Today we're studying in the book of Romans and we're in chapter 16 We trust you'll have your Bible open and stay with us for the next several minutes as we go to the Word. We're in Romans 16 this morning. I wanted to kind of put a ribbon on this study that we did. And the funny thing is, it seems like there's a lot of things in here that are a little bit tedious for us, for he closes the letter to the Romans by acknowledging a lot of people. And the funny thing about that is, is that when we read this in our devotional life, we read it and we're like, okay, okay, okay, and we kind of read it quick. And that's fine. But don't forget the fact that everything in the Bible is there for a reason. And the reason that chapter 16 has all of these various individuals mentioned is because they are threads that kind of qualify the entire Bible. In other words, if he named somebody, that's a person that somebody at that time could have gone to. But also for you and me, you might find their name somewhere else in the scripture. Okay, so you might say, okay, I'm over here in Colossians and he's greeting Archippus. Or he's saying, remember to tell Archippus to do something. And you're like, okay, here's some things. And it makes you realize this is a network of truth that was framed at a period of time where it was going to come under attack later. when people would read it. So they needed to keep this thing real, and they didn't do it on purpose. It's just how it unfolded, and God becomes the clear author of it all. Right? Isn't that beautiful? It's a beautiful thing to know that there's 47 authors of the Bible, and we have it written over 1,500 years, and those 47 authors were from all walks of life. You had anybody from a farmer, a shepherd, you had people who were kings, people who were prophets, you had all different walks of life. And God was the author of it all. They don't contradict each other, they complement each other, the prophecies overlap and overlay, and they bring light to each other. It's a beautiful book we have. And we've been going through the book of Romans for weeks, and it's been beautiful because we've been able to see what we might call our Emancipation Proclamation. Jesus has set us free. You can't get that just by a casual reading. You have to go back, you have to look, you gotta dig in, you gotta take God at His word. You can't just read it and say, well, that's interesting, what's for dinner? You know, you gotta take a minute because God would have you chew on that for a while. In His law, we are to meditate day and night, right? Beautiful. As you come to this chapter, though, it's going to be a little bit interesting to note that there is some cohesion here that can give us light on other issues we might not otherwise address very often. The first issue comes to us with the person who is carrying this letter. It's in verse 1. It says, I commend unto you, Phoebe, our sister, which is a servant of the church, which is at Sancreia, that you receive her in the Lord as becometh saints, and that you assist her in whatsoever business she hath need of you. For she hath been a succorer of many, and of myself also. So we're seeing a lady named Phoebe. Now what's interesting for us if we are prone to look for uniqueness in the scriptures is that this is a woman who's being set forth as some sort of a shaker and a mover in the work of God. You don't get that very often. In the Old Testament, you get Deborah, who was a prophetess, because nobody else would have the job, I guess. And she's told to go get Barak and tell him, you're supposed to go out and take on Sisera. And he says, I won't go unless you go with me. It's like, wait a minute, what? And when things get that lean in the Old Testament, you'll find someone like Deborah show up. When she sings her song of victory over the work that had been taking place under the exploits that took place from Iraq, going out and doing his thing, all the glory was given to another woman whose name was J.L. Again, she told him, if I have to go with you, then what's going to happen is the glory's not going to go to you, it's going to go to one woman. And it was. J.L. nailed him. She nailed him to the floor with a real nail. It was a real tent stake. Boom. put him in a place of safety, made him feel comfortable. When he was asleep, she put him down, and she gets the glory for the win. My point is this, is that there are times where we do have a lack of leadership among the men. But at the same time, we have paradigms in scripture that talk about the roles of women. The roles of women did not ever change. In the garden, it was given that a man, not good for him to be alone, and that the woman was made for the man, and not the man for the woman. When you look in the book of 1 Corinthians, you find Paul reiterating the whole paradigm. When you look in the book of 1 Timothy, you find out that God's Word tells us that, I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over a man. And all of these things are within the realm of the church, for the church is the pillar and ground of the truth. Now, all of those things being said, we have to kind of take a minute, because this is something unique. And some people have said, well, here we go. We have an opportunity to say that women can be preachers, women can do anything that men can do. Many times you'll find that the Bible gives us clarity in such a way as to make us just sit back in the seat and take a big sigh of relief. It's not that anything changes, it's that everything is understood better. You see, when you wake up as a Christian, first time, you get saved, if you've been saved, say as an adult especially, this is true, you've got all these ideas, programmings, and thoughts. When you wake up as a Christian and you look around, you begin to say there's something different this thing called Christendom, this world of Christ's domain, this ground of the truth that we live upon. And you think, well, there's something different. I was watching a video not long ago that was of a girl who was a very hard-nosed, feministic girl who was like a young girl. She was a cute girl. It was very sweet to see her talking. Didn't know anything about her until I saw her video. It was commended to me. And as I watched her, she said, I gotta tell you guys, I gotta tell you, I went out with this guy. He's like a bros bro. Anyway, first thing she said, she's giggly. She's giggly because she's saying, I just felt the feminism oozing out of me because of how he treated her. He treated her like a lady. You see, when you talk about, you know, do anything a man can do and all of that thing, that's crazy. That's crazy. You don't want to be a man. There was one girl who transitioned into being a man. And she started living her life and she killed herself in the end because she said, I didn't know how lonely it was to be a man. You don't want to be a man. We need you. You might need us to have security and cherishing and all of the doting on. We open the door, we pull out the chair sometimes, all those things that we try to be gentlemanly and deferential. But the fact is, is that there's a beauty in both of the genders. So when we come to this and we see Phoebe engaged, we have to kind of understand why is she somebody who's traveling, apparently alone, because she's going to need some help when she arrives in Rome. That's a big deal. Well, let me give you a couple of things that are believed to be true of this lady and some of the understandings about what is going on with her. She is probably very likely not what some people have postulated. If you look at the passage it says she's a servant of the church. The Greek word for servant here is diakonia and some people say she's a deaconess. Now that's an interesting jump just because she's got the Greek word diakonia which we get a transliterated word deacon from. They're taking it and saying here's an officer. in the church, and it is a female officer. But what you have to realize is that the word for deacon in the Bible is written numbers of times. Most often it's translated servant. In fact, if you remember that king who had forgiven a man his debt, and he went around and got his buddy and said, you pay me all you can and all that, and the king hears about it and brings him back in. It says he told his servants to go get that man and throw him in jail, and his family too. And servant is diakonia, the main idea. So just because the word says diakonia does not mean that it is a deacon office. In fact, if you go back to what we might call the moorings of the deaconate, it was in Acts, in chapter 6, when the widows were being ignored, and the Bible says that the elders, apostles that were over the church in Jerusalem, actually said, choose you out seven men, and they have to be filled with the Spirit and filled with the Word and have character, good report among all, and put them over the business to do this service, because it is not good that we take ourselves away from the Word of God in prayer. And so the word there again is servant and service. And the idea means to kick up the dust, it's just somebody who serves. Now, so what is she if it's not an office? If it were an office, by the way, 1 Timothy would have dealt with it. It would have said, A man who desires the office of a pastor, he desires a good work, says bishop there, but it's overseer, and it tells you his qualifications. Then it says, and deacons likewise, and it's must be the husband of one wife. Okay, both of them have to be married to a woman, so it can't be a woman married to a woman. So you're not going to have an office here, okay? Now a deacon's supposed to have a wife that is such that she can serve too, as a pastor should have a wife such that she loves the Lord and is godly as well. Because the pastors are supposed to bring their wives along, the deacons are supposed to bring their wives along, and our job is to have our houses in order. And what does that mean? That means in God's order, not in the order that the world says it's supposed to be. So some people have suggested this was an office of a deacon, and it's not. It's not a deaconess office. This is a woman. She is probably older. Why do we think that? Well, because there's a whole lot of women in the old days who would be widowed at a young age. Do you remember Anna who came in and she saw Jesus at the temple when he was there to do the circumcision and offer a sacrifice for Jesus? Anna comes in and says she was seven years from her virginity with a man, her husband evidently died, and she's 84 now. 84 years old. And she's serving the Lord day and night in prayers and fastings. If you go way back into the Old Testament, you begin to find out that there's also a couple of places where women were involved in the temple service as well. One of the places is when you find Jephthah, he's basically being given this vow to God that if you'll give me the victory in the book of Judges, he says, then I will give the first thing that comes out of my door, my house, I'm going to give them as offering to you. And so he comes back from a victorious campaign, and his daughter comes out. It's like, whoa, I'm going to give her as a sacrifice. Well, if you go back and read the passage, you would find out that it says that he was bemoaning it, he was second-guessing himself, and she said, no, father, let it be as you said. And in the end, she said, just let me go into the mountains with my girlfriends and bemoan my virginity. And then she came back, and the Bible says, and so he did fulfill his vow. And it says, and she never knew a man. Meaning, she never married. And she went into that temple service. Do you remember when Eli, Hophni, and Phinehas, Eli's sons, that were laying with the women in the temple? It's not the women that came, it's the women that were there in service. These boys were nefarious. And if you go even further back, you'd find in Exodus that there was a station for them. And they were women who assembled. The word for assembled in the Hebrew means to array themselves like a military battalion. It has the idea of arrange themselves for war. So these women literally took a position of aggressive intercession and service in any way they could be of service. Also you'll find that Jesus had a certain number of women that went with him. Many who had been delivered from diseases and demonic problems. Remember that? And the Bible says that these women went with the Lord and his apostles, and it also tells us that they ministered unto them, meaning diakonia. It's just ministering, it's just serving. And the one that you'll take most probably personally, because you've probably identified with it if you're a woman, is Martha and Mary. And Jesus is there, and he's teaching, and Mary's not working, and Martha is. Remember Martha? She's all beside herself. And what does she say? She says, Lord, please help Mary to get up and help me make some sandwiches because she's not doing anything. And he says, Martha, Martha, you're worried about a lot of things. But Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her. She's chosen the better part. And the Bible says Martha was serving, serving. Now, this is important because we're going to see a lot of women named in this chapter. And I'm just setting the table for you. This woman was a servant. You'll remember perhaps Lydia in the book of Acts, who is a seller of purple, who got saved when Paul came in Philippi. And what she did is she begged them, if I seem to be faithful, let me host you. There's the segue. Hosting. Hosting. She was a hostess, and she constrained us, it says in Acts chapter 18. She constrained us. So understand that this is a servant heart that is lit up in these women. This woman is probably older. The reason we believe that is because First Timothy chapter five. Well, that concludes today's portion of the message. This has been a ministry of Faith Baptist Church in Ontario, Ohio, and I'm Pastor Dave Davenport. I hope you'll join us Monday through Friday for our verse by verse studies, and we hope you'll tell others to tune in as well. If you'd like to contact us and learn more about our ministry, go to faithbaptistone.net. You can also download recent broadcasts on our homepage. We hope you'll make it a point to tune in daily as we go to the word.