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A Woman God's Spirit Can Guide: New Testament Women Help You Make Today's Choices
224Overview
Use what you have! Alice Mathews reminds you to look at what you have and make good use of it to spread the Good News. In this insightful book you’ll examine the lives of Dorcas, Lydia, Phoebe, and other women in the New Testament to see how God’s Spirit directs lives based on individual gifts and abilities. Find inspiration to reflect on God’s will for your life, as you consider what you have the passion, ability, and opportunity to do. Open your heart to the Holy Spirit’s leading and see how He can help you make wise choices in using your gifts for the Lord.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781627076760 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Our Daily Bread Publishing |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2017 |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Sales rank: | 1,261,198 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.50(d) |
| Age Range: | 3 Months to 18 Years |
About the Author
Alice Mathews is Lois W. Bennett Distinguished Professor Emerita in Women’s Ministries and Educational Ministries at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. She has traveled the world as a Bible teacher and cohosted the Our Daily Bread Ministries Bible-teaching radio program Discover the Word for 23 years. Now retired, she continues to work with doctoral students and continues to write, especially about the intersection of women and the church. Alice resides in Lake Zurich, Illinois.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Joanna
God's Spirit Uses Difficulties to Guide Us
Dot was my college roommate and best friend. Two years older than I, she modeled a kind of can-do spirit that inspired me even as we did crazy things together, talked deeply about eternal matters, and laughed about human foibles. Dot was petite, but no challenge ever led her to say, "I can't." With hands so small they could hardly stretch an octave on the piano, she could hammer out Rachmaninoff's Polichinelle with verve. Once she became convinced that God wanted her to serve as a missionary, she trained in missionary medicine and then earned a pilot's license to fly a plane. After a brief engagement to a college Hulk, she married her childhood best friend, gentle Charles, and they sailed together for East Africa where they planned to spend a lifetime serving in Eritrea.
In time, God gave them a son, but after Mark's birth, Dot — indomitable Dot — found that her muscles wouldn't follow orders. Other symptoms set in, confounding the missionary doctors. Sent to New York for diagnosis, she learned that she had multiple sclerosis, a disease about which very little was known in the 1950s. Advised to move to Tucson, Arizona, for the dry heat, she and Charles shifted gears and walked away from that missionary dream to a new reality. No longer with a mission agency, they lost that source of income. How could Charles provide for Dot and little Mark? As Dot's disease advanced over the next fifteen years, Charles taught in the public schools while earning a Ph.D., and he eventually became a university history professor. Then on Good Friday in 1971, Dot went to be with Jesus as Charles, a host of other friends, and I mourned the loss of this amazing woman.
We don't understand these twists and turns in life. While Dot's illness dramatically changed the course of their lives, it also eventually led Charles back into church ministry as pastor of a largely Hispanic congregation in Arizona. It wasn't what Dot and Charles had envisioned many years earlier, but through their loss, Charles was still able to live out his calling, and an underserved group of people received pastoral leadership and care from a wise and compassionate shepherd.
Sometimes when we glance into the rearview mirror of life, we can glimpse how God's Spirit has worked through our most difficult experiences to change the course of our lives. That is not to say that God is the author of our suffering or losses. We live in a world shot through with every kind of evil, and the apostle John reminds us that "the world around us is under the control of the evil one" (1 John 5:19). As a result, we suffer from many physical and moral pollutions caused by "the evil one." Yet even illness and loss can be redeemed and used by God to change the direction of our lives for a good purpose.
Meet Joanna, a Jewish Girl Who Married into a Roman Palace
Joanna had likely just turned fourteen when she became a wife. Earlier, her wealthy parents had arranged a good marriage for her to an older man, a non-Jew named Chuza, who served as the business manager to King Herod Antipas. That marriage would move her from the family circle to the king's palace and a life apart from that of most of her Jewish friends. But it would also mean learning Roman ways and probably also learning to speak Greek or Latin rather than the Aramaic she had likely used since early childhood.
Joanna's marriage to Chuza took place in the province of Galilee, a region given to Herod Antipas to rule when his father, King Herod the Great, died in 4 BC (Luke 3:1). Not satisfied with the Jewish towns and cities of Galilee, Antipas decided to build a royal city on a major trade route and near famed hot springs. He also wanted to profit from the burgeoning trade in salted fish from the Sea of Galilee. Choosing the best location near the fishing ports required building over an old Jewish graveyard, but Antipas was undeterred. With its sumptuous palace, its amphitheater for theatrical spectacles, and its Roman baths, the new city, named Tiberias for the Emperor Tiberius, was modeled after the great cities of the Roman Empire. But because of its location over a Jewish cemetery, most devout Jews boycotted the city. Antipas was forced to bring in non-Jews to populate his new capital. We have no evidence that Jesus ever entered Tiberias.
Herod Antipas had married a Nabatean princess to cement relations with the nation on his northern border, but when he later fell in love with the wife of his half brother, Herod Philip, he divorced his wife and married his sister-in-law. (That divorce cost him a war with his unhappy neighbor to the north.) When John the Baptist spoke out against this illegal marriage, which violated God's law (Leviticus 18:16), Antipas had John the Baptist imprisoned. And when the king was charmed by the sensual dancing of his new wife's daughter, he offered her anything she requested. He then had to acquiesce to her macabre request for John's severed head on a platter.
It was into that palace life that young Joanna moved when she married Chuza, the king's business manager. What do we know about Chuza? Politics likely dictated that this non-Jewish business manager needed a Jewish wife. It was customary in those days for marriages to be arranged within social circles, and it's likely that Joanna came from a Jewish family of wealth and power. She was a perfect fit for the king's finance minister. Joanna likely spent the earliest years of her married life in Roman luxury.
An Illness and a Dramatic Change of Direction
When we look for Joanna in the Bible, we first meet her in the gospel of Luke:
Jesus began a tour of the nearby towns and villages, preaching and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom of God. He took his twelve disciples with him, along with some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases. Among them were Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons; Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's business manager; Susanna; and many others who were contributing from their own resources to support Jesus and his disciples. (Luke 8:1 — 3, emphasis added)
What? An aristocratic woman from King Antipas's palace is touring with Jesus, his male disciples, and some other women? How could this be? Then we notice that Joanna is included among women who had been cured of either a physical disease or a disease of the soul. In Luke 8, we have no further facts about her. We do not learn the nature of her illness or how she came to be healed. Nor do we have any information in the Bible about the time lapse between her marriage to Chuza and the onset of this debilitating illness. It could have been a number of years. Luke simply tells us that she was now part of the Jesus band, going from town to town as Jesus preached the Good News of God's Kingdom.
Think about the huge social gulf Joanna had to cross as she moved from the Herodian upper class of Tiberias, the royal city of the Roman king, to trekking from town to town with Jesus, listening to him teach and watching him heal the sick. Accustomed to palace life and its luxurious amenities, she nevertheless chose to live as part of a ragtag band of fishermen and others. And there is a reasonably good chance she wouldn't have found a warm welcome among them. As part of the alien Roman aristocracy, hated by most Galileans for the heavy taxes Antipas imposed and the Roman pagan approach to all of life, she might well have been considered "the enemy." But she risked that because she had met her Savior. She realized that Jesus's power to heal was from God whose Kingdom he announced. It was an upside-down Kingdom, contrary to all she knew about palaces and kings and royal rule. He talked about loving not just your own kind, but also about loving your enemies. He was hard on religious elites, but tender toward those with a contrite spirit. There was also quite a bit about this Kingdom of God that had to do with renouncing status and wealth rather than parading it as proof of God's favor.
Joanna had been a wealthy aristocratic woman in a land of poor and oppressed people. Imagine the risk she took when she crossed over from her elite circle to become one with ordinary folks — those with whom Jesus associated. British New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham notes that for Joanna, "throwing her lot with Jesus was a radical conversion to the poor." Had it not been for the incurable illness that first drove her to find that Jewish miracle-worker she had heard about, Joanna may have never left her comfortable life in the king's palace. But through her illness, God led her to Jesus. It is the same for us: God's Spirit can use our most difficult challenges to lead us in new and unexpected directions.
The Complex Lives of Women in First-Century Israel
In the Ancient Near East, women were often sequestered in their homes and kept out of sight. Why? In the legalistic Judaism practiced by the scribes and Pharisees in New Testament times, women were often considered inherently dangerous and corrupt, responsible for the evil in the world because Eve had initiated eating the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3:6). Never mind that Adam joined in the feast on the forbidden fruit with no hesitation!
By first-century moral standards, when women were outside their homes, they were considered to be little more than a sexual temptation to men. For that reason, some Pharisees were so intent on having no contact with a woman that they would not greet even their own mother if they saw her on the street. In fact, one group of Pharisees was known as "the Bleeding Ones" because they walked around with their eyes closed to keep from seeing a woman in public even from a distance. As a result, they would crash into walls and suffer cuts and bruises. Their resultant bleeding was a mark of their superior moral refusal to be tempted by the sight of a woman.
In addition to being sequestered and deemed a moral threat, women were also considered unworthy of learning God's law. Rabbi Eliezer had declared, "If any man gives his daughter a knowledge of the Law, it is as though he taught her lechery" (m. Sota 3:4). Jose ben Johnan of Jerusalem had taught, "He who talks much with womankind brings evil upon himself and neglects the study of the Law and at the last will inherit Gehenna" (m. Abot. 1:5). In the eyes of many Jews, teaching a woman Mosaic law was not only unnecessary; it was downright wrong.
In light of such malign attitudes toward women, we may be shocked to learn that some women traveled all around Galilee as part of Jesus's band. Were they bold or simply reckless? How did God's Spirit guide and influence their stunning choices? How is it that they seem to be respected rather than ostracized by their communities? And how did their humble and courageous choice alter their lives?
The women we meet in Luke 8 were far more complex than we sometimes think. What was true for some women was not true for others, and these women could travel publicly with Jesus and his disciples because of who they were — women of means and privilege. Luke tells us that Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, and many other women "were contributing from their own resources to support Jesus and his disciples" (Luke 8:3). These were women who had access to wealth and were in a position to contribute generously to Jesus.
Luke tells us that their attachment to Jesus grew out of what he had already done for them: he had healed them. Their gratitude to him led to their decision to use their resources to fund his ministry. So we find these women traveling with Jesus and his male disciples on his tours of the towns and villages near the Sea of Galilee. Did tongues wag? Were the townspeople scandalized? To understand how these women were able to travel with Jesus and his band without scandal or community criticism, we need to know a bit about "benefaction" and how it shielded benefactors from public disapproval in the first century.
New Testament scholar Lynn Cohick tells us that benefaction was gender blind. This allowed a woman to move about freely in public if what she did contributed to the common good. Because Jesus was healing multitudes, these women were making that possible by supporting him financially in his work. Joanna's social position allowed her to travel freely with Jesus because her financial support was enabling a good thing benefitting so many poorer folks.
But Joanna's presence with the band might have had another benefit. When we read the early chapters of the gospels by Matthew, Mark, or Luke, we note that everyone was gossiping about this amazing miracle worker, Jesus. Huge crowds followed him wherever he went, and he was kept busy day and night healing the sick and casting demons out of afflicted people. News of him was on everyone's lips, and even King Antipas was curious and wanted to see Jesus at work (Luke 23:8). While early on many of the scribes and Pharisees condemned Jesus for his actions and teachings, his good works throughout the towns and villages in Galilee protected him from the wrath of those religious leaders. Joanna's connection to the Jesus band may also have garnered the group some protection even from the palace.
But Jesus didn't stay only in Galilee. Each year, he made the journey down to Jerusalem in Judea for one of the great feasts of the nation. It was there that the Jewish religious leaders could scheme for a means of seeing Jesus dead. Not only the twelve disciples but also this band of women accompanied Jesus on those treks to Jerusalem. The story of his last trip to Jerusalem takes up much space in each of the four Gospels. In John's Gospel, for example, two-thirds of the book (from chapter 7:10 through chapter 20) detail those last days of teaching in Jerusalem, then Jesus's arrest, his trial, his crucifixion, and finally his resurrection.
Joanna was part of that group to the end. We find her watching Jesus die on Golgotha (Mark 15:41). Had you been in her situation, what might you have felt at that time? With the other women, she had invested her resources in his ministry, but now he was dying on a cross. He had rescued them from debilitating diseases. He had taught them the way to God. He had given them hope for God's Kingdom. But now? Joanna and the other women could do nothing but watch the slow, agonizing death of their Lord.
But even in his death, these women had one more ministry to perform: his body must be anointed properly. It would be risky. In fact, doing so might well incur the wrath of Jerusalem's Roman governor. But it had to be done — and they wanted to do it. Their love for Jesus compelled them to give his body a proper burial. Luke tells us:
As his body was taken away, the women from Galilee followed and saw the tomb where his body was placed. Then they went home and prepared spices and ointments to anoint his body. But by the time they were finished the Sabbath had begun, so they rested as required by the law. (Luke 23:55 — 56)
Then before dawn, the morning after the Sabbath had ended, these women were on their way back to the tomb to complete the task before them.
They faced what seemed to be an impossible situation. The Jewish religious leaders had insisted that the tomb be sealed and a Roman guard posted in front of it so that the followers of Jesus could not steal the body and insist that Jesus was once again alive. How would these women deal with that sealed cave and the Roman soldiers? That was their dilemma.
But these women were determined! Nothing, including the potential threats and unknown obstacles before them, could keep them from that sealed tomb. Who were the women bent on this dangerous mission? Combining lists from the four gospels, we know that the group included Mary of Magdala; Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward; Susanna; Mary the mother of Jesus; Mary the wife of Clopas; Mary the mother of James; Mary the mother of Joses; and the mother of Zebedee's sons. Except for Mary Magdalene and Susanna, all of these women were married and most were mothers of adult sons. Of all the witnesses to the crucifixion, they were most constant throughout Jesus's suffering and death. They were last at the cross and the tomb, and first as witnesses to Jesus's resurrection.
Last at the Tomb, First to Announce Jesus's Resurrection
Luke reports what happened next:
Very early on Sunday morning the women went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. They found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. So they went in, but they didn't find the body of the Lord Jesus. As they stood there puzzled, two men suddenly appeared to them, clothed in dazzling robes.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "A Woman God's Spirit Can Guide"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Alice Mathews.
Excerpted by permission of Discovery House.
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Table of Contents
Introduction: Trusting God's Spirit to Guide Us 9
1 Joanna: God's Spirit Uses Difficulties to Guide Us 17
2 Dorcas: God's Spirit Uses Our Abilities to Guide Us 35
3 The Hungry Greek Widows: God's Spirit Guides Us through Negative Examples 47
4 Lydia: God's Spirit Guides Us through Spiritual Dissatisfaction 63
5 Damaris: God's Spirit Guides Us to Truth in a False Culture 81
6 Priscilla and Aquila: God's Spirit Guides Us in Stressful Events 97
7 Phoebe: God's Spirit Guides Us as Servant Leaders 111
8 Junia[s] and Andronicus: God's Spirit Guides Us through Early Experiences We Did Not Value 129
9 Mary, Tryphena, Tryphosa, Persis, Lois, and Eunice: God's Spirit Guides Us in Different Paths 143
10 Euodia and Syntyche: God's Spirit Guides Us to See Ourselves as God's Servants 163
11 Apphia and Philemon: God's Spirit Guides Us in a Blessed Alliance 177
12 Sometimes God's Spirit Guides Women into Ministry Leadership 193
Notes 213
Acknowledgments 217