one28 PodcastA Woman with a Brain
Leila Bowers
Hebrews 5:14
2007.10.31
one28 Wednesday worship
We need to think about the things we face every day–books, entertainment, the news, preaching. What do magazines like Seventeen tell us about true beauty, purpose, or worth? What do movies like the Pirates of the Caribbean tell us about how we should react to authority, or what is most worthwhile in life, or the type of character we should foster?
We have to build a filtration system for our brain. Not only do we need to be careful what we are exposed to, we MUST analyze and critically evaluate the things that we do allow in, even “good” things like books on Christian living or wholesome movies.
I. Being a Woman of The Book (The Word)
Look at Hebrews 5:14.
But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
The context here is the Perfect High Priest, and the author of Hebrew’s condemnation of his readers’ “dullness.” All Christians should desire to eat “solid food,” but note that such food is for “the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.” This means we must learn to discipline and exercise our discernment. Over our traditions! With films! With magazines!
REMEMBER: This takes effort. We “practice” and “train” to master certain sports, hobbies, and talents–think of all the time and diligence we put into becoming good basketball players or painters. It is SO MUCH more important to become wise and discerning!
1) We must be women of the Word because we must be women of God.
Remember, we are responsible for our walk with the Lord! We are responsible for how we spend our time and what we fill our minds with! Biblical learning is required of us (1 Tim. 2:11). Many women chafe against this verse, but note it does say “Women should learn….”
As Nancy Wilson says in her book, The Fruit of Her Hands,
we have to know more than how to be a good wife. After all, our first calling is to be good Christians, and if we are good Christians, we will be food wives and mothers…we see in Scripture that women became disciples along with the men. What is a disciple? It is not a mindless follower. A disciple is a student.
If we are blessed to be mothers, we must know the Word to teach it to our children. What an awesome responsibility!
2) We must be women of the Word because we must seek after wisdom.
This is IMPORTANT! Listen to Wisdom’s warning in Proverbs 1:32:
For the waywardness of the naïve will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them.
Girls, we are often naïve and gullible. We think it’s “not too bad” to be naïve-–but notice here it can lead to death! What a strong warning! It started with Eve in the garden–her passive attention to the Serpent introduced death to the human race. I believe this is part of why God has set fathers and husbands over us, to protect us.
Often Proverbs and other books warn young men of the “foreign woman.” Rarely are women warned against such things–but listen to Paul’s warning to Timothy (1 Tim. 3:6) in discussing false teachers:
For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to knowledge of the truth.
Being women of the Book is protection! You will someday be tempted!!! You do not want to be “weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, and always learning” because you haven’t trained your brain and fed it with the food of the Word.
In my own life, I have experienced times of temptation. When I was in Jr. High, I thought I was such a strong Christian and influencing the bad people around me, when in fact I didn’t spend time in the Word or at Church. Accordingly, I was led astray by those who “cause divisions” (Rom. 16:17-19). God graciously saved me from those mistakes, and as I got involved in a small group, church, and in the Word, my wisdom and discernment grew. When I faced a similar situation in college, through God’s grace, I realized that individual was speaking lies and walked away.
II. Being a Woman of the book:
1) One of the reasons we seek education and seek to educate our children is SO THAT they understand the Word!
As John Piper points out, reading the Bible is difficult:
This is an overwhelming argument for giving our children a disciplined and rigorous training in how to think an author’s thoughts after him from a text—especially a biblical text. An alphabet must be learned, as well as vocabulary, grammar, syntax, the rudiments of logic, and the way meaning is imparted through sustained connections of sentences and paragraphs.
The reason Christians have always planted schools where they have planted churches is because we are a people of THE BOOK. It is true that THE BOOK will never have its proper effect without prayer and the Holy Spirit. It is not a textbook to be debated; it is a fountain for spiritual thirst, and food for the soul, and a revelation of God, and a living power, and a two-edged sword. But none of this changes the fact: apart from the discipline of reading, the Bible is as powerless as paper. Someone might have to read it for you; but without reading, the meaning and the power of it are locked up.
2) We seek education in God’s truth SO THAT we have discernment to fight the World’s system.
NOTE! Again, here, we must FIRST have the Word and then pursue this. We must build in our “filter.”
I always look to Paul as my example of this, specifically at the Agora in Athens. He understood the Greek philosophers, as MacArthur points out, “He was a scholar, well-read and well-traveled. By God’s designed Paul’s entire life equipped him for situations precisely like this one” (Ashamed of the Gospel, p. 139).
He became all things to all men, and that is what we must do! HOWEVER, as Francis Schaeffer once wrote, “to accommodate to the world spirit about us in our age is the most gross form of worldliness in the proper definition of the word.” Paul never compromised the message, though his form might change to engage his audience.
3) We seek education SO THAT we know what in the World we don’t need.
We need to know why we believe what we do. We need to fight against error. Sometimes, that means understanding the errors and why they are wrong. Examples: Evolution, popular culture, etc. My favorite quote along this line comes from G.K. Chesterton:
Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously. The latest fads of culture, the latest sophistries of anarchism will carry us away if we are uneducated: we shall not know how very old are all the new ideas.
The uneducated man will always care too much for complications, novelties, the fashion, the latest thing. Education demands us to know, as Arnold said, all the best literatures, all the best arts, all the best national philosophies. Education commands us to know them all that we may do without them all.
Some important Disclaimers:
First, pursuing knowledge for the sake of knowledge is stupid. As 1 Corinthians 3:18-19 says, “the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God.” In fact, Paul addresses this point extensively in his first epistle to the Corinthians. However, Paul was never anti-intellectual or rational. He often appealed to people’s minds.
Second, education is NOT the highest goal of the Church or Christianity. As Spurgeon argues:
But if the Church of God thinks that it is sent into the world merely to train the mental faculties, it has made a very serious mistake, for the object of Christianity is not to educate men for their secular callings, or even to train them in the politer arts, or the more elegant professions, or to enable them to enjoy the beauties of nature or the charms of poetry. Jesus Christ came not into the world for any of these things, but He came to seek and to save that which was lost; and on the same errand has He sent His Church, and she is a traitor to the Master who sent her if she is beguiled by the beauties of taste and art to forget that to preach Christ and Him crucified is the only object for which she exists among the sons of men. The business of the Church is salvation.
Third, you cannot argue or convince someone into belief. As MacArthur says about Paul: “he was not interested in changing people’s minds; he wanted God to change their lives” (p. 117).
Conclusion
Coming back to Hebrews 5:14-–we must train our minds. We need to engage with the Bible and dig deeper, we must challenge ourselves with difficult reading-–theology and biography!-–so that we can “discern good and evil.” We must pursue wisdom and knowledge of God so we can train-up the next generation in the fear and admonition of the Lord. We must guard our minds against false teachers and flattering lies. Our walk with the Lord, our faith in Him, our ability to live-out our testimonies in the world, and our strength to fight against temptation are all deeply dependent on our discernment and wisdom.
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