Sermon Tone Analysis

1 Corinthians 14:33b-40

Worship which is Fitting and Orderly

 

As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches.

They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says.

If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

Did the word of God originate with you?

Or are you the only people it has reached?

If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command.

If he ignores this, he himself will be ignored.

Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues.

But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.

| L |

ynda and I were seated together at a breakfast table with the pastoral staff of a Calgary church while in attendance at the Banff Pastor’s and Spouse Conference one morning several years ago.

We were astonished at the arrogance of that staff.

They ridiculed the people they served, laughing repeatedly at their ignorance and making rude comments on their Christian character.

I was not greatly surprised some months later while reading an article reporting the ordination of the first woman pastor for North American Baptist churches in Alberta to note that the same staff was featured.

The title of that article speaks more pointedly to the truth than the editors might have imagined: *In Step With the Spirit of the Age*.[1]

The article detailed how that pastor engineered the acceptance of a woman for ordination, dismissively ignoring Scripture in the process.

The article permits that pastor and the woman he sponsored to explain why Scripture does not apply to their situation.

In fact, when asked about a number of Scriptures (including *1 Corinthians 14:34*), the woman in question, not surprisingly, dismisses them as “those pesky verses.”

She asserts that those particular texts only apply to women who were poorly educated in apostolic days, but with proper education, those Scriptures no longer apply.

She says women’s ordination is a “murky issue.”

Is it?

The issue confronting that denomination, and the issue confronting us as a church, is less an issue of applying Scripture than it is an issue of whether we will accommodate culture.

The issue of the ordination of women is no longer an issue situated on the fringe of evangelical Christendom, it is a major issue confronting every denomination.

Consider the information excerpted from an article on “Women Preachers.”

Statistics from 1994 revealed almost 4,000 licensed and ordained women in the Assemblies of God.

The United Methodist Church has ordained women since 1956 and by 1994 had 4,743 women “clergy.”

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) had 2,419 female leaders.

In 1979, the United Presbyterian Church (forerunner of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)) adopted a resolution requiring the congregations to elect women elders.

This politically correct denomination also voted to ban the ordination of any man who opposed women clergy and gave such men ten years to change their minds or get out.

Again, in 1994 the United Church of Christ in the United States had 1,803 female leaders.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America had 1,358 ordained women.

As of 1992, 15 of the 30 independent Anglican communions around the world had approved ordination of women priests.

The Church of Scotland approved the ordination of women in 1968 and in 1994 had 100 female ministers.

In 1991, Queen Elizabeth showed her approval of women ministers by appointing a woman as one of her royal chaplains in Scotland.

The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, began to allow women to preach in regular worship services within the past decade.

Leaders of Youth With a Mission (YWAM) appointed their first female national director in March, 1994, to oversee a 200-member staff in Switzerland.

At a conference in 1993, Loren Cunningham spoke out against what he called a “cultural bias” against women.

Cunningham also warned that God’s blessing might be removed if YWAM did not commission female leaders in an interview with a charismatic magazine.

By 1994, women comprised at least a third of the student population at the leading interdenominational divinity schools; at Yale and Harvard, they comprised more than one-half of the enrolment.

U.S. women ordained to full-time ministry in 1986 increased to 20,730 from 10,470 in 1977, and represented 7.9% of all U.S. clergy, according to a study by the National Council of Churches.

That survey showed that 84 of 166 denominations ordained women to full ministry at that time.[2]

There is no question but that women are entering the ministry and that there are significant changes to the faces of the churches as result of breaking down Scriptural injunctions.

A 1998 study from Hartford Seminary states:

 

*The experience and sense of calling among clergy women in the 1990s shows that clergywomen are not merely survivors, nor are they breaking down old barriers simply to get into a vocation shaped and still dominated by male perspectives.

Rather, clergywomen are reinventing ministry for the future.

Clergywomen are expanding the very essence of Christian ministry and guiding the whole church to rethink and renew its leadership and membership*.[3]

The issue is not whether women clergy will be represented among the churches of this day—they are!

The issue you must decide is whether the Word of God approves this action.

If this Word is only a book dealing with ancient issues relating to cultures long since dead, why should we obey anything which it presents in this day?

If, on the other hand, this is the Word of God, we dismiss the instruction presented by the Book at our own peril.

I invite you to once again focus your attention on the Word of God.

As it speaks to our hearts, may we find courage to affirm this Word and resist the world.

The Prohibition Delivered — In the text, Paul prohibits women from speaking.

Whatever is intended by this ban, he appeals to the universal practise of the churches in the day in which he wrote [*verse** 33b*] and to the Law [*verse** 34*].

To emphasise this point, he insists that he also spoke on behalf of the Lord Christ Himself [*verse 37*].

Some commentators would relegate the opening clause to the preceding sentence.

If they are correct, it would mean that Paul was speaking of God’s peace in the churches.

It should be obvious that this clearly is not his intent.

While it is true that God is a God of peace in all the churches, such a statement is needlessly redundant, speaking as it does of God’s character even as it restricts that character to an expression among the churches.

The words—as in all the congregations of the saints—have a close logical arrangement with *verse 36*: Did the word of God originate with you?

Or are you the only people it has reached?

Many evangelical feminist commentators consider this text an *ad hoc* statement.

These contemporary theologians argue that whatever Paul says here applied only to the Corinthians and not to us in this day.

They are convinced that Paul was dealing with a problem in that one church only.[4]

The introductory clause belies the intent of such doubters.

Whatever the Apostle speaks of was the universal practise among the churches.

The obvious intent of Paul’s words is that the Corinthians were not to be so proud in their interpretation and application of Christian truth as to suppose they might operate in conflict with the rest of the Christian world.

Paul clearly thought it vital that all Christians conform to certain Christian practises [cf.

*1 Corinthians 11:16*; *1 Timothy 2:8*].

To think that the prohibitions Paul gave applied only to the Corinthians is out of harmony with Paul’s appeal that *they* conform to the *rest* of the Christian church.

The idea that today one may frivolously go against the last two thousand years of Christian teaching (but for heretical movements) on the subject of women, because of the current *Zeitgeist* may be tantamount to holding the attitude found among the Corinthians.[5]

Paul also refers to the Law as supporting his teaching.

While there are varied thoughts which are possible on what is meant by the Law in *verse thirty-four*, it seems most likely that Paul is using the entire teaching of the Torah as the basis for what he is here teaching, with the Creation narrative being the divinely ordained starting point.[6]

Regardless of how you may view the Old Testament foundation on which the Apostle formed his argument, one point should be clear.

Paul was not unconsciously parroting Jewish tradition.

He saw his teaching as Christian teaching, though it was backed by the Law.

He affirmed in *verse 37* that all he had written was a command of the Lord.

Tragically, there are also individuals who attempt to deal with this passage by denying that Paul wrote *verses 34* and *35*.

Though a minority, such individuals are cited with approval by theologians who wish to avoid the apostolic teaching which challenges women in pastoral leadership.[7]

A few manuscripts, mainly later, western texts with a narrow geographical distribution, relocate these same verses.

It is postulated that these variants were prepared because scribes believed these verses should follow *verse 40*.[8]

However, the oldest and best manuscripts place them as they occur in our Bibles today.

Having dealt with a number of introductory issues, what is the prohibition?

/Women should remain silent in the churches.

They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission/…  /If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church/ [*verses 34, 35*].

Paul presents two strict prohibitions—women are to be silent and they are to be submissive—and he provides clarification for the manner in which the issues raised should properly be addressed.

First, /women should remain silent in the churches/.

Either we must accept that Paul here contradicts himself or that there is another purpose in the instructions he provides.

You will recall that when we studied *1 Corinthians 11:2-16* that Paul expressly encouraged women to pray and to prophesy in church.

The sole proviso what that they were to recognise and demonstrate that they accepted male leadership within the church.

That previous passage which we studied should be interpreted in light of this text, for with this proscription Paul is providing insight into the exercise of spiritual gifts.

In keeping with the instruction we saw in our study last week, Paul is saying something very much akin to what he said in that passage [*1 Timothy 2:11-14*] which argues against women occupying a church-recognised teaching authority over men.[9]

The eleventh chapter of this letter began the focus on worship and this fourteenth chapter draws that focus to a conclusion.

Throughout this entire instruction, the Apostle has emphasised the superiority of prophecy as contrasted to speaking in other languages.

More particularly, the Apostle focuses on the parameters of prophecy as part of worship beginning with *verse 26*.

Paul is not encouraging speaking in other languages, but he is rather providing order to the worship among the saints.

No more than a maximum of three people may speak in another language and that only if there is an interpreter present.

Otherwise, there is to be no speaking in other languages [*verses 27, 28*].