865 1 Cor.11.2-16 Honouring God in Worship
1 Corinthians • Sermon • Submitted
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During the past week, I woke up one night to my wonderful wife tenderly stroking my forehead. I thought it was lovely and I went straight back to sleep. In the morning, I told her how meaningful it was for her to show me such affection.
She responded with: “I was trying to gently stop you from snoring” (well that was a deflation)
- Men & women can have wonderful relationships, yet some of those relationships can go toxic
- When we look at Gen. 2 we find this a unique consequence of the fall
16 To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.” 17 Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life.
- Her desire will be to control or rule over her husband – yet he will gain the upper hand & rule over her
- V.17 reinforces this interpretation with… “because you listened to the voice of your wife” – took heed to what she said &, by doing so, violated My command… cursed is the ground
- Sin has infected the world in terrible ways & it weaves its tentacles into the relationship between a man & his wife
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- This divide has been greatly exacerbated through the incursion of what is called post-modern philosophy
- In the past, philosophy sought to find the singular lens by which we view & understand the whole universe
- Philosophy could be said to be a search for the truth
- However, about 200 yrs ago, that search was exhausted & ended in failure – my thinking – because they did not pursue it by faith
- Pure human reason & pure experience with no God to guide them became the norm in what we call the age of enlightenment – my name for it – the age of human arrogance
- They pronounced “God is dead” & pursued life without reference to revelation – not the book of Revelation, but the revelation of God in the Scriptures
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- With the death of philosophy, what many call an anti-philosophy began
- Post-modernism - & this teaches that there are many truths or many lens by which we understand the world (they call them narratives or stories) that all have equal authority
- Since there is not one truth or one lens by which we understand the world, truth became whatever you want it to be
- Truth is now in the eye of the beholder
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- Men, you want to be a woman – in Victoria, you can now legally change your birth sex each and every year, if you like
- Or if you’re a woman, you can become a man
- We laugh at this nonsense – because biological sex is so obviously fixed
- But this is a post-modern society – truths are just narratives or your story (whatever story or narrative you want to live with)
- These are, indeed, dangerous times
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- Since there is no singular grand narrative (God’s narrative or God’s truth) the postmodern world is seeking to equalise everything out & there is now a war over power & prominence
- People hold no distinction between human beings & animals – that animals have equal value to human beings who are made in the image of God
- No distinctions between heterosexuality & homosexuality – they are equal in value – same too with transvestism - equal with what is called the Cis - normal acceptance of your biological sex
- Note too, the emphasis is not about individuals, but of classes of relationships & groups – no relationship is deemed to be of lesser value than another – even paedophiles are trying to make this claim too
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- But the danger is that the various groups or tribes are competing for supremacy – for power
The tribes are blacks versus whites, gays versus straights, religion versus everyone, man versus woman, cis versus trans, right versus left, etc. It is breeding resentment, victimhood, hatred, and discontent – Martyn Iles
- Now, no doubt, you can be angered by the treatment that has come to the African Americans – but that is a far cry from the looting & destruction that is happening – that is outright lawlessness
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- The feminist movement of the 60’s was empowered by the encroaching presence of postmodern thinking
- Unfortunately, many men were intimidated by this movement & joined it trumpeting some virtue of now becoming enlightened
- Little did they know that this movement was not about equality, but power – power is the name of the game in postmodern thought
- It promotes tribalism & causes people to war with each other for power because there is no grand truth by which you are to submit
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- You can see this play out with the rioting on the streets of American cities
- Under the truth, that God is the grand narrative (grand truth) & when we look at the NT teaching of the calling of individuals to Christ from every nation under the sun, Christianity saw people as individuals & evil as that which is committed by individuals, not whether you were black or white or male or female or whether you were rich or poor
- When you have no fixed immutable authority, it becomes a power game
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- There were legitimate concerns that were being addressed by the early feminist movement, but that movement has morphed & gone way passed what the original leaders of that movement intended
- You should you hear the most well known early Australian feminist Germaine Greer speak of it now. She says its gone way passed their original concerns
MAKE MEN MASCULINE AGAIN - that encapsulates modern feminism
- We come to our passage today & we find reasons here to acknowledge the distinctives of male & female
- It’s not some relic from the past, but a truth that is grounded in the creative design of God since the beginning of time
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- Just as marriage is grounded in the creative design of God, so too, is the distinctives of male & female
- Part of the problem people face is accepting what God says, over what our culture is saying
- By the way, how are they doing with that – anyone ready to justify the divorce rate, the fatherless homes, the confusion poor kids experience over matters of their sexuality!
1. Divine Order and Giving Bad Impressions
1. Divine Order and Giving Bad Impressions
- In the creative brilliance of God, He has made male & female - different but complimentary
- In the first section of this passage, Paul shows that there is a proper order to be maintained between husband & wife
- Many people in our society would scoff at this & even some Christians have got caught up in that scoffing as well
- But notice these instructions are applying here to the church at worship
- In our relationship with God, He wants the proper working of the order He established in creation
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- There are numerous passages in Paul's writing bearing on the subject of male & female role relationships – no where there does Paul say that this teaching is merely a cultural thing – in fact he grounds it in creation as he grounds marriage with its one flesh emphasis, in creation
- Now in this first section, we see that the divine order is reflected in a head covering that was worn by the women in worship
- Some would say that this covering was her long hair rolled up in a bun, but it is more likely that she is wearing some sort of veil
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- The veil did give a cultural expression of a woman’s submission to her husband
- It was a fashion, but a fashion that clearly indicated that she was a woman who wanted to be identified as a woman in right standing with her husband
- Obviously, there was some movement either in the society or in the church that gave inclination to discard this practise
- It may have been the old “spirit is good, flesh is evil” kind of thinking that prevailed in the Corinthian church
- Physical issues were bad/evil/irrelevant & only the spiritual was important – but we don’t know for sure, but that is my take on it
- Throwing off the veil was a sign of the triumph of the spiritually empowered that could discard all physical necessities & the spiritual is the only thing that is now important
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- Paul starts by giving a theological argument, however, for why women should retain a veil in worship
1. He says that we should give/show proper respect to our head
- That is man to Christ & wife to her husband
- Some like to see that the word “head” means “source”, but I consider that to fall short of what its meaning is here
- There’s a definite truth to “head” having a prominence in the economy of God – let’s look at some examples...
22 And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church,
23 For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body.
- And this gives the reason why the church should submit to Christ & the wife to her husband
9 For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, 10 and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority;
- In our passage today, we read…
3 But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.
- You might say, wait a minute, “God is the head of Christ”? Aren’t they equal? Isn’t Christ, deity – God?
- The apostle Paul himself does affirm that if you come to Christ, you have come to God – & that Jesus is the creator (“through whom all things were made”)
- But the father sent His Son & the Son obeys the Father & drinks the cup of suffering
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- Man & woman are equal in dignity & worth before God, but that doesn’t mean that we are the same
- Men don’t have to have babies like women or have some of the other traits specific to womanhood in order to be equal with women in dignity & worth!
- We both have equal access to God through salvation in Christ
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.
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- So often, we only look at it from our own perspective – which happens to have been coloured by our postmodern world which is looking to erase all distinctions – level the playing field between humans & animals, between heterosexual & same-sex relationships, between maleness & femaleness, between employer & employee & between all religions too
- Like that song of the sixties with the chorus that says, “what we need is a great big melting pot, big enough to take the world & all its got. We’ve been stirring for a hundred years or more, to turn out coffee-coloured people by the score” – erase all distinctions
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- Now getting back to Christ, we even see in the Godhead that Jesus will be subject to the Father
28 When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.
- In the creation distinctiveness of God, it was proper for a woman to wear a veil in worship
- The veil showed that she was hitched to her husband & respected her place in the divine order
- But before you seek to abandon ship, I want to say that such a custom no longer has the same connotations that it did in the 1st C. so don’t go thinking that David is now going to insist on me wearing a veil
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- To give you an idea, the NZ prime minister, Jacinda Ardern wore a veil to appropriate herself to the Muslim community after the Christchurch massacre
- She wanted to show sensitivity to their culture but you should have heard all the boo-hoos from the feminists
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2. To cast off the veil, Paul says, was to put “shame” upon your head – perhaps shame on her own head, but I think it is meant to reflect shame upon her husband as her head
- The point here is that she throws off the symbol of the veil, she embarrasses her husband by looking like an emancipated independent woman who does not respect her husband’s leadership nor embraces her role as his wife
- The veil marked her out as a woman who pursues life as a woman & who respects the creative order of God
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- Unveiled she may as well shave her hair off, Paul says
- “She is one & the same with a woman whose head is shaved” – speaking here, in that day, of a lesbian who assumes the male role in a relationship
- Paul wants no confusion around what sex the person is
- He wants the women, in general, to dress appropriately & the wives, in particular, to show that they respect the headship of their husband
2. An Argument From Creation
2. An Argument From Creation
- When you go to Gen. 1, you find there that the man & the woman is in the image & likeness of God
- But his words here seem to be more reliant upon Gen. 2 which gives us the account of the creation of the man & the creation of the woman
- Man was made like the animals – from the dust of the ground, but woman was not made from the ground at all – but she came from the man – made out of the rib of Adam
- This speaks powerfully to the relationship between the man & his wife
- Imagine if she was made out of the ground, like Adam & the animals
- You might like to say – yes, true equality – but where would the onus be on mutuality – where would the “one flesh” be?
- There would be no “one flesh” – no unique binding of the husband to his wife
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- The apostle makes the point here, that in the way God made man & woman, there is a uniqueness about how we relate to one another
- Having been made from or out of the man, the woman becomes his helper
- He is not her helper, but she is his
- Adam had the responsibility to obey God, but he listened to his wife – meaning that he obeyed her instead
- He had the responsibility to obey God & to lead his wife in their relationship with God, by saying NO, Eve, God says NO
- But her desires got the better of her & he followed her in her sin
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- There are principles in Genesis because Genesis is the book of beginnings – its the template of creation principles – there you find the principles of marriage as a “one flesh” relationship & the uniting of husband & wife as a lifetime ordinance
- As Jesus affirms in the Gospels – “let not man separate” (refers back to Genesis)
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- Out of this teaching in Genesis, Paul says that woman is the glory of the man, her head, as we could say, Jesus expresses the glory of God, His head
14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
- When we are walking rightly with the Lord, we display His glory
- When a woman is walking rightly with her husband, she shows her glory which reflects on him
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- She is his glory, but she can either bring shame upon him or be a glory to him
- We can all embarrass our spouse at various times, but for a woman to act like a man & to usurp his role as husband is to bring shame upon him & the glory that she was to be to her husband
- Its like a painting people stand back & admire – the painting could be said to be expressing the glory of the artist
- The painting brings praise & honour to both itself as the painting & to the artistic skills of the painter
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- The point is that, in worship, if a man & woman reverse the order of creation & she throws off her veil & proclaims her freedom & authority to do it, it cannot bring the worship that is rightly due to God as creator & designer of the male & female relationship
- Furthermore, Paul says, it offends angels who are guardians of the creative order & who are watching & present in our times of worship
21 I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of His chosen angels, to maintain these principles without bias, doing nothing in a spirit of partiality.
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- But lest the male ego gets carried away with this, Paul balances it up by reminding them & us that as the woman came from man, the man comes from the woman as she is the one who gives birth
- There is a mutuality & interdependence transcending it all
- And why should that not be – we are in a “one flesh” relationship
- All this is, likewise, tempered by the fact that all things come from God
- We don’t aim to please ourselves in this, but our God
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- Authority is a necessary part of life – some might say, necessary evil – but to dismiss the notion of authority is to be akin to living in a fairy tale
- You have authority in the school, in the government, in the Police Force, in the armed services – heck – in the workplace
- Authority is all around us & - you know the saying – too many chiefs & not enough Indians – as a way of saying chaos & unproductive practises happen when too many people want to be the boss!
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- Also I want you to consider the fact that there can be no such thing as equal authority
- When everyone is in authority there is no authority – it cancels each other out
- Imagine the army where every soldier is a General – talk about chaos
- So, equal before God in value, dignity, worth, doesn’t have to mean sameness in roles, or in authority
3. An Argument from Nature
3. An Argument from Nature
- We come to our final point today
- Thus far, the apostle has argued for the women to wear a veil when they pray & prophesy, so it aligns with the custom of a woman who respects authority & wants to pursue her place in the world as a woman
- Paul argues that this is the way a Godly woman is to live before her God
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- In the final part of this passage, the apostle argues that even nature itself teaches us truths about what is proper & what is not proper
- He says that long hair is given to a woman
- That if a man has long hair, it is a dishonour to him
- Now there is much speculation around how nature gives us a clue that long hair is befitting a woman but not a man
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- We have references in the OT that a man under a Nazirite vow was never to have his hair cut (Samson) – certainly, that is an exception that is not the rule for every male
- One of the notable features nature brings to many men is baldness
- Men now tend to shave their head rather than expose their receding hair line – the tendency, therefore, is for shorter hair
- But you will find that women, rarely, if ever have a receding hair line
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- This is what I think is one meaning of nature teaching us that men have short hair, whereas women have long hair
- Even now, as you walk around the street, you see that generally, men have short hair & women have long hair
- Now you will have your exceptions, but they are not the rule
- The main point is that a woman should look like a woman & a man, a man
5 “A woman shall not wear man’s clothing, nor shall a man put on a woman’s clothing; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.
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- It is easy to see in this that societies have gravitated toward reflecting this natural outcome
- It’s a bit like watching boys & girls play with their toys - & affirming that “nature” (by which we mean God) has made them different
- As much as progressives are trying to socially deconstruct society & reconstruct it in their postmodern egalitarian image, children will always gravitate toward toys that match their biological gender
- As Laura Schlessinger has said…
Anyone who has had exposure to babies and children can tell you that boys and girls respond differently to the world right from the start.
Give both a doll, and the girl will cuddle it, while the boy will more likely use it as a projectile or weapon. Give them two dolls, and the girl will have the dolls talking to each other, while the boy will have them engaged in combat.
— Laura Schlessinger, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands (HarperCollins, 2003
- Finally, v.16 makes a very strong point that this teaching on the distinctives of male & female was the universal practice of the church
- Certainly, the cultural practice of wearing a veil has ceased & it can cease because the point is not about a piece of cloth per se but about appropriate social conventions that a) Clearly show a distinction in the sexes & b) maintains the proper reflection of God's creative order
- If you are not convinced about a distinction, then you are forced to admit that it is equally correct to pray “Our Mother in Heaven”
- After all, God is sexless – but God has chosen to reveal Himself in masculine terms – He sent His Son & we are told to pray “Our Father, who is in heaven”
- It’s easy to be caught up in the world’s categories & delusions, but if you do, you will miss the wonderful & bountiful blessings that come from accepting God’s creative brilliance in His creation of male & female
With that word, we will close our Service this morning with the singing of ...