Let us turn to our Bibles to 1 Timothy chapter 6. So I preached on this last week, that is verse by verse, and now I want to go through the structure and the assumptions, the moral background of this exhortation to submit. Let us listen intensively to the word of God. I’ll go ahead and read verse 2 as well.
Let as many bond servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and his doctrine may not be blasphemed. And those who have believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren, rather serve them, because those who are benefit are believers and beloved. Teach and exhort these things, let us pray.
Our Lord and Savior God above. As we read this text, speaking of bond servants, in fact it deals primarily with slaves, although some servants were not slaves. The vast majority were in that time era.
Our God, it seems harsh to our ears that they are told to submit, to even as we read elsewhere, to work well unto them as unto the Lord. Our God and Savior, it’s a reminder that you have given us the fifth commandment, a summary of the broad principle that we are all under somebody, somewhere, that there are superiors and there are inferiors with respect to certain things in life. God, and that idea, and even the language, is not inherently wrong, in fact good when used properly and correctly.
And so Lord, may we learn this lesson anew, especially in a day and age of radical egalitarianism and the rise of flattening out of all distinctions and wanting everyone, every man to do what is right in his own eyes. Our God and Savior, help us we pray by your spirit to relearn this lesson and strengthen us and to guard us we pray. Amen.
So we know the fifth commandment. Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you. We also know that the commandment is a summary of the broader truth that we honor those over us.
That mother and father, those two words are shorthand for more than biological or family relationships, but for anyone in various and sundry circumstances that we find ourselves in, different contexts of life. And I’m going to go through some of those texts to explain that. Now, this fifth commandment is unpacked in our catechism.
That’s our series of questions and answers to explain basic doctrine rooted in the Bible. So we have the Westminster Larger Catechism, written in the mid-1600s, a collection of the most godly men of Great Britain at the time, to explain and unpack this idea of father and mother meaning more than just a family relationship. Question 124.
Why the Language of Superior and Inferior?
Who are meant by father and mother in the fifth commandment? By father and mother in the fifth commandment are meant not only natural parents, but are superiors in age and gifts, and especially such as by God’s ordinance are over us in place of authority, whether in family, church, or commonwealth. We would say family, church, and state. Our forefathers believe, and I’m going to go through the evidence for it, that we can call our leaders fathers.
We should think of them that way, as fathers of the country. We talk about our founding fathers of America. That language is old, that idea is old, that it’s part of who we are, because it’s part of nature.
Father and mother can and have been used, even in the Bible, to describe those over us in authority, in experience, and in training, or whatever else it may be in life. Now, the catechism describes these things, in particular age, gifts, and those over us in authority, but it also describes and uses the word superior, and that’s what I want to get to. That’s the title, of superiors and inferiors.
But why the language of superior and inferior? Why indeed? Because there are things in life that reflect that reality. So, age, gifts, and authority, the three categories the larger catechism gives us, we might want to divide the pie differently, that’s fine, but I’m going to use age and gifts. Age is obvious, that not everyone is the same age.
Even in our day and age, we recognize that age has advantages. We give them advantages in our society. We open the door for them.
In the old days, if you came into the room, the kids had to stand up and give them a seat. So, the aging. Something along those lines.
We recognize, even without the Bible, that there are those who are superior in age, and thus we respect and honor them in certain different ways. Of course, different cultures do different things to reflect that honor. Gifts as well, not just age, but gifts.
It’s a very broad category, the word gift, because it emphasizes the grace of God and His goodness towards us, not just with respect to our soul only, but with respect to the talents and abilities and opportunities granted us by His providence. They are given to us. They are gifts.
They are not ours inherently. I was born smart. I was born very athletic.
I was born whatever. Yeah, sure. But that’s because God gave it to you.
You didn’t get to choose your genetics. You didn’t get to choose your parents or your schooling. God did through His providence and through other means and secondary means, as we’ve talked about in Sunday School class.
And so, the talents, experience, and training, and everything else, and we all know that somebody’s better and smarter and faster than us, somewhere, somehow. We would say they are superior to us in talents, perhaps. In insights.
In height. Something as simple as height. He’s taller than I am.
That has great advantage. People become, of course, envious of that. I wish I was tall.
And then you find out, well, tall people have back problems as well. And they have other issues. So, being superior and better in age, or here, gifts, is relative, isn’t it? It’s not absolute.
And then, authority. One may be in authority over you, your parents, the president. In fact, you may be better at domestic policy than the president, but guess what? You’re not the president.
And he is what? Over you. He is your superior. People forget that.
They want to mix these categories. It’s completely different. It’s a political, a social, political, legal position of superiority or being over you in this manner.
It matches reality, in other words. The larger catechism describing and talking about superiors in age, in gifts, in authority, maps what we see in the rest of the world. It does describe everyday experience.
Look at it this way. What are the synonyms for superior? Over us. Above.
Better. Higher. First.
There’s also shorthands for the word superior. The head. The boss.
The manager. The principal. The superintendent.
The ruler. The supervisor. Or other names.
Parent. Older sibling. Leader of a club.
Leader of a band. The coach. We don’t use the word superior there.
We use other words, but we have the same idea, don’t we? That they are over us. That they have something that we do not have. And we must therefore acknowledge that and submit to it one way or another.
Of course, that changes by circumstance. All these titles describe superiors because it’s part of life. Age cannot be avoided.
Gifts are unevenly distributed. And someone is always over us in authority. That’s just what we are, brothers and sisters.
And I know the American mindset hates that. To the nth degree. Think of your own lives.
You have a job. You have a boss. Your boss is your superior.
At the same time, you may be an expert at a task at your job. Naturally, you expect people to at least pay attention, to use you, to respect that you are better at this particular task than other people. Why? Because you are superior in that task.
And obviously, being superior in a task at the same time doesn’t mean you’re a better man. We know lots of people who are perhaps very good at a job, but are terrible human beings, we like to say. The two don’t always go together, but the point is, they exist.
There are people over us in talent, on the job, in authority, as a boss. By age, you may be older than your boss, you may be more talented than your boss, but guess what? He’s still your boss. And that grinds at you, doesn’t it? Now, that language, those categories fit common sense.
The world around us. What about the Bible? We have a proof text here from the Catechism. There are a few of them, I’m not going to go through all of them.
First, the word father is used to describe a master craftsman, which means why he’s superior to you in gifts. We read this in, of all places, Genesis 4, in the opening part of the formation of the world, and then after the fall, we find out mankind is growing throughout the world, and part of that growth is a mastering of the things of this world. So we read in verse 20 of chapter 4 of Genesis, and Adah bore Jabal.
He was what? The father of all those who dwell in tents and have livestock. Now, just reading it, you have to conclude, well, that means all the other families didn’t have livestock. No, no, no.
By father, he means he’s the master craftsman of livestock. He’s the master rancher. And so people come to him to learn the best way to handle animals.
That’s what it means by father. And we see this more clearly in verse 21. His brother’s name was what? Remember this? Jubal.
Jubilee? Anybody? He was the father of all those who play the harp and flute. You want to learn how to play the harp and flute? You go to Jabal. He will teach you.
He is the master craftsman. He is the father of that instrument. So you see the Bible uses that language.
Showing us that the idea of the 5th commandment is broader than just biological connections. And as for Zarah, she also bore Tubal-Cain, an instructor of every craftsman in bronze and in iron. And the sister of Tubal-Cain was Naaman, and continues on.
So you have three examples there in Genesis 4 where these men are called fathers. And there, in verse 22, he’s called an instructor of every craftsman of bronze and iron. Call him instructor or call him a father, it doesn’t matter.
The point is he’s superior. He’s better. And he’s above you.
And you acknowledge that, so you go to him to learn more. Unless you’re prideful, then you just ignore him and do your own thing. Age.
Older men and women are superior to you, of course, in age. And that’s usually slash experience often, right? 1 Timothy 5.1. We went over this a few weeks ago. Do not rebuke an older man.
But what? Exhort him as a father. In the church, we’re told to exhort him as a father, although he’s not biologically a father. Younger men as brethren, older women as mothers, and younger as sisters of all purity.
Approach them differently, like you would approach a family member. You’d be more considerate. You’d be more caring.
That kind of idea is what’s expressed here. Not that you don’t ever say anything negative. You obviously have to do something to admonish him to stop the sin in this case in verse 1. But you do it differently than you would with employment, with the president.
More like your family. And then, of course, lastly, the word idea of superior and the word father is used in Genesis 4-5 8. This is an interesting passage here. So now it was not you who sent me here, but God.
And he has made me a father to Pharaoh and the lord of Isla’s house and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. And so Joseph was probably younger by age, but he had the gifts, the wisdom and insight and so he was set with the authority to match those gifts as a father over Pharaoh and a ruler over all the land of Egypt. He became a superior.
And in 1 Corinthians 12, I’d like to remind us that we read there a long list of descriptions there of different gifts of the spirit. And he warns the Corinthians who were what? Prideful and arrogant. Look at the gifts that I got.
I got to heal people. I got to speak in tongues. And you didn’t, buddy.
And he tells them what? They were different gifts, but the same spirit. Different talents, but the same lord. And he continues on to show them, look, God brings us all together in this harmony of the body of Christ, that not everyone is an eye, not everyone is a foot, not everyone is a hand and not everyone is a head.
Y’all have your place. And of course that’s a hierarchy often in distribution of gifts. Some are better at one thing than another than you are.
And they are superior in that domain. And we’re called to accept it, not be proudful about it. So it is biblical teaching.
That there is age, there are talents and gifts, and there is simple authority. The difference therein. And the language is often used of father or hinted at that.
Or mother or sister and brother in the case of the church. Let’s drill down into the word superior. Our confession, that is the catechism uses it a few times.
Now of course by superior it does not mean pride. You think of that word, at least I do. I hear, oh I’m superior to you.
Kids would do that. They don’t usually use the word superior. What word do they use? I’m better than you.
Same idea, right? Forget the word. It’s the same idea. I’m more concerned about the idea of course.
The substance of the matter. So it’s not about pride, but characteristics such as age and gifts and authority. Naturally age often includes experience.
In a marriage, for example, the wife may be superior by age, yet she’s still not the head of the home. Doesn’t change anything. She may be younger by age, yet superior in talents like finances compared to the husband.
And if he’s wise enough, he’ll acknowledge that and use her. Governor Bradford, for example, one of the Puritans in the 1600s, had his wife handle the finances. He had a large estate.
They had the servants and he would be gone as a magistrate dealing with things around the shire. They call them shires over there. And helping out.
So she stayed home and she took care of that. The word superior also indicates of course authority, church leaders, the commonwealth or society, the city, the county, the state, and the nation is how we have the hierarchy in America. Different societies do it differently.
Schools, you have superior. Businesses, clubs, everything. Anywhere in life, if you want to have some kind of organization amongst humans, you’ve got to have a superior.
Someone to charge. If you have what we did as kids sometimes, we’d try to get games together in the neighborhood. We ended up having what? Too many chiefs and not enough Indians.
And that’s just a cause for problems, wasn’t it? We recognize this, again, by natural instinct without even the Bible telling us. But the Bible makes it clear because our instinct also gets twisted and warped by pride. And so the leaders may be younger, with less experience and gifts, but there’s still what? Authorities and leaders over them, such as the young pastor Timothy.
He said, don’t let them look down on you because of your youth. Because you are a young man, comparatively speaking. But you have the authority of God.
You ought to exercise it correctly in the body of Christ, and hence the rest of the book of Timothy. Now there’s another word, couples, paired with the word superior, and of course that’s the word inferior. That’s, again, offensive to the American years, but it’s just the other side of the coin of superiority.
If there’s someone who’s superior in age, someone else is what? Inferior in age. And again, I’m not using the word, neither are the Puritans, nor our tradition, as some kind of put-down. But as a clear, unambiguous description of a fact that someone is better than you by age, gifts, or authority.
And the sooner we accept that, the sooner life will be a little more easier for us, instead of fighting it, and fighting it, and fighting it. Now I’m not going to use the word inferior to talk about it a lot. It’s assumed it’s the same proof text and everything else.
I’m mostly going to be talking about the category of superior here. So it’s not just the word again, but the idea. We don’t always have to use the word superior when we’re talking about these things.
We have other synonyms, as I pointed out. We struggle with pride in America. Let’s consider it this way.
And so it’s important, I think, to have language that expresses the truth the best that also humbles us. Because we have a lot of pride. We have pride in spades.
And we fight against this concept, because we have what? A democracy! And that political idea has now become a social idea. It’s become a religious idea. So, superior is unequivocal.
It makes it very clear about the Fifth Commandment. But of course, you don’t have to use it all the time, that word. There’s other words to be used.
There’s a history of that usage of superior and inferior. I looked it up as I ran across an article trying to say, well, no one really uses it except for William Gouge or somebody. No, I found a lot of people used it in their systematic theologies.
It was very common back then. Now, pride comes so naturally, and the Fifth Commandment teaches us to submit, to fight against that pride. And one of the largest projects of hubris in our generation, and the prior generation, maybe in the last hundred years, is the project of egalitarianism.
What do I mean by egalitarianism? It is the flattening of all distinctions in life. Egalitarianism is the flattening of all distinctions in life. We’re all equal.
Nobody really believes that. It’s the massive propaganda, gaslighting project of our day and age. Think about it.
The advertisement pushes this. The politicians talk that way. The movies have this.
It’s even affected the churches. Flattening out moral distinctions, so the righteous and the sin are the same thing. We live, brother, I’m told, we live in a secular pluralistic society, so everything’s the same on the same moral level, and you can’t say no and push against that as a Christian.
You’re supposed to accept and live this way. It’s all the same. A social flattening of all distinctions.
The youth is always on par with the aged. I don’t care how experienced you are. The youth is just as equal to the old in our society, or the other way around.
They’re just flattening all these kinds of distinctions. Political flattening as well. Everyone is equally competent to vote or equally competent to lead.
That is simply not the case. We all know this because we run across a lot of them already. It’s a lie.
It’s one of the great lies of our age. Egalitarianism. To flatten all distinctions destroys, therefore, differences, and that brings a danger in itself.
An obvious danger to Christians often, but not always so obvious to Christians. Treating women like men, in the military, for example. The obvious problem context would be, I don’t know, the military? Firemen? They’re just not as strong as a man.
I recently watched a video of a woman having to do the scale down. You have the rope. She’s in the army.
You’ve got to tie it around you. You’ve got to go down like this with the hand behind your back. She kept flopping and falling.
She was freaking out. Yeah, it’s pretty scary. Didn’t probably have a lot of upper body strength.
You’ve got to have the strength to do that. Women just simply don’t have the comparable to a man. That’s just how God made it.
I’m sorry. And we fight against it. And we keep fighting against it.
And complaining about it. And all it does is bring danger. What kind of a fireman? The best! What kind of a military man? The best! What’s the best involved? At the very least, massive amounts of strength and endurance.
I want you to be able to carry me down the stairs as a fireman. I don’t think a single woman in this room could do that. Even with a fireman carry.
Because my weight is so heavy as a dead man over the shoulder. I’m very heavy. Your dead weight is very heavy.
It causes harm and danger. It’s just setting us up for failure. It’s horrifying.
It puts women in a very bad position too. Putting them in these dangerous positions of course puts everyone else in danger around them. It’s as simple as that.
They’ve already done conduct. They’ve already conducted military studies on these things. And sure enough, the men get in trouble because they’re trying to protect the women.
Combat. Part of it is instinctual. We’re told, no, this thing is instinctual.
It’s all about training. And how you were raised. No, there’s a natural way of doing things that were built that way.
Brothers and sisters. And we fight it. Even in the church.
We’re just told somehow you’ve got to fight that peer pressure of society and you’ll become, a woman will become a man. A man will become a woman. And we see where that’s going.
Treating men like women is also another problem. Boys need male leadership in male spaces. They just simply do.
You don’t expect me to come up to a woman and come up slam them on the back. How was your week this? How did it go this week? How you doing? You don’t hit a woman like that. But you can hit a man.
I’ve been hit. You’ve been hit. We expect that.
And people don’t really think about it, I suppose. But we have seen it. We’ve experienced it.
I don’t think we think about why that’s the case. Men are physical because we’re expected to be physical when the chips are down. Who’s going to defend your house? The man.
I want this 200 pound guy who’s got three times the upper body strength as a woman, even down to the 99th percentile of men, to stop that guy coming to my house. Not this little 5’4″, 5’3″, woman. She’s not going to do it.
It’s a joke. All the movies are jokes. We like to watch the Marvel series.
We just finished it up. I have an edited version. And yeah, I mean, it’s fun because you know it’s all make-believe.
Women can’t do that stuff. They can’t beat up guys three times their size. It’s impossible.
But our culture lies about it. With a straight face and calls you crazy for wondering what in the world is going on. Fight it, brothers and sisters.
Don’t put yourself in that position. Men need it. They need examples.
Babysitters, teachers, solo parents, tutors, doctors. There’s a list I ran across recently. That list I just read, part of it.
Babysitters, teachers, solo parents, tutors, doctors, etc. are dominated by women. Women leadership.
The only place men can find, boys can find men and male leadership and guys that will not coddle them and push them back and say, get up, stop crying. It’s like coaches, religious leaders and I’m not really going to count the scouts anymore because gay men don’t count. They need a rough house and learn the proper use and control of aggression because they have it intuitively.
And thirdly, another example, treating dangerous, crazy people like they’re normal. We have that in spades in Denver now. You know it.
I’ve been to the places in Denver where they try to help the homeless. The vast majority of them are on drugs or alcohol. I did it as a kid with my father and it hasn’t changed since the 80s.
It’s just gotten worse. Now that we have, apparently, mushroom. We can sell mushrooms now.
And they’re like, this is really normal. This is okay. It is not normal.
It’s not okay. It’s dangerous. There’s a difference there.
That’s what egalitarianism is. It’s all the same. It doesn’t matter.
It’s harming us. And so I believe the language is superior, that word superior and of course inferior, should stay in our catechisms and in our vocab, although again, you don’t have to use it all the time and hit someone over the head with it. Because it’s a bulwark in our language against egalitarianism.
It’s plain and simple. Families, especially children, for example, older children, teenagers, even young kids, may be what? Better or superior than their parents. Like another illustration here.
I’ve got them all coming left to right now. That piano kid. Like four or five, just, wow, the kid’s a genius.
And what do the parents do? Are they envious? They may be envious, but most parents are what? Proudful. And they’re thankful. This is wonderful.
This is great. Being superior doesn’t mean you have to complain about it because you’re the inferior. That’s the point.
You should what? Rejoice in their gifts. We’re told that in the New Testament. Rejoice with one another.
Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. When I’ve run across this problem, even in reformed circles, they’re like embarrassed about the language. They don’t seem to understand the time and seasons in which we find ourselves in.
It’s really strange. It’s not helpful at all. Churches need reminding as well.
Egalitarianism is here, growing in our churches, so we need this strong language. We don’t want, for example, what happens in this case with egalitarianism, it sneaks into the church and they’ll say something along the lines of, I can’t find a proof text in the New Testament that says women shouldn’t write commentaries on the Bible. I mean, just saying it that way, you’re like, what? Why would you want a woman to write a commentary? No, pastors should be doing that.
Theologians, professionals, pastors, those are what? Men. But we do know there’s an answer to that question. The means, causes, occasions, and provocations thereof.
You’ve heard that before. That’s completely missing in our domain in the reformed circles. They’re just like, I can’t find a Bible verse, so what? Clearly, the logical implication is that’s the domain of the pastor, of the theologian, which is a male position.
And you’re trying to do an end run around it because you really did swallow egalitarianism. You just haven’t recognized it yet, or at least you haven’t told me yet, in the churches. What is the relationship of superiors to inferiors? That’s a big question, and the larger catechism gives you a number of answers to that.
What Is the Relationship of Superior and Inferior?
I’m not going to go through all that. I want to highlight a particular thing here, one of the questions. They talk about this.
Now the first thing, before going through that question there, the larger catechism. Relationships, of course, in general, change over time. Age changes, gifts change, authority changes, by context, and the like.
And, of course, you can be simultaneously better and inferior and superior, but for different reasons, different contexts and questions. The fifth commandment, the language there describes such a relationship. Superior is there, but it doesn’t use the word superior.
The Bible doesn’t use the word superior. The Bible also doesn’t use the word trinity, but that’s okay. It uses father and mother.
Father and mother, these are comforting words for most of us. That father and mother, of course, already, you’re a baby, you’re born, and what happens? You’re in a bad position as an American because your parents are by age, by gifts, and by authority you’re superior across the board on virtually everything. You’re helpless.
You’re hopeless. What’s going to happen to you? The picture, and that’s why God uses the language of fathers and mothers, is to show the care and consideration in which the authorities over you, both in age and gifts and just raw authority, should treat you as though you were family. The catechism describes it this way.
Question 125. Why are superiors styled father and mother? That’s the question. Why use the word father and mother? Superiors are styled father and mother both to teach them and all duties towards their inferiors like natural parents to express what? Love and tenderness to them according to their several relations.
Those bad old Puritans using the word love and tenderness. Because that’s what parents do. It’s a different mindset back then than what we have today.
Think about it. They are saying, and they believe, and they urge this upon their populace, that not just parents, but your boss. Your king should come to you as a father to a child with love and tenderness, with respect of course to their position.
It’s going to look different as a king. It’s going to look different as a boss. I don’t expect the king to hug you, right? But it’s still there.
That’s a different mindset than the American mindset. I don’t see that in the American mindset. They don’t come to us like they typically kind of pretend they care, right? Well, kind of a big kumbaya party.
No, you don’t really care. You’re not really acting that way. When they say love and tenderness, they don’t just mean emoting.
They mean actually acting out and doing something that shows that they care and understand your difficult position as an employee, as a worker, or as a citizen. That’s what they mean. Kids don’t want parents emoting all over them.
They want them to do something to help them. That’s how you show love and tenderness. So that makes all the difference in the world.
More bosses, more leaders, more rulers acted like fathers and mothers and treated those under them more tenderly with consideration instead of squeezing out every ounce of work they could get out of them. We’ve got to make the bottom line every day, of every minute, of every second. American capitalism really pushes that, doesn’t it? I don’t think that’s healthy.
We’re seeing some of the effects of that. We’d want a boss like that, wouldn’t we? On the flip side, of course, you have a responsibility to work hard and not just, well, woe is me. No, it’s reciprocal.
What About Superiors and Inferiors Today?
Both of you, inferior and superior, got to help one another and treat each other better. So what about superiors and inferiors today? I talked a little bit about that, like in the church, for example. In society, of course, the danger is democracy, finding everything out with the political idea of democracy.
I know there’s a distinction between that and republic, but this is where we are today. It’s no longer considered a political or legal idea, but a social and religious ideal. That we’re all equal across the board, no matter how different, how tall, how short, how fast, whatever.
And they fight against it over and over again. And we know, of course, just because adults can vote doesn’t mean they really know what they’re doing when they vote. In the church, people misuse the Bible to tear down social and biological distinctions.
One way I already told you is I can’t find a proof text for that. You’re not going to find a lot of proof texts about male and female differences, sorry. I’m not going to argue with that.
Galatians 3.28 is a greatly misused Bible verse. Galatians 3.28, you will recognize, you don’t have to go there. There is neither Jew nor Greek.
There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male or female. You are all one in Christ Jesus.
Can you see from egalitarian mindset where everything is flattened out in society a misuse of that passage? And, of course, they misuse it selectively in conservative circles because they clearly believe there’s a difference between a man and a woman. The context is very clear. It is our spiritual union with Christ He speaks of.
It doesn’t matter what you are, you can be saved and you are united with Christ. But that doesn’t change the fact that when you are born again, you’re still a woman. And you will still think like a woman and act like a woman in a way that’s distinguishable from other people called men.
Being saved doesn’t change that. But, of course, if you think you’re a Jew and you’re special, Paul has to remind them, no, you’re not special with respect to salvation and going to heaven. Just as much as the Gentile can be saved, you can be saved and vice versa.
And the slave and the master and the man and the woman, it doesn’t matter. That’s what he’s talking about, the union with Christ. But the union with Christ does not eradicate society.
If it did, why am I reading through 1 Timothy where he literally argues the church shouldn’t help the widows, the family should be taking care of widows on ordinary conditions. Grace reinforced nature does not undermine it. People misuse it.
So Calvin wrote about the misuse where people in his day and age, usually the Anabaptists, are running around saying hey, the king is a Christian, he’s my brother, I’m his brother, we’re brothers, why am I his subject? And he describes that as being unthankful and wicked. And therefore he writes in his sermon on 1 Timothy, and therefore let us consider our unthankfulness and wickedness in that every one of us could find in his heart to be stood up to despise them that rule over us that are better in age, that are better in gifts, that are better in authority. We could find some way to despise them.
What? Under a color that our Lord has joined us together. Under the excuse, it looks so godly and holy, aren’t we all brothers in Christ? Can’t she start doing male things in the church now? What? Where’d that come from? You know where it came from. They’re showing the true colors.
They’re actually egalitarians to one degree or another. Then some, the Lord God made superiors and inferiors. It’s the way nature is, it’s the way life is, and that’s okay.
It should be accepted that if you are young, it’s going to take time to get experience in age. If you are gifted, don’t brag about it. Know it’s from God and it’s to be used for other people’s goods.
And if you have authority even in little things, it should be used to help those below you to be considerate and to love them as a family. And it will remind me of this here in Hymn 221 that I marked here. That we speak this as churches and sing this it’s in accordance to the Bible.
O Christ, when thou shalt come and love remember me. This is O Light that knew no dawn. The third, fourth line.
O Christ, when thou shalt come and love remember me. And in thy kingdom, by thy grace grant me a humble servant’s place. Your humble servant’s place is where you are right now, man or woman.
Under another person who has, and other people who have better gifts than you. Unless you’re 105, someone’s older than you, someone’s over you, has better gifts than everything else. It’s just the way life is.
Accept it. God has answered that prayer already, brothers and sisters. And we need to stand firm upon that and thank the Lord because that’s how He designed it and therefore it’s for our good.
Let us pray. Indeed God Almighty may our hearts contemplate these things and see perhaps where egalitarianism has sunk into our lives and snuck in the back door as it were, trying to make excuses where we should do things that we know at the end of the day we shouldn’t be doing. Because we are under another, with respect to age, gifts, or authority.
Our Lord and Savior help us who do have that requisite age, gift, or authority to use our rights as fathers and as mothers, as those who love those who are underneath us and who are influenced by us. God it should be influenced for good. May we use what you’ve given us, in other words God, for the good of one another and always for your glory we pray.
Amen.