Dennis Tuuri

Sermon text for today is Matthew 28, third Sunday in Easter. We’ll be talking about women in the new creation. There is an extensive set of papers today for the handout, and included in it is this text so you can follow along in the text. It’s way back on page five. Don’t know why I did that, but I did. For your children, by the way, page six is the fill-in-the-blank thing. Page seven is the coloring sheet, which we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes. So you can follow along on page five if you want to see the particular structure I’ll be dealing with today. But the text is Matthew 28, subject: women in the new creation.

Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Now after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat on it. His countenance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. And the guards shook for fear of him and became like dead men. But the angel answered and said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for He is risen, as He said. Come see the place where the Lord lay and go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead and indeed he is going before you into Galilee. There you will see him. Behold, I have told you.”

So they went out quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to bring his disciples word. As they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, “Rejoice.” So they came and held him by the feet and worshiped him. And then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.” Now while they were going, behold, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all the things that had happened. When they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, saying, “Tell them, his disciples came at night and stole him away while we slept. And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will appease him and make you secure.”

So they took the money and did as they were instructed. And this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day. Then the eleven disciples went away to Galilee to the mountain which Jesus had appointed for them. When they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.

Let’s pray. Father, we rejoice gladly in response to our Savior’s words to us today. Father, we thank you for calling us to put off fear, to rejoice in your word, and in this wonderful account of the resurrection of the Savior, the forgiveness of our sins, but so much more, this new world. Bless us, Father, as we consider this wonderful text. May your Holy Spirit use your servant to speak the truth of your word to the end that we might be encouraged, built up, that we might go from this place on a mission for our Savior. In his name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

So the role of women in the new creation—that’s what we have here. We’ll talk about that. No doubt nowhere near enough to satisfy your curiosity or mine. We’ll begin with some more initial thoughts on this based on the text before us, and as we move toward the end of the sermon today, after we’ve understood the text and interacted with it a little bit, we’re continuing in the series of Easter Sunday talks looking at the post-resurrection appearances of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The second page of your handout is a chart that I came across and then modified some several years ago and handed it out then to folks. This is a chart of the post-resurrection appearances of our Savior prior to his ascension. And so we said last week that it’s really important to understand these post-resurrection appearances’ relationship to the kingdom because he’s talking, he’s saying things about the kingdom. This is not just evidential that he has been resurrected. He’s actually instructing them in the kingdom and giving them kingdom instructions and a whole bunch of things, and we’ll see more of that today. We saw some over the last two weeks and we’ll see more today.

Two weeks ago we were actually in Matthew 27 and 28 and we looked at one of those post-resurrection appearances that’s on the chart, and it was the post-resurrection appearance of Jesus meeting with his disciples on that mountain of Galilee, just as the text today, and with as well the giving of the Great Commission. But that’s a post-resurrection appearance of the Savior to give them instructions about the kingdom that are quite significant for us. And so we’ll return to that in just a minute.

The very first post-resurrection appearance is to Mary Magdalene. Children, your coloring sheet today is a wonderful woodcut print by Albrecht Dürer of this meeting—the first post-resurrection appearance of our Savior. I believe it is this one, recorded in John’s gospel and it’s between Mary Magdalene and our Savior. And Dürer has put interesting stuff on our Savior. Do you remember? Do you know why he’s got that funny hat and that spade or that shovel? It’s a gardener’s shovel. And the text in John tells us explicitly that Mary Magdalene mistakenly assumed he was the gardener. And so Dürer in his wonderful woodcut dresses Jesus as the gardener—so the floppy hat and the spade.

She has there, you know, a jar of ointment to anoint him with. She’s on her knees worshiping him. He’s reaching out with his hand, which has the marks of the nail print on it. And it’s just a wonderful picture. I bring it up because we’ve talked over the last couple of weeks about how the text of scripture wants us to associate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ with the beginning of the new creation. And so a whole new world is what we started by talking about.

The sun is risen with healing in its wings. I think I mistakenly kept saying “his wings” before. The sun is risen with healing in its wings. And you can see that here, right? You can see that sun starting to come up. So it reminds us of what we’ve talked about for a couple of weeks about what Easter is. That is, the Sun of the new world. “Let there be light” is the beginning of the first created order, God’s order in it. And here we have the beginning of light. We have the end of the Sabbath in our text today.

At the end of the Sabbath, the Sabbaths are over. The old creation is over. The new creation, the change of day from the seventh day to the eighth day has been accomplished. Jesus is the gardener in a garden with a woman who mistakes him for a gardener. I mean, this is clearly Adam and Eve sort of imagery.

We also saw last week that in the other text we were looking at—the story of Thomas—when Thomas wasn’t there, Jesus breathed on the disciples and gave them the power to forgive and retain sins. You know, I think the church of Jesus Christ would be so much better if it would remember that there are some sins to forgive, but there are others there to retain. I just think it’s astonishing to me how evangelicalism is just rife with this idea that we’re supposed to forgive everybody’s sins whether or not they repent. Clearly, one of the things we learn from the post-resurrection appearance of Jesus that evening, which is when that one was, is that there are some sins to be retained.

But in any event, he’s breathing new life into Adam again, right? All the New Testament imagery in the gospel accounts rather show new creation. And so that’s why I chose this particular coloring picture for the children as well as wanting to talk about it a bit for ourselves, because these post-resurrection appearances begin with the demonstration of new creation.

So that’s the chart. You can continue to look it over and keep it. We’re going to do a couple more sermons in the next couple of weeks on several other post-resurrection appearances. And today we’ll look at this one that we touched on originally on Easter Sunday from Matthew 28.

Now, what we said then was that this first—the second post-resurrection appearance at the end of Matthew 28—is Jesus essentially reinvigorating the cultural mandate, bringing it back again. He has now definitively dealt with death and sin. The new creation has been ushered in. He has given man again the task to go and exercise dominion over the world. They’re to disciple the nations. The mission is not to save the lost in the sense of just getting them to believe. The mission is to make disciples of all the nations. And how do you make disciples? You baptize them and you teach them.

Yeah. So we save souls, save the lost, we baptize them. But that’s not the end. That gets them ready to be taught so that they can obey the commandments of Jesus in all that they do, so that they can go out and again exercise the dominion mandate that man was originally called to do under the second Adam. And so this new creation model is pictured for us, and the Great Commission is along those lines.

Now, on your handouts, I’ve kind of done a little reminder again here of what we do at Reformation Covenant Church. Our mission statement is actually based—we didn’t intend it to, but as it worked out, it reflected the three elements of the Great Commission: to go, to make disciples, and the promise that Jesus is with us always. So to go means we have a mission from God. The church is gathered to be scattered. You’ve been called here and then told to go on a mission.

Now, man needs repentance. He needs forgiveness in order to be able to go on mission for God, right? All men have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. You can’t go on a mission if your sins aren’t forgiven. So the worship service restores you to mission formally, liturgically, through the repentance of sins and the assurance of your forgiveness. That’s not just so you can have a good time in life. I mean, it is that, but you’ve been restored. You’ve been forgiven so that you can go accomplish mission from God.

I should have worn my tie. I was going to—I forgot. You know, we’re on a mission from God. The Blues Brothers tie that I’ve got some coward—somebody gave it to me and it’s a joke. It’s kind of sacrilegious in the movie, but it’s what we all are. You should put on a tie, a mental tie, tomorrow when you go off to your work and say, “I’m on a mission from God.” The penguin has set me. The church has set me on a mission from God. That’s what it is.

So the Great Commission begins by reempowering men and women for mission. Jesus has forgiven our sins so that we can go on a mission, so that we can have glory—the glory of being able to do things for the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he says this mission involves making disciples. So discipleship—we’ve been called to have mission and that mission involves discipleship. So what am I doing right now? You’ve been forgiven. You’re being prepared to go on a mission by being discipled, by being taught what Jesus commands us, right? So the imposition or expression, communication of truth is part of what discipleship is. And that’s what equips you then to go on that mission.

And then Jesus promises that as in the Great Commission, as we go on that mission, he’s with us always. He promises us community. What was the result of the first sin in the garden? It was the disruption of community. Adam and Eve had a big fight. They started pointing fingers at each other and blaming each other. What did God say Adam needed? He needed community to fulfill his work. So Jesus promises community to us as he gives us mission, discipleship, and community.

And this really relates to the gifts of God in our worship service. I saw a guy at the Q gathering who has a company called Epipheo. And it would be really nice if one of you young people or older people, anybody, could take what we’re talking about here—which probably you’ve heard a number of times—make a little visual presentation of this, have that on our website. Epipheo is about, you know, Epiphany and video, and using video as a way to communicate in a couple of minutes complex truths. And so rather than write a tract on how we worship and what it is, you know, an Epipheo sort of approach would take these concepts. It’s really the same thing: it’s glory, knowledge, and life.

God restores us to salvation. He gives us knowledge as he disciples us through the preaching of his word, and he gives us rejoicing life in community together at the table. And that prepares us to do those very things in the context of the world. So this is what new creation life is. Aaron’s rod in the Holy of Holies, the Ten Words, the manna—these relate right up with these three gifts that God gives us.

The three offerings in Leviticus 9—it’s in our order of worship. You know, you have the purification offering for forgiveness of sins. You have the ascension offering that prepares us through a heavenly vision of things related to our work, our tribute offering. And then there’s the peace offering. And so it is with Christian worship as well. We have these gifts of glory, knowledge, and life.

The classical school people, they like the threefold statement of classical education: producing goodness, truth, and beauty. It’s the same thing. It’s completely prevalent in the history of cultures because it’s true. It reflects the triune person of God. We’re given the Father’s character and goodness—his glory. The Son is the truth, the Word of God. So goodness, truth. And the Holy Spirit creates beautiful community in the context of restoring all the broken relationships. We fix brokenness. We bring the world to beauty through the repairing of brokenness wherever we find it. And that’s part of what this Great Commission is all about.

If Jesus is with you, you’re bringing healing. And if Jesus is with you in the Spirit, you have beautiful community occurring. So that’s who we are. That’s how the worship service moves. And it does this because it reflects the triune person of God—it’s one God but existing in three persons in three manifestations. So the Great Commission is that the Sun has risen with healing in its wings, and that healing in its wings has found its fullest expression in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is the Sun. In Psalm 19 it goes over the whole world, and the Sun brings truth, goodness, and beauty. He brings these gifts, and the Great Commission is a reminder of that.

The Great Commission is given in the text in worship, right? The eleven disciples have gone up on a mountain at the end of the text. That’s where they receive this Great Commission. And it’s as they worship Jesus Christ that he speaks to them. As they worshiped him, he spoke to them and he told them to go on a mission. He told them to make disciples as they went about that mission, and he promised them community through his presence with them.

Now when we looked last week at another post-resurrection appearance, we had forgiveness and life in John 20, right? In those twin accounts of Thomas, Thomas the twin, and we had twin heptafold chiastic structures, sevenfold structures. We had two structures given to us in John, identical to one another. At the center of both, the Lord Jesus Christ speaks peace to his people. And we talked about the implications of that.

At the end of the first of the two twinned accounts in John’s gospel that we looked at last week, he tells them to forgive sins. He breathes on them and he says that your mission is to forgive sins. But it doesn’t end there. At the end of the second twin account in verse 29, Jesus told them, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” We have benediction placed upon us.

And then in the matching postscript, it says these are written that you might believe. To what end? That you might have life in his name—life. So the end result of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is life in his name. Forgiveness of sins and life. Life is carrying out the dominion mandate again in the context of the world. And that’s accomplished through mission, discipleship, and community.

Now what about the primal rift? Today’s text involves women and men. Because of that, I think it would cause us to think about the primal rift that happened in the fall of man in the garden. Adam and Eve—Adam sins. And the primal rift is the rift between men and women. And I’m going to, after we look at these accounts of what the women do and the men do in Matthew 28, talk about what that means in terms of healing the primal rift.

But you know what? It’s important that you recognize that the breakdown of male-female relationships is the primal rift. You know, people get married, they think it’s okay. Turns out not to be quite okay, and they wonder why. Well, why would it be? Trying to get two people together, a man and a woman, together to live in unity—it certainly can be done. Praise God for it. We know lots of people. I just delight in my marriage, but it’s been a hard time, as all marriages have been.

You know why? Because the male-female relationship in the context of marriage is what broke first. The first result of breaking relationship with God was to have community broken, and you know the story. They both start blaming each other for what happened. And hatred between men and women began. And hatred between men and women has been the history of mankind for 6,000 years. You do know that, right?

I mean, clearly this has been a huge societal problem, and the way societies typically have dealt with it is just the exertion of brute force or command and authority on the part of the man. And in our day and age, something looks different than that. And I think something looks different now because of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I went to this Q gathering and we’re interested in city transformation. And we talked about metrics. How do we know if we’re transforming Oregon City? I mean, we know we’re doing things. How do we know it’s working? Well, some people would say if there are more Christians than not—that’s a good metric. But let me give you another metric. If there are more marriages each year—you cannot have a city, you cannot build a culture without families. You can’t have godly families without marriage. Marriage is the basic building block. I mean, the statistics are manifold that if people are living together, you know, their chances for economic success are far lower. Their chances for bringing up good kids are far lower.

So marriage, Christian marriage—it’s a small thing, but really it has to do with figuring a way to live in this new creation in joy and peace in what used to be the primal rift of humanity: husband-wife relationships.

Now on the back table, there’s a marriage conference coming up at Oregon City Evangelical Church taught by FamilyLife. I think it’s a video series, I think. And I would—on the same place the orders of worship and outlines were—there are flyers there for that marriage conference. I really encourage you to consider, if you’re married, going to that marriage conference to work hard on your marriage, understanding that there’s nothing to be ashamed about when you have marriage problems.

You know, we come to church and everybody seems to get along well and all that, and there’s this veneer we put on. But marriage is hard because it involves the primal rift, the fall of man. Rich Bledsoe helped us tremendously last year at family camp by reminding us that what happened in the fall continues to play itself out in our old man, in our Adamic man, right? Women are frightened of men abandoning them the way Adam abandoned Eve, betraying them the way Adam betrayed Eve, letting her eat that fruit that God had told him would kill her. And man is afraid, you know, of woman exercising power and authority over him as a result of his own sin and guilt and fear.

So it’s really tough building solid male-female relationships. Now that’s always true, and in our day and age, where a culture is attempting to be built based on a totally egalitarian model of male-female relationships, it’s even more difficult. Now we don’t know it all. We used to have models of what the husband-wife thing was. Now all those models are kind of broken down. You’re challenged. I mean, a whole lot of Christian women over the last 15 years have decided that they’ve been abused all their lives because of the way they’ve been spoken to or the roles they’ve been in. Maybe they’re right. But I’m telling you, this is not going to get easier. Christian marriage is going to get more difficult.

First, because of the inherent sin of men and women, but then secondly, because as our culture becomes post-Christian and then pagan, the support systems for Christian marriage are going to go away. And in fact, what used to be support systems for marriage will now be torpedoes that are shot into marriages from supposed care agencies. That’s what you have to look forward to. So go to the marriage conference and listen to how the text before us describes the relationship of men and women.

Okay, let’s talk about the text. What do we see? We see a time reference. And not to beat this thing over the head, but it’s at the end of the Sabbath, right? We don’t have Sabbaths anymore. They’re gone. We have Lord’s Days. And the Lord’s Day is on the first day of the week. There were double Sabbaths before, the same thing. But so we’re in a new world, with a new worship day. Times have changed, priesthood has changed, and we have a new world. The day has dawned. The sun has risen with healing in its wings.

And the first thing we’re told about in Matthew’s gospel is a woman—Mary Magdalene and the other women came to see the tomb. And so they’re there at the tomb, and there’s an angel there. We read, “Behold, there was a great earthquake, and an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat on it. His countenance was like lightning, and his clothing was white as snow. And the guards shook for fear of him and became like dead men.”

So right away in this narrative that has a time indicator—now we’ve got a new little section. The first thing we’re told is we’ve got an earthquake, we’ve got a tremendous event, and we’ve got two people talked about. We’ve got some women and we’ve got some guards. And the guards are afraid, but the angel doesn’t talk to them. They become like dead men. But the angel doesn’t raise them up. Instead, the angel talks to the women. “Do not be afraid.”

See, the assurance to not be afraid is discriminate, okay? It’s discriminate. Speaking peace to people is discriminate. Seeking the peace of the city is not the same thing as speaking peace to the city. Seeking the removal of fear from the guards is not the same thing as telling them, “Don’t be afraid.” We want people in rebellion against the Lord Jesus Christ to be afraid. Yes, of course. This is what the angel clearly says. We bring the message not to be afraid discriminately, okay?

We forgive sins discriminately. We retain some sins. You know, if you just focus on that, take a note, write it in your head and heart, you will have a good inoculation against the kind of evangelicalism that’s becoming dominant in this culture that thinks that kind of discrimination is bad. It is not bad. But the angel says to the women, “Don’t be afraid. You’re seeking him. He’s risen.” Okay.

So the angel assures the women first of all to not be fearful. And then the angel sends them on a mission. “Go quickly, tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead. And indeed he is going before you to Galilee. You’ll see him. Behold, I have told you.” So the women, they’re there seeking Jesus. And when you seek Jesus, good things happen. Now they get kind of frightened, but the messenger of Jesus—the pastor guy, the angel—he says, “Don’t be afraid.” And then the angel, after giving them the message, gives the women a mission. He tells them to go and he tells them to do a particular task.

And what do they do? They do it. They don’t say, “Well, I don’t know. Do I really want to go?” No, they go. They go quickly. These are all wonderful pictures on resurrection morning of what it is to be a believing disciple of Jesus Christ. You know, surely we’re all women as we’re all part of the bride of Christ. Not individually women, but corporately we’re all the bride of Christ. And so we can read ourselves into the narrative, men and women alike, and we’re given—as we go to seek Jesus—he tells us, “Don’t be afraid.” And he sends us on mission. And we’re supposed to gladly respond to that mission.

And then in the center section is the next section. They went to tell his disciples. So they’re doing what they’re supposed to do. Now, Jesus meets them. Now, this is important too. Where do you meet Jesus? You go off and meditate. You go to the desert. You fast. You do that stuff. You get alone and have a vision. No, you do your work. You do what God tells you to do each day. Here, they’re doing just what the messenger of God told them to do. And wow, there they see Jesus.

We meet Jesus when we do the tasks that God has told us to do. We meet him in special ways. Now, we’re not going to see him the way they saw him. But you know, the implication here is that that’s when Jesus is with us, communicates to us—when we’re doing his will, not when we’re sitting on our hands thinking about what we should be doing. When we’re doing the small, simple things that God has told us to do, lo and behold, they meet Jesus.

What does he say? “Rejoice.” Okay, we’ve got these great resurrection post-appearance messages. “Peace,” Jesus told him in the text from last week—said it twice. “Peace. Peace.” “Joy, rejoice,” he says here. “Don’t be afraid,” he says here as well. So Jesus speaks to these women to have great joy. That’s his first word to them. “They came and held him by the feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Don’t be afraid.’ There we go again. He’s saying the same thing the angel said. And like the angel, he says, ‘Go. I’m going to send you on a mission. Tell my brethren to go to Galilee. There they will see me.’”

So same thing. The women now are worshiping Jesus. And when we worship Jesus, the end result of that is assurance that our sins are forgiven and that we’re going to conquer the world. And then he prepares us to go out on mission and he gives us instructions. He disciples us. He sends us on a mission. Okay? And he’s telling them this: to go out and do this thing. You’re here to worship Jesus. Well, he tells you when you leave this place: go on your mission. Go about your task tomorrow morning. Do it well for him. Create a Christian culture where you live, to as much as is possible, affect your business, your neighborhood, your home with a Christian culture.

We were talking this morning about reasons to Christian school your kids because Jesus says, you know, raise your children in the paideia—the culture of Christ. That means if we’re going to raise our children in the culture of Christ, it means we’ve got to have one, right? So that’s what we’re to do. And like these women, they go, we’re supposed to go just like them. They meet Jesus at the center of this thing.

Now, when they’re going—now we’ve got the guard again. Remember, the guard and women thing was already set up here. And then we had a meeting with Jesus at the center. And now, in opposition to the women, we have a story about the guards.

“Now, while they were going, behold, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all the things that had happened. They’re telling the truth. They’re given a factual account of what occurred. When they had assembled rather with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money. Money. Bob Dylan says, ‘Money doesn’t talk, it swears.’ They gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, saying, ‘Tell them his disciples came at night and stole him away while he slept.’ So they’re bribing these guys to lie.

“And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will appease him and make you secure.” Well, this is all interesting too. If we think of this in terms of a buildup for the Great Commission, what are they doing? They’re offering him money. Money is glory. They’re promising them life, right? So they’re bribing him with glory. They’re promising life. They’re going to keep them safe. And what they’re trying to do is get them to pervert truth. They want them to lie and say that somebody stole the body away.

So you know, the opposition between the glory, knowledge, and life that God gives us—in the other world, there’s a different glory. Glory not coming from God. Truth is twisted, and knowledge is perverted. And the life that’s promised is a community life with people like them. It’s anti-life. But you can’t avoid it is the point here.

And then the eleven meet, they worship Jesus on the mountain, and we have the Great Commission.

Okay, now this is interesting, isn’t it? Before we talk about women in the new creation, think just a few minutes about this story. What has the story done? We have a center with them talking with Jesus, and around that center, we have women here and guards here. We’ve got two groups of people.

You remember that when we looked at Matthew 27 through 28, there was a connection between the Great Commission, Jesus assembling his people, Jesus delegating power from the Father, commanding them to conquer the world—being, you know, in opposition to Pilate with his battalion, his strong men. You know, we have like doubting worshippers of Jesus, and we’re assured that in this new world the way it works is not power, influence, and authority. It’s the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ and discipling the nations that controls the world.

And two thousand years later, here we are, disciples of these men ultimately, counting down through two thousand years. Where is Pilate? Where’s Caesar? Well, there are new Pilates and new Caesars, I suppose. But they all end up in the dustbin of history. The church marches forward. Jesus assures us that he controls the future. And in this text, it’s the same thing. But in this text, it’s women in contrast with strong Roman guards. And again there—who’s going to win? The powerless women, fearing women, or the guards who have money and power, influence with the governing authority of Israel, the governing authority of the Roman Empire?

They’ve got connected guys, they’re moneyed guys, they’re powerful, physical strength guys, and they lose. Two thousand years later, everyone knows what the resurrection was and that it had happened. We win because a few powerless, weak women did the simple task that God told them to do of just going and telling the male disciples what was happening.

Women and warriors—women, faithful women, they control the world. And even whether they’ve got kids or no kids—these women don’t have kids in this text—but they’re the first apostles. They’re the first sent ones. Ain’t that right? An apostle is a sent one. And the women are apostles here. They’re sent. They’re sent to tell the disciples something. You know, some people say, “Well, see, it shows we should have women popes, women preachers because the women were the first apostles.”

But well, we have the rest of the Bible. Well, yeah, but by then Paul was kind of a chauvinist and the church understood, “Oh no, we can’t let that happen.” I mean, I don’t know why you would want to believe one part of the Bible and not the other part. You know, that shows some kind of initial bias, right? Wouldn’t we rather say, “Well, yeah, Paul was right. He was clear in this gospel account. The guy,” I mean the text, “was just illustrating that the women were apostles.” No, it never works that way.

It works to the spirit of the age, right? But in any event, you know, the consistent message of the scriptures can’t be ignored. These women are not capital A apostles. The Bible is quite clear that apostles in that sense, and ministers of the word, have to be men representing the Lord Jesus Christ to the bride, the body of Christ. But they are small-a apostles—are sent ones. And they’re consistently represented in these early days of the new creation as the ones who are faithful, and the men are kind of doubting a lot of the time. And the women seem to be the ones called to secure them and get their courage up.

And so the women are important to this test, to this task. So what does this tell us about women in the new creation?

Let me go over the kids’ questions quick so they get the right answers in. Number six: The women went to the tomb as the new day began. Because of an angel, the guards were very afraid. The angel told the women not to be afraid. He didn’t tell the men—the guards, rather. After the angel’s good news to the women, he gave them a mission from God. The women met, as they obeyed, the person who was Jesus. The three things that Jesus told the women was “Rejoice, don’t be afraid, and go on mission.” And the women met him as they worshiped him.

What did the Jews use to bribe the guards with? Glory, money, life, security. And they got them to lie against the truth.

Okay. Now, a lot of people in our day and age take the text that I’ve just looked at and make a case for women pastors, women capital-A apostles, women popes, whatever it might be. And I think that is wrong because Paul clearly tells us that women are not to preach in the context of the church. You need male leadership in the church.

But there’s—I think there is something that’s significant going on here. But I think if we think of it in terms of the primal rift, it’ll help us to see what actually the big picture is. The primal setting of male-female relationships is that Eve is given to Adam—him—as what? As someone who would help him with his task.

Now, I’ve mentioned before in the last couple of weeks that that’s a very significant statement. I don’t think it just means cook for him. She is a comprehensive helper, fit for him. I believe she’s important in ways that maybe can’t be seen—some that can be seen. To well, it’s obvious she’s important for his vocation, his calling. He can’t do it without her. “Not good for man to be alone”—not just because of all the problems men have being alone, but because he can’t accomplish the task. God says you need a wife to accomplish your task in the world.

These disciples can’t accomplish their task without the women. They’re going to accomplish the task. The disciples, you know, even though they’re fearful and doubting and all that stuff, Jesus will power them up. He’ll get them to go disciple the nations. It’ll happen. It has happened. We know it’s happened. And part of the way that Jesus will accomplish that is through women who are helpers, fit, proper complement to them.

These women are acting the role of Eve, as the men in Christ are the new Adams. They’re empowering the disciples to do the work that Jesus wants them to do. Jesus wants them to go and make disciples. And to accomplish that, Jesus uses women to carry that message, to be his summons to them, to bring them—I don’t know, humble them, whatever it is. It doesn’t make any difference. But the point is the primal rift has been healed, and in the new creation we don’t have a new Adam and Eve in the sense of something, relationship of roles that are different. We have the reassertion of the original roles. Why wouldn’t we? That’s what was lost.

And so what we have here is that now Galatians 3:28-29 says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is no male or female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring according to the promise.”

Now, he’s talking about baptism. He’s just been talking about baptism. And he tells them that, you know, once you’ve been baptized, you’re part of the same body. And so somehow this “no male or female” relates, of course, to baptism and their place in the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s interesting that the Jews at this time—the Jews have a prayer that says this. Listen up: “Blessed be God that he did not make me a Gentile. Blessed be he that he did not make me a boor, an ignorant peasant, or a slave. Blessed be he that he did not make me a woman.”

Those are the three things that Paul says, you know, are equal now in the body of Christ. It’s interesting, isn’t it? The primal rift is reflected in this Jewish prayer, and it affected a pride in terms of Jew versus Gentile, you know, cultured and non-cultured, free or slave, and men—prideful as opposed to women.

By the way, the Greeks, let’s see if I can find this real quick. The Greeks had something actually quite similar. Oh yeah, here it is. There was a statement of gratitude that appeared in Greek writings as well. Quoting now: “I was grateful that I was born a human being and not a beast. Next, a man and not a woman. Thirdly, a Greek and not a barbarian.”

So it’s interesting—these kind of same categories appear in pagan Greek writings and in Jewish writings. And Paul is saying exactly the opposite.

Now, what’s interesting in Galatians 3:28 is that listen closely. He says “There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is no male and female.” So there’s a change in that last couplet. The first is an “or” statement. The last one’s a “kai” statement. Why? Well, probably because—God—this is a reference back to Genesis 1:27. When God made them in his image: “Male and female, he made them.” Okay? So it’s a reference back to Genesis, to that pre-primal rift that I’m trying to talk about here in relationship to what’s going on.

And what’s going on is women’s status is now being exalted. And I think that there’s evidence that—okay, Paul, when he writes to the Galatians, is actually talking to them about the wall of the law that kept Jew and Gentile separated being torn down. And so now in Christ, in Messiah, in his one body, there’s neither Jew nor Gentile. You don’t have special food laws anymore. You know, that food stuff—that was a wall of division because God said, “Until Messiah comes, the world is torn in two.” And I think what Paul is alluding to here is certainly our unity, male and female, in baptism and in the body of Christ, but I think he’s saying that now in Messiah the primal rift has been healed in a liturgical way as well—of course it has been, right?

Let’s see. So when you women have your monthly time, do you ask—are you unclean? Can you come to church or can you not come to church? You couldn’t go to church under Mosaic law. Now you can. There’s no distinction male or female now in terms of those matters.

When you have a girl baby, do you stay away from church longer than when you have a boy baby? No, of course you don’t. Because those distinctions, which you were supposed to do during the time of the Mosaic law—you had to stay away for a girl baby, forty days; for a boy baby, eighty. Those distinctions of male and female are now done away with.

What’s going on? God wanted the Jews and the Gentiles to know that humanity was torn in two because of sin. And he wanted them to know that when Messiah comes, everything that’s broken—and as Bob Dylan says, everything seems to be broken—everything that’s broken will be healed. And God said, “With these distinctions of male, female in the law, Mosaic law, there were things that were broken there too. And when Messiah comes, they’ll be healed.” And now in Jesus Christ and in the church, there’s no distinction—here where you’re sitting, whether you’re male or female, free or slave, Jew or Gentile, we’re all one in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me mention one more practical matter. I used to teach that Numbers 30 said that when my wife had a commercial contract, I could annul it within one day. Anybody do that? You don’t have to raise your hand. You know what I’m talking about. Numbers 30: The woman makes a vow or a pledge, and the husband hears about it, he can overturn it the day he hears it. A woman, by the way, who doesn’t have a husband and is older, she can enter into that vow, pledge without anybody hearing it.

In any event, some people say today in our circles that that’s the same way it is now—women cannot enter into contractual obligations unless they get their husband’s permission. But is that really what Numbers 30 is saying? Numbers 30 follows the laws for the Feast of Tabernacles, the feast of booths, all the sacrifices, and it immediately precedes war on Midian. It’s tied in context to this sacrificial system. And in fact, the particular words used—it doesn’t say a wife who makes a contract. It says a wife who makes a vow to the Lord. Very specific language, covered by the book of Leviticus. And a pledge was an abstinence from doing something. A vow was, “Boy, I know you are great to me, and if you give me this, I’ll give you $10,000.” That’s like a vow to the Lord. But it’s not normal contractual obligations. There’s no reason to assume that it’s talking specifically about the kind of vows that are described in the book of Leviticus.

And I think it’s another example where women in the new creation are different than women in the old creation. Women have no need, I don’t think, to have their husband approve every contract they enter into. Now, it’s with wisdom for husbands and wives to talk together about decisions, and the man is the head of the household. And so certainly you’d want to work it all through. I’m not denying any of that. But this law, which I used to use as a law to instruct men and women in terms of their obligations, is an example, I think, of what Paul was referring to in Galatians 3:28 when he said that in Christ there’s neither male nor female.

All that Mosaic legislation that said that the rending of cultures, nations, and men and women would come together again only when Messiah was there and kind of ritually separated them—that is all done away with now. And this picture of women in the new creation is a picture of just that, I think. Women are given an exalted status. Yeah, they’re not capital-A apostles, but they’re sure lowercase-a apostles. They’re sure sent ones on a mission from God.

And just like Eve was absolutely essential for men carrying out their task in the world, women today are absolutely essential for men carrying out their tasks in the world as well. It’s a beautiful text. It reminds us again of the weak things of the world that God uses to destroy the powerful things, that the future lies with women and not warriors. And the future tells us that increasingly God is healing relationships.

Don’t throw out all of what this culture has done over the last thirty years. A lot of it really has been an attempt to implement the truth of the proper relationship of women and men again, this side of the new creation. Now, you don’t want to throw out the first creation. When Paul argues for male preachers, he does it on the basis not of Mosaic legislation, but of the first creation. So that’s all there. I’m not saying anything against that.

But may the Lord God cause us to rejoice in the fact that male-female relationships were definitively healed, that primal rift was healed with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And history is seeing the working out of that healing as we move into the future.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for our lives. We thank you for the gospel. We thank you for the new creation. Help us not to be afraid. Help us to rejoice. Help us, Father, to go in rapid response to the missions you call us on. And help us expect to see you as we go about our work. Bless us this week as we do the simple task of going into it without fear and indeed with a sense of joy. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.