From the December 18 sermon, “Where Are You?” preached by Pastor Mark Driscoll:
One of the core values of Mars Hill Church is complementarian relationships. Pastor Mark explores what this means practically by answering three important questions with Scripture, starting in the beginning: what is God’s intent for men and women (Genesis 1–3), what is God’s intent for men and women in the church (1 Timothy 2–3), and what is God’s intent for men and women in the home (Ephesians 5).
You don’t need to hide.
You need to repent.You don’t need to try and cover up what you’ve done.
You need to bring it out in the open so that it can be dealt with.And they did not do that.
“But the LORD
God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’”That’s God’s question for men, to the husbands, to the boyfriends, to the fathers, to the grandfathers, to the brothers in Christ: Where are you? Where are you?
And this is God’s question, men, for you and for me today. […]
Let me ask you this: Who sinned first, Adam or Eve? Eve. Who did God come looking for first? Adam. Why? Because to be a man is to bear additional responsibility, not just for yourself, but for your wife and your children. Eve is going to be held responsible, for sure. But, the problems in this family could have been dealt with had Adam led, loved, humbly, courageously as God intended. And he failed. Our father failed. His sons, we, tend to fail. And that’s sin. And what it leads to is separation form his wife. …
Men, you need to know this: The decisions we make greatly affect, for good or evil, our wives and our children, which means that the decisions we make, they reign for generations toward death or life. We are sinners by nature and choice, which means unless God changes us, we are dangerous for one another. And we may want to love and we may want to have life and we may want to have legacy, but we don’t have the means by which to accomplish that apart from God’s salvation and intervention.
What is God’s intent for men and women in the church? And here’s where we begin, 1 Timothy 2:11, “Let a woman learn.” In that day, that was controversial. Women over here, men over here. Men learn, women don’t. Most women were illiterate. They weren’t taught to read. They were not recognized as equal to men. We know that the Bible teaches that men and women are equal because they bear the image and likeness of God, like a right and left hand they complement one another, working together for the glory of God, and God wants the women to learn.So ladies, read your Bibles. Read books. Read theology, good podcasts, vodcasts, classes. Learn. Grow. Don’t borrow the faith of your parents. Don’t borrow the faith of your husband. Don’t take other people’s word for it. Open the book that God wrote. Get to know the God of the book. Do your own homework. Come to your own convictions. There is nothing better than to encourage the ladies to be good theologians. […]
We do believe women have all the spiritual gifts. We do believe that women are gifted to teach and to lead and to love and to serve. We do believe in every way that women are called to offices of leadership in the church—we call them deacons, along with godly men. And in addition to that, we have elders, and all of that comes out of 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Timothy 3, because what was God’s intent in creation is still to this day God’s intent in the church. God’s intent in the church.
And the hard, cold, sad truth is, [in] most churches, all the work is getting done by the women: All the prayer, all the love, all the service, is getting done by the women. And the men, like Adam, are silently, cowardly, passively, just letting women serve God and not doing their part. And God wants that not to be the case in our church.
I want you to enjoy the grace of God individually.
I want you to enjoy the grace of God in your marriage.
I want you to enjoy the grace of God in your family.And I want that river of God’s grace to flow to your kids, your grandkids, your great-grandkids, your great-great-great-grandkids.
And it all starts right now with some of you really getting serious about Jesus. Some of you have borrowed the faith of your parents or you’ve been borrowing the faith of others, maybe even some of you men, you’ve been borrowing the faith of your wife, which often happens.
Today, you need to come to your own faith. You need to decide for yourself, “Yes, I’m going to trust in Jesus. Yes, I may have walked in here as someone who didn’t know God in Christ, but I’m gonna walk out of here, by the grace of God, as someone who knows God in Christ.” …
And the hope for [your family] and the hope for you is the same:
Jesus came.
Jesus forgives sin.
Jesus takes away shame.
Jesus makes people new.
Jesus pours the Holy Spirit in them.
Jesus gives them new desires.
Jesus gives them a new identity.
Jesus gives them a new eternity.Jesus gives them a new power to live out of this new identity as a new person.
And Ephesians 5 says, he took responsibility for us. And this is what I’m asking you men to do like Jesus, not as Jesus, but like Jesus. Jesus took what was not his fault, our sin, and he made it his responsibility. That’s how Christ loved the church. He went to the cross and he poured himself out and he died in our place for our sins. And he rose as our Savior.
And as you give your sin to Jesus, as you give your shame to Jesus, he says, “It is finished.” And he takes care of everything that needs to be taken care of.
He takes your sin away; he gives you his righteousness.
He takes your death away; he gives you his life.
He takes your condemnation away; he gives you his salvation.He takes you from Adam as your father to God as your Father. And he raises you up as matriarchs and patriarchs, women and men of faith, belonging to God, filled with the Holy Spirit, sent to the earth with a mission that begins with marriage and children and a legacy, so that after you, your grandkids, your great-grandkids, your great-great-great-grandkids look back on this day.
And when the question is asked, “What made a difference? Where did it all change? How did that legacy of sin and death that had plagued our family for generations—where did it end?” They will tell the story of this day.
“There was a day when my great-great-grandmother, my great-great-grandfather, they met Jesus. They were filled with the Holy Spirit. They became a new person. And the legacy of faith that comes from them has now been echoing and ringing for generations. And I am part of their legacy of faith. I am fruit hanging on that branch of our family tree, by the grace of God.”
And what I’m begging you to do today is to give yourself to Jesus, to give your sin to Jesus, to give your shame to Jesus, to give your children to Jesus, to give your grandchildren to Jesus, to give your great-grandchildren to Jesus.
And that’s why we’re here.
really excited! You don’t know what God has for you—but it’s wonderful. And it’s for a whole lot of people who have your same last name.
