I would encourage you to open up your Bibles and turn there in them to Luke chapter 8 as we do continue on in the gospel according to Luke. You remember last week, we read about how Jesus had attended a dinner at the house of Simon the Pharisee. And at that dinner, in which he was not particularly honored, the host, we read, did not even do the basic things that a host would do for one of his guests, for Jesus. How a woman had come in who had anointed his feet with oil and who had washed them with her tears, or rather anointed his head, sorry, with oil and washed his feet with her tears. We remember that she was someone who had been saved by Jesus and who in turn now wanted to serve him. And now we're going to consider further the women who served Jesus, not just in the Bible, of course, but in the world. But before we turn our attention to the word of God, let's ask for his help as we seek to understand it. God, our gracious Father, I pray, Lord, that you would help me. I need your unction. I need your zeal. I need your power. I need, O Lord, that which I do not have, which is the ability to reach hearts. Lord, it is not enough merely to reach ears, to tell people the truth. That has to be brought home to them. I must have heard the truth many times, Lord, prior to it piercing my heart and calling me forth from the darkness into your wonderful light. And I pray, Lord, that that would happen today. That if there are those in our midst who do not yet know you, who do not yet know their need of you, Lord, that this would be a day when they turn. Help us, O Lord, not to be deceived as the world, the flesh, and the devil seek to deceive us, especially when it comes to the nature of the sexes, Lord. I pray that you would help us then to understand what you tell us and to see the example that was left by these godly women who loved you and who followed you. And we pray all these things in Jesus' holy name, amen. Luke chapter eight and verses one through three, I do remind you this is the word of the Lord. Now it came to pass afterward that he went through every city and village, preaching and bringing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God, and the 12 were with him. And certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom had come seven demons, and Joanna, the wife of Chusa, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others who provided for him from their substance. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. As I go through the Bible year by year, I am constantly amazed at the number of profound insights that I didn't have, the things that I have missed. I still remember the time when probably about 20 years ago, I realized I'd been reading these verses that are before us here in Luke 8, 1 through 3. through entirely the wrong lens. You see, I looked at the chapter break, it's natural, you get the big eight right in front of you, and you assume that this is something new. And then I looked, I read through these verses, one through three, and then immediately on to four, we have the parable of the sower, and I assumed that what we read in verses one through three for a long time is just a preface to the parable that's about to be told. Then I had one of those, I am not a smart man moments, and I realized that Luke wasn't written with chapter breaks. As helpful as they are, they were created by Stephen Langton in the 13th century. Rather, Luke is a running narrative, okay? So you will notice that we began with, now it came to pass afterward. After what? After the events of chapter seven and particularly what happened at Simon the Pharisee's house. And I realized that what these verses actually do is they function more as an important postscript to the story of the woman who washed Christ's feet that we read last week. That's their nature. That's more of their nature than a preamble to the parable that we will be, God willing, contemplating next week. It's also important to realize that these verses are important. They're in the Word for a reason. The Holy Spirit had a definite reason for giving us this information about these women, and to pass lightly over anything that God has chosen to record in His Word for all eternity is very unwise. In these verses, what do we see? Well, we see the example of some godly women. godly women of the Bible who are put before us front and center. And if we as Christians pass over their example without taking note and seeking to find guidance in it, then I think we're making a terrible mistake. And I think also we're doing something wrong. We're encouraging this perception that the only way that women can serve Christ is by serving Christ as the men did, which is demeaning and it's Gnostic in its nature. That, after all, was the opinion of the Gnostics. For instance, A bundle of documents were found in Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Although I love the antiquities, the findings of writings from the ancient days, this is a bundle of documents that in one sense I wish were not found. What were they? They were a series of Gnostic writings, pseudo-Christian writings that were written sometime in the third or fourth century, and they were written, unfortunately, under the names of various apostles. Now, they were put down on paper long after the death of the apostles. They couldn't possibly have been written by them, and the aim of these documents was to advance the heretical but very Greek idea that people are saved by coming to know and understand secret knowledge, the Greek word for knowledge. Who knows it, incidentally? Gnosis, that's right, so that's where we get the word gnostic. The idea that we are saved by being enlightened, coming into the possession of certain truths that have not been revealed by God, that aren't out there, that aren't open like the gospel is open, but rather that we have to have these ascended masters who will tell us these secret knowledge things and that we will be saved by them. That incidentally is, for instance, the teaching of of Christian science. It's the teaching of the Scientologists as well. You pay them ridiculous amounts of money and they give you science fiction, bad science fiction, and tell you you're being saved by it. Incidentally, the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, was a science fiction writer. It is not surprising that that's what they peddle. But Jesus did not come to share mystical information, something that was held back by God. Rather, he came to proclaim the gospel, and he did so openly, but that's not what the Nag Hammadi documents say. But this idea that we're saved by mystical information created a problem. Well, the Gnostics didn't call it so much a problem, but it did set something difficult for people. Namely, the Greeks had a very low view of the thinking capacity of women. In fact, many Greek writers, some of the great philosophers, did not think they were capable of logical thought. And therefore, if they can't think properly, there's a number of men who are smiling kind of smugly in the room, stop. If they cannot think properly, They can't be saved. So the Gospel of Thomas, which was not written by the disciple of that name, includes this following passage. It's number 114. Simon Peter said to them, make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life. Jesus said, look, I will guide her to make her male so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven. That is literally the teaching of this heretical gospel of Thomas. Now, we may laugh or be appalled or both when we read that kind of thing. But let me ask you this question. Isn't that the spirit of our age wrapped up? The women have to make themselves male in order to be anything. They certainly cannot merely engage in all of those activities and roles which have typified the female sex since creation. They cannot live out that which they were created to do. The scorn that is poured out on women who choose, for instance, to stay home and have a family. What's your job? Oh, I'm a homemaker. Oh, unemployed. No, actually, I am over-employed in many senses, should be the response there. I don't, you know, this is not a 9-to-5 job. It's rather a 9-to-9 job every single day. Hey, it's ridiculous the way our culture treats women, but understand there is an agenda that's driving it, and an agenda that goes back all the way to the garden, all the way back to the devil deceiving the first woman and saying, hath God said? So that's what the Gnostics did. They said, no, no, no, women can't possibly follow Jesus. Women can't serve Jesus. To be anything, women have to become men to follow Jesus and to serve them. Therefore, they have to take on male roles. And the Bible tells us, and these verses tell us, that that's simply not true, brothers and sisters. All believers, both male and female, men and women, are called to serve their Savior. And while there are often similarities in the ways that we serve Him, there are just as many differences. Now we see here, the story of a group of women who were in Christ's inner circle. They were just as close to Christ as the apostles, they lived and traveled with him, and they had the awesome privilege of sitting at his feet and hearing his teaching, including those fuller explanations that he reserved for his closest companions. And yet they did not do the same things the disciples did. When Jesus sends out the disciples two by two to go and preach the word, it's not male and female. He sends out male disciples to go and do that. But that doesn't mean that they were any less faithful. In fact, I think it's worthy to note, as we look at the gospel story, that it was not the women of Christ's company who were constantly arguing about who was the greatest. It was not the women who gave him answers like, not so, Lord. It's not the women who were secretly stealing from the bag. The women were not the ones who betrayed him for silver, neither did they desert him when all the apostles were running away, or when they were swearing at the top of their lungs that they wouldn't desert him, and then later on swearing at the top of their lungs, literally swearing, and saying that they didn't know him. We do not read, for instance, during those awful hours on Golgotha, as Jesus was paying the ultimate price for our sins, as the wrath of the Father was being poured out on the Son. We don't read that he was surrounded by the apostles. Rather, and I hope you've noticed this, John tells us that it was just John and the women who were there at the foot of the cross. In John 19.25, we read this, now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved, that's John's way of speaking of himself in the gospel. He said to his mother, woman, behold your son. Then he said to the disciple, behold your mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own home. Later, after the crucifixion, after his death and his burial, in his resurrection, his final victory over death and sin, in the third day, he rises again. And who did he appear to, though, that morning after he had risen again? Again, it was not the apostles that he appeared to. It wasn't Peter, it wasn't John, it wasn't Thomas. The first person that Jesus appeared to was the woman whom we read Jesus had delivered from bondage to demons. He appeared to Mary Magdalene in the garden. And what an awesome thing it was that the first woman to see the risen Lord Jesus was a woman who was herself a living testimony of the delivering power of Jesus. And who better to appreciate what the resurrection really meant than this woman who had herself been delivered from death. Now, while it's wonderful to contemplate that nowhere in any of the gospels do we read of any individual woman who treated Christ with scorn and contempt, I don't want you to jump to the false conclusion, therefore, that women are inherently more spiritual and always better followers of Christ and are all, every woman on earth is inclined to follow Jesus and to believe the Bible. That is not the case. You only have to listen to many of the, female leaders in politics and so on to recognize that that's not the truth. And you know all too well from names like Sapphira and Herodias and Jezebel that Judas had plenty of peers amongst the fair sex in terms of not following the Lord according to his instruction. But what this does, this narrative here tells us, what it does tell us is that Christian women can and should serve Jesus just as faithfully as any man. And I want to consider some of the ways that they can go about and should go about doing that in just a little while. But we read in verse one of this passage, going back to Luke 8 verse 1, that from the time Jesus left the carpenter shop to begin his earthly ministry, Jesus was always about his father's business. As soon as he came of age, And he went and he was anointed by John. He was prepared for that high priestly ministry that he was going to take on. He himself, the priest and the sacrifice, the one to whom all those other sacrifices from millennia had pointed to. From that point onwards, he served him faithfully. He was constantly going from town to town to preach the good news of the gospel. And indeed, he told his disciples that it was for that reason that he had been sent. And as he did so, he was accompanied by his apostles. They followed him and by these women whom he delivered either from demon possession or from illness. They served the one who had served them. And they had been delivered from terrible afflictions in this life, and most importantly, from damnation and their bondage to sin. So they did whatever they could to serve Christ with their substance. Jesus says, or rather Luke says, that they served Jesus here out of their substance. That was out of their possessions, out of their goods, out of their wealth, out of their property. And they didn't only serve him with their goods. We know that they served him with their lives as well. They did whatever they could to minister to him. We remember that it was the women who prepared the spices and oil for the Lord's body in the grave. And that mournful duty would have been too much for Peter. And yet Mary does not hesitate to perform even the saddest of services. These women did not hesitate to serve the Lord with the labor of their hands as well. They were willing to do everything for him. And there is a lesson there for you. beware of this thinking that once you've given a little money in the name of the Lord, you provided for some missionary overseas, that you have done everything that you can to serve the Lord. Now, I am not saying that doing that kind of thing, providing for missionaries, tithing on a regular basis, I'm not saying that that's not a good thing, but giving money is only the beginning. You know, there are a lot of nominal Christians in this world, that is, people who have a profession of faith, but who are not really Christians. In every age they have existed, and there have been a lot of rich, nominal Christians. And they have been very, very generous with their contributions. They have made a lot of contributions to churches, to building things, and so on. But often they are doing that, to be seen by others. They wanted to be known as great philanthropists or as a bomb to soothe a nagging conscience. Or they have some more nefarious purposes to it. The Rockefellers, for instance, contributed a lot to build a giant church for a man by the name of Harry Emerson Fosdick. Why? Because he was a modernist. Because he was an anti-supernaturalist. He didn't believe the gospel story. He believed in the social gospel. that the Bible tells us how to get along well with others, how to build a kingdom like unto God's here on earth, and they wanted to promote that message. So today, there are philanthropists who are donating money to the church in order to move it into a socialist direction. I don't know if you've been, if you're online and you're Christian, you can't have missed this, but there was a book that came out recently by Megan Bashan called Shepherds for Sale. which recounts how there have been these people who have been pouring tremendous amounts of money into evangelical churches in order to move them in a theologically and politically leftward direction. And I have to tell you, they have done a very good job of doing that. They have made people, they have gotten, for instance, organizations like the National Association of Evangelicals to embrace causes that the founders of the National Association of Evangelicals back in the 1950s, men like Billy Graham, would have looked at them and said, what are you doing? This has nothing to do with the gospel. And yet they've managed to do that. They have an agenda. So not everybody who gives money to the kingdom does so for the right reasons. But even if you're giving for the right reasons, don't let it be the case with you that you're just giving from your money and certainly out of your surplus. Rather, make it your aim, male or female, to serve the Lord with your life, with all that you are. Let yourself, let your life be poured out in service to Christ. That's the best thing that we can do. After all, He was poured out for your sake, wasn't He? His blood was shed in order to save you from an eternity in hell. Think of it, the most that you can do for Christ will never come close to or even be comparable with what Christ did for you on the cross and his death for you. And so therefore be thinking on a regular basis of the ways that you can serve Christ by serving others. For instance, is there a friend who is sick, someone you know of who could use perhaps a gift of food or assistance on a regular basis? Is there an elderly person who could use Christian fellowship desperately, a shut-in? Incidentally, if you don't know of any, I am more than happy to send you in the right direction. These people who need that just to be able to talk to another living being. It used to be. the case that, and I guess it still happens today. You know, the TV channels on cable where they just constantly are selling junk 24 by seven. They have the person who comes out and, this is the new glamor. It removes every stain known unto mankind, except for perhaps the stain of sin. And there are many shut-ins and older people who will sit and watch these shows and call in and spend money. And it's not because they want glamor. It's because they just want to talk to another human being for a few moments. I spoke to somebody who was once one of the people who answered the phone and so on, and they said, you know, part of our training was we were supposed to engage these people and to be as friendly as we possibly could, but not to stay on the line with them after the sale had been made for much time because they would want to talk and talk and talk. Why? Because they were so lonely. Loneliness is one of the great epidemics of our society, especially as family structures have fallen apart and as the church has begun to decline. There are many people who are living their final years all by themselves, desperately lonely. You can be used in their lives. Perhaps you will be the one whom God sends to share the gospel with them, to give them hope before it is too late. There are also out there, I mean, just think about all the other opportunities that are there. A young mother whose husband is TDY or deployed. who could use your fellowship as well, your company, or your counsel in times of difficulty. Or a woman who is new to the area, new to the congregation, who is desperate to make friends, real friends. Or how about those people you meet with on a regular basis who don't know Christ? Friends, the person across the street, perhaps a coworker or so on. Could you spend a little of your credit with them to tell them about the good news of Jesus Christ? Now there are many who will say at this point, or they won't say it out loud, what they'll do is they'll feel within themselves, oh man, that would be embarrassing to talk about Jesus openly. But what is a little embarrassment for the sake of an eternal soul's salvation? Step out of your comfort zones. Now, before I get down to some of the other applications, let me give one warning, and this is also particularly important. I mean, it applies to men as well, to a certain extent, but in my experience, it's a particular application to women, and it's this. Service is of critical importance, absolutely. The evangelical church, absolutely. This church depends upon the service of the women who are within it. the evangelical church depends upon the service of women. And the evangelical church would be an infinitely better place if we all had a servant's heart towards one another. And you can see from the verses that we read, the service that these women rendered to Christ that was part of the means that allowed the gospel to be spread through Galilee and Judea. And service is still a necessary part of the spreading of the gospel, but Never allow service to trump the means of grace. Never allow it to become something that takes you away from hearing the gospel, away from serving Christ directly and listening to his word, listening to the preaching and the teaching of the word, prayer and the sacraments. Turn with me if you would. We're gonna go ahead to Luke chapter 10, 38. 10, 38. There we read in Luke 10.38, now it happened as they went that he entered a certain village and a certain woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary who also sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she approached him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore, tell her to help me. And Jesus answered and said to her, Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things, but one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her. In the church that we attended when I was in seminary, and this is, obviously, this is well over now, 20 years ago, two decades, it was a Korean American church. And one of the things that they had, apart from great fellowship and wonderful preaching, was amazing fellowship meals. They would have a fellowship meal after every single service, okay? And there was Korean food, japchae, bulgogi, I'm actually, I'm not joking, I'm actually solidating just from the memory of those fellowship meals. They were amazing. One of the things that would happen was that about halfway through the sermon, and I know my wife remembers this, the women would get up and they would all go downstairs and begin the process of cooking the fellowship meal because we wanted the hot, fresh bulgogi. It's better than hot, fresh donuts. But they would go down and the odors would come seeping through the floor and up and you would sit there and your mind would be taken away from whatever was being said because you were just thinking at that point, You're like spicy pork. Oh yeah, Jesus. It was very difficult to do, to keep your mind on the subject. And also, obviously, if the women were downstairs cooking, what wasn't happening was they weren't sitting in the service. So as much as it pained us, we had to have a conversation where we sat down with the women of the church and said, look, you need to sit through the entire service. We love you. And your service to us is wonderful. It really is. But you need the means of grace. You need to be sitting through the sermon. You need to be singing with the saints. You need to be praying. The service that you render to us is unspeakably good. But at the same time, you need Christ. So remember that. It is possible for us to be busy doing things, serving the people in the church, and miss sitting at the face of the Savior. So while it is a great help, for instance, to take opportunities, for instance, to serve in the nursery, to take care of little ones, we would ask that you don't continually sign up, that you aren't in the nursery every single week or week after week, but that rather you are here listening to the word, preaching or praying, don't come and preach the word, please, praying and doing the things that are good for your soul again and again. Now, I want to give you just three quick applications. And the first concerns charity. You read these verses and you obviously see a wonderful example of charity, of giving. And you see an even better example of receiving it. Christ willingly received the assistance of these women. So let me ask this question, and it's particularly needful here in the South. If Christ received the assistance of these women willingly, then who were we to scorn the assistance of anyone? Oftentimes we will not accept charity out of pride, even in our times of greatest need. Sometimes we won't even see our need. until perhaps it's too late. The natural man is so absolutely set on the idea of, no, I don't want to accept your charity. It would be demeaning. I don't want to accept your assistance, because I can do it myself. I will do it myself. Now, we do that with the things of the material world. When it comes to salvation, there are often those who won't accept the free gift of salvation from Jesus Christ either. No, I'm going to do this myself. You can't. You simply can't. I mean, try telling Mary Magdalene, out of whom the Lord cast seven demons, that we're saved by our own free will. What could have saved her other than Christ coming to her? He didn't ask her, Mary, do you want me to cast the demons out? No, he cast the demons out and she was saved by the will and the power of a gracious God alone. Another important note is related to this theme of charity. Sheep provide for the shepherd. Now the question is, are the sheep who provide for their shepherd being ripped off? Are they losing something in the exchange? Would anyone say that these women who provided for and traveled with and sat at the feet of their savior, that they didn't get a bargain? In the process of doing that, sheep are protected, they're fed, they're watched over, they're warned by their shepherds. And in a very real sense, often literally, the shepherd's life, obviously in Christ's case, it was literally the truth. The shepherd's life is poured out for the sheep. But sheep would do well, therefore, to make sure their shepherd doesn't have to split his attention between the flock and some other occupation in order to survive. And hopefully, I'm going somewhere with this, this will be as thought-provoking to you as it was when it occurred to me. Can you imagine how awful it would have been if Jesus had only been able to perform his earthly ministry on the Sabbath? Because on the other six days of the week, he had to work in a carpenter shop. So he couldn't travel about. Well, I'd love to travel about, but I'm gonna starve if I do so. And I certainly won't be able to provide for the needs of the apostles. Do you realize, therefore, how well the charity of these women served you? This is something that I've been thinking about. Do you recognize how important your service, your giving is to the church generally? Elder King stood up and talked about how it is not merely when you donate to the mission that I'm going on to Rwanda and Uganda, it's not merely me who you are. You're not just paying for my plane ticket. Incidentally, I'm taking the Doha route, so pray for me as I fly through. It's a very Muslim experience. It's not merely me you're serving. You are serving the pastors in that country through TBI and so on. And by serving those pastors, you know who else you're serving? You're serving the sheep. You are serving the people over there as you give. And that is of vital importance. Your charity is an act of service that goes far beyond anything you could imagine. I can extend that also. I'm served to this day by countless godly women in history. I think of Susanna Spurgeon who had a ministry of her own. She found out through her husband and through her experiences with his students who came to be trained by him how few books they had. She started what was called the Coal Porters Ministry, whereby she raised money to buy books for ministers in rural villages who couldn't afford books themselves. And so England and Christianity in England and the Reformed faith was given a massive boost by that particular ministry. The Great Awakening. It is impossible to underestimate the importance of the Great Awakening to the shaping of America, this wonderful revival that took place in the 1700s. The Great Awakening, I am not kidding, is the difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution. the way one went in a bloody and humanistic, awful direction, and the other, which remembered God and put him at the very beginning of the Declaration of Independence. That great awakening, though, didn't happen without money. And one of the people who was most used in the Great Awakening was a woman by the name of Selina Countess of Huntington. She took the estate that she had inherited from her husband after he died and she used it to pay for men like George Whitefield to come to America and to preach the gospel, to establish chapels throughout the United Kingdom and missionary endeavors in the American colony. She was greatly used, singly used. I could go on. Mrs. McCormick, who funded the founding of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. All of these women who were greatly used in one way or another. Amy Carmichael, who went over to serve the incredibly oppressed young women of India, especially those who were sold at a young age into the temple as prostitutes and so on. These women whom God used in the past to build up the Christian faith. One name that's probably not on your radar, Mary Winslow. She was a godly Christian mother, raised up two wonderful minister sons, but she was a woman whose husband was not saved. But it was through her example, her willingness to do family worship with her sons, that ultimately her husband was brought to faith. Or how can we forget Saint Augustine's mother, Monica, who constantly was praying for her son, an example of piety. And she produced a son eventually, through her tears and her prayers, who served the church more than we can possibly imagine. That, brothers and sisters, is what can happen if we are dedicated to the Lord. Sisters, there is a way to serve wherever you are. Now, also, secondly, as we saw from the false gospel of Thomas, the devil has long tried to pervert God's creation order. He's always been in the business of persuading men that they have to act like women, and women, the only way that they can be happy is if they take on the roles and the actions of men. I don't think it's a coincidence, incidentally, that the current generation of women are, by any metric, the most unhappy generation in history, the most depressed. Why? Because they're constantly being told that they have to be something that they're not. They're being told that in order to be happy, to be fulfilled, and so on, you have to be men, and they're not. To tell the truth, how many men are really fulfilled by a nine to five job? We have, I don't know if you saw the sad story of the woman who died at work in her cubicle. Nobody found her for four days. Is this fulfillment? That I get to be the wage slave of a corporate body that doesn't care anything for me, instead of raising a family, being surrounded by people who, yes, are constantly requiring my attention, but who might notice if I died suddenly? I mean, there's no comparison. It is, therefore, A godly, a wonderful example when a woman lives her life according to God's setting in that particular place that she's been put faithfully. We see the Joannas, we see the Susannas, we see the Priscilla's and so on. And we see the way that they serve the Lord while maintaining their connection to their families and so on. If you want to serve the Lord, you don't have to do so through an ordained ministry role. It's not necessary. Not at all. Peter had a different God-ordained role, but Mary's service was no less important to the kingdom than his. Spurgeon notes this. He says, there's a place for everyone who is willing to be used by the great master builder who leaves no stone out of the wall if it is fit to be built into it. There is something for the twelve to do, and there is something for the holy women to do. and we cannot do without either of them. And in that last great day, when the rewards are distributed, there will be as much for Joanna as for John, and as much for Mary Magdalene as for Simon Peter. Did they not each, according to their utility, serve the Lord Jesus Christ? And the answer is, of course they did. Finally, look at the example of these women and see that each one of them was, in her own sense, a monument. She was an Ebenezer of God's power and mercy. They were healed of demon possession. They were healed of sickness. And we know some of them were great sinners prior to, in fact, we know they were all sinners prior to their conversion and so on. Many of them typically manifested strange, possessed behavior. And it is very possible that the wife of a famously evil, or the steward of a famously rather evil tyrant like Herod, was probably a great sinner herself prior to conversion. But regardless of their situation or their station, all of them stood in need of Christ. All of them stood condemned. And Jesus, the great physician of souls, healed them all. And look at these women as eternal memorials, not only of their service, but of also God's saving power. No matter how great your sins, you should never, like these women, despair of being pardoned. There is no sin so great that the blood of Christ cannot pardon it. And through faith alone, you can encounter the healing grace of Jesus Christ. and then you can go on to serve him. And remember this, those who have been forgiven much love much. These were women who loved Christ precisely because they had been saved from their situations. I don't know where you are or state of your heart. It's impossible though that in a group this large, being listened to online, that there are not people who have not yet closed with Christ. Maybe some of the women here, young or old, who have not yet come to feel their need of Him in that deepest of all senses. My prayer this day is that you would close with the Lord Jesus Christ, not just so that you can serve him, but that rather you can know the joy, the healing, the contentment, and then, yes, the wondrous love of serving Christ and his people afterwards. but close with him. Make that your first priority. Come to the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved from your sins. Let's go before him now. God, our gracious Father, we thank you for the example of these women who served you, who followed you. They were on that dusty road as you walked from place to place, village to village. They served you out of their substance. They knew you and they loved you because you had saved them from their sins, saved them in some cases from demon possession. I pray, oh Lord, that you would do that wonderful work in our community here, that you would save us, male and female, from our sins and then give us opportunities to serve you. I pray, oh Lord, that you would not let the devil delude any of the women who are hearing me, that in order to serve you are right, they have to suddenly become men. That is a foul and obnoxious lie, something from the pit of hell. May it be, O Lord, that we remember you have made us exactly the way you wanted us to be, and you've given us things to do. There is a reason for everything that happens in our lives. Help us to understand that you're behind them all, and help us, O Lord, to be grateful that you have ordered all of the days of our lives. And we pray this in Jesus' holy name.