In preparation for our Tuesday night Ladies Bible Class this week we read about various women from the book of Genesis—Eve, the daughters of men, Noah’s daughters-in-law, Sarah, Hagar, and the women in Lot’s life.[1] Then in our class together we tried to glean from their lives a small sample of what God would have us to learn from His record of their lives in history. So for this article (and for part two of this article later) I’d like to focus briefly on these women in order to encourage us to be the kind of women God wants us to be.
Beginning with Eve, the mother of all living, we learn just how important we are as women. God took special care in creating woman and we must take special care in maintaining that which God carefully constructed. Our roles as women are unique—we hold very sacred responsibilities as helpers who will be suitable for our husbands and as mothers who will be nurturers for our children. We are not the leaders of our homes but we are the keepers of them (Titus 2:5). And with this great privilege comes a great responsibility that must never be taken lightly. Consequently, we also learn from Eve how very real sin is and that its effects are serious. Sin robbed Eve of her purity, her innocence, and her life with God. The wages of sin is indeed death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. 6:23). God be thanked that through Jesus Christ we can be delivered from this body of death (Rom. 7:24-25)!Next we looked at the “daughters of men” as referenced in Genesis 6. The “sons of God” took for themselves these daughters of men to be their wives and from the context we know that this was not a good thing in God’s eyes. Why not? The answer seems to be in the distinct phraseology God uses to distinguish between these two groups of people. The sons of God would have been those who were following their ancestor’s (and thus God’s) instruction from the beginning—beginning with Adam, followed by Seth, and so on. The other group, the daughters of men, had not adhered to their Creator’s instruction but instead followed in the footsteps of Cain, who “went out from the presence of the Lord” (Gen. 4:16). And so in Genesis 6 we see the two coming together and God was not pleased. It seems that the principle here applies to us today. “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?” (James 4:4). “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?” (II Cor. 6:14). Therefore, God says, “come out from among them and be separate….and you shall be My sons and daughters” (II Cor. 6:17-18). May we strive daily to be set apart, sanctified, and separate as the daughters of God and not entangled, intertwined, and blended together with the world as the daughters of men!
Continuing in Genesis 6 we looked next at Noah’s daughters-in-law and tried to imagine what it must have been like to be three of only eight people saved from the flood. These three women were part of a small minority preparing to witness the destruction of the massive majority of humanity. These three women were willing to be counted among the few even though it meant giving up all that they had ever known. Does the same God require any less of us today? Jesus said, “So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple” (Lk. 14:33). Those are difficult words—difficult to grasp and difficult to obey—but they’re true and they’re for our good. The same God who called Noah and his family out of a sinful world and into the vessel of salvation is the same God who calls us out of darkness into His marvelous light (I Pet. 2:9). May we, like these three women, have faith enough and the will enough to enter His ark of salvation and be counted among the few for Christ (Mt. 7:14)!
[1] Some of our ladies at Farmersville are currently involved in the Digging Deep in God’s Word study formulated by Cindy Colley. Currently, we are reading through her book “Women of the Genesis.” We discussed these women from the first six chapters of her book in our last class.
Veronica is blessed to be the wife of Clint Brown. Clint currently preaches for the Farmersville church of Christ in north Texas. She is also blessed to be a stay at home mom to two boys, Jeremy (13) and Joshua (12). She has been a preacher's wife, Bible class teacher, missionary, and a host of other things for the Lord for the past 14 years and she's thankful for every moment God uses to mold her into His image.
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