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Men, the title of my sermon this morning is postpartum recovery or recovery after childbirth. This chapter deals with the procedure after a woman gives birth. Now I understand this is the Old Testament Mosaic law. We're not under the law. We don't follow these rules regarding, you know, cleanness to approach the holy things or come into the sanctuary. The Old Testament has a whole program of the tabernacle, the sanctuary, the holy things, who can eat the holy bread and who can eat the sacrifices among the Levites and who can come and offer a sacrifice and those type of things. And obviously under the New Testament, we're not bound by those things because the Bible says the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law. You know, we're not under that Levitical priesthood, but we're under Jesus as our high priest after the order of Melchizedek. But yet, in spite of that, the Old Testament can still teach us biblical principles and godly principles about how to live our lives. The Bible says all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, okay? So we can get doctrine from Leviticus chapter 12. The passage of the Old Testament teaches us doctrine for the New Testament, even though we might apply it differently in light of the New Testament's teachings. So when the Bible here explains the recovery after childbirth, there's still a lot that we can learn today in 2019. Look at what the Bible says in verse number 1, the Lord spake unto Moses saying, speak unto the children of Israel saying, if a woman have conceived seed and born a man child, then she shall be unclean seven days, according to the days of the separation for her infirmity, shall she be unclean. And in the eighth day, the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised and he shall then continue, she shall then continue in the blood of her purifying thirty and three days, she shall touch no hallowed thing. Hallowed means sacred or holy. And again, that has to do with the Levitical order of things that are sanctified and offered to the Lord in the tabernacle. Nor come into the sanctuary, again referring to the tabernacle, until the days of her purifying be fulfilled. But if she bear a maid child, a female child, then she shall be unclean two weeks. So notice the length is doubled as in her separation and she shall consider, or she shall continue in the blood of her purifying three score and six days, again, the number is doubled. So what's going on here? When the Bible talks about being clean and unclean, one of the applications of this is sanitation. Now this is something that the Jews completely miss because they have the veil over their eyes in reading of the Old Testament. And it's bizarre what they teach on this. They teach that uncleanness and cleanness in the Old Testament only had to do with ritual, just a ritual impurity. Whereas actually what's being taught is sanitation. They completely ignore that. They even go so far as to say this has nothing to do with sanitation. And when it comes to leprosy, they say, oh, the leprosy in the Bible wasn't contagious. It's just nothing to do with sanitation, nothing to do with contagion, nothing to do with like clean and dirty. It's all ritual and so forth. That's wrong, folks. When the Bible talks about being clean and unclean, there is a sanitation element that's being brought up. Now, don't turn there, but in chapter 15 of Leviticus, there's a great deal of scripture there about how if someone is sick and if they sit on a bed or if they sit on a chair, you have to clean the sheets, you have to clean their clothing. If someone who is ill touches a glass or a bowl or a plate, you have to wash those things and scrub them. And if you touch that person, you have to wash your hands with running water. Don't tell me that has nothing to do with sanitation. People want to deny that it has to do with sanitation. They want to acknowledge the fact that the Bible is thousands of years ahead of its time. It's only literally within the last couple hundred years that people have understood these things in the Western world about washing your hands with running water, sanitation, germs, and so forth. Even just a few hundred years ago, doctors would all wash their hands in the same water basin, not running water, but dipping their hands in water to wash their hands and literally spreading more germs. And so this idea of, hey, the sick person has contaminated their bed, the cup that they drank out of, the bowl that they ate out of, the clothes that they're wearing are all unclean, and then the Bible says if you come into contact with things that are unclean, you need to wash your clothes, and you need to bathe your flesh in water, this is teaching you how to be sanitary and clean. The Bible also taught them that if they use the bathroom, don't use the bathroom in the middle of your camp. Don't use the bathroom where you live. Go outside the camp and go use the bathroom and then bury it with a shovel. The Bible is teaching sanitation. Now there's also a spiritual symbolism there of going into the tabernacle clean, which is a picture of people being right with God or spiritually clean or spiritually right, but there is a sanitation element, of course, that is there, okay? So even if we don't have hallowed objects and even if we don't have a sanctuary with the holy place and the most holy place and the veil and the mercy seat, even if we don't have those things, we should still apply the sanitation principles of the Bible, right? We should still wash our hands and wash our clothes and be clean. This is obvious. God's law was there to help them stay healthy, okay? Not just for ritualistic purposes, but also to stay clean and healthy. Now I've heard some atheists attack this passage of scripture and say that the Bible is being negative toward women here because of the fact that the woman is unclean for twice as long after giving birth to a girl as a boy and that she has to continue in the blood of her purification for twice as long. Who's ever heard somebody bring that up and say, hey, this is negative toward females? Folks, that's ridiculous. The truth of the matter is, and I can speak from experience since I have 10 children and six of them are boys and four of them are girls, is that the recovery after giving birth to a girl is longer and more difficult. My wife has had more difficult and longer recoveries after giving birth to a girl than giving birth to a boy because totally different hormones are at play. When a woman is pregnant with a boy, she shares in his hormones, all right? And when she's pregnant with a girl, she shares in those female hormones and so there is more of a recovery. It takes longer to get better after a girl and the Bible is simply acknowledging that and saying, hey, she's going to bleed longer. She's going to be unclean longer. It's going to be unsanitary longer. Now what the Bible is saying here is that for the first seven days, she shall be unclean, if you look at verse 2, according to the days of the separation for her infirmity, shall she be unclean. This is referring to her monthly cycle, her monthly uncleanness. He's saying, hey, just like all the rules that I gave you for the woman who is experiencing that time of month, that's what you're going to do for the first seven days after giving birth to a boy or the first 14 days after giving birth to a girl. You're going to have that level of separation for those days. And then he says, but then after those first seven days, she shall then continue in the blood of her purifying, three and 30 days. So there's a three and 30 day period where she's not totally unclean, but she's in kind of a less clean state. And then after the end of that 40 days, she goes down to the tabernacle and she offers the burnt offering and gets basically reinstated with a full cleanness. Okay. And he said, what is all this clean and unclean? Look, God kept people in a status of clean and unclean, like I said, for sanitation purposes and also for symbolic and religious purposes, but it was primarily for their own good to keep them sanitary and clean and keep everything clean in that way. So what can we learn from this in 2019? Well, one of the primary teachings that we should take away from this is that when women give birth, they need time to recover. Okay. They need time to rest and recover. They're bleeding. They need to be healed and get through that period and they shouldn't be asked to just go straight back to work or straight back to church or out soul winning the next day or some crazy thing like that. You know, women need to take childbirth seriously and understand that there's a process of getting back on your feet and getting back into the swing of normal life. Go to Luke Chapter 2, if you would, Luke Chapter 2. And this can sometimes take discipline on the part of women who want to just jump right up and do everything. You know, they need to be, they need to basically make a point to rest and relax and take care of their bodies after they give birth. You know, the Bible says that our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in us and that we should glorify God in our body and in our spirit which are God's. And we typically apply that verse as to not abuse our body. You know, don't eat junk food, don't smoke cigarettes, don't take drugs and do things that are harmful to your body. Well, you know what? Another thing that can be harmful to your body is to just give birth and then to just jump right back into life and just get out there and do everything. And we live in a day where women today get the scheduled C-section on Friday afternoon and they're back at work on Monday morning, okay? And this is not the picture that the Bible paints of what giving birth is like, okay? Look at Luke chapter 2, we'll see Mary, the mother of Jesus, following this law. It says in verse 21, and when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, that's Jesus, his name was called Jesus which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb. And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, that's 40 days, they brought him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. As it is written in the law of the Lord, every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord and to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons. You know, another thing that's interesting about this is it shows that Jesus came from a humble family because actually in Leviticus chapter 12, what we just read, it said that the offering that was to be given, it talked about being a lamb. But then it basically says, you know, if she can't afford it, then she'll bring the two turtle doves, the two young pigeons, that was an alternate offering showing that they were poor, okay? So we see here that Mary followed this with Jesus. Now if you would flip over to Titus chapter 2, Titus chapter 2, Titus chapter 2. When a woman gives birth, there's a period of time that she should rest and recover and take care of herself and understand that giving birth for a woman is a big deal. This isn't just something that she kind of does on the side, you know. She's having her career and all these other important things that she does and then she'll just kind of have a baby or two into the bargain. No, actually this is one of the primary purposes of her life. In fact, in Genesis 3.20, you don't have to turn there, but the Bible says that Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living. So even her name, Eve, was wrapped up in her identity as being a mother. Being the mother of all living is what her name was, all right? So this is an important part of being a woman, it's an important aspect of being a woman. And so you need to understand that this is a big part of a woman's life and that she should stop everything and focus on giving birth in a safe and healthy way and recovering adequately not just jumping right back into life, okay. Now I've been in churches where literally the culture is that when you give birth, you're supposed to be at the next service. I mean I've seen women give birth on, you know, Wednesday morning and they're there at Wednesday night at church and they stick their baby in the nursery Wednesday night. It's crazy, all right? But it's out there, believe me, it is out there. Like I said, women making it a point of pride to go straight back to work or, you know, straight back to church and just going right out in public with the baby. First of all, it's not good for the baby because you're exposing the baby to too many germs right away. It already went through the trauma of being born. It needs to be kept in a safe, clean environment for a while and kept with its mother at home. These are the type of principles that we should draw from Leviticus 12. Instead of just writing off Leviticus 12, oh that's Old Testament, Old Covenant, clean, unclean, that doesn't matter. Let's see what kind of doctrine we can get from that passage. How about instruction in righteousness that says, hey, give her several weeks after she gives birth to recover from that childbirth and not just make it a point to see how fast you can get to church. You know what? That's what the live stream is for, amen. And you know what? Even if there was no live stream, you should still stay home and get well from having a baby and not just feel like you got to be there right away, you know, and just show up to church immediately with your baby, exposing it to a bunch of germs when you need to be on bed rest, taking it easy, relaxing, okay, getting better and not trying to show off how tough you are, all right. You don't need to do that as a woman because that's not a female attribute, all right. Giving birth is the only toughness you need to show, all right. After that, you know, take a load off, amen. Take it easy. Now, Titus chapter 2 verse 4 says this, that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, watch this, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed. We need to get an old-fashioned view of what it means to be a woman, what it means to be feminine, what it means to be a wife, what it means to be a mother. We need to get off this modern feminist garbage and get on the Bible's program for Christian womanhood, and the Bible is saying here that women are to be good and chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, and you know what it means, keepers at home, it's basically saying that they're a homemaker, all right. They are keeping the house. Now to shed a little more light on this, go if you would over to 1 Timothy chapter 5. 1 Timothy chapter number 5, sometimes we use the term housekeeping, okay, as far as just taking care of the home. That's what's meant by keepers at home. It's sort of like where Adam was told of the Garden of Eden that he was supposed to dress and keep it. Keep it didn't mean like, hey, don't lose it, retain it, all right. When he said keep it, he's saying basically take care of it, attend unto it, dress and keep it. So when the Bible says keepers at home, it's saying that the woman is supposed to take care of things at home, right. Take care of the household, make sure that things are running smoothly and that everything's going well. So the Bible says in 1 Timothy 5.14, I will therefore that the younger women marry their children, guide the house. So keeper at home is also tied in with this thing of guiding the house, running the household. Guide the house and then it says, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully for some are already turned aside after Satan, isn't that the truth, all right. There are many today turned aside after Satan but we as Christians need to be different than this world and follow the Bible's principles and wives are to be guiding the house, keepers at home. And let me just come right out and say this and make no bones about it, the husband is supposed to be the breadwinner in the home. He is supposed to pay the bills, all right. God's plan is for the husband to go to work and for the wife to stay home with the kids, all right. That is God's plan. Now the world will tell you, hey, you both need to have a job. You know, you both go out there and work a career and they'll take young women aside and say, well, you got to have a backup plan in case this marriage doesn't work out. You got to have something to fall back on. You got to have that college degree to fall back on. You got to have that career, otherwise what if things don't work out and, you know, your husband just leaves you high and dry. Let me tell you something, when you get married, it's do or die, till death do us part. That's do or die. You shouldn't have a backup plan. I don't have a backup plan for getting divorced from my wife. My wife doesn't have a backup plan for divorcing me. Why? Because we're going to stay married. We're going to stay married. That's what God demands, okay. And so no backup plan, no separate career for the wife. And you say, oh, this sounds, I don't care what it sounds, it sounds like the Bible. The Bible, if you back up, you're in 1 Timothy 5, back up to verse 8. But if any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel. The Bible is telling us that we have a responsibility to provide for our family as men. We have to provide for our house, all right. Now you say, well Pastor Anderson, it's difficult in 2019 because our society is designed for two incomes. Yes, this is true. It can be difficult, but you know what, let's go to Guyana and see how they're doing down there making a lot less money than you are. You know, yeah, it's hard folks, but we do live in the land of opportunity. It's pretty sad to be crying about how hard it is in America in 2019. What about the people that are in Africa right now? What about the people in Mexico right now? What about people in the Caribbean right now, South America, Asia, Southeast Asia? You could pretty much name anywhere else in the world, it's harder to make a living. Virtually anywhere, it's going to be, you say, oh, what about the wonderful Denmark and Sweden and Finland and Germany and oh France, oh. Well guess what, there is no way that I would be over there able to live the lifestyle that I have lived. It wouldn't be possible, okay. Getting married at age 19 and having 10 kids, not happening over there friend, okay. Look, when I was 24 years old and I started this church, I was able to buy a home for the first time. You know, I was a first time home buyer, I bought a house here in Tempe, I was 24 years old and I was married with three kids, all right, and I was able to buy a 1500 square foot house, which is still the same house I live in to this day. And I bought my 1500 square foot house from the 1950s and I was thrilled about it. And you know, guess what, there's no way if I were growing up in Germany or one of these other places and I know I've been to these places, I have friends and relatives that live in these places, you're not going to be 24 years old, married with three kids and owning your own home with a pool in the backyard, not happening. You know why I was able to do that, because I live in America, all right. Because I had opportunities to go out and work and make money and be able to succeed, all right. And so, you know, God's been able to bless me and provide as I've had more kids. And look, I'm not saying if you live in another country you can't have kids, but you know what, you're not going to live the same lifestyle that you can live in America. In America, we have the best standard of living. And you say, oh no, they have a higher standard of living in Denmark. Yeah, with their 1.2 children or with their 0.9 children, yeah, of course, it's easy to make it financially when you don't have any kids. Kids are the expense, friend. Are you kidding? Kids are expensive. Having no kids, yeah, okay, wow, oh yeah, you have nice things. You know, we could all have nice things if we didn't have kids, all right. But we know children are a blessing and we'd rather have kids than nice things. Rather than stare at fancy things, I'd rather look at my children's faces every morning than to stare at a fancy car or a fancy circular driveway or something stupid like that. So the point is that we live in America, the land of opportunity. If there's ever a place in the world where it's possible for you to go to work and for your wife to stay home, it's America. You can make that happen. You can do it if it's a priority for you. Now, you might not be able to have as nice of things, as I alluded to, but it can be done. It's possible. And you know what? All over the building are men who are doing it. I mean, you've probably got almost 100 men here today that are providing for their families, okay. Why? Because it's possible. Because it can be done, all right. And by the way, I would rather work two jobs and have my wife stay home than for me to work one job and her to work one job, okay. Now, this is one of the reasons why I'm bringing this up is because, you know, my wife, when she gives birth, she doesn't have to worry about going back to work too soon because she's never going to go back to work because she hasn't gone to work in almost 20 years, all right. Now, obviously, my wife works very hard. She works harder than most professional women because being married and having kids is a full-time job. Just cooking for the whole family, cleaning the house, taking care of the children, change the diapers, change the clothes, bathe, feed, educate them, play with them. That's a full-time job. It's a very busy job and we need to respect that in 2019 as Christians. We need to respect the role of being a wife and a mother and we need to respect that when our wife gives birth, she needs some time to rest and recover. We shouldn't just be like, all right, woman, what's for dinner, you know, go back to the kitchen. She needs to rest, right? So other people in the family need to pick up the slack a little bit to help her out and let her recover from that, okay. Now the good thing is when you're giving birth to your first baby, you know, there's not a whole lot of work to do around the house because you only have that one baby and you can really focus on that one baby. And then as you have more kids, the bigger kids help out. And then, you know, you need to train them to work and pick up the slack and hopefully your older kids can cook meals, do laundry, take care of things like that. And you say, ah, yeah, you built 10 slaves. Yeah, you got it right. But you know what? Teaching kids how to work is good for them. They're happy. You know, I'll give you the number one way to put a smile on a toddler's face, give them a job to do. Kids love working, right? Hey, go put this in the trash. Sure, yeah, you know, they just, they'll do anything. Anybody who has kids knows that that's true. They love to help. They love, hey, kids, let's go work out in the yard. Yeah, let's go, you know. And then they become a teenager. It's like, ah, you know. They learn to be lazy over time but they're born a worker, all right? So we need to teach our kids to work and to enjoy working and to pull their weight and to do their job. And so the hardest stage of having kids is when you have just like three or four kids and they're all small. That's the most difficult stage, all right? Once you get through that, because people say, oh, man, it must be hard having 10 kids. It's harder having four kids, you know, because when you have 10 kids, you've got all these older helpers, all right? See, the way I look at it is every time we have another child, we're not adding a baby because we always have a baby. It's just we're adding older kids, you know? So we went from having, instead of having like, you know, five, three and one, now we have seven, five, three and one, then we have nine, seven, five, three and one, then we have 11. So we're just like adding an 11-year-old, adding a 13-year-old, adding a 15-year-old. There's always a kid in diapers. There's always a toddler. There's always a baby. It's been like that for the last, you know, 17 years, all right, just nonstop. We've always had diapers, always had that. So we're adding big helpers, all right? And obviously, teenagers have their own challenges but that's another sermon that shall be preached at another time. But either way, even if they're giving you guff, they can still do a load of laundry, amen? And they can still do the dishes and cook a meal and take care of that stuff even if they are a pain in the backside sometimes, all right? So the point is, you got to put, look, put the kids to work so that mom can take a break, all right? And also, you know, the husband should be sensitive to this, respectful of this, help out and not put a burden on his wife during this time of postpartum recovery. And one of the things that my wife does that you could do too, you say, I don't have any help. I don't have all the, you know, the maidservants that these biblical characters had, you know, like Sarah and Rebecca. Well, here's the thing. What my wife does, she doesn't have a maidservant either, okay, although she has a lot of kids to help her out. One of the things that she's been doing for many years now is that she cooks a whole bunch of meals in advance and freezes them, okay? That way, she doesn't have to deal with me cooking or someone else who doesn't know what they're doing. And, you know, she doesn't have to, you know, she's a connoisseur. She wants the food to be right and I don't blame her. And so she actually freezes a bunch of meals in advance to make sure that she can relax and take it easy. And she's a person who likes to do a lot of stuff and get out there and do things. So this takes a little discipline on her part also to make sure that she actually forces herself to stay in bed, forces herself to sit in the rocking chair, forces herself to take it easy because she wants to take care of her body for the long run, for the long haul. You know, she's not just planning on having one kid or two kids and just, you know, just drive it till the wheels fall off, okay? She'd rather take care of it. That's why she's able to have, you know, God willing, her 11th child here very soon. So we want to make sure that we don't get a worldly view of womanhood, being a wife, being a mother. Let's get a biblical view that exalts womanhood, that understands that being a wife and a mother is her primary role and that doesn't expect her to go on a missions trip, you know, two weeks after she gave birth or, you know, come to church a week and a half later or go out and work a job or do – I don't care if it's spiritual or secular or whatever. She needs to relax on those things, okay? And it's going to be fine. But you see, today the world has given us a wrong view of what it means to be a woman, what it means to be feminine. I mean, what is the world's standard for femininity now? Now it's for a woman to have six-pack abs. Now let me explain something to you real quick. A woman having six-pack abs is not normal. It isn't normal. I don't care what that little Facebook ad told you, hey, just eat this food or do this simple trick and you're going to have six-pack. Why do you want your stomach to look like a man's stomach, number one? That is not normal. Now, look, when it comes – let me just explain to you a fundamental difference between men and women, okay? Men, the lowest that their body fat can go without being in danger is 5%, all right? And I don't think any of us as men here have 5% body fat, all right? But the lowest that it can go without you being in danger is 5%. But do you know for a woman that number is 12%? Anything under 12%, a woman is in mortal danger, just like a man would be with less than 5% body fat. What does that tell you? Women have more fat on their bodies than men by nature. They have to. It's normal, okay? And so to have six-pack abs, you have to have extremely low body – see, all of us men, we all have six-pack abs. It's just that they're covered in a layer of fat. Seriously. Every single one of us. I mean, if you could see with x-ray vision, every single one of us has a washboard stomach and six-pack abs. It's not building strong abs that gives you a six-pack. It's losing fat. And you can't just lose fat on your stomach, despite what some kind of a 1-900 number type advertising tells you about how this is going to reduce the belly fat. You lose body fat pretty much all over or you gain it all over, okay? Every time I lose weight, like, it changes the way my ring fits on my hand. You don't really think of losing weight in your fingers, but you lose weight everywhere or nowhere, all right? That's usually how it works. And a lot of it's genetically determined where you're going to have the weight. So the bottom line is, in order for a woman to have six-pack abs, she'd have to have such a ridiculously low body fat that it wouldn't even be healthy. It would be crazy, all right? This is not the femininity that the Bible teaches. Isn't this what the world puts out there, though? I mean, doesn't the world show us images of women with the six-pack abs, literally? Not only that, but today, and by the way, a lot of those women are on steroids. There I said it. They're taking drugs, they're doping in order to have their bodies look like that, okay? Where they're just all muscly like a man and everything, that's not normal. But not only that, today, it seems like Hollywood is just putting out a bazillion movies with these like crime-fighting superhero women. Isn't that true? It's everywhere. It used to be that the heroes of these type of superhero comic book types were typically men that were out shooting up the bad guys and going to war. Now we got the women with the bazooka. We have women getting in fistfights and they're doing all this hand-to-hand combat. Literally men are going to the theater and watching women beat up men on the screen. Is that true? And by the way, when I was a child, I speak as a child. I thought as a child. I understood as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. And when you're 30, 40 years old and you're into Marvel comic superheroes and DC comic superheroes, you know what? It's time to grow up. It's time to grow up and stop being into Superman and Batman and X-Men and all these different things. It's time to put away those childish things. But today, that seems like every movie Hollywood's putting out from what I see is just superhero film after superhero film. And it's not even marketed to teenagers, it's marketed to adults. They put out an R-rated superhero film. And then, and by the way, the lead character is a woman who's beating up men. Folks, that's not even realistic. It's virtually impossible for a woman to beat up a man in any situation. Super rare, virtually impossible. And by the way, a lot of women who take these self-defense classes up, sometimes they get overconfident thinking that all their karate and taekwondo and jujitsu is going to save them. But you know, a lot of times a man can just run right over them, unfortunately. And they go out and they get overconfident and they end up getting assaulted, okay? So you know, you don't get overconfident, ladies, because you watched the Karate Kid Part 57 and now the lead character of the Karate Kid's a girl, apparently. Seriously, I haven't seen it, but it was like, I think it was like 20 years ago it came out or something. Karate Kid, what was it? Is that the name of the actress? What part was it, four? Three? Three? I thought three was, no, I saw three when I was a teenager. No. Next Karate Kid, this time it's a woman, okay, kicking dudes' butts all over the place. I don't know if she kicks dudes' butts, but I'm sure these superhero movies they do, right? They're fighting up against all these men and everything. Now we have women in mixed martial arts, female MMA fighters, you know, these violent warriors, fist fighting, shooting machine guns, bazookas, and this is what little girls are being taught is womanhood, you know, grow up and just be this bad dude and be able to fight and bleed and cuss and smoke and, I mean, right, get covered in tattoos, be all tough and manly and you say, okay, well, even if you don't go down that road, then what about the image of women as these pantsuit wearing bossy corporate types, you know, the president of a corporation, the CEO of a corporation or, you know, or the president of a country for crying out loud or congresswoman, senator, board member, right? So our view today of womanhood is warped. If we want women to be like, you know, hitting their speed bag in the morning before they go to their job as a lawyer or something, right, folks, it sounds funny like I'm joking but this is literally what kind of image our young people are looking at today. A woman with a six-pack abs beating a speed bag and then going to some power luncheon or whatever in the business world. Folks need to get back to a biblical view of femininity, a biblical view of womanhood where women are wearing skirts and dresses and they're actually taking care of a baby and they're nursing their baby and they're changing the diapers, making food, taking care of the house, they give birth and they don't have to prove how tough they are where they like give birth and then they go out and like do some vigilante justice on some bad guys or something. They need to give birth and relax and take it easy, amen? Go to 1 Peter chapter 3, we need to be old-fashioned, alright? The Bible doesn't change and we shouldn't change either and you know what, a lot of people think that our views are radical because we say that men should be the breadwinner, that women should stay home and we think that women should be feminine and that they should wear skirts and dresses. Folks, in the 1960s in Los Angeles, California, it was against the rules for girls to wear pants or shorts to school. In Los Angeles, not exactly the Bible Belt, in the 1960s and 70s, folks, it was against the rules. Men had to have short hair, women had to have long hair, they had to wear skirts and dresses. I mean, today, we have this gender-bending confusion in our world today. So now more than ever, would you please, if you're a woman, for crying out loud, look like a woman? Look like a woman. You say, I can't wear pants. Why don't you put on a skirt or a dress so that we can know for sure you're a woman? You have long hair, skirt, dress, be feminine and you men, you know, how about you snip off the stupid man bun because the Bible says it's a shame for a man to have long hair but a woman's hair is a glory unto her. How about you cut your hair, dress like a man, put on clothes that fit, quit looking like one of these fruity weirdos walking down the street in their little skinny jeans and their little bright-colored shoes matching their bright-colored belt, bright-colored shirt and they're all like coordinated or something and they got their little man bun with a little scrunchie. Quit looking like a fag. Be a man. Man up. Amen? Look, we need more than ever in this gender-bending weirdo trans society that we live in, more than ever we need what? Men to be men and women to be women and we need to strive to be in our proper roles. As men, hey, let's go out, let's work, let's make a living. If we have to get a second job, so be it and, you know, this isn't me just talking up here. Hey, I've worked a second job many times and I've also worked many 80, 90-hour weeks. I know what it's like to provide and earn money for a wife and children. It's not always easy but wouldn't want you to have to do anything hard now, would we? But you need to make sure that your wife can stay at home. Be old-fashioned. Look what the Bible says in 1 Peter 3.1, likewise you wives be in subjection to your own husbands that if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives while they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear. Whose adorning, let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair and of wearing of gold or of putting on of apparel but let it be the hidden man of the heart in that which is not corrupt. Well, watch this, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit which is in the sight of God of great price. Now is the meek and quiet spirit what Marvel Comics is teaching you to be, ladies? Meek and quiet, submitting to her husband, giving birth to a baby and then staying home for several weeks. Is that what we see with the world? Stay home for several weeks, get well, rest, relax, focus on getting your milk supply up so that you can nurse your baby. Is that what Marvel Comics is showing you with these, you know, ripped like a prizefighter women out there battling bad guys? No. We need to get a biblical view of femininity. For after this manner in the old time, the holy women also who trusted in God, verse 5, adorn themselves being in subjection unto their own husbands. Notice he's saying it's even old-fashioned 2,000 years ago. So Peter is writing this in the first century AD saying, hey, remember the good old days when women used to be in subjection to their own husbands? He's talking about the good old days in the first century AD. Why? Because he's throwing back to Sarah, which how far is Sarah before him, 2,000 years? Sarah and Abraham lived around 2,000 BC. So in the first century AD, he's talking about back in the old days, Sarah obeyed her husband. She called him Lord. She submitted to him. She was a godly woman. And you say, well, it's outdated. Well, was it outdated then because it was 2,000 years old then and this is 2,000 years old now. Guess what? It doesn't change. Okay. The word of God doesn't change. And yeah, times change for the worldly people that are carried about with every wind of doctrine with the shifting sands. But you know what? Certain things just don't change. And men are to be men, women are to be women, and the same principle that God was teaching around 1500 BC when he's telling the children of Israel in Leviticus chapter 12, hey, when a woman gives birth, hey, she needs to be set apart. She needs to take it easy. She's unclean for seven days. Then give her 33 days to fully recover. Before she needs to come bring her offering down to the sanctuary, she gets 40 days of recovery. What's he teaching there? He's teaching that giving birth is an ordeal that has to be recovered from and you have to give her time to get well and to get back into the swing of things. That doesn't change. Even though the Levitical law is not enforced in that sense, we can still learn from that principle of what it means to give birth and what it means to recover from giving birth. So we need to be old-fashioned as God's people and not change with the times. And look, people can act like we're crazy. Why? Because we want to have the same gender differences that we had 60 years ago in California? If it was good enough for California 60 years ago, can we do it today in Arizona in 2019? We ought to be able to. Right? Now, look, I understand certain things change and technology changes and culture changes, but you know what? Certain things don't change. And you know what? To sit there and say like our fundamental Baptist brethren, 90-some percent of them are doing, and saying, oh, well, you know, pants on men, skirts on women. They say, oh, that's outdated, that's old, outmodish, and that's just not a thing anymore. We need it more than ever. I mean, we need the distinction in the genders more now than we ever have. If there was ever a time, men, for you to look like men, it's now. If there were ever a time for ladies to look like ladies, it's now. Our whole country is descending into confusion today. Today we have teenage boys dressing up like girls, and then they win the track meet, because they can sprint 100 meters faster than the girls can, and they will identify as a woman. That's the kind of stupidity and nonsense of the world that we're living in today. So if there was ever a time when we should go out of our way to make sure we don't follow the crowd, that we don't follow the trends, that men be men and that women be women, it's now. But it's not just in our appearance. It's not just in our clothing. It's not just in our hairstyle. It should also be in our demeanor, in the way that we act, right? Men need to act like men, and women need to act like women. And you know what? We don't need to expect some kind of a level of toughness out of women that they weren't designed to have, okay? Hey, if a woman gives birth, that's already tough enough. Let her relax. Let her recover. Let her be feminine. Let her take it easy. You go to work and pay the bills. You help pick up the slack so that she can get the rest that she needs. And the kids and the teenagers, they need to help pick up the slack. We need to allow women to rest after childbirth. I just want you to know, if you're a lady in our church, how many women do we have that are expecting right now? I know the whole list is in the bulletin. So just in our church right now, we literally have, it looks like, what, 15 ladies that are pregnant right now. Well, here's the thing. This is an important sermon then for those 15 ladies. Because we don't want those 15 ladies to think that they should give birth and then be at church next Sunday. And think like, well, Pastor Anderson preached about the importance of church attendance, so I'm going to be there. Folks, that doesn't apply to you when you just gave birth. Because number one, you don't want to expose your baby to a ton of germs. And by the way, that means you don't need to head out to Walmart the first day either. Do a little planning. Get the Walmart run before the baby's born, all right? And take it easy. Stay home. Relax. And use Instacart if you have to or something, right, or Amazon or eBay or whatever, so that you can stay home and take it easy. Put your feet up, relax, recover, be healthy. And you know what? Don't be like, oh, I'm not right with God because I didn't go soul-winning. Folks, God doesn't want you to go soul-winning the day after you give birth or the week after or the month after. Right? You've got to do well. You've got to take care of yourself. There's no virtue in just, you know, pushing it until your uterus falls out, all right? Take it easy. Relax. Rest. Follow the Bible's principles. And realize that God is always right about every subject. So if we were, if we were, here we are reading Leviticus 12, 3,500 years after it's written, we shouldn't just be like, oh, we know so much more now. Oh, we've come so far. No. You read, Leviticus is smarter than you'll ever be, than I'll ever be. Okay. It's the word of God. Amen. Okay. God is the source of all knowledge and all wisdom. So whatever we read in Leviticus 12, the foolishness of God is wiser than man. All right. So we need to understand that there's profitability in that doctrine. And even that tiny little chapter of Leviticus 12 has something important to teach us about childbirth, about recovery and getting well. And that the recovery after a daughter is going to be a little bit longer than the recovery after a son. You know, there's another little pearl of wisdom there in the Bible. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord. Help us to be old fashioned and to be godly and different than this corrupt world that we're living in, Lord. And Lord, if there are any people here that are offended by what I preached because of the fact that their wife goes to work, Lord, I pray that they not be offended, but rather that they would understand that it's your perfect will that men provide and that women stay home and care for the home and care for the family. And I realize that there are some people that are in situations where that's impossible, but Lord, I pray that they would strive for that ideal that is set forth in your word, that the women would be able to be keepers at home and that the men would be able to be providers, Lord, and that we not go off the cliff that the rest of the world is going off of, of just completely destroying the family unit, destroying femininity, Lord. Help us to be a peculiar people that's holy as you're holy, and in Jesus' name we pray, amen.