Sharon Knotts addresses the contentious topic of women in ministry through a scriptural lens, unraveling misconceptions and offering a grounded theological discourse. Highlighting Paul’s teachings on prophecy and order in church services, Knotts draws on historical biblical contexts to dispel myths surrounding women’s silence in the church. This episode is an invitation to re-examine longstanding biases and embrace the diversity of voices that enrich the body of Christ.
Greetings friends and new listeners and welcome to the Sound of Faith. I’m Sharon Knotts thanking you for joining us today because we know that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Our message today is Women in the Pulpit. This controversy in the body of Christ refuses to go away. And after Sound of Faith was cancelled on a network of 19 stations because I’m a woman, for the first time in my 40 years of ministry, I was forced to teach on this subject, Women in the Pulpit. Let’s look at verse 23 while we’re here. If therefore the whole church become together into one place and all speak with tongues and there come in those that are unlearned or unbelievers, will not they say that you’re all mad or you’re all crazy? But if all prophesy and there come in one that believes not or one who is unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all. Drop down to verse 31. For ye may all prophesy one by one that all may learn and all may be comforted. Now here Paul is talking about the whole church, and of course he is giving the regulations, I don’t like that word, but I can’t think of a better one right now, of how the gifts should operate in the church. But we’re looking at this point that he’s making, that we see here. We’re talking about everyone, men and women, husbands and wives, singles and marrieds, all in the same church. In the same service. How many see that? And he’s saying that when you’re all there together as one, it’s not a good idea for everybody to speak in tongues at one time. Because then people will come in and say, those people are nuts. But he said, if you speak in tongues one at a time, and of course we understand there’s a gift that goes with that in the church, which is interpretation, or if you prophesy one at a time, then the Holy Spirit can use that to convict their hearts, the unbelievers, the sinners, those that come in. How many see what I’m saying? But then he says, because you may all prophesy. as long as you do it one by one. Didn’t say only the men could prophesy and not the women. He said, you all may prophesy. So I know the point he’s making is he’s not putting a governor, he’s not saying don’t have prophecy in the church. He’s not saying you’ve got too much prophecy in the church. He’s not saying you’ve got to limit your prophecy. He’s saying you just have to do it in order because God is not the God of confusion. You can’t be over prophesying one another or speaking in tongues over one another in a service where people have no idea what you’re talking about. But here’s the point I want you to see is that all may prophesy. And then if all prophesy, women and men, guess what will happen? All may learn. So men sitting in the congregation can learn when a female is prophesying. Do you see that? All can speak in tongues. All can prophesy as long as we do it in order. And you know, Brother Hardy has preached on the gifts many times. And so he always, you know, targets and focuses on the order part because we never needed to talk about the male-female thing in Faith Tabernacle. So you know what happened on the day of Pentecost. You all know it. I’ll just refresh you. You don’t need to actually for me to read everything, but you know that Jesus had told them to tarry in Jerusalem until Father sends the Holy Spirit, and you’re going to receive power when you get the Holy Spirit, and you shall be my witnesses. I think you’ve got to open your mouth and talk to do that. So we find out in Acts 1 that they found an upper room, and they all gathered there. It names specifically the 11 disciples of Jesus. It names specifically Mary, the mother of Jesus, and it says, “…with the women.” And also Jesus’ biological brothers, Mary’s other sons. So we have the disciples, we have Jesus’ brothers, we have Mary, the mother of Jesus, and we’ve got with the women. And they were all there in that one place, in one accord. Amen. And we know that the Holy Spirit fell. And when he fell, they became cloven tongues of fire that sat upon all the men. No? Said it sat upon each of them. Amen. Each of them, every single one that was there, including all the women. And then, you know, when they got so filled up, they began to go out of the building and they were speaking in all these languages, probably about 70 different languages they were speaking. And then the people outside thought, these people are drunk. And, you know, they really believed that. And they said to Peter, what meaneth this? And what did Peter do? He referred to the Old Testament prophet Joel. And he quoted it. And he said, but this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel. And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and your daughters. shall prophesy. Your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams, and I’ll pour out my spirit on my servants and on my handmaidens. I will pour out in those days of my spirit, and they, servants, male, handmaidens, female, shall prophesy. Amen? Is that what it says? I’m quoting now from a reading from Acts 2, 16 and 18. So when the women prophesy, everybody there in that particular service will learn something from God, including all the men. And let the men say, Amen. So we’re still in Corinthians and chapter 14. Let’s look at verse 21. In the law it is written, with men of other tongues and other lips will I speak unto this people, and yet for all of that they will not hear me, saith the Lord. Wherefore tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not. But prophesying serves not for them that believe, but for them which believe.” So what Paul is saying here, he’s referring to an Old Testament prophecy, Isaiah 28, verses 11 and 12. And it says that I will speak, God is saying I will pour out my spirit, and I will speak with stammering lips and other tongues. It’s obvious it’s referring to this. But nowhere in the Isaiah prophecy does it say anything about this. Gender, male nor female, doesn’t even say anything about people. Says I’ll pour out my spirit and there will be stammering lips and other tongues. So it is a generic gender in Isaiah. Amen? And yet we see here, if we look at Corinthians chapter 14, verse 21, it is in the law, it is written, I just told you where, with men of other tongues and other lips, I will speak unto this people. How many of you have the word men in your Bible italicized? If you do, let me see your hand. If you’ve got a King James Version, I know that you do. And the reason why it’s italicized is it’s not in the original text. The translators added it. Most of the time when they added something, it’s to clarify something that they thought was perhaps confusing the reader. So they added it. And it was okay to add something that refers to humans with stammering lips and other tongues. But they went way over with their male bias and put men… Oh yeah, you might want to look at that, 1 Corinthians 14, 21. They should have said, they… Because Isaiah does not say men or women. Doesn’t even mention people. It’s inferred that the people got the lips and the tongues. But here in 1 Corinthians 14, 21, in the law, it is written with men of other tongues and other lips. Will I speak? And men is italicized. They should have put in there, they will speak. How many follow that? You know, you didn’t know grammar could be so interesting, did you? Oh, yeah, grammar’s fun. Especially when it clears up things that people repeat and bring confusion and then outright lies, really. Yeah. So the major mistake of those who are against women in the role of pastor, preacher, teacher in the church is that they confuse the role of headship in the home with the role of headship in the church. They bring over the authority that the husband has over the wife in the home into the church, making all women subject to all men in the church. And as I said a moment ago, then what about the unmarried women? Now, I’m gonna read you directly verbatim a claim that was in this article that was published by the Southern Baptist. This is verbatim. For a woman to serve as pastor would be to take the place of headship over men. Now, we already read who is the head of men in the church? Christ. Who is the head of women in the church? Are they saying women are taking the place of Christ? If Christ is the head of men and Christ is the head of woman, it’s because Christ is the head of the church. And for a woman to serve as a pastor, she is not usurping Christ’s position as head because he’s the head of the church. She can’t do that. Because they’re trying to bring over the husband part as being the head of the wife into the church as men being the head of women. Let me read another claim. The wife submits to husband. The husband submits to the Lord Jesus. Jesus submits to God. In his submission to God the Father, Jesus identified both man and woman. In submission to the Lordship of Christ, men identify with the submissive role of women. Yeah, I know it went over your head. You’ve got to read it like five times to try to figure out exactly what are you saying here. This was a quote. This wasn’t my words, okay? So they’re saying that wives submit to the husband and the husband submits to the Lord. That’s true. Jesus submits to God. That’s true. But they’re saying, well, when Jesus submitted to God, he was identifying with both men and women. So that meaning, again, I’m telling you what they’re saying. So when in submission to the Lordship of Jesus, men then can identify with the submission of women. I don’t know, but that’s just downright baloney. So men, when you submit to the Lord Jesus, then you are now experiencing what we women have to go through submitting as women. Amen. Women submit to the Lord Jesus too. We all submit to the Lord Jesus. Amen? But wives submit to their husbands at home. But in the church, we all submit to the Lordship of Jesus. See, we’ve got to keep it straight. All of their arguments, and there’s many, and they’re very detailed, boiled down to this headship thing, in my opinion. Because just like I’ve showed you, the headship of husband and wife is domestic. The headship of men and women is spiritual. And in that case, we’re talking about married women, single women, etc. We are all under the headship of Jesus Christ. Amen. Otherwise, Christ is not the head of women. Our husbands are. I should say wives. And he’s not the head of single women at all. So single women are headless. We will not make comment on that. All right, let’s look at the companion scripture that they use. Let’s go to 1 Timothy chapter 2. You will recognize these verses right away. These are the ones that you always hear shaking the women’s heads. 1 Timothy 2, verse 11. Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not, I allow not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. Right away out of the gate, let’s remember the same Greek words, gune and aner, that can be women and men, can also be wives and husbands. If we translate this verse using wives and husbands, it completely changes it. Amen? Let the wives learn in silence with all subjection. I suffer not a woman to teach nor usurp authority over the husband, but to be in silence. Now, in this particular chapter, and I don’t want to go through it all because it’s kind of beside the point, but he’s talking about women in the church prophesying whether their head is covered or not covered, whether they’re wearing a veil or they’re not wearing a veil. We’re not going to get into that because it doesn’t concern us. We don’t have a problem with what your hair looks like. I mean, if you’ve got a weave, that’s fine. If you want to wear something like Sister wears, that’s fine too. It’s not going to prohibit you from prophesying. How many understand that? So therefore, I don’t want to get hung up on that. But because Paul went on to say, we don’t have any such custom. We’re not getting into the semantics of what a woman is wearing on her head. Because we realize that in that culture, there were some women who shaved their heads. They shaved their heads bald. And he said it was shameful to do that. And the reason being is it identified them with the women of the world, and specifically women that were prostitutes and sexually immoral. Amen? So to be a Christian woman in the church and keep shaving your head, he was against that. But he went on to say, we have no such custom. We’re not going to get into the customs of your hair. Because if you’re born again and filled with the Spirit, I believe the Spirit of God will direct you about shaving your head. Now there are some women that may have a problem with growing hair. In the old days, maybe their hair wasn’t long and they can’t grow long hair. There are some women that have tried to grow long hair and they can’t. Of course, today they can go buy it. And it’s theirs because they paid for it. And don’t even try to pull it and see if it’s real or not. And we don’t have a problem with that. We don’t care if somebody goes and gets long hair and it makes them look pretty and attractive. They feel good about themselves. That’s good. I mean, I’m blessed. I have a lot of hair and I never have to worry about running out of hair. I’ve got plenty of it, but I understand that it’s not the same with all women. So we’re not going to get hung up on the hairdo. Here’s the point we’re making. Women are allowed to pray and prophesy. Whether they have long hair or whether they got a veil on, the point is I’m trying to show you is he said they could prophesy. Do you understand? Regardless of what their hair looks like, they were allowed to prophesy in the service. Amen? Amen? And would he tell them here in 1 Corinthians, what we read in 1 Corinthians 11, that we read that they’re not allowed to speak in the church, and then he turns around, actually it was 14, but yet in 1 Corinthians 11 he said, you can prophesy. You can prophesy in 1 Corinthians 11, and I’m not going to get in about the hairdo, he said, but in chapter 14 in the same letter, oh, you can’t prophesy, you’ve got to be silent in the church. He would be contradicting himself in the same letter. Do you see that? Okay, I wanted to bring that in even though we’re still in 1 Timothy 2. I want you to see that. So he wouldn’t tell them you can prophesy in 1 Corinthians 11 and you can in 1 Corinthians 14. So now we have to say, well, what is he talking about here to Timothy? Well, first of all, we need to know where they are. And Timothy eventually became the pastor of the church at Ephesus. That’s important to know. He’s not the pastor yet. He’s being trained, but he will eventually be the pastor of Ephesus. So what Paul is doing, he is addressing a problem that’s in the church at Ephesus. Look at chapter 1, verse 3. Now he’s talking to Timothy. And remember, this is a personal letter. to Timothy about a specific situation in the church of Ephesus. Verse three, as I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus when I went into Macedonia, why? That thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine. So right up front, we have the purpose for why Paul is writing Timothy. And note that he said, I besought thee to abide, or I besought thee to stay. In other words, they were both at Ephesus, but now Paul is going to leave to go on into Macedonia. But he is beseeching, he is urging, he is pressuring Timothy to stay behind. Not to go with him. And we can see by the tone and all that apparently Timothy is reluctant to stay behind. He wants to go with Paul. He doesn’t want to stay behind. And we can understand why. Because Paul is giving him the task of charging people that are preaching false doctrine. And we all know that Timothy was on the timid side. How do we know that? In chapter 4, 12, he tells them, let no man despise your youth. I got confidence in you in spite of your age. You are qualified. You grew up at the knee of your grandmother and mother, Lois and Eunice, and you are qualified. From a little child thou has known the holy scriptures that are able to make thee wise through faith in Jesus Christ. All scripture that is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. That’s what he wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy. He was qualified, but he was timid. That’s why in 2 Timothy 1.7 he said, God hasn’t given you a spirit of fear. The word is intimidation. Intimidation. God hasn’t given you a spirit of intimidation, but a power of love and a sound mind. In other words, he’s saying, Timothy, you’ve got to stand up in the face of all these people. They’re trying to take advantage of you because you are young and because you easily come under intimidation. So because of that, he’s urging and pressing him to stay behind because he wants him to charge. Do you know the word charge is very powerful? I want you to charge them. I want you to boldly challenge them. Forbid them not to speak it here where it says charge you that he teach no other doctrine the Greek word is hetero didoskalene And all I want to show you is hetero how many ever heard a hetero? You know like heterosexual What’s it mean it means? It means the opposite The opposite sex. Now, straight is a modern word, okay? But hetero means the opposite. It means different. If you’re in a heterosexual relationship, you’re different from your partner. You’re male, he’s female, he’s vice versa. So here where it says other doctrine, it is different doctrine. Different doctrine than what we have been teaching. And he wanted him to stay there and confront these people. And we know from reading Acts 20, 20 that Ephesus also was made up of many house churches. And I say this because in Acts 20, 20, Paul said, I taught you daily house to house. So he visited all those different houses. That’s how a lot of churches got started. Somebody’s house, and then it grew. Amen? And so he’s urging Timothy to do this. So the best interpretation of this passage is we’ve got to understand he was addressing a specific situation at Ephesus and somehow it was involving the women. He may be speaking of a particular woman, a particular woman who was propagating this other doctrine. Because if we look in 1 Timothy 2, verse 9, in like manner also that women, how many see women plural, adorn themselves in modest apparel with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with broided hair or gold or pearls or costly array, but which becometh women professing godliness and good works. I am not going to get on this again. You’ve got to understand the key to this verse is the word modest. That’s the key. What is modest is what we should wear. Amen? It doesn’t mean you can’t braid your hair. It doesn’t mean you can’t put barrettes in your hair. It doesn’t mean any of that. It means you have to be modest and not dress like the world. Immodestly. Amen? So that’s all I’m going to say about that. But I want you to see in verse 9, he says, women, plural. Do you see that? And so it carries over in verse 10 that he’s talking about women. We see it, women that profess godliness. But when we get to verse 11, which we have read, he changes. He changes from women to the woman. And verse 12, he talks about a woman. Why did he change? Why did he go from plural to singular? Amen? So it’s like he’s doing a switcheroo here. So if we instead, because he went to singular, the woman and a woman, remember the same Greek words, gune and aner, right? So he went from plural, meaning all the women in the church, should dress modestly. And now he’s talking about teaching and he goes down to a singular women. So why don’t we just take that Greek word that means the same thing and read wife and husband. Let the wife learn in silence with all subjection. That matches what we just read in 1 Corinthians, does it not? But I suffer not a woman, I suffer not a wife to teach nor usurp authority over the husband. but to be in silence. Are you taking this in? If you put husband and wife there, it’s the only way that it can make sense without contradicting the other scriptures that women can prophesy. And the word prophesy does not mean you say, thus saith the Lord, coming down from heaven is judgment if you don’t straighten up. The word prophesy means to flow forth. You could be prophesying. You could be preaching, teaching. You could even be singing. Elisha used to call for them to come and play music that he would prophesy to. Amen? So we have to understand that. Now let’s look at the word silence. Because, you know, that is hard. If he’s talking about all women and he’s not talking about wives, that we have to be silent in the church? What’s the point of coming? I can stay home and listen to CDs. I can sing and worship at home, but I can’t when I come to church. I got to be silent. What does the word silence mean? It’s a Greek word. Of course, you knew that. Hesukia. And I want you to just look up at verse 2. Look at verse 2 while we’re here. 1 Timothy, verse 2 of chapter 2. He’s saying we should pray for kings and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. See the word peaceable there? See it? Same Greek word. Hesukia. Hesukia. Oh, so we should lead a quiet and silent life. Oh, I know you think the word quiet would be the one, but it’s not, folks. Get out your lexicon. Peaceable is hesychia. Quiet is another word altogether. So don’t you see here? He’s saying, and he’s talking to all the saints. He wants all the saints in the church to have a peaceable life. Do you see that? And that means he wants them to have a life that’s free from turmoil and a life of tranquility, which we don’t have today in the world. We’ve got just the opposite. We’ve got so much division and unrest. Well, you all, I don’t even have to describe it. So he’s saying, pray that you won’t have that going on. Amen? So it cannot mean silence and mean that you’re mute. It means that you have a peaceable, calm environment. Not that you’re silent and you cannot speak. Because it’s the same word as peaceable in verse 2. Amen. I trust you’re being enlightened and informed by our message today, Women in the Pulpit. After the shocking cancellation of 19 radio stations because I’m an associate minister with my dad, Brother Hardy, I was led by the Holy Spirit to do an in-depth defense on this subject. We need to know why we believe what we believe. And you may not be a female minister, but you may need to defend those who are. You can with this scripturally based, doctrinally sound teaching, including the Greek texts in a simple, easy to understand format. For instance, there was one Greek word translated into our English New Testament as both man and husband, and only one Greek word translated both women and wife. And this is a major factor in the mistranslation of controversial verses. that substantially changes their intent and outcome. Women in the Pulpit is part two of a double sermon CD set we are offering for the special price of only $10. Part one, Gospel Game Changer for Women, chronicles Jesus’ emancipation of women. Order SK197. Send a minimum love gift of $10 to Sound of Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Or go online to soundoffaith.org. To order your two CDs sent by mail, send a love gift of $10 or more to P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203 and request SK197. Until next time, this is Sharon Knott saying, Maranatha.
