STRANGER SCRIPTURES - PART TWO

Don’t Speak

Have you ever read something in the Bible and been thoroughly confused about what it meant or how it fit with the rest of the Scriptures?

Maybe you feel really comfortable with the Jesus you know and accepted as Lord and Savior, but you come across a verse that doesn’t really seem to fit.

What we believe about the Bible is absolutely paramount to our faith.

2 Timothy 3:16–17 (ESV)

16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

If we believe that ALL Scripture is inspired by God, then we can’t just set some verses aside became they make us uncomfortable. We have to believe every single word of this Bible as deeply as we believe the passages we know that make us feel good.

John 3:16 is awesome. Mark 11:22-24 are powerful. Psalm 91 is comforting. Those are easy to believe and memorize and confess and claim all day long. What do we do with some of these others, though? If you’re able to disqualify even one verse as not being born out of the heart of God, you open up the conversation for any verse to be thrown out.

For the next few weeks, we’re going to be dissecting some of the most commonly misunderstood verses in the Bible. I believe this will help us to be stronger in our faith and more assured that the Word of God in its entirety is useful to teach us what is true and make us realize what is wrong in our lives, according to Paul’s letter to Timothy.

The Bible was not written for your comfort. It was not meant to reinforce the instincts of your flesh or affirm your feelings. It is Jesus on paper, which means that it is going to challenge your paradigms. It’s going to disrupt your comfort zone.

At the same time, God is not schizophrenic. He doesn’t suffer from an identity crisis. He is consistent, which means His Word is consistent. In this series, we’re going to take a closer look at some passages in the Bible that may seem confusing or even contradictory on the surface and discuss their real meaning and how they fit into the truth of who God is, His heart for you, and how the whole Bible shows us that without exception.

Every weekend, we’ll put up a poll on Instagram with four options from which you can choose which passage you’d like to discuss the following Tuesday. This week’s poll came down to the wire, but our winner was...

1 Corinthians 14:34–35 (ESV)

34 the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. 35 If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

It’s a little misleading to start our reading with verse 34, because the punctuation alone indicates that this verse starts in the middle of a thought. Those who would use this verse to advocate for women being mute in the body of Christ should roll back up the page a few verses and get some additional context.

1 Corinthians 14:26–35 (ESV)

26 What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. 27 If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn, and let someone interpret. 28 But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God. 29 Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. 30 If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent. 31 For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged, 32 and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets. 33 For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.

As in all the churches of the saints, 34 the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. 35 If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

The theme here is order in the Church, which makes for a good theme for us tonight.

Let’s first squash the thought process that women shouldn’t speak in church. Three chapters before this, Paul is talking about women prophesying, so we can pretty much squash the idea that he’s some sort of misogynist. If women shouldn’t speak in church and Paul speaks about the importance of prophecy in church, then how do we explain Paul giving instructions for women prophesying? 1 Corinthians 11 tells women to keep their head covered when they prophesy. That’s because gender distinctions were made at first glance via head covering, by the way. Don’t read any more into Paul’s dress code than that.

In fact, there are scholars who study Paul who are so perplexed by the idea that they take the notion that this wasn’t even in the original text and must have been added later.

Knowing the context of what was happening in Corinth at this point would be helpful. Here’s the gist: as with all New Testament churches that got mail from Paul, Corinth is a newly established church. Many of the Christians in Corinth were fresh out of paganism and worship of goddesses above all, specifically the goddess Aphrodite. She had at least three sanctuaries in the city of Corinth. I’m going to keep this PG, but let’s just say that there was some crazy stuff that went down at those temples.

So Paul is addressing a newly formed church in a city in which women were exalted above men because the goddess they believed protected their city was this icon of femininity. Paul is not necessarily advocating for female subjection, but he is setting the church in order with God’s design.

There are two important things to note in that distinction. First of all, as was customary for Jewish synagogues, the women in the early Church sat on one side of the room while their husbands sat on the other. This would have made for a pretty chaotic scene if they were trying to talk during the service. This is why Paul says they should talk at home if they have questions about what’s being preached. Because women are lesser and shouldn’t have their questions answered? No, because it’s super distracting to yell across a room during the middle of a sermon. “Honey! What does he mean by that? Also, what should we do for lunch?”

Secondly, what is the overall theme of this passage? It’s about order in the Church and its services. Paul is adamant that we can’t just go about doing whatever we want in the Church. Remember what we said about the issues in Corinth? Their religious worship services were absolutely insane. And there were attempts to integrate the parts of their paganism they liked with the parts of Christianity that they liked. And Paul is coming at that with the fire of a million suns. He ends this chapter by reiterating that things need to be done decently and in order.

Our church services should be led by the Holy Spirit through the ordained leadership of the body of Christ. Church leaders are responsible for what happens in their services. It can’t just be whoever grabbing a microphone and saying whatever. This is what was essentially happening in Corinth. It was a free-for-all. Pure chaos. Women yelling at men and taking roles they weren’t designed to take. Tongues without interpretation confusing the mess out of everyone. It needed order, so Paul spoke into it. Let the order of church reflect the order of home. Men lead. It doesn’t silence women, but it puts women in a position to do what they are equipped to do that men aren’t.

1 Corinthians 14:40 (ESV)

40 But all things should be done decently and in order.

He then goes on to reiterate the basics of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15.

1 Corinthians 15:1–8 (ESV)

1 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

1 Corinthians is a letter from Paul to a new church with new leadership (Apollos was the pastor at this point) in an attempt to help them find some order and create a New Testament church that’s positioned to be different from the world.

This is something that we need to apply to our lives. We are meant to be different. Our lives are not supposed to look like they did before we met Jesus. We can’t take the best of our old lives and apply the eternal security that salvation brings and create our own hybrid version of Christianity.

Serving Jesus and being a part of His Kingdom requires you to hold nothing more sacred than Him.

What are you holding that needs to be released? What’s part of who you used to be that doesn’t belong with the new creation that Christ has made you through the power of the cross.

James 4:4 (ESV)

4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

We live in a world in which sin is glorified. People want to use God for their own needs and neglect the call to serve Him and love Him with heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Matthew 22:37 (ESV)

37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

My challenge to you tonight is this. Be all in. Leave behind who you used to be. Be all that He has made you to be.