to be able to rest when the baby rests. But I can't do that during the day. Our livelihood will be affected if I'm up half the night with a crying baby. And it wouldn't be good for me to do that so that you can sleep. So I want you to get up and take care of the baby at night. And if things get to a certain level,

then obviously I'm going to come and I'm going to help. But that was helpful to me to say, we're different and we have different responsibilities in our home with regard to children. And it's not a bad thing. What would be a bad thing is if I said, honey, you're going to get up with the babies all night and you're going to go to work tomorrow in the morning too. That would be a bad thing. And so Adam and Eve said, God has promised redemption through our seed. Let's have kids. And Paul promises the same thing in a different context. You could say that Adam and Eve understood their salvation in terms of justification. That justification would come through their seed. Is that what we're to understand? No. What are we supposed to understand? Well, we're supposed to understand that our sanctification will come through the bearing of children for women. In either case, for Eve...

with regard to justification, or every other woman since her with regard to sanctification, childbearing is the primary place where women are sanctified, where they grow and become more like Jesus. And this is where it gets very close to me saying, well, what about the women who can't have children? What, because they're single or they're barren or those sorts of things? We're all going, well, what ifs, what ifs, what ifs? And we have those what ifs in this room. And what I want to say to you is, I'm sorry that you're not able to have children, whether it's because you're single or because you're... You're barren. I don't mean to deminimize it and to say, well, you're just an outcast. That's not the point. The point is to say, you wouldn't be asking the question if you didn't want to have children. And it's most likely that you're going to be preserved through your desire to have children going unmet until such time as God sees fit to bring a husband or open your womb. And so this verse applies no less to those who can't have children because their desire is difficult and it weighs heavy on them.

And as Christians, we ought not to say, well, you just need to minimize. No, you just don't. You shouldn't have that desire. No, you should have that desire. And you say, well, that desire hurts. And I say, I know. I'm sorry that it hurts. In the same way that a mom has to trust God as she has children, a woman who can't have children has to trust God. He's faithful. In the same sort of pain that that mother would have in childbirth, you experience a different sort of pain by not having children. And sanctification will come to you through it. So Paul says women will be preserved through the bearing of children. And I don't want us to truncate down bearing of children to the act of delivery. That's not what's being spoken of here. Mothers of grown children are enduring this. And it's incumbent on them that they persevere in love and faith and sanctity with self-restraint. Hey guys, be quiet. When a woman becomes a mother, she never ceases to be a mother.

Her children grow up. What they need from her changes. What she's able to give them changes. But a mother is a mother until she dies. Her life will never go back to the same. It'll never go back to the way it was before. And it shouldn't. It's a life-changing event. And it doesn't just happen when the child's born. It starts as soon as she gets pregnant. She's become a mother, and her body starts to change, and her emotions start to change, and everything about her is in flux. And I wouldn't be telling you the whole truth if I didn't say it's going to be that way the rest of your life. From the time you get pregnant as a woman until you die, your body and the reality of being a mother will never stop shifting. And that's why you have need of...

Faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint. Because it's not simply saying, get through having the baby. And then you'll have done it. Check it off the list. No. You've just begun. The pain of childbirth is for a time. And there's joy that comes after that pain because you get to hold your baby. But then there's this whole flood of responsibilities and the I don't knows and what am I going to do and what ifs he's and what if she that that comes. And moms ask those questions forever. I don't know if he's ready to ride the bike. I don't know if he's ready to go to school. I don't know if she's ready to drive. I don't know if they're ready to get married. I don't know if they're ready to be parents. I don't know if they should buy their first house. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That's motherhood. And men, what are you supposed to do? Despise it? No. You're supposed to desire your wife and your daughter's salvation. And so you ought not to despise her motherhood and her care and her concern. At whatever stage she finds herself. I said to a groom, well, recently, it's very common when...

When daughters get married, the conflict arises between the daughter and the bride and the mom. It's very common. So those of you who are like, is he talking about me? Yeah, I am. And everyone else who's gone through it. It's very, very common. And what ends up happening is that the bride feels like she's stuck in the middle between her fiancé and her mom. And she wants to please both of them. And yet they don't agree, so she's sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place. What's she to do? What's to be done with this situation? Well, what I often tell the men is just this. I say, listen, your fiancé's mother is losing a daughter right now. That's what she feels like. And you can argue with her about all the details until the cows come home, and you will have done nothing but cause more trouble. If you will just go give her a hug and tell her you love her and that you appreciate the work she's done in raising your fiancé to this point and that you're going to take good care of her daughter, you will resolve 90% of the conflict without ever talking about it.

And you know what? It works. Because that mom is still being a mom. She's still being preserved. Even as her daughter gets married. And she'll go through the same thing again when they have children. So just buckle up. It's not a bad thing. The work of having children for a woman is largely an unseen work. It's something that they bear. A lot of it happens inside their bodies, whether it's growing a baby or delivering a baby or carrying that child and its well-being in their heart. It's something that happens hidden from the rest of the world. And so it's very common that that work is despised and undervalued because who sees it? There's no fruit of it. The love that a mother has for her child and all of the energy and effort that she gives to that end, who knows about it? Well, very few people know about it, so what it means is that the value of it goes down.

It's just not that valuable. The work of motherhood, the work of caring for children and bearing them and loving them is like, well, yeah, anybody can do that. And I say, well, in one sense, yes, anyone can do that. But Christians are given a particular perspective on it. And the perspective is that this is where they will be sanctified. And what I want to say to all of us is this is where our wives and our daughters will grow in godliness the most. There are plenty of other places where we can grow. But this will be the primary place, even more so than getting married. A woman will grow more in godliness through having children than she will through getting married. So all of you who are getting married, young married, have all stars in your eyes, are you nervous? Gotten married, got no kids. It's going to get harder, more painful. And once it starts hurting, it'll never stop. Go for it. God is good. Go for it. You'll be preserved through it.

You'll be made more holy. You'll become more like Jesus through that work than anything else you give your life to. You say, well, I'm going to go and be a missionary, and I'm going to go translate the Bible into all these different languages, and I'm going to go do all this stuff. And I say, you won't be as holy. You won't do as much good for Jesus as if you would stay home and keep kids, have kids, and raise them, and love them, and give your heart to them, and to all the vulnerability that it entails. Women will be preserved through the bearing of children. They give their heart to it, and their body to it, and ultimately their life to it.

It is what a godly Christian woman will give her life for. And I don't want the disdain of the world to trip you up. This disdain is not a new thing. It's not something like, oh, 21st century America is the hardest place ever in the world to be a Christian. That's not true. It's hard, but it's similarly hard to other situations. I want to read to you what Calvin wrote about his time in godly Geneva, where he pastored. 500 years ago, back in the glory days of everything that was good and right. This is what he said about this. He says, first, here the apostle doesn't speak merely about having children, but about enduring all the distresses which are manifold and severe, both in birth and in the rearing of children. Secondly, whatever hypocrites or wise men, speaking of the world, whatever hypocrites and wise men of the world may think of it when a woman...

considering to what she has been called, submits to the condition which God has assigned to her and does not refuse to endure the pains or rather the fearful anguish of birth or the anxiety of her offspring or anything else that belongs to her duty. If she won't give herself to those fears, if she'll restrain herself, God values her obedience more highly than if in some other manner she had made a great display of heroic virtues while she refused to obey the calling of God. And so I realized the difficulty of it. Some of you, you know, you have kids and you're in over your head, so you feel like it. And some of you go, we want to have kids, or we're not sure if we want to have kids, and this is scary, hard, or the rest. And I say, that's how it'll be. This is your sanctification. There's nothing easy about it, but there is something glorious about it. So don't run away from it because you're scared. And I mean that especially for the women. Don't run away from it because you're scared. You say, oh, I'm scared. And I say, I know. You aren't going to be any less scared in six months or two years or five years, or when you're 50.

You won't be any less scared about children than you are now. So don't let fear make your decision. You men, don't let your wife's fear be the ordering principle of your home with regard to children. If you want her to become holy, don't deprive her of the primary means of her sanctification. Scripture is very clear in teaching us that this is the place where women will be made holy. This is what it takes. And some of the women look at me and they're like, I don't like what you're saying. My husband's going to want it. Yeah, well, he wants your holiness. And if he doesn't help you along the way, and if he doesn't fulfill his role as a husband, you come tell me. Because it's not all your work, but it is your work. Then we come to the second half of the verse, and it says it gives this seeming qualifier. If they continue. And so you realize that the promise of preservation has a qualifier or an instruction or something. And really what I would say is this part of the passage.

Continuing in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint is meant to distinguish Christian women from the rest of the world. Non-Christian women, unbelieving women, are quite capable of having children and loving them and raising them up and giving themselves at some level and in some capacity to the necessity of having a child. But that's not sufficient for a Christian woman. Simply having a baby or babies is not the end of your duty. Simply making sure that they're fed and clothed is not the end of your duty. Simply making sure that they can become productive members of society is not the end of your duty. The duty of a Christian woman with regard to her children is to have them, to bear them, and everything that that means from conception until they die, the mother, with faith. You say, what do you mean with faith? And I say, well...

What was it that was going to keep you from having children? Fear. Fear and faith don't mix. They can't exist in the same place. You can't have faith about something and be scared stiff by it. Fear will paralyze you and faith will mobilize you. So you have to have children by faith. And so if everything, as you process this and as you work through it, if everything is governed by your fear, then you're not fulfilling your duty as a Christian woman. Because you're to conduct yourself with faith, in faith, from conception until you die, without breaks in between, to be a Christian mother. Love is well. It's one of the strangest things I think Scripture does, is it says that young women have to learn how to love their children. And it seems like, well, who in the world needs to be taught, what woman needs to be taught to love their children? Their hearts are just, it's their child. And I say, no, that's not true.

It's one of the things the older women in Titus 2 are told to teach the younger women. Teach them to love their children. And really what I'm convinced they're being told is, teach those women not to waste their time doing things that are working toward their children's destruction instead of their salvation. They don't know the difference. They think that hovering and micromanaging and wrapping everything up in plastic and styrofoam is going to save their child. And I say, no. No, no, no, no. That is not good. You need an older woman to say, let him climb the tree. What if he breaks his arm? So what if he breaks his arm? Tell him not to break his arm. You laugh. You're like, well, you can't just tell a kid not to break his arm. And I go, well, what are you going to do when you can't stop him from doing it? You better hope he has some place in his mind to listen to what you said. Don't you fall out of that tree. Why not tell your child that instead of wrapping them up in a bubble that only you think you're equipped to maintain? Younger women, young mothers have to learn how to love their children. And this is especially true, I think, of firstborns.

I won't go too far into this, but the firstborns are the hardest. They're just the hardest. And you especially need older women with your firstborns because you don't have a clue what you're doing. And this is just as true for husbands as it is for mothers, fathers. I mean, what do you do with a firstborn? You need older women to give you perspective and to teach you to love them, that you might persevere in it with sanctity and self-control. What's a mother supposed to do? Well, a mother's most inclined to care for her children's felt needs. He's hungry. He's thirsty. He's tired. He's teething. He's in pain. It's all well and good. It's true. And she'll be more acutely aware of that than the husband will be in most cases. But that's not all she's supposed to give to them. She's supposed to conduct herself with sanctity, which means that she's supposed to model Christian virtue and Christian faith to her children, that they actually spend a lot of time, especially during their formative years, with their mother.

And it's her job as a Christian mother to care for them and to model for them what Christian faith looks like. So you're putting all this pressure on women. And I say, here's the thing. Women are very prone to feeling all kinds of pressure anyway. And so if you're going to feel pressure, I want you to feel the pressure from God's word and not from the world or your own heart. If you're going to go, man, I better not do that. I want you to say, I better not do what the Bible says I ought not to do. Instead of what the parenting magazine tells you you ought not to do.

Fair enough? So you're like, if you feel pressure, I say, I'm sorry. I wish you didn't. But since you do, feel this pressure. Your children are watching you. And you don't get to close their eyes when you don't feel like it. So conduct yourself in faith and love and sanctity. Model Christian faith and practice for them with self-control. And you say, self-control? And I say, oh, self-control. Sanctification feels like... The walls are closing in on you, whether it's for men or women or you're young or you're old, and whatever the context is, that's what it feels like. It feels like you're taking rubber bands and you just keep putting them around the watermelon, waiting to see if it'll explode. That's what sanctification feels like. Don't explode. The rubber bands are going to keep coming. The pressure's going to keep getting more. That's how we're sanctified. Scripture says that it's like dross being cooked out of gold.

You have to not only melt the gold, but you have to get it so hot that not only the gold melts, but the gold releases from the impurities. Really hot. So Christian mothers have an obligation to conduct themselves with sanctity and self-control as mothers. I say, but it's really hard. I say, I know. I know. But you'll be glad if you do it. And you'll be upset if you don't. So aim at it. Take full aim at it and say, that's what I'm going for. I keep my mouth shut when I should keep my mouth shut, even though I don't feel like keeping my mouth shut right now. Even though I feel like lecturing and hollering at my husband and my kids and everyone else. And you women who are thinking, I think he's just talking to me. I'm not. I'm talking to all of the women because there's not a mother in this room who hasn't screamed and hollered at her kids. And there's not a kid here who hasn't had their mom lose it with them with sanctity and self-restraint.

When you start to see what the responsibility is or what the instruction is for Scripture, it would make sense that you'd be like, I don't know that I want all that. That's really hard. Or you men might be sitting there going, that's an awful lot to put on my wife. I don't know if she's going to, that seems kind of mean. I say the Lord disciplines us for our good so that we'll share his holiness. Do you want to share his holiness? If you want to share his holiness, then for women, this is your instruction. Men, if you want your wives and your daughters to share his holiness, then this is their instruction. Prepare them for it. Equip them for it. Walk alongside them with it. And God will be glorified and they'll be sanctified. That'll be sweet. Men, you'll lose part of your wife when she becomes a mother. And you won't get it back. And that's okay. And you men need to know that. When she becomes a mom, she's got a responsibility given to her by God for her sanctification and for the well-being of that child. And you'll be sanctified too.

So don't think, oh, yeah, my wife's going to be sanctified. We're going to have kids. Oh, this is a joint endeavor. So don't be selfish, you men. And withhold this blessing from your wife because you want her all to yourself. God didn't give her to you to have for yourself. She gave her to you so you could be fruitful and multiply. And so you could share his holiness. So don't run away from it. Don't neglect this work in favor of worldly pursuits. Value what God values. Give yourself to what God commends to you by faith. and you'll see his blessing in your life. What we do with our lives should be aligned with what God teaches us to do in his word. Let's pray.