Season two of Love in Context podcast welcomes you. Get ready for engaging unscripted conversations
with your hosts, Ben and Spencer. Our mission remains unchanged to explore the Bible through
the powerful lens of love. In this new season, we'll embark on a journey together, unearthing
fresh insights and gaining deeper understanding of how we can love God and live out our faith
in practical ways. So let's dive into this season of Love in Context, where love in the
context of the Bible intersect to transform our lives. Welcome to season two of Love in
Context. We made it this far. We made it this far. I think we said in our promo, all two
of our listeners are still listening. We might have three now. Yeah, it's Pastor Nick and
his wife and they're like making a whole nother season just for us. Well, and his wife only
listens because he makes her listen. Yeah. Yeah. Because mostly I think she wants to
find out if we mentioned her in the episode or not. So she can argue for us to pull it
down. Self-defense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're getting started with our first mini-series
of the year and it's going to be talking about women in the Bible. And so we thought who's
more qualified to talk about women than two middle-aged guys. And our rolls are eyes.
During the series, we actually have a number of women who are going to come on and join
us and talk about women throughout the Bible. So this week and next week, we have Laura
Cronk who is an illustrious member of our congregation. Yes. And we're very excited
that she is here and she's just going to have a conversation with us about some things pertaining
to women in the Bible. I told her to interrupt Ben as many times as she can. I will forewarn
you though that when we did have Pastor Sarah on here, I did put in, got the mom look, got
the mom look. If we do it enough times, I'll start like tallying it on the video and so
people will actually know. When you have five kids, the mom look works. Yeah. So Laura,
would you tell people a little bit about yourself? I'm 66 years old. That means I'm pushing 70.
I believe that means 66 years young. Oh, okay. And I've lived in Alaska since 1994, a long
time. Yeah. Got saved when I was 18 or 19. She? Unless I got saved before I did, my husband.
And yeah, he was instrumental in planting seeds that led me to the Lord. Yeah. And been
serving the Lord ever since. Been at First Assembly for ever since we moved to town.
Yeah. Yeah. I knew you when you were in junior high. You were going to say smaller, but that
wasn't technically true. Say it in little or, you know, when you were in young verb.
Yeah. I went to school with two of your kids. You did? Yeah. That was a lot of fun. They
may be watching now and being like, oh boy, what is going on here now? You know? So we're
going to be getting into, we're going to be getting into the foundation of this series,
which is we're going to talk about like, how does God set up women from the very beginning?
So we're actually going to be recapping some things we talked about last season and some
new things that we didn't talk about last season, but we're in the text of what we were
talking about. We're going to actually just dive right in. And you know, not unlike our
first episode, we're going to talk about Genesis. Yeah. So one of the things we talked about
while we were in Genesis one, the first time is that you actually get to the end of Genesis
one and it says that God makes mankind in his image. It says he made mankind in the
image of God. In the image of God, he made mankind male and female. He created them.
Right. And the whole context there is that it's, there's division, but it's actually
singular. So it's not man is made in the image of God. Man and woman together represent the
image of God. Yes. Together, we actually represent the image of God in the world. And that's
the precedent set up from Genesis one. And we think that's really important because the
second that you forget that your theology starts to get really twisted. We said very
early on, it's shocking how often we start the story in Genesis three. Yeah. Right. We
start the story in Genesis three, forgetting that Genesis one actually exists. Before the
garden, there is this relationship, right? There's this relationship with God and with
humanity. If you actually read it in Genesis one 26, it's you go and you read it and then
you have this precedent where people are like, well, men are supposed to be an authority.
They're supposed to be over the woman. These different theologies that have come out in
Genesis one 26, it says they may rule. They will subdue. They will be fruitful and multiply.
The implication is that men and women do this together. It's not meant to be done separate.
It's meant to be done together. This is the precedent from the very beginning. And so
we want to set the foundation now that this is the story. This is, this is where we're
always trying to get back to Brad gray, who has walking the text.com. We referenced him
a number of times. He has a series he calls the restoration of all things. And he's talking
about how post garden, everything is about coming back to the garden state. And even
in the book of revelation, you have this imagery of garden imagery, people returning to the
garden. So in that everything that we do as Christians is actually to come back to the
original design. It seems counterintuitive then to buy into the fallen design rather
than the God blessed design. Right? Yeah. And the language is actually used in Genesis
for God as your helper and woman as your helper is the same. Yes. It's the, it's the same
language that's used. So, and that sets the stage for the rest of scripture. Yeah. That's
Genesis two 18 on that is the Etzer connecto is the, is the Hebrew. One of the best descriptions
that I've heard. And this is so everybody who listens knows that I'm not a builder.
I'm not a car person, a contract. You just rolled your eyes. Like what didn't say that
you're like, Oh, I know I had to go. I've been on the receiving end of you tried to
describe house problems to me. And I've been like, what are you talking about? Yeah. So
the way that I fix like house problems, car problems with the call Spencer and they get
fixed and as long as you can describe it. Yes, exactly. Well, I say car, car, no good.
That's where Tara comes in. Oh, good. Yeah. So the whole idea of Etzer connecto is, it's
these, this force that opposes, right? Now people think, okay, well that means you're
in opposition. Well, there's a good opposition is bad opposition. Cause when you're building
a house and you're building an A-frame, you have one side on the left and you have one
side of the right and they actually oppose each other in force, but together they make
a structure, right? They actually oppose each other in force. And that's the idea of Etzer
connecto is that you have people in your life who oppose you, but are for you. They're actually
helping you to become something. And ideally in male, female friendships, relationships,
covenantal relationships of like believers, that's what we're actually doing with each
other. When they talk about men, iron sharpens iron. Okay. That's a force that opposes like
you're actually helping to strengthen each other. Right. When, when you set a year marriage,
you should like sometimes you're not going to be wealth. A lot of times you're not going
to be agreement about everything. How long have you been married? I've been married 45
years. So I'm getting to the point where it's not quite as much as it used to be. But there's
plenty of things that you don't just, you just have different opinions on and that's
okay. You learn how to work together. It's almost like being married teaches you how
to love Christians. Well, because if you're, if you're like, wow, I know that I am committed
to loving this person. So we will figure it out. Did you grace and compassion and patience
and yeah, all the things. So God creates humanity, man and woman to be a co-patriots to fulfill
his purpose in the world. And that's the goal from the very beginning. Now, once again,
Genesis three is coming. And so we're going to talk about that probably in this episode,
but before all that, the relationship of man and woman, they're partners that work together.
Right. This is the foundational thing. And so like, when you want to go somewhere, you
always got to know where you're coming from. Right. And then Genesis three happens. And
I want to reference something we talked about last year, which I've becoming more and more
convinced about is that in this section where Adam and Eve, they reach out and they just
say, we want to define good and evil on our own terms. Right. We want to, we want to take
this knowledge of good and evil. We want to have the ability to decide for ourselves.
What is good and evil? Very dangerous in general. Yeah. Which goes back to why you don't want
to eat from that tree. Yeah. Exactly. Why you don't eat fruit. Wait, that's not, that's
that tree, that's that specific tree. Capital T. There's this, there's section where people
say, well, the humanity is given a curse and I have maintained and we discussed and I'm
becoming more convinced that there is not actually a curse of this leaven on mankind.
And especially after talking through Torah, I absolutely believe that to be true because
the snake is cursed to crawl in his belly. And then he says to Adam that the ground is
cursed because of you. Okay. Adam is not cursed, but the ground is cursed because of him. And
then we get into this very interesting piece. Tim Mackey has a great clip. I might put it
in the show notes or he talks about what's going on in Genesis three, but it tells the
man that he says you're going to produce fruit from the field through thorns on thistles
and sweat of your brow. Right. It's going to be difficult now. And then there's this
right after that comes this part where they talk about the women and they say, you're
going to have increased pain in childbirth. That's probably what most people are familiar
with. I mean, that portion of scripture problem is there's a word for childbirth in Hebrew
and that's not the one that's used because childbirth throughout the book of Genesis
is used over and over and over and over again. Like it happens so many times. The word that's
actually used and is used also throughout the New Testament is this word for you're
going to have increased difficulty in getting pregnant. Okay. So then Tim Mackey posits,
he says, now you have this duality of the ground is cursed because of you. So man is
going to have difficulty producing fruit and woman is also going to have difficulty producing
fruit. It is the same issue that they're having in their different spheres. Now I think the
tendency to hear what I just said is that I said that all women need to just bear babies
and all men need to work the field. It's not what I'm talking about because this is patriarchal
language from a long time ago. It's talking in general terms about man and woman. Right.
Yeah. And again, remember that when Genesis was translated from Hebrew to English, they
took a language that had about four to 6,000 words and then translated it into a language
that had about 15,000 at the time. Yeah. So let's go back to what it actually says here.
We'll take our best guess. Yeah. There's a little bit of that. We always want to give
grace to the translators because they do phenomenal work. Yeah. But this word doesn't mean childbirth.
It does mean to get pregnant. Now the interesting thing about that is we just finished at the
end of last season, we finished Deuteronomy. Yeah. And one of the promises that God has
throughout the Torah is he says that if you follow after me, he gives these lists of things
over and over. He says, your fields will produce fruit, your animals will reproduce, and you'll
bear lots of children. Okay. So what is God effectively saying in light of Genesis 3?
What happens when you actually line up your will with his? Rust. That happened, not a
reverse, but the situation you created, this is the effects, will be reversed if you walk
with me. Correct. And then he says, if you don't, your fields are going to die, your
enemies are going to raid you, you're not going to have children. Like you're going
to be under the curse of the ground. Right? Not the curse of humanity, the curse of the
ground. Right? Now, if you listen and you want to say that they have levy to curse on
them, I'm completely fine with that. You can just disagree with me. That's totally fine.
But we should see the imagery of what's going on there. And I think it's super important
because it really helps us understand what does Jesus actually come to do. Because throughout
the rest of the Tanakh, the Old Testament, Israel struggles to follow after God. They
struggle to actually accept that which he's given freely. Right? And what Jesus does is
he fundamentally changes our nature so that we are actually able to receive everything
that God has always wanted to give us. Right? We will talk about that at some point because
it's a really, it's a really so profound. There's a reason why the death, burial, resurrection
of Jesus is a pivotal moment in history for the entire world. Right? God never leaves
us without a way out. And that's always following him and doing his will. I mean, even from
Genesis, even from the beginning, there was, here's your way out. Right. You know, later
when you turn about too. Yeah. We often miscue curses with like punishment. Yeah. Sure. Right.
And those at the root are two different things. Like to be punished is one thing or disciplined
isn't one thing versus to be cursed is a whole, you know, totally another thing. Right. And
so you have to be able to separate those two out. Like there was a punishment and discipline
that happened when we stepped out of Eden. Right. Death, toil of the ground, hard work,
water your brow, all that stuff. Right. That's a discipline. That's a punishment. That's
not a curse. And consequences of your actions. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I was having this conversation
with somebody. They say, well, well, God forgive me if I XYZ. And I said, well, here's the
deal. Like, so let's say that you, you, before you're married, you step out, you get somebody
very good. God will absolutely forgive you for having a relationship outside of marriage.
There still might be a baby. Right. There still might be fractured relationship between
you and this person. If you don't do or do not work things out. Right. That doesn't go
away. You still have a response for that. Correct. Yeah. There is still, there is still
a, not a penalty. I'm going to call it just a repercussion of what consequences. Yeah.
And I was like, that isn't necessarily brought on guy. God, that is just a natural part
of what the world is at this point, because the world is fallen. It hasn't been redeemed.
It hasn't been passing through fire. As Peter was talking about purified back to a heaven
coming to earth. It's not there yet. And so we live in a world where when you have these,
when you step out and you're doing these things, you're going to have consequences that stick
with you to your point, Spencer, like when you don't trust God to determine good and
evil on your own terms, this is what's going to happen. This is just what it looks like.
There's a reason why God told you to do it one way. It turns out if you create the system,
you have a pretty good idea of how it should run, you know, where you're going to put in
the escape clauses. Well, and you know, like I was having that,
I was having that conversation actually with your husband, but we were talking, I was talking
about, I said, I said, you know, people are like, oh, well, why death decay? And I was
like, well, God told us how the world's supposed to operate. And then we choose to operate
outside of it. And then we're like, well, why did, why is my body messed up? Why is
my mind messed up? Why is my spirit messed up? Because it's not meant to be that way.
You're meant to be in harmony with the way God created the world, but we're out of sync.
I mean, it's a beautiful thing we call free will, but it's also a terrible thing we call
free will. Have you ever formatted an Excel sheet?
Not well. So I worked at a place where like they had
some Excel sheets that were like expertly formatted. It was awesome. And every time
I went in there to look at something, somehow something changed, right? And then I would,
and then the HR person would like, come give me an earful and then be like, okay. And then
she says, I just spent two hours fixing everything, finding the problem. Don't ever touch the
list again. Right. But it's really easy to go in and be like, oh, well that seven should
be a six and then you change it. And then all of a sudden your whole thing just falls
apart. Right. Right. And so to your point, like it's really easy. Like God designed everything.
He knows how it works and it's really easy for us to step in and mess it up. Right.
I think it should be this way. I think this too should be a four. Oh, look
at that. Everything broke. Yeah.
And especially with Excel sheets, the cascade effect on all of your other sheets and all
of your, oh my gosh, I mean, avalanche. Yeah. We're talking about Excel and there's somebody
here who's like hyperventilating because they can just feel like you messing with their
system. They can just feel it. Yeah. They can feel it right out. We'll keep him away.
Yeah. One of the things, what reason I bring all this out is, is to point out like in the
beginning man and woman, partners, compatriots go. So you're at the fill it, be fruitful,
multiply. You do this together. Okay. Post fall, like together, you both are going to
have consequences and they're very similar things. They're just in your own realm of
what God is doing in your life. You're actually both responsible for following after and following
God. And as you do that, you start to see this reversal of everything that's come before
it because God starts to bless your walk. And so now instead the ground is blessed because
of you. Like the places are blessed because of you. I think it's really actually clear
and then it get a little Pentecostal here for sure. But when believers in Christ carry
the Holy Spirit and go places, their very presence changes atmosphere. Yeah. It does.
Right. Because you carry God into a place. And so if it's broken, you start to see light
come in. Right. It's one of the reasons that I love, I always pray for and encourage Christians
who work in jails because it's such a dark place to work. I was like, but their presence
shifts atmospheres because the presence of God goes with you. Coming back to this idea
of the temple, right? One of the things that I was going to say in talking about that each
one had consequences for their actions within their purview or whatever, right? Which doesn't
mean that the only thing women should do is have babies. Right. And doesn't mean that
Adam the only thing he should do is work. Right. Which that has gotten skewed. Right.
And it was written in a patriarchal time. Sure. Particularly where this was the jobs
and this is to identify with that. Yeah. 100%. And we're going to try to pull that out over
the next seven or eight weeks. A lot of these things where God has worked through women
in leadership in elevated office. Now, one of the things I was actually talking about
with a friend today is I said, well, we're talking and we're talking about women serving
in ministry. I was like, not every woman should be a pastor. No. Or a missionary. Not every
man should be a pastor or a prophet. Exactly. That's the follow up too is there's lots of
people who are serving in pastoral ministry that probably shouldn't be there. Right. So
what we are trying to do is dispel this idea that because of your gender, you're unqualified.
Right. Now, listeners, if you disagree with us, that's totally fine. We're going to love
you anyways, and we'll just disagree and figure it out. Right. We both love Jesus and we're
going to figure it out. This is not a salvation issue. And if you think it is, then I would
love to buy you a French fry. Just a French fry. Just one? To have a conversation. It's
a sure conversation. Okay. One French fry. We'll buy you two if you agree with us. Yeah.
We will just. We want to let you know, just because you're listening here, it doesn't
mean you have to agree. Like people are going to have different perspectives, but I do expect
you to be consistent. And we're going to talk over the next six, seven weeks of what that
actually looks like. Right. So talking about tore up, some of the things we talked about
last year that I thought were actually women specific, like then I wanted to bring up,
you are when we talked about the test for the unfaithful wife. Are you familiar with
this story? Okay. So in the book of numbers, there is this test that's given for the unfaithful
wife. And it's this really weird story that when you read, you're like, what is going
on here? Right. And so the story essentially posits that if a man thinks his wife is unfaithful,
he has to go talk to the priest. They have to go to the priest together. And then the
priest is going to take dirt from the floor, put it in some water, make her drink it. And
if she's been unfaithful, her, she's her basic innards are going to show up and die. And
if nothing happens, then the guy can't bring that accusation against her anymore. Right.
Okay. Now we said that sounds really weird in our context because we live in the 21st
century. It is really weird to interpret it for the first century. But I said, now you
got to understand that in their society, women had no recourse. If they were accused of adultery,
they could just be divorced, sent away, left with nothing. God says, no, you can't do that.
Now if you are a wife and you haven't been unfaithful, do you really care about drinking
dirty water? The fact that it's dirty water. It's not going to do anything. It might make
your poop a little grably. Well, I mean, contextually to be fair, majority of the water was dirty.
Yes. Like it's true. So it's not, it's not too much different. And if you have
committed adultery, you're probably not going to drink it because you know what it's going
to do to you. So what it does is it gives women a recourse to actually one, come against
their husbands. And also they have to bring it to the priest. And if they bring a false
accusation, there is, there's a very strong shame and honor culture. Yeah. And so the
husband actually brings shame. So there, it gets rid of a lot of baseless accusations,
right? Because they're like, well, you cheated on me. Well, let's go to the priest. Here,
give me the water. Yeah. If you haven't done it, like you don't care. You know, you're
not doing anything. So we're like, this thing that seems like it's an anti-women thing is
actually very progressive when you're actually looking in the context of what it's actually
talking about. It's actually elevating rights. It gives women both power and dignity in this,
in this context. And that's really important because in their culture, they're very suppressed.
Yeah. Right. And it works along the same lines of when the two mothers came to Solomon, each
having the baby. And he said, well, we'll cut the baby in half and you can both have.
And the, you know, there's a psychology in here and the same with the dirty water, right?
If you haven't cheated, you're not going to worry about it. Right? Yeah. And, you know,
and the mother whose baby it was said, no, give it to her. Yeah. The mother would rather
the baby stays alive. Yes. Then, and they never have it. Yeah. Then the baby would be
cut in half. Right. And now to be fair, most fathers would also, you know, we would just
also probably get in a fight because that's how we roll. But if I, if my husband's falsely
accusing me, you know, give me the water. Yeah. Give me the water. Yeah. It gives you
actionable recourse, which is a big deal. And it's not, there was power. Yeah. And then
we talked about in Leviticus, there is this, this prescription on childbirth. So when women
give birth, like they're unclean for a certain amount of time because there's discharge and
all sorts of things. But for boys, the time is half of what it is for the women when they're,
when they're born with daughters. And there's a lot of conversation about that. But we said,
why don't we assume that God's actually for women instead of against them and think about
why this might be the case. So if you go into a patriarchal society where women are not
valued as highly as men, where daughters might be cast aside so that they can actually have
boys, right. Left out in the wilderness, those types of things. If you have to spend twice
as much time with the girls, every time that they're born, generation after generation
after generation, after generation, what's going to start happening? You're going to
start to have more affection and more, more like connection, connection with the daughters
and daughters are going to start to matter more and more. Especially to the mothers.
And so it doesn't necessarily make a change immediately, but it is going to generationally,
right? Mothers, mothers and daughters are going to become closer and closer. They're
going to be valued more and more and more over time. It's going to take time because
you can't necessarily change a culture instantly. Right? I wish you could. That was the same
thing. It takes a lot of time. Yeah, it takes a lot of time. But a lot of the things that
we see happening in Leviticus and Numbers and Torah as a whole is God instituting changes
that are promoting them to be more ethical, loving, kind people. The problem is if you
take Leviticus and you compare it to modern law, it seems really archaic. Well, that's
because it is. Yeah. You got to compare it against what they were doing and what are
they actually trying to do inside of it. Yeah. Yeah. Even modern, like in modern life, if
you followed the Levitical law, your family would be so much healthier. Right? Like in
general, like there's some things that don't necessarily apply because we're not desert
people. Like we are definitely not desert people. Oh, no. Yeah. No. Especially with
the temperature exciting today. Yeah, I know. It's very cold today. Last week I was in the
high desert in the winter and it was like 65 and I was like, this is a beautiful summer
day. Sleep. And then I was like, I don't want to be here in the summer. Yeah. Yeah, it's
real hot. Yeah. I remember in Numbers also, Zalephehid's daughters. You remember that
story? I wondered how to pronounce that. Yeah. So many probably on this thing are like, that's
not right. You're whooping through it really fast. Yeah. I'm just going to pretend like
I said it right. Zalephehid. Yeah. Big old Z's. His daughters, like he dies and all the
males in their family die and so the daughters are left without anything and the people are
like, wow, I mean, I guess we'll just take their land. Right. Because, you know, and
God was like, uh-uh. Yeah, that's not happening. Like we were going to make sure and then we're
also going to make sure that they can never lose their land. And so like we start seeing
over and over again throughout Tora and you can go listen to last season. Like we point
him out every time. A lot of times they show up. God is for women. He's always promoting
that they need to be taken care of. He's talking about their specific rules about taking care
of widows and orphans and aliens and you know, yes, for Mars. No, uh, for foreign countries,
but there's a lot of prescriptions because widows don't have anybody to take care of
them. He says, no, you're going to take care of them. Orphans don't have anybody to take
care of them. No, you're going to take care of them. Might does not make right. In fact,
God is going to say that your ability to love your neighbor is going to be your defining
characteristic. That we actually have some of my favorite characters in the Bible, which
are the midwives and exes one. Yeah. Like we pointed this out too, where when Pharaoh
goes to these midwives and was like, Hey, your nation's getting too strong. Kill every
boy under the age of two. Yeah. They, they don't cause they fear God, which side note,
why they fear God. They haven't really had an encounter with God for 400 years yet. They
still fear him. Right. But isn't, isn't there maybe something about witnessing birth on
a regular basis that connects you with the divine? Yeah. Oh yes. I would think so. It,
midwife has to be called as a midwife. And I had one of my children at home with a midwife
and it is a calling and it is, there is a spiritual aspect to it that you cannot deny
watching life happens, you know, and be created and come to fruition. And yeah, I agree. One,
they're just like, I mean, cause they're, they're basically flipping the bird to Pharaoh
because they're like the most powerful guy in the world at the point. And they're like,
yeah, we're not going to listen to you. We recognize what God is doing and we're not
going to do that. And there's, and there's an interesting paradigm in this, in this story
because they straight up lie to Pharaoh and God is okay with it. Yeah. It's my favorite
as well. These women are so stout. We like, we're running together and babies have already
popped out and so we can't do anything about it. Yeah. Yeah. Which, which is like, you
know, look at it as face value. Like that's a complete lie because you could show up a
little late and still do what Pharaoh asked. Right. But they're like, they're like, oh,
well we can't do it because we can't do what you asked because man, they're just, they're
just too quick at pushing them out. Right. Yeah. These Hebrew woman. Yeah. Right. And
if we just hear the cork pop and we're like trying to get over there, but yeah, those
kids are, yeah, I am there. And then at the end of Exodus one, it's got, it talks about
how God blessed these midwives with families. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Right. And honor and
yeah, most cultures honor midwives because of that sacred spiritual act. You know, and
it's so it's interesting because talking about the Exodus, it's cause most of Torah revolves
around them leaving and then them wandering and then they're going in. Right. But when
they come out of, out of Egypt, God takes them to Sinai and he starts to talk to them
about the 10 words, the 10 commandments we call them. But he talks about how important
it is to remember the Sabbath. And we talked about how Sabbath is this day where you recognize
your identity that you're made in God's image and that you don't, you rest on this day knowing
God is going to provide the other six days of the week. Now the significance of that
is if to your point, if you're in slavery, you're only valued for what you can produce.
Like day in day out, how many bricks can you make? How many babies can you make to make
more bricks? Right. This is your value when you're under the yoke of oppression of slavery
is you are valued for what you can produce. And when you can't produce any more, suddenly
you have no value. And so I think it's really important because next week we're going to
be talking about women of promise throughout Genesis, but a lot of them are barren. So
from that mentality, they have no worth. And God says, yes, they do. He strongly disagrees
and actually brings promise through them. And so it's interesting that the nation is
taught that you need to rest one day of the week so that you recognize your production
doesn't come from your ability, but from my blessing and that you are not valued for what
you can produce, but because you are mine. But then it's interesting because then throughout
the rest of Torah and Tanakh through the Old Testament and even partial to the New Testament,
women are still only valued for what they can produce. And so like some of them get
the message and some of them definitely don't. Yeah. It's hard to let go of old habits though.
Yeah. Right. Especially in a patriarchal society where that is just perpetrated to you and
presented to you and I will divorce her because she can't have kids and I'm going to go get
another wife. Right. And every surrounding culture had a different view on women. Like
the Egyptians, the Palestinians, the Babylonians, the Syrians, every surrounding culture that
they came up against over time, they had a different view. And then God's there, he's
like, I'm putting value on women and other cultures were not. So the fact that there
were like simple laws written about women's rights in Torah, test to the unfaithful wife,
like redemption for daughters. Yep. You know, it's like, those are not things that you saw
culturally. So from the beginning of scripture, you have this value placed on women that is
unheard of in the surrounding cultures. And so kind of one of the things we're hoping
to do over the next seven, eight weeks is help you understand that God doesn't stop
there. He elevates. Just like with his message, his kingdom, his people, it goes from a guy
to his family, to a nation, to massive Exodus from Egypt, to taking over the land and kings
and kingdoms all the way into Jesus. Like it grows and there's more and more and more
things that are happening. And then it's open to the entire world through the Gentiles.
And God is not bringing less. He's always doing more. He's always doing much more than
we think he's doing. And so to stop short and to stunt what God is doing in the life
of anybody is probably a bad idea. It's probably a bad idea for us to do. And so we're not
trying to change anybody's mind. And we are going to be really overemphasizing women over
the next seven, eight weeks. Okay. And the reason we're doing that is because they've
been so de-emphasized that we want to make sure that we understand we're partners built
together to bring the kingdom of God wherever we go. Preach it, bro. And there's an underlying
and there's actually an underlying thing that goes on throughout all of this. And it's God
bringing value to where other people see none. And you can actually break that down just
down to the basis of human life too. Where there's people who don't see value on their
life and God is bringing value to them. There's people who see themselves as so broken, so
hurt, so outcast that they bring nothing to the table. Why do I even live? Why am I even
here and God's reversing that story. And so you see that story happening and you see that
happening in the life of women in the Old Testament where surrounding cultures put no
value and God said, let's reverse that. I want to add one piece of clarification because
we're using a word a lot and I think that it's gotten co-opted in modern culture. We're
using the word patriarchal often and what we mean by patriarchal is in their time that
means the men ran everything. That does not necessarily mean the same thing as it would
be today where people are like, you need to bring down the patriarchy. That's that we're
not saying the same type of thing. What we're saying is in their culture, men have the ability
to trade, do all these things and that is their culture. We don't get to stand in judgment
of it. What we do look at is what does God do in the midst of it. Jewish culture is not
American culture so we're not sitting here saying that Jewish culture was wrong. We're
saying what was God doing in the middle of it. And you can't change history and that's
the way that culture ran. Yet. Just kidding. So you're looking at the past and you can't
go, oh, we're going to throw this out because of this because it's history. It is actually
interesting how often we try to rewrite history rather than learn from it. Well, they say
history is written by the victors. Yeah. Over the next six, seven weeks, like I said, we're
going to get into the context of women in the Bible and we're going to really heavily
emphasize this. I imagine that we'll have more Q&A questions from this series than for
most of them. Maybe Gifts of the Holy Spirit might get more Q&A questions. We're going
to try to do this with a gentle leap and just talk about what we believe that the Bible
is talking about and how do we walk this out in unity together. Yeah. Well, thanks for joining
us and until next time.
And that's a wrap for today's episode of Love and Context. We hope you enjoyed this
engaging conversation and gained valuable insights into the powerful message of love
within the Bible. We'd love to hear from you and continue the conversation. Connect
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Let's see here. I got lost. By the way, if this does fall, like I'm leaving that in.
That's gonna be great.