October 1, 2025 • 39 mins
In this episode of the Legacy Bible Podcast, we look deeply into God’s design for older women as revealed in Scripture. From 1 Timothy 5 and Titus 2, we discover how older women are called to be a blessing to younger women, guiding them in marriage, motherhood, and godly living.
Pastor Chuck Rains explores how Scripture defines "younger" and "older" women, the vital role of older women in teaching love, purity, and wisdom, and how this design strengthens homes, families, and the church. Whether you are a younger woman learning to walk faithfully or an older woman seeking to pass on wisdom, this message highlights the treasure God has placed in His people for generational blessing.
📋 Show Notes
- Scripture Focus: 1 Timothy 5, Titus 2, Proverbs 31, Romans 7
- Key Themes:
- Defining younger and older women by Scripture, not culture
- The call for younger women to marry, bear children, and guide the home
- The responsibility of older women to teach younger women how to love their husbands and children
- God’s design for the home as a place of teaching, training, and blessing
- How older women become a rich treasure to families, churches, and communities
- Takeaway: Older women are not sidelined in God’s design—they are essential. Their wisdom, experience, and example help younger women walk faithfully and strengthen the church for generations.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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This is the Legacy Bible Podcast, the place for legacy audio from the tape archives of
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the Fellowship Bible Church of Joliet, Illinois.
Now here's your host, Marcus O. Nate.
All right.
Thank you, Mr. AI Voice.
I hope you are liking the voice.
You're going to be trying a few of them in the next coming episode.
So we'll see how that works out.
All right.
So this is the Legacy Bible Podcast.
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And today we're going to be having something from May, May 5, 1991, and is titled The
Treasure of Older Women.
God's Design for Generational Wisdom.
So that should be a good one.
But how older women can teach the younger women of the church.
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And that's kind of like the one before the one we're going to have next week, which
came out on Mother's Day, 1991.
So we're going to have another Mother's Day one.
So that'll be next week.
So today we'll have this one about the Treasure of Older Women.
All right.
So let's get right into it.
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Take it away, Pastor.
I want to talk about older women.
But in saying that, you know, there are really two directions for this message.
These words.
One of course is to the older woman.
We have some things to say that she could probably listen to and gain from.
But the other is a message to the rest of us.
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It's about older women.
And it's so that we would let older women be the blessings to us that they can be.
Now I'm sure everybody's sitting there wondering, now, what is an older woman?
Is the pastor going to be so silly as to get into that dangerous territory of telling a
woman when she's older?
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That's dangerous.
I'm going to stay on scriptural ground.
And I'm just going to say this is what the Lord says.
Well, is an older woman maybe just a widow?
Well, there could be older women that are widows, but it does include married women also.
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Well, is an older woman just those who might qualify for being on the church role for support.
You know, in 1 Timothy, if you want to go over there, and I need to have you go there,
in fact, go to 1 Timothy, chapter 5.
It says at verse 9 about widows, let not a widow be taken into the number.
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And that means be put on the list for support.
This is a section dealing with support.
You're three-score years old.
You can't be on the list if you're not at least 60 years old.
Now he says, having been the wife of one man and well reported out for good works, and
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then there's a list of things that for a woman to be supported by the church, you just would
have to meet these qualifications.
Is an older woman in that category?
Well, it's true that when you're 60 and up, you would be classified scripturally as an
older woman.
Most women would accept that.
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Now we get into dangerous territory.
Could she be younger than that?
Well, I think the way to define older women is to find out what a younger woman is.
Isn't that sneaky?
Maybe if we could define what the Scripture says younger women are all about, then the
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ones that are beyond that would be we'd have to call them the older women.
Now I'm going to take the safe route.
First Timothy 514.
This is the counsel of the Apostle Paul about younger women.
He says, I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, and the children
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guide the house given on occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.
Now what do, how do we know when a woman is a younger woman?
First of all, they marry.
In the Old Testament, a man is counseled about the wife of his youth.
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And it is true that marriage first occurs for most in the years that we would call their
youth.
Now obviously we're not talking about below the age of 10, are we?
When we say youth.
In the scriptural perspective, you're still a youth, even at marriageable age.
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Even in your late teen years and on through your twenties in the Scripture, you would
be called a youth.
Isn't that wonderful?
Some of us have barely gotten out of our youth.
I speak generally.
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So to be married, he says, now younger women should marry.
Does that mean the women that entered into marriage when they were in their youth and
could be therefore the wife of a man's youth?
Well, yes, it would include them, but it includes others because there could be some
who have lost their husband.
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Well is this encouraging a second marriage while the first husband is still alive?
And I think the answer would be clearly no.
And I think that we'll go to Romans chapter 7, verse 2 for this.
Romans 7, verse 2, he's not going to violate the principles of the Scripture about marriage
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when he says he wants younger women to marry.
You've got to keep all of the Scriptures in mind.
And here's what it says in Romans 7, too.
For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he live
it.
But if the husband be dead, she is loose from the law of her husband, so then, if while
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her husband live it, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulterous.
But if her husband be dead, she is free from that law so that she is no adulterous, though
she be married to another man.
See the Scripture basically is saying that when you marry, you truly are married for
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life.
And if one by man's law separates from that marriage or divorces by man's law or whatever,
they ought not to marry again so long as that one is still alive.
Basically, basically that's the scriptural standard.
That's the standard God wants you to hold to and understand.
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That's the design for this life in marriage.
So Paul in saying, well, I would the younger women marry certainly would never be violating
that truth.
He just saying they ought to marry.
They're still unmarried or they're perhaps widows that could still be married and they
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ought to marry.
Well, I put it in context with something else in 1 Timothy, same chapter 5 at verse 14 where
we were reading.
And this goes along with marrying.
The next phrase kind of defines what we mean by younger women.
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Next thing that's said is that they should bear children.
Bear children.
Bear women can bear children and they ought to bear children in a marriage as their health
and capacity allows, of course, but this is the standard.
This is the expectation.
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Bearing children physically concludes for a woman somewhere between 40 and 45 years of
age.
Generally, and I speak generally here, that in the workings of God's design for the woman's
body that that kind of tops off the years when a woman could bear children.
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Now younger women bear children.
Older women do not therefore bear children.
You're certain to see what might include older women?
I'd say in the 40 plus category, as far as bearing children are concerned, ladies, we're
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probably talking about older women.
Scriftually.
The Lord is saying that you can't be the younger woman anymore if you can't bear children.
But if you could, God would like you to have that blessing.
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Children are inherited to the Lord and the fruit of the womb has his reward.
Wonderful privilege.
Wonderful blessing for those that would do it to marry and bear children.
Then He says here after that at verse 14, to guide the house.
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Now in the New American Standard version, it says, keep the house.
I really don't like that translation.
I've looked over options for what to do with that word in the Greek.
And in this case, I'd say the King James does very well with that word.
Guide the house.
Guide the house.
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Housekeeping sometimes gets reduced down to dusting and rearranging the furniture and
washing the dishes.
And I wouldn't choose that.
It's the word that just doesn't have the capacity to cave in it.
What this word means, guide the house.
You see, younger women are supposed to guide the house.
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To guide the house means, first of all, management.
Management of all that sustains the home.
And first, I'd like to say in the area of basic necessities.
A woman, a younger woman in her functioning in a marriage is to manage the things that
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relate to shelter, that relate to food, that relate to rest, and that relate to clothing.
Those are basic, essential elements of life.
Now if you want to see that operation most beautifully put in the scriptures, you know
the section, but I'll turn you back to it for a moment.
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I'm going to come back to the first Timothy.
Is Proverbs 31.
At last chapter of the book of Proverbs, verse 10 to the end of the chapter.
And what you find in that chapter is a woman guiding her house, managing all of these things
that relate to the shelter, the relate to food, the relate to rest, and it relates
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to clothing.
It's just beautifully put in the section.
How busy she is from morning till evening, guiding the house.
And as you read that section in Proverbs, there's another area that comes out in her
guiding the house and that's oversight of the servants.
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Now my wife has never really had that to deal with.
We never could afford servants.
Now some of you are so wealthy, you have a gardener and a chauffeur and a first floor
man and an upstairs lady and a cook and an ananny for the children.
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And somebody to walk the dog, but we haven't, you know.
We don't have those folk.
But if you happen to have such in the home, such servants, oh and somebody to do all the
housework, every lady who start there probably before she got all those other things, somebody
to come in and do all the housework.
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If there are such people in the home, guess who has the oversight of them?
Well the wife does because they are taking up the chores that relate to her area of responsibility,
of shelter, food, rest, clothing and all these things to sustain the household.
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She's to manage that, to oversee those servants.
Now it may be difficult for you to think of servants in your home, but sometimes you get
into this area with relatives that come to live with you.
It could be an aunt or some niece or nephew.
It could be a grandmother or a mother that comes into the home.
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And they really come in to live there, maybe their health demands that you bring them in
and care for them.
And by the way, that's part of the instruction in 1st Timothy 5.
If there are women who have lost their husbands, their relatives bear responsibility to care
for them and to bring them into their homes or at least to provide for their needs.
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And if you don't, the Scripture says you're worse than an unbeliever.
You have no excuse in this.
Well, you may bring such a person in your home and they may take up some of the chores.
Well guess who has the responsibility to oversee them?
The woman, the wife, the mother, the younger woman, the younger woman in the home.
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Now not only to oversee management in the home of those basic things and the oversight
of those that help her in the labors of the home, but there's teaching and training of
children in the home that she has to oversee.
What is she doing in that teaching and training?
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Well she's giving them instruction in how to bring into practical daily living the spiritual
truths of the Word of God, the councils of God.
How to make it real, how to make it live.
And she's the one that oversees that in the home, in the daily experience with the children.
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There's the area of learning that she has to oversee during the day.
Learning for the children, learning, I'll say it in three words from the Old Testament
and New, knowledge, understanding and wisdom.
Knowledge of what happens in life, what goes into the events of life in this world.
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She has to help in that teaching and in that learning process in the area of understanding.
In other words, for dealing with life in the world, not just know what goes on, but deal
with it.
Get the concept, see it in its full perspective and respond accordingly.
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And then the last word of course is wisdom.
And that's for a constant heart response to God in going through all of these issues
from day to day, all the matters of life.
A heart tenderness to God, an obedience to him, a surrender to him, a delight in him,
a walking along with him in all of his councils.
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She's teaching that to her children.
It's a time of learning and teaching.
And then from that section that we had in Titus, if you go back there, chapter two again,
I want to see some things that go beyond what Timothy has for us.
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Titus chapter two, verse four.
Are women now?
Are those that are supposed to be taught to love their husbands?
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Love their husbands?
Well that means that she's married.
Now here's what you think.
Does a woman who is married need to be taught how to love her husband?
And I know when you're young you think, I don't see any reason why an older woman would
think that she has to teach a younger woman how to love her husband.
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Well when a woman gets married, I think I'll let you better listen to this.
When she starts to learn, I'm just going to call it her husband's imperfections.
It's a sad day for the young bride.
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She thought she married the most wonderful person in the world.
And she has to suddenly admit to herself, this fellow has some problems.
She might even get to the conclusion if I knew this.
I don't know if I would have married him, but I hope that she knows that she's married
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in the will of God and that she has to deal with things now.
But his imperfections start to come out.
Once a young bride finds out that her wonderful husband is not mature.
That's not amazing.
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He's a young man like she's a young woman.
Maybe some as they go along for a few years ought to be gaining some maturity, but the
wife starts to realize he isn't.
That's a real shock.
Then she sees his weaknesses of personality.
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Things are wrong with him.
He even has a lack of knowledge, a lack of understanding and a lack of wisdom.
He is a lack of practical skills.
Now there are some women that can't cook.
This happens to men too.
They get married and their day of revelation comes.
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That doesn't take so long.
It's usually the next morning when it's breakfast time.
It's time for her to go to the stove for the first time and cook.
There's only so much you can do wrong with an egg.
That's why some fellas eat cereal for the first year.
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There are women that just can't cook very well.
But there are also some fellas.
Young brides find out they're not too skillful either.
There are some fellas that can't fix a flat tire.
They don't know what to do.
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And that's very discouraging to a woman.
She has to deal with the fact that this man doesn't have all the skills that she thought
he should have.
He's just not perfect.
He may not be a perfect budgeter of money.
That starts to come out.
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Why can't we pay the bill?
Well we don't have any money.
But you earned all that money.
I don't know where it went.
He may not therefore, she starts to think, well he's not a perfect earner of money.
He should make more.
If he only made more money, then everything would be fine.
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That's often the mistake that a young bride makes.
Younger women think, now listen, younger women often think if we only had more money.
That's a common thought of younger women.
Not always true, not always necessary, but somehow that seems to be a solution to all
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the problems dealing with money.
Just had more of it.
It's not the solution.
Sometimes you get more of it.
You get in deeper holes.
Some of us don't know anything about that.
But others have so much money that they've gotten into deeper holes.
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He may be not so perfect on his budgeting, not so perfect on his earning money.
But a younger woman may find out that her husband isn't so perfect as a partner either.
He's not sensitive to every need, to every hope, or every dream.
He's not tuned in.
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He's not sensitive to her feelings, to her emotions, like she would want him to be.
Not even to her basic drives in her body until she starts comparing him with others.
And through the months and through the years that follow in that young marriage, she looks
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around and she starts to see that he doesn't compare well with others in certain areas.
She may meet a nice man who's very mature.
Her husband isn't as mature as that man.
May meet a man who has wonderful skills.
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I mean, not only could he fix a tire, he could tear a motor down and put it back together
and make it work.
Her husband doesn't know which end of the jack to put under the car.
He meets a man who makes a hundred thousand dollars a year.
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Her husband brings home ten thousand dollars a year.
She meets a man that has dark, wavy, thick, curly hair.
The dream of some men.
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Her husband, well, some men just don't, you know, and she figured, my husband is not
perfect.
They're just certain areas of his life that just he just doesn't measure up to when I
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start to compare him with other men.
Other men may seem to be more gentle, more tender, more feeling, more compassionate.
You see, we have to say all this about younger women because older women are supposed to
teach them how to love their husbands.
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Teach them how to love their husbands.
Teach them how to love their husbands.
You know love is a choice.
It means that that means it's an act that requires that our will be surrendered to do
something.
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And what God is talking about when He talks about love in the Bible is choosing to give
ourselves to meet the needs in someone else without any concern for what we may get.
That's choosing to love your husband.
Now why would a younger wife have to be taught how to love her husband?
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Because older women have gone through the childbearing years and they've gone through
the years of training those children and children go through physical changes and psychological
changes that can almost, well they can, not just almost, they can actually be written
about and grouped in their progression through the years.
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They have gone through all of that.
They've brought their children to maturity and they can say what they have faced.
They have dealt with their children with the spiritual truths of the Word of God all
through those years.
They have lived with this man that they have been with for their years in their marriage
and they've gone through that 20 or so years in that marriage and they have called on the
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grace of God.
They have learned of those shortcomings and needs and they have made the choice then to
have gone to God for His grace to deal with all those issues that they've had to face.
And they've made a choice to love their husbands for those years.
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And the older women have this wonderful record that they have seen the grace of God supplied
to help them meet those shortcomings and those that they love and to give themselves to them
in those years and to learn the blessed increase of love that can come in the face
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of all that growth and all that difficulty.
So they have to teach this to younger women.
Younger women need to listen to these that have already gone that way.
They have to teach them to love their children.
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Through all those stages that their children have gone, they've had to deal with them.
And younger women haven't yet had to deal with children through all those stages.
Through all the problems that children can face, those older women have gone through it
already and younger women haven't had that yet.
And they're going to have complication and frustration day after day, week after week,
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and to whom would they go?
Young mother might be so discouraged when she realizes that she has a child that just
lies over and over lies.
It might do well for her just to call an older woman that's had already finished the rearing
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years of her children.
And she's gone through that.
Maybe she had more than one child.
Maybe she had two, three, four, five, six, seven children.
And she's gone through it all over and over again and had to deal with the fact that children
do lie.
And they have to be helped to see the wrong in it.
And out of love for them, they have to be dealt with and shown how to confess it to the
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Lord.
And you have to deal with it sometimes over and over and over and over again with children
and have patience in dealing with them in these issues.
And she can go to that older woman and she can say, tell me what I must do.
Encourage me that God has answers for me.
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Encourage me that I can go on in this thing in dealing with this problem.
Child's faults are there too, you know.
You have little ones and you think they're so precious, they're so beautiful.
But as the years go along, you find all those shortcomings in children.
All right, there just is no child without a shortcoming.
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I have sadly had to deal with some parents who think their children can do no wrong.
I think it's one of the saddest things in life to meet a parent who thinks their children
are perfect.
It's just not honest, folks.
You're still living in dreamland.
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You're back there where some of these people are when they get married thinking they're
marrying an angel.
And it's just not going to be that way.
If you're going to have children, you're going to need the grace of God to continue
to love them and to choose to love them every day, every week, every month and every year
they're in your home.
And even, and even when they leave that home, some of the saddest days may be that if they
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don't learn well how to love the Lord and walk with Him that they will just perpetuate
that rebellion and those heartaches and those scars in their life are going to perpetuate
it in their adult life.
And I'll tell you, I'll warn you that as an adult parent, that could be one of the heaviest
weights for you to have to deal with every day out of great love for your children.
You'll constantly want that they should learn truth and love the Lord and walk in happiness
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and they won't.
And that's going to be hard.
Keep praying for them.
Keep loving them.
And if you're one that even has that hurt, you have a lot to offer to younger women to
encourage them to trust the grace of God that the child being led in the right way won't
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depart from it when he's old.
You have to give them your best counsels, pour your heart out.
And then in 1 Timothy 2, 5, he tells them to be discreet and to be discreet young women
are supposed to show good sense in behaving in a way, in every situation, in a way that
honors God and honors her husband, honors her children, to be chaste or chaste.
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That means to be pure morally.
And women as counsels here to be free from immorality.
And by the way, it doesn't just mean overt outward immorality.
It also can mean flirtatious sexual behavior that stops short perhaps of actual immorality,
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but still by speech and by body movement and by dress and all the other ways that one can
allude to encourage immoral thinking that a woman might do that.
And God says, no, don't go that route, women.
And older women are supposed to teach younger women about these things to be pure.
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Then it says to be homemakers in New American.
Nice word, but I still like this one, to guide the home.
To guide the home means building up relationships and overseeing all that goes on.
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Be good.
And by the way, New American standard again says kind, but really that's not the word.
Good here is to bring a benefit, to bring a benefit, show a woman how to add something
good to her home, good to her children, good to her husband.
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In everything she does to have this thought that I'm going to add something that's beneficial
to be a blessing, would be a nice way to put it.
By the way, that is goodness and kindness are both listed there in Galatians 5, 22 and
23.
I think it's in verse 22, they're both in there.
And it says that this is the fruit of the Spirit.
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They're always made conscious that it takes the Holy Spirit of God to help a woman be
all that she should be, be obedient to your husband.
And that really takes up the idea of submission.
In other words, stay in that right relationship with the man of your life so that he as head
and you as the compliment with him to all that he should be and he your compliment for
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all you should be staying at right relationship so that God's word is honored in the order
of things.
His leadership is not taken away.
Let him be your leader.
Let him be there for your encouragement and for your security and for your strength.
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Submissive to that.
Therefore I'm going to end with this that older women are those who have already gone
through all of these things.
Older women are those who now, because they've gone through these things, have the profit
of those years to bring back and teach to younger women so that godliness, Christ-likeness
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is evident.
You know the assumption in all of this?
And I think it's proper for me to have made it here this morning.
Although I have to bring us back to it over and over, the assumption is that you know Christ
is your Savior.
One of the work of the Holy Spirit of God through you in knowledge, understanding, or
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wisdom in really being able to love could ever happen except that God be alive in you
and that the Spirit of God be the one that by his power and life in you makes it possible
for you to love.
Without the Lord in your life, this is only so much talking.
He's the power of all of this.
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He's designed it this way.
It's his book that gives us the counsel on these things, but it's more than that that
we learn.
He is actually the one behind it all to make it happen.
He's the one that lives in us and provides the power.
And so I'd say to older women, women, you could be a great blessing to every one of
us.
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If you've gone through these years, if you've had these experiences, you pass them on to
the younger women.
And men, whether you're still in that bracket where you have still those child-rearing years
going on with your wife or whether you're already in those years where those children
have gone on into adulthood or maybe you're straddling them, we can be blessed as our
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wives mature.
We ought to be maturing.
And as other women, older women can give the benefit of their counsel and encouragement
into our homes through our wives, we're going to be the ones blessed by it.
Our children are going to be blessed by it.
Our homes are going to be blessed by it.
And I'll say another thing.
The Church of the Lord Jesus is blessed by having them.
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I thank God for these older women who can teach and underscore these truths for younger
ones.
What a blessing.
What a treasure.
What a treasure they are.
We ought to love them and encourage them.
And when they're there at the end of their life and they're in need of just that final
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stage of care, when they can no longer be the leaders and managers and sustainers, we
have to do that for them.
Having given all and having received all that they have to give, it's now our privilege
to give back and sustain them at the end.
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What a rich treasure there is in a family.
This is God's design.
Father, thank you for the Lord Jesus and thank you for the women that you've placed in our
lives.
Come along as our mothers.
They're theirs, our guides and our friends.
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You take us into adulthood and allow adulthood, Lord, and you allow us to know them as wives
and then to enjoy their maturity as they go along in their maturity and the blessing
and encouragement of them as they stand with us in life and add so much through all those
years.
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And then Lord, how much they have to offer to others as they would teach the younger ones
in the later years.
Lord, thank you for such a perfect design in women.
Thank you, blessed us, one with another.
Now we can know that blessing because we have the Lord Jesus as our Savior and let the Spirit
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of God be seen in our lives in all these practical things we speak of.
God help us make it easy for them to be a blessing to us and support them in prayer
and with all our love in Jesus' name.
Amen.
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All right, there we go.
Thank you, Pastor, for another great message from the Lord of God.
And like I said next week, we have another one that was from Mother's Day of 1991.
So you can look forward to that.
And I thank you for listening in and listeners, if you want, you could subscribe or comment.
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You know, send us emails.
We like that.
If you want a request for something, do you want to have a request for prayer or something
from the people of Fellowship Bible Church to pray for you?
I'll take those and pass those on down to the praying group down there at Fellowship
Bible Church.
Until then, you can, like, subscribe, do whatever you want and share it with others.
(39:33):
All righty then.
Thanks for listening.
And I'll see you again next week.
And don't forget, have a great day.
This is the Legacy Bible Podcast, the place for legacy audio from the tape archives of
(00:07):
the Fellowship Bible Church of Joliet, Illinois.
Now here's your host, Marcus O. Nate.
All right.
Thank you, Mr. AI Voice.
I hope you are liking the voice.
You're going to be trying a few of them in the next coming episode.
So we'll see how that works out.
All right.
So this is the Legacy Bible Podcast.
(00:29):
And today we're going to be having something from May, May 5, 1991, and is titled The
Treasure of Older Women.
God's Design for Generational Wisdom.
So that should be a good one.
But how older women can teach the younger women of the church.
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And that's kind of like the one before the one we're going to have next week, which
came out on Mother's Day, 1991.
So we're going to have another Mother's Day one.
So that'll be next week.
So today we'll have this one about the Treasure of Older Women.
All right.
So let's get right into it.
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Take it away, Pastor.
I want to talk about older women.
But in saying that, you know, there are really two directions for this message.
These words.
One of course is to the older woman.
We have some things to say that she could probably listen to and gain from.
But the other is a message to the rest of us.
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It's about older women.
And it's so that we would let older women be the blessings to us that they can be.
Now I'm sure everybody's sitting there wondering, now, what is an older woman?
Is the pastor going to be so silly as to get into that dangerous territory of telling a
woman when she's older?
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That's dangerous.
I'm going to stay on scriptural ground.
And I'm just going to say this is what the Lord says.
Well, is an older woman maybe just a widow?
Well, there could be older women that are widows, but it does include married women also.
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Well, is an older woman just those who might qualify for being on the church role for support.
You know, in 1 Timothy, if you want to go over there, and I need to have you go there,
in fact, go to 1 Timothy, chapter 5.
It says at verse 9 about widows, let not a widow be taken into the number.
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And that means be put on the list for support.
This is a section dealing with support.
You're three-score years old.
You can't be on the list if you're not at least 60 years old.
Now he says, having been the wife of one man and well reported out for good works, and
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then there's a list of things that for a woman to be supported by the church, you just would
have to meet these qualifications.
Is an older woman in that category?
Well, it's true that when you're 60 and up, you would be classified scripturally as an
older woman.
Most women would accept that.
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Now we get into dangerous territory.
Could she be younger than that?
Well, I think the way to define older women is to find out what a younger woman is.
Isn't that sneaky?
Maybe if we could define what the Scripture says younger women are all about, then the
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ones that are beyond that would be we'd have to call them the older women.
Now I'm going to take the safe route.
First Timothy 514.
This is the counsel of the Apostle Paul about younger women.
He says, I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, and the children
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guide the house given on occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.
Now what do, how do we know when a woman is a younger woman?
First of all, they marry.
In the Old Testament, a man is counseled about the wife of his youth.
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And it is true that marriage first occurs for most in the years that we would call their
youth.
Now obviously we're not talking about below the age of 10, are we?
When we say youth.
In the scriptural perspective, you're still a youth, even at marriageable age.
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Even in your late teen years and on through your twenties in the Scripture, you would
be called a youth.
Isn't that wonderful?
Some of us have barely gotten out of our youth.
I speak generally.
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So to be married, he says, now younger women should marry.
Does that mean the women that entered into marriage when they were in their youth and
could be therefore the wife of a man's youth?
Well, yes, it would include them, but it includes others because there could be some
who have lost their husband.
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Well is this encouraging a second marriage while the first husband is still alive?
And I think the answer would be clearly no.
And I think that we'll go to Romans chapter 7, verse 2 for this.
Romans 7, verse 2, he's not going to violate the principles of the Scripture about marriage
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when he says he wants younger women to marry.
You've got to keep all of the Scriptures in mind.
And here's what it says in Romans 7, too.
For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he live
it.
But if the husband be dead, she is loose from the law of her husband, so then, if while
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her husband live it, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulterous.
But if her husband be dead, she is free from that law so that she is no adulterous, though
she be married to another man.
See the Scripture basically is saying that when you marry, you truly are married for
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life.
And if one by man's law separates from that marriage or divorces by man's law or whatever,
they ought not to marry again so long as that one is still alive.
Basically, basically that's the scriptural standard.
That's the standard God wants you to hold to and understand.
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That's the design for this life in marriage.
So Paul in saying, well, I would the younger women marry certainly would never be violating
that truth.
He just saying they ought to marry.
They're still unmarried or they're perhaps widows that could still be married and they
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ought to marry.
Well, I put it in context with something else in 1 Timothy, same chapter 5 at verse 14 where
we were reading.
And this goes along with marrying.
The next phrase kind of defines what we mean by younger women.
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Next thing that's said is that they should bear children.
Bear children.
Bear women can bear children and they ought to bear children in a marriage as their health
and capacity allows, of course, but this is the standard.
This is the expectation.
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Bearing children physically concludes for a woman somewhere between 40 and 45 years of
age.
Generally, and I speak generally here, that in the workings of God's design for the woman's
body that that kind of tops off the years when a woman could bear children.
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Now younger women bear children.
Older women do not therefore bear children.
You're certain to see what might include older women?
I'd say in the 40 plus category, as far as bearing children are concerned, ladies, we're
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probably talking about older women.
Scriftually.
The Lord is saying that you can't be the younger woman anymore if you can't bear children.
But if you could, God would like you to have that blessing.
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Children are inherited to the Lord and the fruit of the womb has his reward.
Wonderful privilege.
Wonderful blessing for those that would do it to marry and bear children.
Then He says here after that at verse 14, to guide the house.
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Now in the New American Standard version, it says, keep the house.
I really don't like that translation.
I've looked over options for what to do with that word in the Greek.
And in this case, I'd say the King James does very well with that word.
Guide the house.
Guide the house.
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Housekeeping sometimes gets reduced down to dusting and rearranging the furniture and
washing the dishes.
And I wouldn't choose that.
It's the word that just doesn't have the capacity to cave in it.
What this word means, guide the house.
You see, younger women are supposed to guide the house.
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To guide the house means, first of all, management.
Management of all that sustains the home.
And first, I'd like to say in the area of basic necessities.
A woman, a younger woman in her functioning in a marriage is to manage the things that
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relate to shelter, that relate to food, that relate to rest, and that relate to clothing.
Those are basic, essential elements of life.
Now if you want to see that operation most beautifully put in the scriptures, you know
the section, but I'll turn you back to it for a moment.
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I'm going to come back to the first Timothy.
Is Proverbs 31.
At last chapter of the book of Proverbs, verse 10 to the end of the chapter.
And what you find in that chapter is a woman guiding her house, managing all of these things
that relate to the shelter, the relate to food, the relate to rest, and it relates
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to clothing.
It's just beautifully put in the section.
How busy she is from morning till evening, guiding the house.
And as you read that section in Proverbs, there's another area that comes out in her
guiding the house and that's oversight of the servants.
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Now my wife has never really had that to deal with.
We never could afford servants.
Now some of you are so wealthy, you have a gardener and a chauffeur and a first floor
man and an upstairs lady and a cook and an ananny for the children.
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And somebody to walk the dog, but we haven't, you know.
We don't have those folk.
But if you happen to have such in the home, such servants, oh and somebody to do all the
housework, every lady who start there probably before she got all those other things, somebody
to come in and do all the housework.
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If there are such people in the home, guess who has the oversight of them?
Well the wife does because they are taking up the chores that relate to her area of responsibility,
of shelter, food, rest, clothing and all these things to sustain the household.
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She's to manage that, to oversee those servants.
Now it may be difficult for you to think of servants in your home, but sometimes you get
into this area with relatives that come to live with you.
It could be an aunt or some niece or nephew.
It could be a grandmother or a mother that comes into the home.
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And they really come in to live there, maybe their health demands that you bring them in
and care for them.
And by the way, that's part of the instruction in 1st Timothy 5.
If there are women who have lost their husbands, their relatives bear responsibility to care
for them and to bring them into their homes or at least to provide for their needs.
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And if you don't, the Scripture says you're worse than an unbeliever.
You have no excuse in this.
Well, you may bring such a person in your home and they may take up some of the chores.
Well guess who has the responsibility to oversee them?
The woman, the wife, the mother, the younger woman, the younger woman in the home.
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Now not only to oversee management in the home of those basic things and the oversight
of those that help her in the labors of the home, but there's teaching and training of
children in the home that she has to oversee.
What is she doing in that teaching and training?
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Well she's giving them instruction in how to bring into practical daily living the spiritual
truths of the Word of God, the councils of God.
How to make it real, how to make it live.
And she's the one that oversees that in the home, in the daily experience with the children.
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There's the area of learning that she has to oversee during the day.
Learning for the children, learning, I'll say it in three words from the Old Testament
and New, knowledge, understanding and wisdom.
Knowledge of what happens in life, what goes into the events of life in this world.
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She has to help in that teaching and in that learning process in the area of understanding.
In other words, for dealing with life in the world, not just know what goes on, but deal
with it.
Get the concept, see it in its full perspective and respond accordingly.
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And then the last word of course is wisdom.
And that's for a constant heart response to God in going through all of these issues
from day to day, all the matters of life.
A heart tenderness to God, an obedience to him, a surrender to him, a delight in him,
a walking along with him in all of his councils.
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She's teaching that to her children.
It's a time of learning and teaching.
And then from that section that we had in Titus, if you go back there, chapter two again,
I want to see some things that go beyond what Timothy has for us.
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Titus chapter two, verse four.
Are women now?
Are those that are supposed to be taught to love their husbands?
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Love their husbands?
Well that means that she's married.
Now here's what you think.
Does a woman who is married need to be taught how to love her husband?
And I know when you're young you think, I don't see any reason why an older woman would
think that she has to teach a younger woman how to love her husband.
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Well when a woman gets married, I think I'll let you better listen to this.
When she starts to learn, I'm just going to call it her husband's imperfections.
It's a sad day for the young bride.
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She thought she married the most wonderful person in the world.
And she has to suddenly admit to herself, this fellow has some problems.
She might even get to the conclusion if I knew this.
I don't know if I would have married him, but I hope that she knows that she's married
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in the will of God and that she has to deal with things now.
But his imperfections start to come out.
Once a young bride finds out that her wonderful husband is not mature.
That's not amazing.
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He's a young man like she's a young woman.
Maybe some as they go along for a few years ought to be gaining some maturity, but the
wife starts to realize he isn't.
That's a real shock.
Then she sees his weaknesses of personality.
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Things are wrong with him.
He even has a lack of knowledge, a lack of understanding and a lack of wisdom.
He is a lack of practical skills.
Now there are some women that can't cook.
This happens to men too.
They get married and their day of revelation comes.
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That doesn't take so long.
It's usually the next morning when it's breakfast time.
It's time for her to go to the stove for the first time and cook.
There's only so much you can do wrong with an egg.
That's why some fellas eat cereal for the first year.
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There are women that just can't cook very well.
But there are also some fellas.
Young brides find out they're not too skillful either.
There are some fellas that can't fix a flat tire.
They don't know what to do.
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And that's very discouraging to a woman.
She has to deal with the fact that this man doesn't have all the skills that she thought
he should have.
He's just not perfect.
He may not be a perfect budgeter of money.
That starts to come out.
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Why can't we pay the bill?
Well we don't have any money.
But you earned all that money.
I don't know where it went.
He may not therefore, she starts to think, well he's not a perfect earner of money.
He should make more.
If he only made more money, then everything would be fine.
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That's often the mistake that a young bride makes.
Younger women think, now listen, younger women often think if we only had more money.
That's a common thought of younger women.
Not always true, not always necessary, but somehow that seems to be a solution to all
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the problems dealing with money.
Just had more of it.
It's not the solution.
Sometimes you get more of it.
You get in deeper holes.
Some of us don't know anything about that.
But others have so much money that they've gotten into deeper holes.
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He may be not so perfect on his budgeting, not so perfect on his earning money.
But a younger woman may find out that her husband isn't so perfect as a partner either.
He's not sensitive to every need, to every hope, or every dream.
He's not tuned in.
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He's not sensitive to her feelings, to her emotions, like she would want him to be.
Not even to her basic drives in her body until she starts comparing him with others.
And through the months and through the years that follow in that young marriage, she looks
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around and she starts to see that he doesn't compare well with others in certain areas.
She may meet a nice man who's very mature.
Her husband isn't as mature as that man.
May meet a man who has wonderful skills.
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I mean, not only could he fix a tire, he could tear a motor down and put it back together
and make it work.
Her husband doesn't know which end of the jack to put under the car.
He meets a man who makes a hundred thousand dollars a year.
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Her husband brings home ten thousand dollars a year.
She meets a man that has dark, wavy, thick, curly hair.
The dream of some men.
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Her husband, well, some men just don't, you know, and she figured, my husband is not
perfect.
They're just certain areas of his life that just he just doesn't measure up to when I
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start to compare him with other men.
Other men may seem to be more gentle, more tender, more feeling, more compassionate.
You see, we have to say all this about younger women because older women are supposed to
teach them how to love their husbands.
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Teach them how to love their husbands.
Teach them how to love their husbands.
You know love is a choice.
It means that that means it's an act that requires that our will be surrendered to do
something.
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And what God is talking about when He talks about love in the Bible is choosing to give
ourselves to meet the needs in someone else without any concern for what we may get.
That's choosing to love your husband.
Now why would a younger wife have to be taught how to love her husband?
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Because older women have gone through the childbearing years and they've gone through
the years of training those children and children go through physical changes and psychological
changes that can almost, well they can, not just almost, they can actually be written
about and grouped in their progression through the years.
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They have gone through all of that.
They've brought their children to maturity and they can say what they have faced.
They have dealt with their children with the spiritual truths of the Word of God all
through those years.
They have lived with this man that they have been with for their years in their marriage
and they've gone through that 20 or so years in that marriage and they have called on the
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grace of God.
They have learned of those shortcomings and needs and they have made the choice then to
have gone to God for His grace to deal with all those issues that they've had to face.
And they've made a choice to love their husbands for those years.
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And the older women have this wonderful record that they have seen the grace of God supplied
to help them meet those shortcomings and those that they love and to give themselves to them
in those years and to learn the blessed increase of love that can come in the face
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of all that growth and all that difficulty.
So they have to teach this to younger women.
Younger women need to listen to these that have already gone that way.
They have to teach them to love their children.
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Through all those stages that their children have gone, they've had to deal with them.
And younger women haven't yet had to deal with children through all those stages.
Through all the problems that children can face, those older women have gone through it
already and younger women haven't had that yet.
And they're going to have complication and frustration day after day, week after week,
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and to whom would they go?
Young mother might be so discouraged when she realizes that she has a child that just
lies over and over lies.
It might do well for her just to call an older woman that's had already finished the rearing
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years of her children.
And she's gone through that.
Maybe she had more than one child.
Maybe she had two, three, four, five, six, seven children.
And she's gone through it all over and over again and had to deal with the fact that children
do lie.
And they have to be helped to see the wrong in it.
And out of love for them, they have to be dealt with and shown how to confess it to the
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Lord.
And you have to deal with it sometimes over and over and over and over again with children
and have patience in dealing with them in these issues.
And she can go to that older woman and she can say, tell me what I must do.
Encourage me that God has answers for me.
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Encourage me that I can go on in this thing in dealing with this problem.
Child's faults are there too, you know.
You have little ones and you think they're so precious, they're so beautiful.
But as the years go along, you find all those shortcomings in children.
All right, there just is no child without a shortcoming.
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I have sadly had to deal with some parents who think their children can do no wrong.
I think it's one of the saddest things in life to meet a parent who thinks their children
are perfect.
It's just not honest, folks.
You're still living in dreamland.
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You're back there where some of these people are when they get married thinking they're
marrying an angel.
And it's just not going to be that way.
If you're going to have children, you're going to need the grace of God to continue
to love them and to choose to love them every day, every week, every month and every year
they're in your home.
And even, and even when they leave that home, some of the saddest days may be that if they
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don't learn well how to love the Lord and walk with Him that they will just perpetuate
that rebellion and those heartaches and those scars in their life are going to perpetuate
it in their adult life.
And I'll tell you, I'll warn you that as an adult parent, that could be one of the heaviest
weights for you to have to deal with every day out of great love for your children.
You'll constantly want that they should learn truth and love the Lord and walk in happiness
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and they won't.
And that's going to be hard.
Keep praying for them.
Keep loving them.
And if you're one that even has that hurt, you have a lot to offer to younger women to
encourage them to trust the grace of God that the child being led in the right way won't
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depart from it when he's old.
You have to give them your best counsels, pour your heart out.
And then in 1 Timothy 2, 5, he tells them to be discreet and to be discreet young women
are supposed to show good sense in behaving in a way, in every situation, in a way that
honors God and honors her husband, honors her children, to be chaste or chaste.
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That means to be pure morally.
And women as counsels here to be free from immorality.
And by the way, it doesn't just mean overt outward immorality.
It also can mean flirtatious sexual behavior that stops short perhaps of actual immorality,
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but still by speech and by body movement and by dress and all the other ways that one can
allude to encourage immoral thinking that a woman might do that.
And God says, no, don't go that route, women.
And older women are supposed to teach younger women about these things to be pure.
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Then it says to be homemakers in New American.
Nice word, but I still like this one, to guide the home.
To guide the home means building up relationships and overseeing all that goes on.
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Be good.
And by the way, New American standard again says kind, but really that's not the word.
Good here is to bring a benefit, to bring a benefit, show a woman how to add something
good to her home, good to her children, good to her husband.
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In everything she does to have this thought that I'm going to add something that's beneficial
to be a blessing, would be a nice way to put it.
By the way, that is goodness and kindness are both listed there in Galatians 5, 22 and
23.
I think it's in verse 22, they're both in there.
And it says that this is the fruit of the Spirit.
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They're always made conscious that it takes the Holy Spirit of God to help a woman be
all that she should be, be obedient to your husband.
And that really takes up the idea of submission.
In other words, stay in that right relationship with the man of your life so that he as head
and you as the compliment with him to all that he should be and he your compliment for
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all you should be staying at right relationship so that God's word is honored in the order
of things.
His leadership is not taken away.
Let him be your leader.
Let him be there for your encouragement and for your security and for your strength.
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Submissive to that.
Therefore I'm going to end with this that older women are those who have already gone
through all of these things.
Older women are those who now, because they've gone through these things, have the profit
of those years to bring back and teach to younger women so that godliness, Christ-likeness
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is evident.
You know the assumption in all of this?
And I think it's proper for me to have made it here this morning.
Although I have to bring us back to it over and over, the assumption is that you know Christ
is your Savior.
One of the work of the Holy Spirit of God through you in knowledge, understanding, or
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wisdom in really being able to love could ever happen except that God be alive in you
and that the Spirit of God be the one that by his power and life in you makes it possible
for you to love.
Without the Lord in your life, this is only so much talking.
He's the power of all of this.
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He's designed it this way.
It's his book that gives us the counsel on these things, but it's more than that that
we learn.
He is actually the one behind it all to make it happen.
He's the one that lives in us and provides the power.
And so I'd say to older women, women, you could be a great blessing to every one of
us.
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If you've gone through these years, if you've had these experiences, you pass them on to
the younger women.
And men, whether you're still in that bracket where you have still those child-rearing years
going on with your wife or whether you're already in those years where those children
have gone on into adulthood or maybe you're straddling them, we can be blessed as our
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wives mature.
We ought to be maturing.
And as other women, older women can give the benefit of their counsel and encouragement
into our homes through our wives, we're going to be the ones blessed by it.
Our children are going to be blessed by it.
Our homes are going to be blessed by it.
And I'll say another thing.
The Church of the Lord Jesus is blessed by having them.
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I thank God for these older women who can teach and underscore these truths for younger
ones.
What a blessing.
What a treasure.
What a treasure they are.
We ought to love them and encourage them.
And when they're there at the end of their life and they're in need of just that final
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stage of care, when they can no longer be the leaders and managers and sustainers, we
have to do that for them.
Having given all and having received all that they have to give, it's now our privilege
to give back and sustain them at the end.
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What a rich treasure there is in a family.
This is God's design.
Father, thank you for the Lord Jesus and thank you for the women that you've placed in our
lives.
Come along as our mothers.
They're theirs, our guides and our friends.
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You take us into adulthood and allow adulthood, Lord, and you allow us to know them as wives
and then to enjoy their maturity as they go along in their maturity and the blessing
and encouragement of them as they stand with us in life and add so much through all those
years.
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And then Lord, how much they have to offer to others as they would teach the younger ones
in the later years.
Lord, thank you for such a perfect design in women.
Thank you, blessed us, one with another.
Now we can know that blessing because we have the Lord Jesus as our Savior and let the Spirit
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of God be seen in our lives in all these practical things we speak of.
God help us make it easy for them to be a blessing to us and support them in prayer
and with all our love in Jesus' name.
Amen.
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All right, there we go.
Thank you, Pastor, for another great message from the Lord of God.
And like I said next week, we have another one that was from Mother's Day of 1991.
So you can look forward to that.
And I thank you for listening in and listeners, if you want, you could subscribe or comment.
(39:05):
You know, send us emails.
We like that.
If you want a request for something, do you want to have a request for prayer or something
from the people of Fellowship Bible Church to pray for you?
I'll take those and pass those on down to the praying group down there at Fellowship
Bible Church.
Until then, you can, like, subscribe, do whatever you want and share it with others.
(39:33):
All righty then.
Thanks for listening.
And I'll see you again next week.
And don't forget, have a great day.
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