Debra, God's woman for God's time. Let's talk about it on this edition of Key Light. Hello, I'm Mike Kellogg and this is Key Light. If you are interested in honest and practical Bible teaching for struggling believers, you are at the right place. Here's Steve Brown. Thanks, Mike. If you have your Bible open into the book of Judges, we are in the process of a long study in the Old Testament. And the purpose of this study is to make the older Testament user-friendly. Too many Christians don't read the Old Testament very much other than the 23rd Psalm and an occasional proverb. And we do that to our lack. I mean, if there's so much that is so rich, this is the Bible Jesus read. This is the Bible he quoted. This is the Bible that Paul quoted. It was the Bible of everybody who wrote the New Testament. This was the basis of things that they said. Now let me say something that's really important. You can't find outside of the absolute atonement of Christ, his love and the incarnation. You can't find anything in the New Testament, you can't also find in the Old Testament. Jesus didn't teach anything in the New Testament that you can't find in the Old Testament taught there. So it's really important that we understand all of the Bible and not just part of it. And so for me and for you, we're taking a couple of weeks, sometimes three weeks, looking at each of the books of the Old Testament, and we're up to the book of judges. So if you have your Bible, you might want to do that. Now, if you've been listening, we introduced the book. We talked about when it was written some of the historical value of the book. And then we talked about some of the themes of philosophy of history, a doctrine of leadership, the reason for trials and sanitation, a definition of empty religion. We also saw a model of God's patience. I love that. I mean, God says these incredibly bad things about this stiff neck people. And then He says, I have compassion on them. I'm gentle with them. I'm patient with them. And that's the real God who really is. He's patient. It's said that the father of John Wesley, after seeing his wife, Susanna, by the way, he had 19 children. Boy, I'll tell you, that's a bunch of diapers to change. And Susanna admonished John 20 times about the same thing. And he said to her, how can you tell that block ed the same thing 20 times? Her reply was classic. If I had stopped at 19, I would have lost all of my labor. One of the mistakes we make is to think that God will waste any of his labor on us. His patience is infinite because of Philippians 1.6. And because his patience is infinite, he won't ever let you go. And you can depend on that. All right. Now what we're going to do, having covered the themes of judges. I want to just kind of go to some places that I find interesting and that I like in the book of judges. And I'm going to do that today, tomorrow, my pastor will be in and will answer some questions. And the next week, I think, unless the Holy Spirit should speak to me differently, whenever your pastor says, the God is impressed on me about what I had, another thing to preach on, that means he didn't have time to prepare the sermon. He was talking about the floor. No, that's too judgmental. That's not true all the time, but sometimes it is. But I think next week we'll stay in judges for another week and I'll just show you some, because this is a great book. And there's really good stuff in here. But the first thing place I want you to go as the tour director in the book of judges is up in your Bible, if you will, to the fourth chapter of the book of judges. Now this is the place where a woman is called to be the huncho of the people of God. Look at the third and fourth, maybe fifth verses of the fourth chapter of judges. And the children of Israel cried out to the Lord and for Jaban had 900 chariots of iron, and for 20 years he largely oppressed the children of Israel. Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidah, was judging Israel at that time. And she would sit under the palm tree of Deborah between Rama and Bethel in the mountains of Ephraim, and the children of Israel came to her for judgment. Now before we get into this in any detail, I want you to know that I believe that women should not be ruling elders in the church. I believe they should not be ordained. Now I'm not willing to die on that hill, but that's a conviction of mine. If I were God, I would have done it differently. But because the Bible is so incredibly clear about the sin of sexism, of disvaluing women, I sometimes wonder why God did that. Well, probably for a number of reasons, and he hardly ever checks with me about those, I believe the issue is one of a variety and not gifts. I believe that women can be in the church the people who have significant gifts of teaching, of reaching out, of compassion, of preaching. I don't think it's a matter of gifts. I think it's a matter of authority. And I also believe that God created males the way they are. Maley goes horrible thing, but in some ways it's a good thing. I think God was interested in peace and unity in the church. And I think he recognized that if men had to submit to women, the system would break down some place because men have this thing about authority and submission. And so God made us the way we are. So I think maybe God was pandering them in. I don't know. But I want you to know at the beginning, that's how I feel. I was preaching at a conference in California, a woman who's in a denomination where they do ordain women, came to me. We were on a retreat, and she looked shocked. She said, I just found out you're in an nomination that doesn't ordain women. And I went and said, yeah, she said, you don't believe an ordination of women, do you? And I said, no. And she said, you know something Steve. And she grinned. And I loved her for it. She said, you're the first person I ever met who didn't believe in the ordination of women. And I don't feel condemned. And I knew then that God was doing something in me. Christians can disagree about this and it's okay. But I think we've got to be very careful when we talk about it, that women are not disvalued in our talking about it. Sometimes we use the Bible to confirm the sin of sexism and to make women second-class citizens in the church. And the one place, and there are a lot of other places also, but you can go to the fourth chapter of the book of Judges. You begin to find out that God used a woman, Deborah, to be a judge of his people. You say, and I've heard this said, well he only did that his second best. I mean the men wouldn't do it, so she had to do it. Don't do that. That kind of statement, this values women. As a matter of fact, God used Deborah in a position of leadership. And every time I try to take that out of the fourth chapter of Judges, it leaves a smudge on my Bible. I have a friend whose wife, his name is Brad Bradford and his wife Lee, and I just love him to death. He's been a student of the seminary. And his wife, he had a significant kidney problem at one time. His wife gave him her kidney. They went through the surgery and he now has her kidney in his body. And he's alive today because of the amazing sacrifice and love of his wife. When he goes before the Presbyteria of the denomination where he is and they don't believe in the ordination of women, he might say, you guys can't do this. And they'll say, why? And he'll say, well I have a woman's kidney. I mean maybe I can't do this. And what if he had had a heart transplant? Or what if he had had two kidneys and a liver transplant? And that all been women? Could he be ordained and brought in? That's how silly we get, guys. And we've got to stop that. And so I think an antidote to what is sometimes quite sexist in the church is the fourth chapter of Judges. God called a woman and he's still calling women. He called a woman to lead and he wants her to judge and to be strong and to utilize the gifts that God has given her. And then let me just make a passing comment here from the fifth chapter which follows upon that. And that's one of the oldest passages that we have in manuscript form in the entire Bible. And it's called the Song of Deborah. And it's a credible, epic poetry that is down there. And I think sometimes that the left brain, right brain, men are from what? Venus and women are from wherever, kind of stuff begins to take place. We are bereft in the church when we do not utilize the significant gifts that women are given in the church. Now let me just, let me make another comment and I'm going to do some more of this as we go. And you can find this throughout the entire book of Judges. You just, you just find it everywhere. In the ninth chapter for instance, tonight before you go to bed read the ninth chapter of the book of Judges. Especially those of you who yearn for the good old days when giants walked in the land. I was a pastor down on Cape God one time. The ninth chapter is the deception of the Demolek. And you begin to see some of the worst politics and more deception that you've ever found in the Republican or the Democratic Party in America or the new parties in Canada or the Liberal Party. I mean, you think this is new and you yearn for the good old days, there weren't any good old days. As I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, I was a pastor down on Cape God. And Cape God has become quite a tourist and a lot of people go there. When I first came, this has been a lot of years ago. There was a man there in my church and he was a goat farmer. He said, and the new people that would be moving into the Cape would say, tell us about the good old days. They would say, oh man, we wish the Cape could be the way it used to be and he used to laugh and say, it was awful. There were dirt roads and filth and tear. It was terrible. You couldn't, there's an awful place to live. Don't yearn for the good old days. Make what you think about the good old days, the days today. Giants walk in the land and so do twists. And that's always been true. And it always will be true. You think about that? I mean, hey, if you haven't written for the booklet questions and answers, I'd love to send it to you for free. It is a booklet to staff put together when they took the ten most asked questions in key life and my answers to them like what about homosexuality, what about women in the church, what is grace, etc. And I'd love to send it to you. 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