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Sermon Outline
The Truth about What the Bible Teaches Concerning Women Preachers |
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By the late H. M. Riggle Pioneer Evangelist, Pastor, Author From The Cream of My Life’s Work, pp. 62-65 |
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Texts: Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak. . . . It is a shame for women to speak in the church. 1 Cor. 14:34, 35 Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but be in silence. 1 Tim. 2:11, 12
I. To arrive at what Paul meant we must apply the law of context and comparison. A. No correct or true doctrine can be built upon a single portion of Scripture apart from the rest. B. The only safe rule is to compare Scripture with Scripture. C. Every text must be interpreted in the light of its historical setting. D. All truth harmonizes, never contradicts. 1. A truth cannot contradict a truth. 2. Any theory built upon a portion of Scripture that is contradicted by another portion of Scripture is absolutely wrong. II. What Paul did not teach in these Scriptures. A. That women are inferior creatures to men. 1. He places them side by side on the same level, 1 Cor. 11:12. 2. The woman is the glory of the man, 1 Cor. 11:12. 3. She holds the most responsible place in the world. a.) She is the mother of all great men the world ever produced. b.) Her example and teaching, her influence, molds the lives of men. c.) “All that I am, my mother made me.”—John Quincy Adams d.) “Men are what their mothers made them.”—Emerson e.) “One good mother is worth a thousand schoolmasters.”—George Herbert 4. She shares equally with the man. a.) In creation and in the fall and its effects. b.) In the atonement, its blessings and benefits. c.) In the Pentecostal baptism, Acts 1:12-14; 2:1-4; 2:16-18. d.) In the ordinances of the church. e.) In divine healing. f.) In all the blessings of the gospel. g.) Paul elsewhere shows that woman shares equally with man in the privileges of the church, Gal. 3:28. B. That women are prohibited from taking active part in public religious services. 1. If taken in an unqualified sense, these texts would debar women from praying, singing, or testifying in public church services: “Women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak.” 2. Yet Paul taught that she may both pray and prophesy in church, 1 Cor. 11:5; 1 Cor. 14:31. 3. Some of the greatest leaders of men have been women: Deborah, Miriam, etc. C. That women cannot preach the gospel. 1. Notice that preaching is not mentioned in the text. “Usurping authority over the man” is not in the nature of preaching. 2. Prophesying or preaching is speaking “unto men to edification, and exhortation, and com- fort,” 1 Cor. 14:3. a.) In this, women have the same right as men, Acts 2:16-18; Acts 21:9. 3. In Paul’s own company were women who “labored with him in the gospel,” Phil. 4:3. 4. Priscilla, the wife of Aquila, was a preacher. Compare Acts 18:2; 18:26; Rom. 16:3. 5. Phoebe held a place of responsibility in the church at Cenchrea, Rom. 16:1-2. 6. John’s Second Epistle was addressed to an “elect lady” who was responsible for a congre- gation of saints whom John familiarly calls “children.” Read all of 2 John and compare with 1 John 2:12. 7. My observation covering forty years in the ministry shows without doubt that God by His Spirit calls, qualifies, and uses women in preaching the gospel just as must as men. “There is no difference.” III. What Paul does teach. A. Domestic or home duties are frequently classed together with church duties. B. In the homes of the saints a woman is out of place who assumes absolute headship and “teaches and usurps authority over man.” 1. Paul qualifies this by saying, “As saith also the law.” a. Gen. 3:16 is where the apostle cites, “Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” b. Sarah called Abraham lord. 2. Paul taught the same thing elsewhere, Eph. 5:22-24. 3. This does not mean that she belongs at her husband’s feet, but gracefully she stands by his side, honors him, and keeps her place as a faithful, dutiful wife. C. As applied to the public church service. 1. The apostle is warning against taking liberties that might cause confusion, 1 Cor. 14:33. 2. Preaching the pure gospel never has this effect. 3. I was a missionary in the Orient a number of years. It is a custom to this day for the man to ask the preacher questions while he is speaking. It is considered a shame for a woman to interrupt a public speaker. 4. That is exactly what Paul forbade. Instead of speaking up and asking the preacher, “Let them ask their husbands at home,” 1 Cor. 14:35.
A Pioneer Woman Preacher’s Experience
The first place that [Mary Cole] and her brother visited was Salisbury, MO., where a holiness convention was being held. On the Sunday after their arrival the minister in charge said that the Lord had given him no message that morning but doubtless had to someone else. . . . [Mary] was on her feet in a moment with a message from heaven, burning words that went right into the hearts of the people. . . . Old men bowed themselves and wept like children, and sinners came flocking to the altar. In her early work she met considerable opposition to women preaching, but the Lord helped her to drive the opposers out of their false positions and show them were misusing the Scriptures. At Sturgeon, MO, her second place of meeting, women had not been allowed to preach. She was told they could sing and pray and testify a little. Some of the ministers cautioned her not to preach; others said, “Go ahead, Sister Cole, God will see you through. Whenever she would contemplate speaking, God would bless her soul; but when she would decide to keep still, it seemed as if she would be paralyzed. Finally she decided to take the floor and God spoke through her in power. The Methodists did not license women to preach, but when the preachers found that God was using her in the salvation of souls and that she was not especially interested in building up any denomination, she had an abundance of offers to preach. In fact, she would be sometimes sent for as an attraction to draw crowds. --A. L. Byers, in Biographical Sketches: Pioneers of the Church of God Reformation, Vol. 1, p. 21
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