Women’s ministry in and through your household

We're entitling House to House, God's Vision for your household, and my particular assignment is to talk about women's ministry in and through your household. before we get into it, I just wanna hope you guys all had a Merry Christmas and, and good, good to have everybody back. Our family had a really enjoyable time yesterday at my sister's house. I'm still, a little full from yesterday.

I don't know about you. I still have some ham and turkey in me. but we're gonna be talking about women's ministry in and through your household. It is a little interesting as a man to be up here talking about women, to be talking about women's ministry in particular, as I am not a woman.

as you may know, but I have several consolations in preaching this message, on women. First of all, after this sermon, I am on vacation and so regardless of how you feel about what I say, I'm out of here, baby. So, you ain't gonna see me for at least a week. So, no questions after the message.

I'm off. I'm joking. Secondly, I'm married to a wonderful woman, and, and I got to share the contents of this message last night, and she said it was pretty good, so feeling pretty good about that. and then thirdly, our women's ministry has already done a fabulous job just developing and implementing, a great vision, for women's ministry.

Our deaconesses, Kim Davis, Donna Vincent, and others that have been involved have done such an excellent job. There's much that I've been able to learn from their ministry, and you can look at the website, you can look at the women's ministry brochure. to find out what is going on here at Cornerstone and Respect Women's Ministry. In fact, I want to give you just the purpose statement that's on the website.

Women's ministry exists in unison with other ministries at Cornerstone to further enable women to experience the gospel in all its fullness by training. and equipping each woman to be continually growing into the likeness of Christ. That's a great purpose statement. And they flush that out on the website.

They, they want to see our women experience the gospel and grow in Christlikeness. One of the things that we'll be focusing on in this message is, is what they say in this purpose statement. Women's ministry exists in unison with other ministries. A women's ministry is not a ministry in and of itself, but it seeks to cooperate obviously with the homes, with the husbands, with our various care groups and whatnot, and so we're going to be drawing out some of that unifying purpose that our women's ministry has with other ministries.

Another consolation I have on just preaching. A message about women is that the Bible is replete with guidance about the topic of women's ministry as we're going to see this morning. If I were up here trying to talk about something that the Bible didn't have anything to say, then I wouldn't have anything to say. But the Bible talks about women and women's ministry all over the place.

And then lastly, Church history is full of testimonies of women and women's ministry, and that's really where we want to begin this morning is to talk a little bit about women's ministry and church history and use that as a segue into this morning's topic. the Reformation in the 1500s was more than just a reformation of the doctrine of salvation, justification alone. It was more than just a reformation of the doctrine of the Bible, solo scriptura. It was also a reformation of the family.

You need to realize that particularly in the Western Church for 1000 years, over 1000 years before the Reformation, if a woman wanted to minister in the sacred sense of the term, in any high and eternal sense of ministry, a woman had to commit herself to being single, celibate, to be a nun cloistered in a nunnery. That was the highest form of women's ministry available. If she were not going to go into sacred ministry, she was relegated to what they called secular ministry, and secular ministry just involved being a wife and mother and taking care of the economics of the home.

But with the Reformation came a reformation of the family, and the first real reformed family that we see is the family of Martin Luther and his wife Catherine.

You need to understand that until the Reformation, it was actually a desired place to be, to be celibate, single, and a monk or a nun. In fact, the culture was so dominated by religion at the time and by the concept of the highest form of ministry is celibacy and nunnery or or being involved in a monastery. That even children had children's games that revolved around this, in the past generation in our culture, children would play cowboys and Indians. If you lived in the medieval period, your children would play monks and demons.

They were so caught up with this concept that somebody would play the part of a monk like Saint Anthony and then a bunch of other kids would jump around him and harass him like demons, and he would pray and say prayers and incantations and drive away the demons. And that's the way children grew up, that this was a, this was a desired state of life to be off in the desert, to be away from everything, totally committed to prayer, not distracted by the secular things of this world.

And then comes along Martin Luther. And he begins to write about many things, and there were 12 nuns in, in a local nunnery in Germany that got a hold of Luther's writings and began to believe them and began to believe the gospel of salvation by faith alone.

And these 12 nuns secretly contacted Luther and asked if there was any way that he could help them escape the nunnery. At this time in history, it was a crime punishable by death for a nun to escape the cloister and for anybody to assist a nun escaping the cloister. Luther had a friend who happened to supply food to this particular nunnery. And he came in with several barrels of fish, as the story goes, and he came out with several barrels of nuns.

And took them out of the nunnery, and Luther and his cohorts helped many of them get back to their families, and several of them get married to ex-priests, but Luther himself, 42 years old at the time, had decided that the Reformation required too much of him to get married, and a monk was, was an ex-monk just did not have time for a woman. But Catherine, Deborah, I'm sorry, I'm always getting her last name, Catherine von Bora, had other ideas. She, let it be known that she would marry either Luther or his associate, whoever expressed interest.

And Luther began to examine the issue and to consider the advantages of being married versus not being married.

His father chipped in and said, I'd love for you to get married and pass on the Luther name. So that was a mark in its favor. Luther thought having children would be a mark in its favor. However, many of his friends felt that this would take him away from his commitment to the Reformation.

They felt that it could be perceived as scandalous for a monk to be married. Even his best friend said, I will not show up to your wedding if you get married, and Melanchthon did not show up to Luther's wedding. And, but Luther decided, what, I'm gonna stick it to the Pope and I'm gonna get married. And that was one of his reasons.

And he decided he was going to get married to Catherine von Bora, who became Catherine Luther. And just imagine for the first time in over 1000 years, in the Western Church, at least, you have a pastor's, a pastor and his wife. The church is now watching a Christian home, and Luther is now writing that the home is not a place of secular ministry, the home is sacred. And every man is the priest of his home, and every home is a little church where worship is to be had.

Suddenly now the place of women's ministry is very different from where it had been for over 1000 years. So as we talk about this topic, we're gonna be going back and forth between some passages of scripture, and then I'm gonna be using the Luther family as an example of women's ministry just because Catherine Luther, one is just such an interesting character in church history and how she puts To practice on the pages of the scripture women's roles or women's ministry and the fact that this is the first time in over 1000 years that you see a clergy family, as it were, living out ministry in and through a household.

Now you have to, you should know that Catherine was extremely old when she got married. She was 24, well past her prime for marriage, but Luther took her anyway.

So this morning we're going to talk basically about ways women's ministry happens in and through the household. I'm going to suggest 8 ways women's ministry happens in and through the household, and then we're going to throw out some footnotes of other ways that women's ministry happens, but I want to suggest first of all that, the first and most important way that ministry happens, women's ministry happens in and through the household is through a husband. A husband ministers to his wife.

This is the highest and first form of women's ministry on the pages of scripture.

Now, not everybody in this room is in a family where you have a Christian husband, a Christian wife, but I want to say to you that regardless of your current station of life, Everyone in this room has been impacted positively or negatively by a man's relationship with a woman, right? All got here somehow. Right? You were all born because two people, a man and a woman, came together.

And either that man married the woman and lived out faithfully as a Christian before you as an example, or that man never married, or he married and got divorced, or all the other situations that happened. But every one of you are here because a man and a woman came together. And so what we're saying here is in God's economy in the ideal scenario, The highest form of women's ministry is a husband. With being faithful, marrying a woman and loving that woman and raising children.

And so let's flesh that out here. A husband ministers to his wife. Every husband in here this morning is a women's ministry leader. Many of you ever thought about yourself as a women's ministry leader?

You are a women's ministry leader. Now you may not be a good one. But whether you like it or not, you are a women's ministry leader because you are leading at least one woman, your wife, and if you have daughters, you're leading multiple women. Men, what is your vision?

To wash your bride with the water of God's word as we see in Ephesians. Ephesians Paul commands, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for. Christ died for the church. Christ took stripes for the church.

Christ had a crown of thorns put on his head for the church. He drunk in the wrath of God for the church, and we are called as men to love our wives as Christ loved the church, that our wives, like the church, may be sanctified with the washing of the water of the Word. Men, what is your vision? To wash your wife with the water of the Word, the way Christ is washing the church with the word.

If we are The women's ministry leaders in our homes, we need to have a vision on how we're going to wash our wives. Men, do you have a vision for women's ministry? How are you proposing to present your wife blameless at the coming of Christ? Every husband in this room has been given a stewardship of a wife.

Christ who died for that woman who loves that woman has entrusted her to you, and has said, now wash her and present her blameless at my return. What is your vision man? As a woman's ministry leader. We must have a vision.

May I suggest to all of the men that you take some time this week, this afternoon, to go onto our website and just look at the women's ministry page and say, What's the vision of this church for our women and how can I help put this into practice? How can I help my wife experience the gospel? How can I help my wife grow in her likeness to Christ? Look at the women's ministry brochure, look at the website and see what is the vision here, and men own the vision because you are the main women's ministry leader.

Young men, If your mom doesn't have a husband at home, guess what? You are the women's ministry leader in a sense. Uncles, grandpas, as you come around, divorcees and people, widows, we are the women's ministry leaders of this church, men in our care group, we are the leaders expected to love the women in this church, to wash them with the water of the Word and try to see them presented blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Luther viewed marriage as a school for the character.

He saw the family as a place that helped train Christians in the virtues of fortitude, patience, charity, and humility. the problem with being a monk out in the desert is who are you going to practice the one another's with. Right? Who are you going to be patient with?

Who are you going to have to look over the sins of? The family is the place where these things get practiced. Luther had many reasons for getting married. His marriage would please his father.

They would rile the pope. It would cause angels to laugh. And devils to weep. And Luther established for the first time.

In about 1000 years, a vision for a man's ministry to his wife. It's Peter that tells husbands to likewise dwell with them. According to understanding or with understanding, giving honor to the wife as the weaker vessel, and she's a co-heir of the grace of life. That word dwell with them is the word that we've been talking about, the Greek word oikos in its verb form dwell with them.

Come and dwell in the same household. With your wife, with understanding, have knowledge, have expertise about your wife. Every man in this room who's serving in some field or career received training, I assume for that field. If you're a teacher, you got teacher training, an auto mechanic, you got mechanic training.

Whatever you do, you received, I'm sure, an ample amount of training so that you could do your job with understanding. What Peter is commanding us to do is to dwell with our wives with experience, having been trained or trained ourselves. Are we students of our wives? Are we students of women in general?

Are we trying to figure out what is it that my wife needs? What are the things that God is commanding me to do in order to minister to my wife? Marriage is much more than just coming home and sharing a bed. Luther on home and marriage says this marriage does not consist only with sleeping with a woman.

Everybody can do that. But keeping house and bringing up children. In another place, the husband and father washing smelly diapers may be ridiculed by fools, but God with all His holy angels and creatures is smiling, not because the father is washing diapers, but because he is doing so in Christian faith. Luther imagined in the reformed family that you would have a husband that's coming along and learning to dwell with his wife according to understanding that they have mutual, they have different responsibilities, but they're both trying to raise up kids.

They're both trying to raise, give gospel awareness and whatnot. And just imagine Luther after he spent time translating the Bible into German, going over and changing the diaper of his little Elizabeth. This is the type of pastor now that we're seeing in the church. Luther wrote to a friend, there's a lot to get used to in the first year of marriage.

One wakes up in the morning and finds a pair of pigtails on the pillow which were not there before. After a year of marriage, Luther wrote another friend. He said, My Katie is all things so obliging and pleasing to me that I would not exchange my poverty for the riches of Croesus. Luther, the former celibate monk, now exalted marriage, exclaiming, there's no bond on earth so sweet, nor any separation so bitter as that which occurs in a good marriage.

You have, you see now Luther's heart, you see a pastor's heart driven towards his wife. You also see that as men are called to be the primary leaders of a woman's ministry, is that we're called to take care of our wives and provide for them, right? Paul says, if anyone does not provide for his own, he's, he's worse than an unbeliever. He's denied the gospel.

Luther believed this so, so, so much that he against the culture of Saxony, made his wife the sole heir after he died. The custom at that time would be for the father to leave all of the assets to the children and hope the children would take care of the widow, which sometimes didn't happen. Totally against the culture, Luther did an unheard of act and made Catherine his sole heir. Of his property, and so he, he thought of her spiritual life, he thought of her physical life and ministered to his wife.

The second way that we see women's ministry and into the household is how a wife ministers to her husband. You have the ministry of the husband to the wife. You have the ministry of the wife to the husband. All the way back in Genesis, we see Adam created and Eve is created to come and be a helper and to be a completer of the man.

It's interesting that Theoretically, I guess, God could have created Adam and said, OK, Adam's incomplete. I know what he needs. The first thing I'll do is I'll create 11 other men for him to hang out with so that he can have a little men's ministry. And they can all hang out and talk about theology and, and the, and the latest football game between the Babylonians and, and whoever else they're playing.

And no, but that's not what he did. He says he's going to complete this man and he gives her Eve, He gives him Eve, a woman. In the, in the same respect, he could have looked at Eve, created her separately, and He said, I know what this woman needs. I'm going to create 11 other gals and keep her over there so that she can have a women's ministry totally apart from this man.

I'm gonna make her complete. He doesn't do that. He brings a husband and a wife together and he says, it is very good. And he says, now propagate.

I want you to have children, go out and spread throughout the earth, have a family, right? And, obviously, as the families develop, we do have things that rise up like men that are ministering to men and women, ministering to women in different respects. But that first ecclesia, just imagine that first gathering of worship. That first church, as it were, of Adam and Eve and their children and they're gathering together to worship the Lord, what did that look like?

What did that look like? A wife ministering to her husband in the context of worship? Well, you had a, the men's ministry was Adam and his sons, and the women's ministry would be, Adam ministering to his wife and then the daughters, and then the nursery would be the parents taking care of the little ones and maybe the, teenagers throwing in their help. he had a full complete package right there in the first building block of the ecclesia, the family, right?

And so we have, but more particularly, you have, you think about Eve and how she would minister to Adam and how a, a wife is to come alongside and minister to her husband in the context of the household. Proverbs says Proverbs 31, an excellent wife who can find her worth is far above jewels. The heart of her husband trusts her, and he will lack, no gain. A woman is to come alongside we see from the Old Testament, we see it in the New Testament, and, and to support her husband, encourage her husband to provide management of that home economy.

and we see the example in the Reformation period of Catherine Luther. An amazing gal comes along and now provides the sacred ministry to her husband. And what does she do? She's, you need to know that Luther before he married Catherine, folks, he was a mess.

This guy was a leader of the Reformation, but he did not take very good care of himself. He didn't sleep very much. He didn't eat very much. After working all day long, he would just fall into bed, into bed sheets that hadn't been changed for two years.

He wouldn't take off his clothes, and wake up and get rolling again. He did not know how to manage his money. He wasn't a spendthrift, but he would just give his money to anybody that asked him. He was giving away all the household items in the monastery he lived in.

People were publishing his books and writings and making all kinds of money off of them, and he didn't have time or didn't even care to go out and try to at least get enough money from his writings to support his household. If this guy didn't get married, the, the, the reformation could have easily faltered right there. This guy would have died an early death and would have been penniless. Catherine comes into the situation and she's a wonderful manager of the household.

Despite limited funds and a large number of guests, she grew vegetables, bought a farm to raise cattle and chickens. She brewed beer. Katie, would try to, one of the arguments that her and Luther would get into frequently was about money. She's trying to manage this ministry, this mini business, and making sure they don't go into, bankruptcy, and Luther's trying to give everything away.

Luther had promised to give some valuable vase to some friend that just asked him for it, and Catherine goes and hides the vase. And so he writes his friend and says, I'd love to give you that vase, but I can't find it because Catherine's hidden it from me. She's trying to keep me from giving everything away. But Luther would come and, and, and Catherine would help him with his translation of the Bible into German because he wanted to make sure that the translation didn't just sound like a theologian, he wanted to make sure that the words that he was choosing could be understood by anybody, just a wife in her kitchen.

And so Catherine was actually quite a wordsmith and she helped, frequently with the translation of the Bible into German. Catherine helped Luther with his depression by reading him scripture. she got Luther into gardening because she knew that if this guy just kept working all the time, he was going to kill himself and die an early death. She even convinced him to build a bowling alley in their house in their old monastery, so they built a bowling alley so he could get away and bowl once in a while when he wasn't worried about being killed by the Roman Catholics.

they bore 6 children, 11 orphans, and had many of Martin's students staying with them. I want to read just a section from a book. This shows you the level of reading I like to read. This is a children's book called 10 Girls Who Made a Difference, and, it's got a section in here on Katherine Luther.

This is a great little book for your kids, but just a little section here. Martin Luther says, my darling Katie keeps me young, Martin Luther told a visitor, and fit too. He laughed. Without her, I'd be totally lost.

She put up with my, she puts up with my travels, and she always, she's always waiting for me when I come back. She nurses me through my depressions. She's patient with my tantrums. She helps me with my work, and most of all, she loves Jesus.

Apart from God's gift of His Son, she's the best gift He has given me in all my life. And Again, many would argue that without Catherine, the Reformation could have very well sputtered. She had such an impact, an excellent wife, who can find? When I take a moment, my wife's not in this service, I won't embarrass her, but just talk about my Katie, and I'm sure that many of you guys could, could say similar types of things, but, one of the things I really appreciate the way that my wife ministers to me.

In our home is that she makes sure that her duties at church are not so overreaching so as to cheat her primary church ministry to her family. She's made myself, she's made our children the number one ministry in her life, even to the point of, of turning down offers of ministry when we're gathered together, knowing that, really her ministry to me and the kids is, is one of the chief and primary ways that she's ministering to the whole body, right? the other thing I appreciate is it's not uncommon at all for me to get home from a long day at work.

I come strolling in at 8 o'clock at night or whatever and, and my wife's on the phone, and this is a regular occurrence with her to say, Hey, I gotta go.

My man's home. I'll talk to you later. And she's just off the phone, ready, ready to come and talk with me and minister to me, and I just so appreciate that. And the other thing finally that I really appreciate about my wife is, is she treats me with respect.

she speaks respectfully to me and about me. she, she, she's not afraid to get out the gospel 2x4 in private and let me have it, right, when I need it. but we're in public or whatever, she's, she's very, respectful, and I really appreciate that. That, that helps me step up as a man and be the man that called, that God's called me to do.

Just to respect, fuels me. It gives me energy, to step up to the plate. Katie reminded me after the first service that there are times when she doesn't speak as respectfully during baseball season. If I'm giving a little too much attention to, to, to the angels.

A third way, well, let me, let's just go back and look at this passage real quick. first Peter says, how, how is it that we, our wives can be ministering, be submissive to your husbands. Even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be one without a word by the behavior of their wives. One of the main ways that wives can be a ministry to husbands is not just to wait for the husband to be obedient.

There's a lot of gals that are in homes where the husbands aren't going to be obedient. They're not right now. They're not taking up the leadership, but God calls you to submit to them just like Christ submits to the Father and to seek to win them by faith, even without a word. To state, your point, and then to leave it with God, and to let God change your man.

It's an amazing thing, amazing power that the Lord has given women, to be able to have impact, even without speaking and uttering words. Luther, tongue in cheek, well, a lot of times we referred to his wife as, as my rib, or he would call her, my sweet. Sometimes he would call her Galatians because he loved the book of Galatians so much. Other times he called her Katie, my lord.

And, it was tongue in cheek, but they had a relationship where Katie would come in and, and they would be rousing each other about something or arguing about something and their, their marriage was actually about as public as you could get during that time of the Reformation. they had the paparazzi living with them all the time, right? And people always in their house, always there having meals. So if Katie and Luther started fighting about money, guess what, it's around the neighborhood.

But, but they, they loved each other and, and, and, actually relished in the difference, the differences they had between one another. A third way That women's ministry can happen in and through the home is is how a father ministers to his daughter. If a man is called to minister to his wife, and that's his chief way of being a women's ministry leader, he's also called to minister to his daughter or daughters. Ephesians 6, we see that fathers are called not to provoke their children to wrath, but to bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.

A couple of things to notice here is the direction is the fathers. Secondly, it's the children plural, which implies not just sons but daughters. is our husbands in the church are called to raise up women of God, and not just to leave that to the wife. I, as a man, am called to minister to my daughter Anna.

And to raise her up to be a woman of God. So that means I need to dwell with my daughter in an understanding way. I need to learn how she ticks. One of the main ways that you, one of the main ways that I can have an impact on our daughters is how we're treating our wives.

How are we speaking to our wives? How are we speaking about our wives? And folks, we're not here talking about, perfection. what?

That, that cat's out of the bag a long time ago. You've been married for longer than about a month. Guess what? Your wife knows, right?

She knows something about you. And if your children are old enough to be cognizant of anything of, smacking of real life, they know, right? Cat's out of the bag. None of us are fooling one another here.

We're, we're saints, but we've also got this indwelling sin problem we're going to have problems with till the day of glorification. And so how do we live authentically before a wife and a daughter that knows I'm a knucklehead sometimes? How do I do that? God says, if we humble ourselves, God gives grace to the humble, right?

He resists the proud, gives grace to the humble. And so I, if I speak disrespectfully to my wife in front of my kids, God's calling me, guess what, to apologize to my wife in front of my kids, humble myself. If I'm speaking disrespectfully to one of my children, my daughter, particularly, I can, I can speak a certain way to my son, and he gets it, right? I speak a certain way to my daughter, and she wells up with tears.

And, and sometimes maybe it's manipulation, but sometimes it's just I'm a spooky big guy with a goatee, right? And I need to be a little more sensitive to her, and I need to learn how to minister to her, all right, so, so fathers, we minister to our daughters, but, 1/4 way, and this may seem strange at first, how women's ministry happens in through the home is a father ministers to his son. What's that have to do with women's ministry? Well, he ministers to his son in respect to how he relates to the present and future women in his life.

I need to teach my son and you need to teach your sons how to relate properly to their mother. How to relate properly to their sisters, right? I need to train my son how a husband behaves before his wife. Proverbs 5:18 says, let your fountains be blessed and rejoice with the wife of your youth, a husband or a father talking to his son, rejoice in the wife of your youth and setting that example before, our children.

the thing is, is, is your kids, one of the things you're trying to do as parents, is your kids are going to treat their future spouse, Lord willing, if they get married, or future roommates, the way that they treat you in the house, or the way they treat their sisters, right? Now your kids are going to say, I ain't that way around my friends. I know who I am. My friends know who I am because this is the way I am around my friends.

Well, guess what? That ain't who you are, bro. Who you are is the way you are in the home. Anybody can put on a little dog and pony show out in front of your friends, right?

I've never in a staff meeting before Milton, Carlos, or Silos said knock it off. I've never said that. I've never, I promise, I've never done that. Pastor Milton's never said to me, Hey, Mike, could you get me a soda?

And I said, I'm real busy. Could you get it yourself? I've never said that to Pastor Milton. Why?

I have a certain level of respect for the man and these guys, and what, there's, there's just a different game going on when you're not in the home, right? Now, unfortunately, I have spoken that way at times to my kids. I have spoken that way at, at times to my wife. So how do I deal with that?

How do I learn to humble myself, in the real world, which is in your home, right? And so when I'm talking to my kids, if Josh is not behaving, treating his sister properly, one of the lessons as a father is I want to train him and teach him the way that you're treating your sister right now, it's the way you're going to treat your wife. Let's not treat her that way. The disrespectful tone that you just gave to your mother, that's the way you're going to speak to that woman one day, and I'm doing some work for that woman.

I care about her, right? I don't want you treating her that way. And so let's, let's deal with this. Let me just give you one thing before we move on to the next point.

Mothers You might think that you're doing your kids a favor. Your kid speaks disrespectfully, behaves disrespectfully towards you, and you say, I'm going to be merciful. I'm going to be compassionate. Think of that future spouse.

You're training your child to disrespect you. You're training them to disrespect the future spouse. By God's grace, get your husband involved, get other people involved. Mothers, don't let your children speak disrespectfully to you.

One of the things that Phyllis Thompson told me earlier in the first service, which I really appreciated, is she told her son growing up, he said, you can, I want to encourage you to say anything that's on your mind to me, and I want you to feel open and free to express your opinions, but you will always do so with a respectful tone. Yeah, that's a good piece of advice right there. And to help, that's one of the ways a father can enter in and make sure that our young people, our sons are grown up to be good future husbands and so on.

A 5th way that women's ministry can happen through the home is is a mother's ministry to her daughter.

flip this around here. First Timothy 1:5. You have Lois, this grandmother who had an incredible impact on Eunice, who turned around and have an incredible impact on Timothy, who was serving Paul in the early founding of the church. Lois was, was training a daughter named Eunice who one day was going to have a great impact through her son, Timothy.

We see in Titus too, the older women are to teach the younger women. We'll talk more about that later, but, that has to include mothers training their daughters who are younger women on how to treat their husbands, how to treat their brothers, how to treat their fathers, and so on. Catherine Bombora or Catherine Luther, unfortunately she was dropped off at the nunnery at 3 years old. Her mother had died.

Her father didn't think he could take care of her, and so he thought the best thing he could do to help her achieve the highest form of women's ministry was to drop her off at a nunnery. So she never had that example. So she's learning on the fly here in the Luther household how to do family ministry now in this new era called the Reformation. A 6th way that women's ministry can happen through the household is how a mother ministers to her son.

The ministry of, of, to your son, Eunice and her ministry to Timothy had an incredible impact. Proverbs 1:8. says, Here, my son, your father's instruction. Do not forsake your mother's teaching.

You want to read a great example of how a mother ministered to her son. Read the testimony of Augustine and his mother Teresa. How that she had an unsaved husband who obviously didn't care about the spiritual upbringing of the children, and she To raise raise Augustine in the things of the Lord, and he walked away in his adulthood off into total debauchery and sin and forsook the faith and went into actually cults, and yet she kept ministering and kept loving him and praying for him and eventually the Holy Spirit opened up the heart of Augustine, and he became one of the greatest pastors in the history of the church.

we can also talk seventhly about how, a woman ministers to her mother or mother-in-law.

in and through her home. We see in 1 Timothy 5, that we're called as a church to honor widows who are really widows, but if any widow has children or grandchildren, let, let them first show piety or godliness at home. And so, we're called, we could talk about the man's part of this, but since we're talking about the women's ministry, let's talk about just women being willing to minister to their mothers, to their in-laws, their mother-in-laws, and, and, and, and, and to let the church take care of widows indeed, that is those that have no one.

And for us to take up our responsibility to minister to our elderly mothers and our elderly mother-in-laws, that happens in lots of different ways.

I know that there's a debate about exactly how you do that, particularly when your mother or mother-in-law gets to the place where she needs serious medical and nursing attention, but it does not negate the responsibility that falls at our feet to honor our parents and take care of them. In our family, we've had the blessing of having my mother out here the last, several years, and she lives with, John and Michelle, and, during the week and comes over and stays with Melissa on the weekend, and that's really been a great encouragement to my mother to see her get involved with Cornerstone and, to grow in her understanding of the gospel.

the one thing that does make me a little jealous is that how the Astrain house just is so clean all the time. And, and then when my mother, my mother comes over to Melissa's house, so we decided to have my mom come over to our house every other week at least, and that, that does help.

But it's, it's a great way to, just see, it's encouraging to see my mom encouraged with the gospel and, and things like that. let's also, let's lastly talk here and then we'll add some footnotes, about just the ministry of older women, to younger women as Titus Tu, talks about. this is mentioned in our women's ministry philosophy on the website, the importance of Titus 2. and let's go ahead and read that together.

We see older women, you, we don't have to take this as older wives, it can just be older women. married or not, likewise are to be teaching what is good. that they may may encourage the young women to do a number of different things and what's the first thing an older woman is supposed to teach a younger woman? Love her husband.

We're back to, we're back to stage two, right? We're back to the wife's ministry to her husband and through her household. So an older gal comes along, doesn't matter if she's married or not, or widowed or never been married. But one of the things that Paul says to the Holy Spirit to you older gals is get together with those younger gals.

And the assumption is in this culture, is that most of your younger gals are going to be married. That's, going to be different, different times, different places, but Paul says get and encourage those younger gals to love their husbands first, love their children. Be sensible, pure workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be dishonored or the gospel may not be dishonored, and so. Paul envisions a situation where older gals are ministering to younger gals and not just older married gals, but just more seasoned gals in general are looking at the younger gals and saying we need to pass on to them what's been passed on to us.

We need to help them learn how do you deal with a knucklehead husband. How do you deal with disobedient children? How do you maintain sanity when you want to go insane? How do you keep pure thoughts when your husband's not fulfilling his conjugal duties?

How do you manage the economy of a household that is just bustling with all kinds of stuff? How do you, how are you kind? How do you, how do you subject yourself to a husband that can be rather. Disagreeable.

How do you do that stuff and, and let me just suggest, I know, most of our gals know this, but what, where's the best venue for an older gal to teach a younger gal how to minister to her husband and children. And, and to manage the economy of a home, where do you think is the best place to do that? In a home, right? we could, I could sit here this afternoon and give you guys everything that I know about swimming, which is nothing.

And I could, we could look at videos of the best swimmers, and we could look at the breaststroke and the backstroke and all the other things that they do, right, and how to shave hair off your body and all that. And so we could sit here in this auditorium from now till kingdom come and guess what, how much better you guys are going to be at swimming. Not very much until we actually get in the pool, right, and we start working on it and then you're going to have to get a real expert to help you in the pool, OK?

Same thing, we're going to help older, older women.

We're going to teach younger women how to do all these things. We could, it's great for us to talk about the theoretical in church or talk about the theoretical in the class. Ain't nothing wrong with that. You've got to talk about the doctrine.

You've got to talk about the theory. But somewhere along the line, you got to get to the real deal and that's the practice in the home, right? Let me just say a couple things here about one of the phrases that Paul talks about that has somewhat, controversial at times, and that's when he talks about women being workers at home., this, keeper of the home or worker at the home, sounds more diminishing these days than it did in biblical times because so much happens outside the home today.

Back in biblical times, the home was the economical center just like it was in the time of Catherine Luther.

When Catherine Luther was the manager of the home. Luther, by the way, he called her her morning star of Wittenberg, and this isn't to make you guys feel guilty, but because she was called Morning Star of Wittenberg because she got up at 4 in the morning to care for her many responsibilities which included the vegetable garden, orchard, fish pond, barnyard animals, even butchering them herself. I just, I'm sorry, I don't think I could do that. But she butchered her own animals.

Often there were as many as 30 students, guests, or boarders staying in the monastery, all of whom came under Katie's care. Luther was often ill and Katie was able to minister to him in his illness because of her great medical skill. Holy smokes. This is like Superwoman and the Reformation.

But, the thing is, is, If nothing's really happening in the home as far as ministry and economy, then what in the world's a woman got to be there for, to eat bonbons and watch daytime TV? But if, if the home is a is a business and a a place of economy and ministry and stuff is just thriving, then you can see why Paul would say gals give your attention to the economy at the home and be ministering to those husbands be ministering to those kids. One of my buddies. Actually does not like the word homemaker applied to the woman.

He says, I'm the homemaker. My wife is the home manager. And he would say that the homemaker as a man, he's the one that's providing vision. He's bringing in the main source of income, and that she's the one that's providing the economy of the house and the ministry of the house and and and being delegated the primary responsibility of raising the children, though not exclusively, and so on.

I need to give that some thought, but I like that on an initial pass. other ways women's ministry happens, and this is where we'll, we'll, we'll conclude. we've got the ministry of a single man. To married women.

And what's Apostle Paul doing? This is a single apostle writing the book of Ephesians, writing the book of First Thessalon or First Timothy and all these other books. He's, as far as we know at this time, not been married, and yet he is writing to women and saying, here's how you need to conduct yourself, and And so there's a place, Christ Himself was never married, yet he's ministering to married women. There's a place in the church for even single guys to have an impact and, and an encouragement in the life of a married woman.

there's Priscilla and Aquila, a married couple that's running around helping the single minister Paul, and so you can have married couples that are having an impact on singles and divorcees and widows. We see young men are told to treat older women as mothers and younger women as sisters. In 1 Timothy 5. And so Paul's expecting that Timothy, a young single man, would have an impact on older gals and younger gals with all purity, that there would be ministry that is happening there.

And so there's lots of ways this occurs, but the bottom line this morning is that we want to encourage you guys and gals with is that women's ministry is not just something that the gals do on Thursday morning, as important as that is. It's not just something the gals do when they're having their, their tea times and having a great speaker come in. Women's ministry biblically starts in a church like this with husbands seeing themselves as I am the women's ministry leader of my home.

And I'm, I'm going to minister to my wife, and wives sing their primary, my primary ministry to their husbands, to their children.

And then the community of God's people coming around and gathering around those families, gathering around those moms that don't have husbands in the house, gathering around those widows and ministering to one another. towards the end of Catherine Luther's life, she said, all I've been is a wife and mother. And I think I must have been one of the happiest wives and mothers in all of Germany. What a fulfilling life the scout had, what an impact she had for eternity, and praise the Lord for the reformation of the family that was begun with the Luthers.

Let's go ahead and bow in prayer. We'll have our ushers come forward to take the offering. Perhaps you're here this morning and the spirit has spoken to you, and that you need to, as a man, increase your ministry, to the women in your life. Just drink in the gospel, understand that we're all on a journey.

By God's grace, try to take baby steps this week. Perhaps you're a woman, a wife, you're looking at the life of Catherine Luther, and you're thinking there's no way I'm going to be able to be butchering my own meat. I can't do what she did. By God's grace, see the example and take steps, baby steps to be a minister to your husband, to your children.

There's women in our church that do not have husbands, divorcees. We have singles who long to be married or not married. We have people who perhaps are called to be single. We need to minister to one another through the context of our households.

Let's pray. Lord, we ask God that your spirit would minister to each of us, individually with these principles that we've seen from your word. we thank you so much that your word give us, gives us everything we need for life and godliness, and that your word is, is spirit breathed, God breathes, and it gives us what we need, for teaching and doctrine, encouragement, correction. And we thank you for the example of many saints on the pages of church history.

We thank you for the example of Martin Luther, we thank you for the example of Catherine, and we ask Lord that we would be able to follow in their gospel footsteps. Christ's name we pray. Amen.