Women's Ordination Symposium

C. Raymond Holmes

Secrets Unsealed

17- My Story and the Hermeneutical Question

I haven't been in California for about 25 years.

I flew out here with Kevin Paulson, And I did not know that he was born and raised here until after we got here.

I want to thank Pastor Bohr for the privilege of occupying his pulpit.

Just before we came out on the platform, Eileen came back there with the specific purpose of telling me to smile.

And it reminded me of my first appointment as pastor in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

It was as associate pastor at the Battle Creek Tabernacle.

And the first time I was privileged to preach there, when I got up to the pulpit, I noticed a sign that said, smile, Sir.

So I'm going to smile just to prove to you that I can do it.

I'm not really a smiley person because I'm a Scandinavian.

I'm what's known as a Fin Swede, or as the Finns say, Suomen Rotsalainen.

If there are, I'd like to meet you after the service.

1 morning when I came to my office at the seminary at 7 o'clock, I always came at 7, I found taped to my office door this photograph of a beautiful eagle.

We have a lot of those in the UP, with a piercing look on his countenance.

Now that I have proven to you that I can smile, I want to tell you I want to tell you that I'm not smiling today because our church is in a serious crisis, and that's why we've been here for the last 3 days.

Before we have a prayer, I want to tell you that I'm going to break a homiletical rule and read the sermon text at the end of the sermon, instead of at the beginning.

And I also want to do something I've never done before.

I want to dedicate this sermon to the memory of 4 people whom I loved and admired greatly and whose voice we would happily welcome today, but unfortunately their voices are silent.

Heavenly Father, we have met as your people in this sanctuary to worship you today.

And to hear your word, we pray for the ministry of your Holy Spirit.

Ministry of your Holy Spirit, open our ears to hear what you have to say to us today, and give us the grace, the determination, the will, the faith to respond in obedience.

When I began my ministry in my last Lutheran parish, which by the way is only a little over a half a mile from the little Adventist church that I'm pastoring for the last 20 years in retirement.

But when I began my ministry there in the 60s, It was not long before I discovered that the congregation had been deeply influenced by the prevailing social gospel of the times.

How to counteract such influence and get the congregation on a biblical path.

I started by consistently preaching expository sermons that focused on the scriptures.

Now I preach 45 minutes or longer because I'm an old man, I have a lot to say and a little time to say it.

Some folks didn't like the longer sermons, but some did.

I also tried to start a Sunday school class for adults that would concentrate on Bible study, but I had few takers.

I remember also, as a young minister, being invited to preach a series of sermons at a Bible camp.

That's what they called them in those days.

And after 1 of the evening meetings, a lady came up to me and asked me if she could talk with me.

And I said, yes, of course, but they were turning out the lights in the chapel, so we had to sit on the cement steps underneath 1 light bulb.

So we sat down and I asked her, how can I help you?

She said, well, I've been a believer for many years, but I've got a real serious problem.

She said, I don't have the assurance of the forgiveness of sin.

I love God, but I don't have the assurance that he has forgiven my sin.

They didn't teach me anything about how to deal with that in the seminary.

So I shot a prayer up to God and he helped me.

I said, well, let's open our Bibles to 1 John 1 9.

She opened her Bible and I said, would you read that verse out loud?

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." And I said to her, have you confessed your sins?

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

She said, I just told you, yes, many times.

And she looked at me, you know, you've got to be kidding.

And I asked her, have you confessed your sins?

And she said, because it says so right here.

Well, anyway, during this time, starting the Sunday school class for adults that failed and this experience with that lady, I've often wondered what happened to her.

My wife was the Vacation Bible School leader that particular summer, and when the materials arrived that she had sent for dealing with human origins, she was alarmed.

Julie Mesa

16- Male and Female Created He Them

Before I begin, I just want to say that I have some dear friends and family that are on the other side of this issue.

And I want you to know that while I take a different position, my love and my respect for you still remains the same.

And it's painful to me that we're even having to deal with this issue in our church at this time.

My parents and surrounding family instilled in me and in my brothers and my sister, my brother and sister, the idea that we could set our minds to do anything we wanted to do.

And coming from a long line of very strong women, and you could ask any of the women in my family, we are all very strong, opinionated, and stubborn, I felt that the role of a woman was just as high and exalted as that of a man.

And I never felt deprived because there were some positions that were not open to women.

In fact, I usually didn't want those positions anyway.

So when the issue of women's ordination came up, I wondered why women would want to put themselves into that position.

I know because for a while my husband was a minister and I was a minister's wife.

And when I thought about if I would want to be a minister, you know, when this question was coming up, I thought, do I want to be a mother and a wife and a minister?

So for me, I just said, I don't even need to study this issue out because for me it's not, you know, it's not really an issue.

Then friends and family of mine started taking sides on this issue and urging me to study it out.

I just wished the whole thing would go away, that I didn't have to focus on it.

Occasionally I would sit down and I would take some time to study a little bit of it out and then I just put it down again.

But what caused me to pick it up again was when I saw what was happening in our church.

I saw that some of our unions and conferences were choosing to ordain women despite being asked by our general conference to hold off on some of these steps.

And when I saw that I thought, what is it that would make our conferences and some of our unions do what appeared very rebellious to me and create disunity.

And so I said, you know, I really do need to take the time and study this out.

And when I came to the conclusion of my study, I saw a beautiful picture for the ministry of men and women that I hope to share with you today.

So before I get into the main part of my talk, let's go ahead and have a prayer.

Lord, I just pray that you would be up here with me, that you would speak through me, that it wouldn't be my words that are heard, but yours.

I pray that just the power of the Holy Spirit would be felt in this place.

Hearts would be convicted to follow you in Jesus name, amen.

Sally Shaywitz in her book Overcoming Dyslexia talks about 3 regions of the brain that are very critical to reading.

1 is called Broca's region, and it's located near the front of the brain.

And then there are 2 other regions called the parietal temporal area and the occipitotemporal area or region.

Now, what's interesting about dyslexia is that people that are dyslexic generally only have Broca's region in their brain functioning during active reading.

So 1 study said, you know, we're going to take a group of people that are dyslexics that only have this 1 region of their brain working and we're going to put them through a period of tutoring and at the end of the time we want to see what kind of an effect it has had on their brain.

So they put them through several months of tutoring and at the end of that time these people were reading wonderfully, fluently.

They'd been struggling before, but now they were reading wonderfully.

They said, I wonder what kind of changes we're going to see in the brain when we look at it.

And so they looked at their brain and they found that instead of just that 1 region working, all 3 of the regions were working at the end of that tutoring session.

And their conclusion was that in order for a person to be a fluent reader, they needed all 3 of the regions to be involved.

Now, do you think any of those individuals who were struggling to read before would wish to go back and say, you know, my BRCA's region of the brain is pretty amazing, and it can do its own job, and the job of those other regions.

We are discriminating against this region by stating the other regions do a better job at their job.

We would quickly reply that BRCA has demonstrated that it can cover for the other areas plus its own, but the result will not be what God designed it to be, as when all the regions work together.

God, my friends, has also designed specific roles for men and women.

Genesis 1, 27 says, male and female created he them.

It doesn't say male and male or female and female.

God created men and women of equal importance just like the regions of the brain and he designed us to work together just like the regions of the brain.

And he designed us to work together, just like the regions of the brain, toward a common goal.

To accomplish this purpose, he gave us different roles.

If 1 of us tries to do our job plus the job of the other 1, we're going to leave a job undone.

He created us male and female, a team that is equal, but with different and important functions.

Today, the idea that men and women are actually different comes as a surprise to some.

I just read a story of a woman, she's a psychologist, Susan Pinker, and I'll quote some of her thoughts later on.

And she said, it came as a surprise to me that my husband and I were not just alike.

After they had that they didn't react the same to the birth of their first child.

She said, I thought everything he could do and was like, I was like as well as a result of the whole feminist movement.

If you haven't heard Laurel Domstik's talk on the connection between feminism and this whole issue, I hope you can can go back and listen to that.

But ultimately my church family, we have an enemy, the devil, who would like to obliterate the image of God within us.

The blurring of distinction between the sexes is 1 of his methods.

When Ellen White saw this happening a hundred years ago in dress, and it was happening with something called the American costume, they were trying to blur the distinction of the sexes at that time.

She said, God designed that there should be a plain distinction between the dress of men and women and has considered the matter of sufficient importance to give explicit directions in regard to it.

And listen to this part, for the same dress worn by both sexes would cause confusion and great increase of crime.

Are we not seeing that great confusion now between, or as it regards to the roles of men and women.

Yet some in our culture would like us to believe that males and females are different, not because God created them different, but because they are socialized to be that way.

That we are only different because girls were given little dolls to play with when they were little, and boys were given little cars to play with when they were little.

And so of course girls are going to like dolls when they get older, and of course boys are going to like cars when they get older.

They say it's just because that's how parents trained them to be or that's how society trained them to be.

But just so that we can be clear, this idea of socialization is not the reason our Bibles give.

And it is an idea questioned even today by biologists and psychologists.

And I would just want to take a little bit of time before we get into other parts to just enumerate on some of these differences.

There's a book that's just been written by a developmental biologist.

And the title of his book is Why Can't Women Be More Like Men?

And he gives a whole list of biological differences between men and women.

Number 1, 40 hours after birth, girls will look around and choose to look at the faces of people more than boys will.

And boys, on the other hand, instead of looking at faces, you know what they like to look at?

Mechanical objects, fans, and other gadgets.

At 40 hours after birth, at 4 months of age, twice as many girls will cry when frightened in a strange room as will boys.

At 12, 18, or 24 months of age, girls will look at dolls much more than boys, while boys will look at cars much more than girls.

He says, quote, It is hard to attribute these basic differences at such young ages to purely social influences.

Another difference, the hypothalamus, which is a part of the brain, is much larger in men than it is in women.

Men tend to be more aggressive than women.

And interestingly, Even the words we choose can reveal our gender.

Did you know, ladies and men, if we were to take a paper and write it and send it off to someone who never knew if we were a male or a female, if they just took a look at our writing, they could tell, generally, what gender you are, simply because women use more words related to psychological and social topics, while men use more words that refer to the properties of objects and impersonal topics.

Susan Pinker, a psychologist who I mentioned before, says in her book, The Sexual Paradox, Men, Women, and the Real Gender Gap, she says, women are more likely to choose people-oriented professions and more willing to change or leave jobs when they threaten to destabilize their families or infringe on their relationships.

In fact, 80% of women will make adjustments to their career to support these priorities.

Men, on the other hand, tend to have 1 passion and pursue it doggedly.

The Book of Proverbs

The Ambassador Group

12. Proverbs: The Humility of the Wise

Welcome to Words of the Wise, an introduction to the Book of Proverbs by Dr.

Ducan, edited for audio by the Ambassador Group.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5 verse 3, New King James Version In the Bible, humility is considered an important virtue.

The greatest of prophets, Moses, is singled out as the most humble person who ever lived.

According to Micah 6, 8, the main duty that God expects from people is to walk humbly with your God.

Jesus, too, insists that humility is an ideal that the Christian should adopt.

Whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

After all, what does anyone have to boast about?

Every breath, every heartbeat, every gift and every talent comes only from God, in whom we live and move and have our being.

And in light of the cross, even all our righteousness is as Isaiah 64 verse 6 declares, our filthy rags.

In this exploration, Proverbs looks at humility, considering our situation.

How foolish is it to be anything but humble?

Listen to Proverbs 30 verses 1 through 3, 32 and 33.

The words of Agur, the son of Jaca, even the prophecy, the man that spake unto Ithiel, even unto Ithiel and Uchal.

Surely I am more brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man.

I neither learned wisdom nor have the knowledge of the holy.

If thou hast done foolishly in lifting up thyself, or if thou hast thought evil, lay thine hand upon thy mouth.

Surely the churning of milk bringeth forth butter, and the ringing of the nose bringeth forth blood, So the forcing of wrath bringeth forth strife.

The self-negation seen in these texts is quite a break from the usual self-exaltation of kings in the ancient Near East, who often liked to boast of their wisdom, achievements, and military victories.

First Kings 10, 23, New King James Version, and Ecclesiastes 2, verse 9.

Solomon himself is recorded as surpassing all the kings of the earth in riches and wisdom.

And then, of course, there's Nebuchadnezzar, Who proclaimed, Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power, and for the glory of my majesty?

Because our author understands his own ignorance, he calls boasting foolish.

The Hebrew word for foolish here is nabal, which is the name of Nabal, whose behavior exemplified foolish pride as well, for Samuel 25.

Such boasting, which implies pride, also carries the potential for humiliation and thus for anger and strife.

The Apostle Paul also called some of his church members fools, who considered themselves wise, and were, even worse, boasting about it.

2 Corinthians 11 18 and 19, Seeing that many glory after the flesh, I will glory also.

For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise.

Luke sets up the parable Jesus tells, And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves, that they were righteous and despised others.

2 men went up into the temple to pray, the 1 a Pharisee and the other a publican.

The Pharisee stood, and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee that I am, not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican, I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess." And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other, for every 1 that exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." Why might it be easier to be like the Pharisee than 1 might think?

How can you make sure that you don't fall into this same trap, even in the subtlest ways.

You have to feel sorry for people who boast.

It shows just how self-deceived and ignorant they really are.

Pride arises in those who don't know the Lord in a personal way.

In contrast, the person who lives in communion with God will be humble, for he or she is constantly in touch with the 1 who is infinitely greater than any of us.

When we think about the size of the universe and realize that we are worshipping the 1 who created that universe, and that this same God suffered in the person of Jesus on the cross for us, it's hard to imagine how we could struggle with pride while keeping these thoughts before us.

The question is, what do these verses tell us about the power, majesty, and mystery of God?

I neither learned wisdom, nor have the knowledge of the Holy.

Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended?

Who hath established all the ends of the earth?

What is his name, and what is his son's name, if thou canst tell?

He is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.

Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.

The expression, knowledge of God, is to be understood as meaning knowledge about God.

5 rhetorical questions are then asked, which force us to recognize just how much about God we really don't understand.

Let's listen again to those questions in Proverbs 30 verse 4.

And who hath established all the ends of the earth?

What challenge do these questions present to you?

Because God is the Creator, the first 4 questions, He remains far beyond our understanding, The fifth question.

In the book of Job, God challenges Job with similar questions so that Job would realize that he could not comprehend God or His ways.

You can read the entire one-way question and answer experience and Job's response in Job 38 through 40 verse 2.

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?

1 Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest?

Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened?

The fact that God is the Creator, and that we cannot fully understand him, gives us a crucial lesson regarding how we should receive his written revelation, which scholars are always questioning.

Who are we, whose understanding of even the simplest things in nature is clouded and full of mystery, to challenge the Word of God, even the parts that baffle or disturb us?

Think about the grandeur and mystery of creation itself.

Does this tell you about the grandeur and mystery of the Creator?

Does this grandeur and mystery give you comfort and hope?

Feed me with food convenient for me, lest I be fool and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord?

Back to Menu

All Teachings

17- My Story and the Hermeneutical Question

1h

16- Male and Female Created He Them

57m

12. Proverbs: The Humility of the Wise

29m

12- Becoming New

28m

11- Pressing Together

28m

10- Faithful Abiding

28m

9- Becoming Fireproof

28m

8- Are You Tempted?

28m

7- Heavenly-minded

28m

6- View From Above

28m

5- Revival

28m

4- Danger to Safety

28m

Sound Doctrine