The Restoration of God's Pattern

The restoration of God's pattern of creation as seen in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 takes place in stages - in particular the Old Testament, the New Testament, the time of Jesus, the time of the apostles and the New Creation. This message deals with the Old Testament.

The Old Testament's attitude toward women and their role and relationship with men was a gigantic leap forward from that of the ancient world of Egypt, Babylon and Assyria. But it did not get back to God's creation order. For example, polygamy was accepted by God in the Old Testament. Abraham was a polygamist, so was king David and king Solomon. God's original pattern was monogamy which means being married to one wife. God never intended that a man has more than one wife. So the Old Testament was less than God's best because it fell short of God's original order.

Paradox of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2

The same paradox or ambiguity between Gen. 1 and Gen. 2 carried all the way through the Old Testament. On the one hand the responsibility of leadership was given to the men. But on the other hand the women were treated better in Israel than in the other nations of the ancient world.

The maleness of the Patriarchal Society

Throughout the Old Testament we have what we called the Patriarchal society, one which the male took responsibility and in which therefore inheritance was passed down through the male. So both the responsibility and the privilege were given to the men.

Right from the beginning God said, "(I Am) the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ...." (Exodus 3:15). He did not call Himself the God of Sarah, God of Rebekah, God of Rachel. God had tied Himself to the names of those three men. We called them the patriachs - because those three men began the people of God. And it was a male-led people of God. God is the God of the men. The 12 tribes of Israel were named after Jacob's 12 sons. There was not a single tribe named after Jacob's daughter. The whole maleness of the Old Testament society is very obvious.

Deborah, a prophetess and a Judge

There is a very interesting story in the Book of Judges (Judges 4). All the seven Judges raised up by God except Deborah were men. Not only Deborah was a woman; she was a prophetess as well. In fact from the beginning of the Old Testament to the New Testament the prophetic ministry was opened to woman. God often used women to speak to His people, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. Examples are, Miriam, Moses' sister (Ex. 15:20), Huldah (2 Kings 22:14) and the four daughters of Philip (Acts 21:8, 9).

In the case of Deborah, she brought the Words of the Lord that danger was threatening the people of God. She called for a man named Barak to deploy troops for battle. But Barak refused to be a man and he replied Deborah, "If you will go with me, then I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go" (Judges 4:8, NKJV). He was abdicating his responsibility as a man to protect Deborah. God was so angry with Barak that He gave Deborah another prophecy (Verse 9) indicating that a woman would defeat God's enemy and the name of Barak would go down in history in disgrace!

Eldership in the Old Testament

Eldership in the Old Testament was the male responsibility for the people of God.

When Moses needed help to carry responsibilty for the 3 million people he brought out of Egypt he heeded his father-in-law's advice and selected "able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness" (Ex. 18:21, 22) and apointed them as elders.

Many nations of the ancient world had queens - queen of Sheba for example (1 Kings 10). But Israel was never to have a queen because the king was to represent the divine side of the divine-human relationship (please read my previous messages). The king was the representative of God and so Israel could only have kings. The wives of the kings of Israel were never called queens.

God's special concern for widows and orphans

God has a special concern for widows and the fatherless and apparently He has no concern for widowers. He shows not just a concern for the bereaved but also a concern for those whose bereavement has robed them of a man. It is for those who do not have a man to provide for them and to protect them that God has a special concern. This includes the single ladies as well as the fatherless.

God seems to say to those He shows concern, "I make a promise - the the widows I will be a husband and to the fatherless child I will be a father". But He never says to the widower that He will be his wife.

A good example is the raising of a widow's son:

"And when He (Jesus) came near the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother; and she was a widow" (Luke 7:12).

The widow was losing her only son and Jesus had compassion on her for the reason that that she was losing her man.

Similarly, Lazarus, whose sisters were Mary and Martha, was dead (John 11) and Jesus come to raise him up because these women were losing their man.

So Jesus was not haphazard in raising the dead. He was providing a man for those who are losing their man. It was all because of the Jewish background of Jesus and He understood what the Old Testament taught about the responsibility of men.

Women's place of honor and respect

There are a lot of Old Testament Scriptures about the patriarchs' wives. The three of them, Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel were so attractive to look at that when they went with their husbands to a foreign country, the husbands, in order to protect themselves, had to say the wives were their sisters. Abraham told a half lie to Abimelech that Sarah was his sister. He said this so as to save his own life (Gen. 20). What Abraham said however also a half truth because Sarah was his half-sister. Isaac did exactly the same with his wife Rebekah (Gen. 26:7).

The Scripture says that the patriarchs' wives were attractive to look at and attractive to live with. In fact these two qualities are picked up at the New Testament as models for Christian wives.

Solomon and his women

I thought solomon was the wisest man in the Old Testament but I do not believe it now. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines and most of them were foreign women who turned his heart to follow other gods (1 Kings 11:1 - 4). For this reason I will not say Solomon was wise. He broke God's Law and married outside the people of God. This Law is also repeated in the New Testament. If you are a Christian you cannot marry someone who is not a Christian.

Solomon had wisdom for everybody except for himself. He learned wisdom in a hard way - through all his women. You can read about his wisdom in the three books he wrote - Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon. Someone said solomon actually wrote 3000 proverbs but we have only a sample of which in the Book of Proverbs. He wrote 1005 songs but we have only one of his songs. I believe he wrote a song for every one of his women. The Song of Solomon was the only one published because it was about the woman that God chose for him!

You can almost guess Solomon's age by reading the books he wrote. He was an old man when he wrote Ecclesiastes.

Chapter 12, the last Chapter says, "Remember your Creator before the silver cord is loosed, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the well. Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it" (Eccl. 12:6, 7, NKJV).

The Song of Solomon is a young man's poetry. Solomon wrote this when he was a young man deeply in love with a young girl. But allegorically, this book pictures God' betrothed wife as depicted by Hosea (Hos. 2:19, 20). It also pictures the Bride of Christ. As human life finds its hightest fulfillment in the love of man and woman so spiritual life finds its highest fulfillment in the love of God for his people and Christ for His Church.

When you read Proverbs you will read about Solomon's experience with all the women in his life, both good and bad. All the first Chapters are all about the bad women he got mixed up with. But he finished up with a beautiful Chapter concerning an ideal wife.

The virtuous wife

"Who can find a virtuous wife? For her worth is far above rubies. The heart of her husband safely trusts her; so he will have no lack of gain" (Proverbs 31:10, 11, NKJV, emphasis added).

The word "virtuous" comes from the Hebrew word "chayil" which means resourceful, able, worthy, ideal and fine. Literally the question asked is "Who can find a fine wife?"

As you read Proverbs 31 notice that the ideal wife puts her home and family first (Verse 15). But she is not limited to do only housework. She goes out to work, she trades and she does business and makes a profit. She actually manufacturing things and sells them. And then as if that does not fill her time she goes out to the poor and the needy (Verse 20). She does the work of mercy all over the place. Surely this a marvelous description of a very full and busy life for a wife.

But when you read it again you will find something missing in her daily life. She does not attend any women's fellowship meeting; she does not attend any prayer meeting or Bible study group or open her house for home-cell group. She is much too busy in three more importnat areas - her home and family, her business and work outside, and her care for the poor and needy. Furthermore, "her husband is known in the gates, when he sits among the elders of the land" (Verse 23). In other words, her husband holds an honored position among the elders. The virtuous wife knows that it is the responsibility of her husband to teach her the Scripture and any spiritual things at home if she wants to learn.

The trouble of the married Christian woman going to endless Church meetings is that she got so far ahead of her husband that both her husband and she are no longer traveling together as one flesh in the spiritual way.

General Comments

The Old Testament was still not God's pattern of role and relationship between the male and the female - there was still plenty of unbalance. For example in the Old Testament a man could divorce his wife but the wife could not divorce her husband (Deut. 24:1 - 4). This unequal justice would be put right in the New Testament.

There were other inequalities in the Old Testament. Sometimes the wives were listed together with the men's property:

"You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shell not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's" (Ex. 20:17, NKJV, emphasis added).

That is the kind of language you will not find in the New Testament. Even though under Moses' Law there were unequal justice, but it was a gigantic leap ahead of the contemporary attitude toward women. One reason is that Christians are not under the Law of Moses. We have the highter Law of Christ which takes us right back to God's original pattern. This we shall see in my next message.