Good morning. It's great to be with you all. I always enjoy the occasions when I get to get out of my own hometown and visit another faithful congregation that's seeking to serve the Lord Jesus.

It's gathering around His word and seeking to apply it to all of life. It's a great gift, a great honor to be with you all. And so, a huge thanks to the elders here for the invitation to be here with you all this evening. I want to read to you just a couple of verses as I begin from Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis chapter 2 beginning at verse 21, just 21 to 23. You've heard these words many times. You no doubt know this verse. but hear it again. This is the word of God. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept, and he took out one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof.

And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Let's pray together. Father, we bow before you and we submit before you and your word.

Father, we ask that by your Holy Spirit, you would take this word and you would drive it into our hearts and that you would cause it to bear much fruit. And we ask for this in Jesus’ name and amen. Amen.

As Pastor Michael mentioned, I gave the first part of these, this two-part message on Friday entitled The Glory of Man.

And today is The Glory of Woman, or The Glory of Women. And I want to begin by repeating a little bit of what I said on Friday, not all of you were there and just setting the stage and talking about just the notion of glory. So, when we say The Glory of Women, what do we mean? What do we mean by glory?

And I, you might stop, think for a second. What do you think of when you hear that word? When you hear that word glory? I think I think of something shining. I think of something bright. I think of something that catches your attention. Something that you can't look away from. Something that's beautiful.

Something that is majestic. These are all sort of words that we use interchangeably to describe glory. And that's right. And that's how the Bible uses the word also. In fact, the word glory in Hebrew, the same word can also be translated honor. So that's the same word. So, glory and honor is actually the same word.

For example, in the Ten Commandments when it says, Children, honor your father and your mother, that's the same word. And it literally means heavy. That's like the sort of the root idea is heavy or weighty. And the reason for that is when you think of an ancient king.

An ancient king who was very glorious and very honorable. He was literally often weighed down with a lot of treasure. gold and silver and possessions and to glorify or honor a great man or a great woman, a great king, you would bring treasures to them and make them heavier, make them more glorious.

And but you think for like children, for example, or all of us are to honor our father and mother. What you're doing then is you're reckoning their words, their wisdom as. Weighty, significant, powerful, potent. You think of their wisdom as significant. That's how you honor them. That's how you rightly glorify them.

In Proverbs it says that we're to wear the words of our mother and father like great chains, ornamental chains around our necks. Or you're to wear the words and the wisdom of your mother and father like a crown on your head. You're to feel the weight of your mother and father, of their legacy, of their hard work, of their sacrifices for you and their instructions to you and their desires for your good.

And the idea though, is as you do that, as you honor God above all, and then you honor those who rightly deserve our honor you're being honored. You wear their words like a crown and now you're. And so, this is the idea, this is what makes a person shine. This is what makes someone glorious.

This is what makes someone honorable. Glory then has to do with the way God has made the world, and the way God has blessed the world and put his glory in the world, such that we can bear that glory. Such that we can carry that glory. So, glory has to do then with influence, and power, and authority.

Someone who is glorious is influential. authoritative, a leader. And so, when we talk about the glory of man and the glory of woman, we're talking about the way that God has made men and women to rule. We're talking about the power of men and women. This is why Satan attacked glory. In the garden, Satan attacked this glory in the garden in the beginning.

It's why he has attacked this glory in every generation. He goes after our glory. He's trying to disarm us. He wants to convince us not to embrace the glory that God has given us. And, of course, Satan doesn't do this by saying, you’re not really interested in glory. No, that's not how it works.

He offers us glory. Foe glory. He offers us something else that's shiny. Something else that looks influential or powerful. And he's trying to get us though, to let go of the real thing. God has bestowed true glory in his image, in male and female. True power, true authority. But Satan comes and says, but look at this fruit, you can become like God, right?

You can get that glory, but a different way. It's a faux glory, it's a false glory. It's a cheap substitute for glory. But this is why our greatest cultural battles in every generation, actually the conflict and the clash almost always happens at the level of glory. Just think about this. Where are our great clashes in our culture right now?

Parades. Are we gonna have pride parades? Are we gonna celebrate that? They say, yeah, everybody come out and celebrate, wave your flags and cheer, right? They want us to join in that quote unquote glory. Of course, the Bible says what they're doing is they're actually glorying in their shame, right?

It's actually deeply shameful what they're doing, but they don't just do it in secret. They want to get you to celebrate it with them. Think of the other places where we've had these cultural clashes that has to do with photographers and weddings. Come make this detestable practice look good, right?

Photographer, come, make it look good. Or baker, cake baker, come celebrate with us. Glorify this abomination. Let's do it with glory. We're constantly, every generation in a glory war. with competing visions of glory. And the fundamental question is it going to be what Romans 1 calls the uncorruptible glory of the living God, or is it going to be the corruptible glory of man and created things?

Now, of course, if, when you honor God rightly and you give God all the glory, turns out what happens is all the other glories in creation get given back to you. But they give, they're given back to you in the right order. But what sinful, rebellious man does is says, no, not you, me. And we substitute another glory, the glory of man, the glory of sex, the glory of money, the glory of earthly power, and we substitute it.

This is, Romans famously says that all have sinned. What is sin? and fallen short of the glory of God, right? So that's what sin is doing. Sin is turning away from the glory of the maker and then in him, the right glories of all the creation and substituting something. Sin is falling from that glory. But the reverse then means that repentance and obedience is turning back to the glory.

Embracing the glory of God, giving him the glory and repenting of our sins, giving him the glory and surrendering our lives, giving him the glory and saying, I want to serve you. You are worthy. And so, standing in that obedience and in that repentance and in that faith is actually embracing the glory of God.

Psalm 115 says that you become like what you worship. Whatever you think is most glorious. That's your God, and you'll become like it. Those who make idols don't have hands, they don't have feet, they don't have eyes, they don't have noses, they don't have ears, and those who make them are like them.

So are those who serve them. But if you serve the living God, who sees his people and hears his people and acts for his people, then you become more human. Then, your eyes begin to open. Your ears begin to open, your mouths begin to open, you become more glorious. And in so doing, glory is what makes you powerful.

Your glory is your God given power. Glory is what makes men and women shine like royalty.

So, what is the glory of women? The glory of women is their beautiful fruitfulness.

or their fruitful beauty. We noted on Friday in my first talk that this beauty is what Adam declares when he first speaks about his wife. Remember, as God took the rib out, forms the woman, fashions the woman, brings her to the man, he speaks the first poem in recorded history. He sings the first song, maybe he sung it, it's a poem, it's a song, he bursts out.

This is now, bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, and I noted on Friday that, that's not just him saying, wow, although it's that, but it's actually a Hebrew, Superlative, you got to remember back to English grammar in middle school. Comparative and superlative. So, you've got good, better, that's the comparative, best, that's the superlative.

We use more and most or ER and EST to designate that. Big, bigger, biggest, beautiful, beautifuller, no. More beautiful. Most beautiful. Okay. In the Hebrew, what they do is they say, of all of the things, you are the thing. That means most. That's the superlative. That's what Adam's doing here. Adam says, of all of my bones, you are the best.

Of all of my flesh, you are the best. You are the most beautiful. The most glorious. You know a couple of Hebrew superlatives. The most famous one is holy of holies, right? Or sometimes translated, most holy place. The holiest place. That's a Hebrew superlative. Or another one is song of songs.

That's the most beautiful song. The most glorious song. The songiest song. Adam is saying, you are like me, glorified. You are like me, but you are the best version of me. Or we might say like Paul does in 1 Corinthians 11, You are the glory of me. You are the glory of man. Woman is man glorified. She's the glory of man.

And in 1 Corinthians 11, Paul says in particular that a woman is given longer hair as a sign of that glory. God put a sign on her, a longer hair that is a sign of her beauty, her glory.

In fact, in the creation of the woman, God uses a different verb to describe the action. In, back in, in verse 7, chapter 2, verse 7, it says the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and there's a generic word there for made. He made it. He made the man. But in, in verse 22, it's a different verb and it would be better translated crafted or constructed.

It's a verb that's used often for artisans. Crafting something glorious. God made the man, but God fashioned the woman. The woman is a work of art. Her glory is her beauty. She is the glory of man. But there's more. Adam actually is naming her in that poem. This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman. We commonly refer to Adam and Eve as our first parents, which is It's accurate and true, but don't forget that Eve had a first, she actually had a prior name to Eve. She's actually not named Eve until after the fall. She's initially named Woman. He's naming her right here, Woman.

The word in Hebrew is Eshah. He names her Eshah. That's her first name. The word Eshah is related to the Hebrew word for fire. Turns out men have been calling women hot a long time. Beautiful. Now, that's not it, that's not all. Not only does he name the woman Isha, which may be translated, since it's related to the word for fire, we might translate it if we really wanted to, so it's like glory woman, fire woman, right?

Glory woman. He says, you will be called glory woman because you are taken out of. And then this is the part that you just can't get in the English. The word there for man is a new word that's never been used in Genesis yet. All through Genesis 1 and 2, the word for man is the word, Adam. From which we get the name Adam.

It's the same. So everywhere in 1 and 2 up to this point, every time man or Adam, it's the same word. It's the same word. Man. Adam. Adam. Adam. So, you think about, and he's called Adam, he's called Adam because he was taken out of the Adama. That's the word for ground. Didn't know you were going to become Hebrew scholars today, did you?

Adam, because he was taken out of the Adama. He's ground man, dirt man, which is why we like dirt. Right? Ground man. That's the word that's been used all the way up through to this point. And then Adam bursts out in song. He sees his bride and says, this is man glorified. This is like me, but the best. She shall be called glory woman because she was taken out of.

And then he names himself Ish,

man, but it's not ground man anymore. It's glory man. He's actually naming himself after the name that he gave his wife. You are glorious, and he says, and now I'm glorified. You are all glory. You have lit up my world. And now you've made my face to shine. You're a crown. So now I'm a king. You see that?

She has glorified him. And so, he needs a new name for the occasion. He is now Glory Man. Because Glory woman has come, and her glory has shone upon him. And of course, ever since men have been singing songs like baby, you light up my life like nobody else, or you light up my world. There's like a fundamental, like creational instinct to that.

God made the world that way. It's true.

But in the beginning, this external beauty, this external glory matched her internal glory. All of her being, all of her calling, this was a sign of truth. She is all glorious because her job, her vocation, her calling is to be a glorifier.

Think of beauty. What's beauty? Beauty is a kind of complexity and harmony. All of these different colors brought into an organization of a beautiful work of art. All of these different notes or sounds brought into a beautiful piece of music. All of these ingredients brought into an amazing. Dinner, complexity into harmony.

It's a kind of symmetry and pleasantness. Beauty is pleasing and attractive and welcoming and invigorating and life giving. And this glory is given to a woman in particular to make a home. She makes a home for her husband. She makes a home in her own womb. For the bearing of children, I read a number of years ago about the development of a female embryo.

It's the tiniest of baby girl inside her mother's womb. And it's within only a few weeks that tiny little baby girl already is developing her own womb. It's this like fundamental sign of what are you? What are you for? You're for making home,

not just a house. I'm, I've been staying in the Airbnb here just a few blocks away and it's been great. It is a very nice house, but it is not a home. Do you know what I mean? I'm going to go home. I'm going to go home this afternoon, this evening to my home where my wife is. Where she's decorated and organized.

Where my kids are. Where my three dogs and my four cats are.

It's my home. Home. Home is a place that makes everything better.

Single women, you do this too. You do this too. You practice hospitality. You cultivate life. You make beautiful things too. You glorify. By serving, you glorify by organizing, you glorify by preparing meals, you glorify by decorating and designing and healing. It's a woman's glory to beautify and glorify herself and everything around her.

This is your glory.

Little girls turn everything into dolls, right? Boys turn everything into guns and swords. They stick, they start making explosion sounds. And you see a little girl and she's holding a stick and what is that? It's my baby. Yes, it is. Right? And it doesn't matter what they have. It doesn't matter, they turn it into a baby doll.

They turn it into a house. They turn it into a kitchen. They turn it into a tea party. Because that's their glory. They know what they're made for. They know what they're made for. And this is glorious. Yes. It's glorious and you need to see it as glorious. When you see them doing it, you need to think, look at what God did.

He put it into their bones. He put it into their souls. They know what they're for. They make home. They make life. They make beauty. That's what they're for. Or I learned this I grew up in a house full of boys, my, my sister, I have one sister, she's ten years younger than me, so I didn't know her very well growing up.

We, I know her well now, but I didn't have sisters nearby, so I learned this from my own daughters. I have two boys and two girls. It turns out that the lockers of teenage girls and boys are incredibly different. Like a teenage boy locker, is just a pile. Stuff it in, slam it, and there's sometimes a little bit of a strange smell coming out of it.

When I took my, one of my daughters a coffee from Starbucks or something, and I go open the, and it's like this, like music starts playing and there's a light, little lights, little candle, not really a candle. What, what do they've done? They turned their locker into a little. It's glorious.

Dads, make sure you encourage this.

Don't despise it.

It's fun to point out and chuckle because it's just, it's fun. It's fun. But don't make fun of it. Don't mock it. Don't belittle it. Don't despise it. They know what they're for. They're practicing their glory. They're doing it. They know what they're made for by the living God. They know how they image the glory of their maker.

Don't despise it. Dads, brothers, look at it and say, it's fun.

This is how they bear the image of the everlasting God.

Don't despise it, don't mock it, don't belittle it. They're practicing their glory. Celebrate it. When your little girl comes out and she's got the dress backwards and upside down and she says, look dad, I'm a princess. Don't make fun of her. Smile and say, yes, you,

it's your glory.

And your wife, when she redecorates again. You say, honey, wasn't that just like a couple months ago? Don't despise it. I talk to, I do a lot of premarital counseling and I talk to other couples as they come in and have various bumps and obviously there's sin. People sin against each other.

Men and women sin. We're all fallen and fall short of the glory of God. But so often some of the day-to-day bumps and collisions that men and women have, and particularly married couples have is it has to do with women acting like women and men acting like men. This is your glory.

Glory. She's decorating the house again and are you tempted to roll your eyes? She's

doing what she's made for. Now, yeah, are you to lead her? Yes, you're to lead her. And, if it was, I don't know, three times in the same day, maybe you sit down and say, all right, honey, what's going on here? Are you trying to tell me something?

It's her glory to make home, to care about the colors, to care about the curtains, to care about where the dishes are and how they're organized and the food and all the, this is her glory. This is what she was made for. Don't despise it. I mentioned on Friday that, men, our superpower is that we only think about one thing at a time and women think this is weird, but it really is our superpower because this is how, like some of the most amazing things have gotten done in the world.

A bunch of guys were like, let's build a giant bridge over this chasm and that's all he thought about for two years. Five years. And there's only guys who usually think, hey, I bet you we could make a big metal tube and put a bunch of dynamite at the bottom, and I could shoot you to the moon.

No, no woman ever thought that. She's like, why don't we just stay here where it's safe?

But a bunch of men did that and that's all they thought about for several decades. And there was an army of women keeping them all alive, remembering all of the other things. And your superpower women is that you think about a lot of things all at the same time, I am told. I'm told.

Because your glory is to make a home, to run a home, bless, and provide, and enliven, and glorify.

So, tell your wife and your daughters they're beautiful, and tell them again, and tell them again, because it's their glory. It's what God made them for. And tell them that you love what they've done with the house, and you love that they got a new dress, and you love the dinner they made, and you love how they do that.

Tell them, because it's their glory. It's their power. It's their authority. It's their influence.

Men, be very careful with your teasing. Men are different creatures. We tease and mock each other, and that's how we show that we like one another. I make fun of you, and that means we're friends. Don't do that with your wife. Don't do it with your daughters. Now, you should be playful. A home that's just dour and serious, there's something wrong.

It should be playful. There is give and take and a little bit of teasing.

Be very careful.

Wisdom is a woman, it says in Proverbs, who builds a house. Proverbs 9 verse 1, Proverbs 24 verse 3, Wisdom is a woman who builds a house. But in Proverbs 14 it says, every wise woman buildeth her house, but the foolish pulls it down with their own hands. Remember, God constructed the woman. In the beginning, she was crafted, she was fashioned in the beginning.

She builds houses because she is a home.

This is why the New Jerusalem is described as a city adorned like a bride coming down to earth. In Ephesians 5, husbands are called to imitate Christ in their love for their wives. Husbands you constantly image Christ whether you want to or not. You don't have the option. Men, you are generally, constantly talking about Jesus.

And you are either telling the truth, and you are saying Jesus is faithful to his own, he is sacrificial for his own, that he gives his life up for the good of those entrusted to him. He takes responsibility for his people, or else, men, you're lying. And you're saying, Jesus forgets his people. Jesus is lazy.

Jesus is apathetic. Jesus is abdicating. Jesus is harsh and angry. But the same thing is true of women. It says in Ephesians 5 that wives are to imitate the church, and the church's submission and obedience.

You are adorning that. And so, women, in a general way, and wives in a particular way, you're constantly talking about the Christian church. You're either telling the truth about the Christian church, that she is the bride of Christ, that she is well loved, that she has been well adorned by her husband. Or else you're lying.

And you're saying the Christian church is critical. The Christian church is disrespectful. The Christian church is disobedient. The Christian church is rebellious. The Christian church

is bitter. You're always working on a house. You're always building a home. You're either making a home with wisdom, where food and rest and hospitality and wisdom are shared, or else you're tearing down your home. It's the glory of a woman to be a homemaker. Christians believe that women are powerful. The Bible isn't, doesn't say that women are not powerful.

The Bible says they are powerful. They are powerful in either building homes and legacies that are potent for blessing and life over generations, or else they are potent for tearing them down and leaving a pile of wreckage in its wake. Women don't need to be empowered. Women are powerful beings. They bear the image of the living God.

They make homes.

One time my wife was Making dinner. I come home from work five ish or five 30 or so. And I'm in the living room and we have this open floor plan and looking into the kitchen. She's in there just, she's all-star making dinner, kids running around, doing things, ordering things. And in the middle of it all, she takes a phone call.

She's got the phone on her shoulder, doing this thing, frying stuff. And I'm listening over here and she's like taking a survey. I'm like, really? She's like showing off. I think I'll watch. I can do. She's answering questions. It was like some kind of alumni survey with her university where she graduated from and she gets to the end and they do the demographic thing, how old are you?

And that kind of thing. How, when did you graduate? And then I hear her say homemaker, home maker,

and then she finally says, I'm a wife and a mom. A minute later, she gets off the phone. She looks up and says, that poor girl had never heard of a homemaker before.

And I thought to myself, we live in a world where that girl had never heard of the most glorious thing a woman can be.

What have we done?

I sometimes point out that wherever we find death penalties in the Bible, we ought to sit up and pay attention with great reverence. You and I have all been marinating in modern sentimentalism. We all have this knee jerk reaction in our hearts where you see the death penalty and you go, because we've been screamed at for all these decades about those death penalties.

But we serve a good and faithful father, and our instinct should not be that. When we come across those death penalties, we ought to be thinking of them as the flashing lights, and the yellow tape, and the barbed wire fencing of our faithful father. He's saying, watch out, there's something important here, there's something powerful here, there's something dangerous here, watch out.

And one of those death penalties, almost always protecting marriage and sexuality. Most of them are protecting that.

Marriage and sexuality are so fiercely guarded because at the center of that union is conception and motherhood. God is guarding our glory.

He's saying watch out here.

This is your glory. Protect this. It's no accident that as we have allowed marriage and motherhood to be dishonored, we have simultaneously taught our culture to despise the Christian church. I almost running parallel, as marriage and sexuality has been more and more despised, the Christian church has been despised, right on schedule.

There was a day, there were many years in this nation where the biggest newspapers in the country would print sermons from Bible believing preachers. They would print and report on the national meetings of the big denominations. Because there was a day in which our nation thought that what was happening in the Christian church mattered.

But we have taught our culture that it doesn't matter by how we have treated our wives and our daughters and our sisters. There was once a time in this land when if a woman walked into a room, every man would stand up and take off his hat.

Think about that.

Because there had entered the room a creature bearing the image of the immortal God. Who brings people into the world

on a close readings from Psalm 127.

You know the song except the Lord build the house. They labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city. The watchman waketh but in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early to sit up late to eat the bread of sorrows for so he giveth his beloved sleep. Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord.

And the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.

If only there was some way to build houses that would last. If only there was some way to guard our cities from the barbarians. If only there was some way we could fight back, if only we had more weapons, if only we had reinforcements,

if only God had told us how to do that. It's right there. Wait, so how do you build this house? How do you garden the city? How do you get a lot of reinforcements and weapons?

Have more kids.

And train them in the Lord.

And the Christian churches, no, there's got to be another verse. I think we need to vote differently. More protests. It's right there. It's right there. How can we have the blessing of God? How can we have the blessing of God on our houses and on our city? How can we have weapons in our hands, men? Receive the blessing of God.

Welcome children into your homes. Welcome the children in the church. Welcome the children in your neighborhoods. See them as the reinforcements. Honor motherhood. Honor your mother.

Train them up in the Lord. It's not enough just to have more.

Train them into arrows.

See, our vision for bearing children and families ought to be the kind of thing where we're thinking to ourselves, so our concern is not so much that the world would have too much influence on our kids, but we want to have the mindset that we are training kids that are dangerous to the world. We want the neighborhood families concerned about their kids playing with our kids because they might become Christians.

But that means we have to take it seriously. Do we want them in the gates with us? Then we must train them for the gates. One pastor one time preached a message at my church, and he said this, and I'll never forget it, but he said, Parents, you get your report card when your grandkids come to maturity loving Jesus.

That's your report card.

Men, your glory is your strength. Your glory is your strength. And God gave you your strength, all of it. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, all of it. God gave you your strength to image your maker in using that strength sacrificially for the good and the blessing and the protection and the provision of your people.

That is your glory and that is what you were made for. You were made to spend that strength until you die, and that is your crown. And women, you, your glory is to glorify. Your glory is to adorn. Your glory is to honor. And these glories are potent for the kingdom. But you cannot do this in your own strength.

You cannot give what you do not have. You cannot give what you do not have. But if you ask for this glory, you know the father of all glory.

And we serve a faithful Father. And when we ask for bread, He does not give His children stones. Everyone in this room has fallen short of the glory.

But you need to fix your eyes on your king and your failures as a man and as a woman were crucified 2, 000 years ago on a cross and they were buried. And when Jesus rose, those failures, your failures, your weaknesses, your faults, all of your sin. He rose. It stayed in the grave when Jesus rose, you rose in him, and you rose in his glory.

Ask, and your father will give you this glory. So sometimes when you're in the middle of the craziness of family life, it’s been one of those days, changing the diapers and the dishes haven't been done yet and the laundry's half done and you've been spanking bottoms and, just doing it all.

You need to look up in the middle of it all and just look around you. And you need to say, look at all the glory. It's glory. It's glory. Father, we confess to you that we have fallen short of your glory. But we praise you and thank you that you sent your Son in order to restore us to your glory. Amen.

Father, I pray that you would cause our eyes to be fixed on you where Christ is seated above in all glory, not on things on the earth, that we would not be distracted by our own sins, our own failures, the threats, the dangers of this world, but Father, our eyes would be fixed on you. And on Jesus Christ, and in Him we would see our glory.

And so, Father, you would make us, conform us into the image of your glorious Son. Because we ask for it in His name. And Amen.