Let me invite you now to take your Bibles and turn to our text this morning. It is in 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 11, and we'll be reading together verses 4 through 16. 1 Corinthians 11, 4 through 16. And let's hear the word of the Lord. Would you please stand for the reading of God's word? The Apostle Paul writes there in verse four, every man who has something on his head while praying or prophesying shames his head. But every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying shames her head. For she is one in the same as the woman whose head is shaved. For if a woman does not cover her head, let her also have her hair cut short. But if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut short or her head shaved, let her cover her head. For a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is in the image and the glory of God. But the woman is the glory of man. For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man. For indeed, man was not created for the woman's sake, but woman for the man's sake. Therefore, the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels. Nevertheless, in the Lord, neither is a woman independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as the woman originates from the man, so also the man has his birth through the woman. But all things originate from God. Judge for yourselves. Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him? But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her. for her hair is given to her for a covering. But if one is inclined to be contentious, we have no other practice, nor have the churches of God. May God bless his word. Please be seated. Let's look to the Lord and ask his blessing. Father, we come to this text now knowing that it is your your word, your sufficient word for us. And so we ask for your help as we would understand it and apply it to our lives. We would pray we would do it in a way that honors you, that glorifies Christ, that honors the headship of of the father and the son, and then through the husband and the wife. And so, Lord, we pray that that good order would be glorified. And so now we just pray for minds that think, Lord, as you would want us to think, and lives that would be, Lord, according to your word. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. So what is the pastor going to do with this text? This is a chapter that have things in here that are hard to understand. Not impossible, but difficult and there are many. understandings or interpretations of what Paul is aiming for here, what he means by all these things, what he means by hair coverings and hair and hair length. And as we seek to unravel some of those, we need to keep in mind that Paul, what he's about here in this section, goes back to what he did in verses one through three, especially verse three. We looked at that about a month ago now first. And so Paul is looking to establish in this the headship of the husband over the wife and the husband being under the authority of Christ and Christ being under the authority of God the Father. So that's the pattern that we saw in verse three where Paul says, 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. Paul is making it clear to the church at Corinth that there are clear roles that verse three takes within the church. And that there are certain, you could say, outward markers in both, Paul I think is gonna unveil for us here, unpack, markers in the culture and markers from creation that set men and women apart in God's good order. We ought to know and we've seen it in our day that Satan loves to confuse and to distort maleness and femaleness. And he's doing a good job of that in our day. And he loves then to distort out of that the marriage relationship as well. Corinth, it appears, has confused many issues around this and it seems that they have confused the relationships there between the husband and the wife and how all this functions in the visible church and the way God has ordered things with the Father and Christ and the husband and the wife. We saw these distinctions and these roles that he has. They are not a function of, if you remember, inferiority. He's not establishing that the wife is looking to the husband's headship because she's inferior in any way. Just as the son is not looking to the father in his headship in that sense because he is in some way inferior to the father. But rather, Paul has revealed to us that God has a good plan and an order for things. And he here is establishing the good order that needs to be there in the home and then in the church. And it seems Corinth had begun to set that aside. Christ serves the Father's will, as we saw, but not because he's inferior to the Father. And the husband is directly responsible to Christ for his headship or his leadership with his wife, but it's not because she is inferior to him. But this is God's pattern in his role. In the culture of Corinth, there was confusion over men and women and their roles. There were, at the pagan temples, remember the gospel just breaking into Corinth. It's not a Christianized city, right? It's still pagan. there were priestesses in the temples, women leading in these pagan temples. And that culture is there, pressing in to the church. And so Paul is at least writing these things to begin to correct and stave off that influence. And the pattern we see in verse three of God the Father and Christ and the husband and the wife is one that is going to display itself, as Paul reveals here, in the visible worship of the church. This is a pattern that's going to be seen in the outward distinctions that are there Even in our appearances, how we look as men and women. Those things are not neutral. In fact, they are crucial in God's plan. We are not merely different in a few biological aspects. None of us can change ourselves that way. We can't assume another role, nor should we attempt to assume another role. God has designed us uniquely and gloriously as men and women. And we ought to want to display that uniqueness in how we live, and we dress, and we worship, and even I think as Paul reveals here, how we wear our hair. How we wear our hair, hear this, I think is a theological statement. It's a theological statement. That's what Paul, I think, is revealing here. It acknowledges, however it is, that the differences between men and women are good and true. And we want those to be on display. And in general, as we look through the world, really, Paul reveals that long hair has been a sign of being female. And there are variations in that. He's not setting a length in that. But this is a marker that Paul reveals of nature, really a creational marker. of what that is. And then there are cultural markers that are there as well that are not biblically mandated, but they are good and right and true, cultural markers of maleness and femaleness, right? There are real differences here that we just can't ignore. We dress differently. At least we ought to, right, as men and women. They do in every culture, really. Clothes in a society, whatever culture, they identify something as masculine and something as feminine. And it varies, but yet every culture has its markers, its cultural markers as to what that is. If I were to show up in a dress this morning, you would say, sorry for that image, but you would say that this is wrong. That's a feminine way to dress. What if I showed up in a kilt, right? You would say, that's weird, but, you know, it's masculine, right? I mean, there are cultural things there. Men don't wear dresses. If I did, it would be an outright sign of rebellion against God-given masculinity. We even wear our hair differently as men and women, as a sign of our masculinity or femininity. for a man to wear his hair the same fashion as a woman is a rebellion against his masculine nature. Now, as we understand all this is what Paul's saying and speaking about here, we need to know hair length isn't set as far as inches. If it's this long, it's long. If it's that long, it's long. Men may have a longer hair to a degree, but not to have it look feminine, right? If we show up with highlights and bows. Clearly, the culture says that's feminine, right? As men and women, we just identify things differently that way. Even in the clothes we wear, the hair we have. I mean, women value things rightly, by their nature, things that are pretty. If I told somebody, my wife, that her shirt was pretty, she would like that. If you told me my shirt was pretty, I wouldn't like that. I mean, there are just cultural markers of masculinity and femininity that are there. And I think Paul's addressing both of these. There are those creational ones, and there are cultural ones. And the cultural ones are important, though they're not ultimate. A woman may have shorter hair to a degree, but not have it look masculine. Right? And so, you know that we should know our hair is a creational marker of our masculinity or femininity here. And we ought to wear it, I think, in ways that make it plain that we are distinct from another. I'm not looking to look like a woman in the way I groom my hair. You can ask, would my hairstyle look really pretty on a woman? You know, that's probably a good way to evaluate it. Or for a woman, whatever style, would it say, if a man wore my hairstyle, would that be, would he look like a man with my hairstyle? Am I wearing my clothes, my hair in ways that honor my masculinity or femininity? There are a lot of hard and fast rules in this, but I think we know it both creationally and we know it culturally. I mean, even in the gay community of gay men, there's a way in which their hair is a signal. of their homosexuality. There's a certain type of cropped hair that's sort of overly styled that became distinctive of many homosexual men. It came out of the 80s and 90s during the AIDS crisis. It was kind of a projection to say, I'm not sickly, I'm healthy. And you can sort of identify them with that. They choose that. hairstyle for that purpose. And so often there's a subtle difference, but there's a clear one. And so we should know, I think, our hairstyles are meant to reflect our natures as men and women. And there are also cultural factors that weigh in at all. But for a man, I think, to take on what is clearly a feminine look, either dress or hair, is to be in rebellion against God. And the same with women, to deliberately take on a masculine look is to be in rebellion against God. And so Paul, is addressing some of these issues in Corinth as they press in to the church where women, it appears, were looking to come into worship in a way that was sort of throwing off their God-given womanhood, femininity in this way. And so, I think a man can certainly wear his hair longer, but have it in a style, in a manner that is not feminine. If a woman as well keeps her hair shorter, but if she goes and keeps it like a marine, I mean, obviously it's making a statement about her femininity. Even the military recognizes this, right? When women go into the military, they don't have to shave their heads. They're not required, right? There's an understanding there of nature, even at that level, that women are different. They're created differently. And so, I think we ought to come and ask questions about the manner of our dress. Does this give a confusing message about my maleness or femaleness? Am I dressing to confuse? Or rebel? Or am I just dressing in a way that I'm clearly honoring the way in which God has created me as a man or a woman? Paul's point here, I think, is that we are to see our masculinity and our femininity and how they are expressed in their outward appearances. as reflecting God's good design in the home and the church. How femininity particularly here is expressed in Corinth was to be an expression of a wife's submission to her husband's leadership. And so, it seems one of the contentious topics that was happening there in Corinth was that of head coverings. Whether or not a woman wore a head covering in worship as a symbol of her authority under her husband in that culture. Now, there are at least three ways to understand this. this section. What does Paul mean by head coverings? And what are we to do with this? One that is understood, some people come to this text and they say, well Paul is giving us a timeless command for women to always wear some type of head covering in worship. There are those who understand, and they understand it well-meaning and There are good Christians who hold to that position. The second one is that Paul is giving a command here that is reflecting the culture of Corinth where in Corinth to show up as a woman without a head covering was demonstrating in that culture a rebellion against your God-given feminine nature and the headship of your husband. So, some see it as a timeless command. Some see it as a genuine command but focused in on what was happening there in Corinth. And then there are some others who come to this text, good men, who interpret it and say, well, what Paul really is doing here, he's equating head covering with hair. And so it's not an additional thing that he's speaking about as a head covering, but when he speaks about head coverings, he's just really speaking about hair. And so when he speaks about a hair, head being covered, he just means that a woman's head is not shaved. or has not, and it's covered in that sense as she comes to worship. She's not coming as a shorn woman with that rebellious implications that it brings. Now, among all those views, I think this is, I think the view that, Paul is addressing into the culture a situation that was unique to the times of Corinth, where they wore head coverings as a clear cultural symbol of what was happening there in a wife's submission to her husband. We don't seem to find this command one repeated throughout the New Testament, mandating this in all places, even as Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter two, where he does address how a woman ought to carry herself. He simply says there in 1 Timothy two, Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, with modesty and self-restraint, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing, but rather by means of good works as is proper for women professing godliness. There, it seems that a woman's hair is visible. It's not covered with a shawl or a veil even. So, and the context too, at First Timothy is one of worship. It's a woman in worship. I think the arguments as well that Paul is speaking about just hair here, not another head covering, is hard to get out of the text. I don't think it fits well. And so my understanding is that Paul is addressing an important, a very important cultural marker that was happening in the day of some type of covering that the woman was to wear, that to violate that would show defiance of God's creational order for men and women. And so in that day, in that place and time, to not cover your head as a woman was a clear signal of rejecting what Paul had laid out in verse three. So there are cultural markers, beloved, that display those creational designs. Creational designs, cultural markers of how we carry ourselves, how we dress. But these cultural markers that are there are not ultimate. But they do reflect timeless, creational marks of manhood and womanhood. And so we ought to approach them carefully. not elevate them to sort of a creational standard, a legalistic standard, but also know that they're important. They're important in our culture to display in real time, in practical ways, how God has created us as a man or a woman. It would be possible, I think, to begin to elevate the head covering standard to all sorts of, I think, unbiblical places. You could mandate a certain length of the hair covering. You could mandate how much it needed to cover. You could mandate the color of it. and even with some of what I think are more creational markers of your hair length in a sense. You could raise that to unbiblical standards. There are Christian colleges in the past at least who had, mandated hair length for men if you went there. It couldn't be on your collar. It couldn't be over your ears. If it was, it was wrong. It was unmasculine. Strangely enough, I grew up in a town and I went to public school, public high school. And even there, the men couldn't wear your hair over your collar at the public high school. But there were men there, boys, who were allowed to grow their hair long, but they had to wear a wig at school to get around it. And they were ugly wigs, right? It just kind of sat on their head, and you knew there was this big bundle of hair underneath it. So even outside the church, there can be some strange strange designs and strange mandates. But even for a woman, to mandate that a woman, well, she can't cut her hair, or that she, it must be at least six inches, or eight inches, or 15 inches, or, you know, there's just no way to establish that, right? The principle, though, I think, does stand that A man's hair and a woman's hair ought to be a marker, a creational marker of how God has made them male or female. A lot of variations in that, right? And yet at the end of the day, just the way I dress, the way I do my hair, display masculinity as God has made me or femininity in that. Paul says, every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying shames her head for she is one in the same with the woman whose head is shaved. And so there's this sense that in Corinth there were some women who were coming and they were just sort of tossing off sort of a cultural marker. And Paul is saying, if you do that, you're just like the woman who is just brazenly looking to cut her hair so that she defies her femininity openly. She's deliberately looking to be like a man. Now the opposite, Paul reveals, is also true if a man approaches worship, at least in that culture, where he would put a cover on his head of some kind in that setting. There again, he is throwing off God's creational design for him in his display. Paul says that the man ought not to do that. He ought not to put a cover on his head. Why? Because he is in the image and the glory of God. He is in the image and glory of God. Verse seven. That is, he brings the authority of Christ to his leadership with his wife. That's the order Paul is set back in verse three. Now, in verses eight through 12, Paul reminds us that, again, this is not about superiority of being. All this isn't set up this way because men are better. Or women are, better in some way. Rather, it's God's created order for us. For the man does not originate from the woman, but the woman from the man. Indeed, man was not created for the woman's sake, but the woman for the man's sake. Therefore, the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels. We'll look at that in a minute. Nevertheless, the Lord, in the Lord, neither is a woman independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as the woman originates from the man, so also the man has his birth through the woman, but all things originate from God. So there it is. This is the way God has ordained it. And there is this mutual needing of each other in God's created order. Not because one is more important or better than the other. Well, verse 10, kind of a strange one there. The woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her because of the angels. What does that mean? A lot of speculation around that. But I believe, in the whole context of things, that Paul is addressing the angels who fell, or at least who witnessed the fall, being themselves in the very glory of God, face to face, seeing it, and yet, rejecting it and falling. Those angels, they stood and saw the glory of God and yet they somehow thought they could reject his authority. And so I think this is a warning to say to women that the angels fell. They actually saw the glory of God face to face. Don't begin to be like them in your rejection of God's authority in this way. The angels fell in their pride. Even the angels were capable of falling and overthrowing, seeking to overthrow God's authority. Well, Paul says it's not proper for a woman to come to worship that way, assuming an authority, as it were, or displaying, in a way, an authority that is not granted to her in that moment. Nor should a man come and put himself in a place and display that he is a man not under the authority of Christ, in a way, by wearing this head covering. So Paul, I think in verses 14 and 15, goes on to speak about hair and hair length there and hair given to a woman for her covering, is using the creation marker of hair to affirm a cultural marker of head coverings for a woman. Long hair, that is hair that is clearly feminine, is to display the glory of God and the submission of the wife to her husband. For a woman to don another hairstyle is to dishonor her God in that way. To seek to look as a man would look. And the same for a man. So Paul is setting this out, I think, as God's good design for his people. One that we ought to work out in our culture. What are there things in our culture that are meant to display what a man is and what a woman is? We need to tease that out at times, right? But what are those things that clearly reflect that and reflect the pattern of verse three? The leadership of the husband, the submission of the wife to that, the husband's looking to Christ. We've got to do that humbly, with patience with one another as well. But no, beloved, God has an order for us in the home and in the church for how we live and worship. And it's an order that's going to be seen. It will be seen, right, in practical matters of just how we wear our hair, how we dress, It's going to have both creational markers and cultural markers as we do it. That's God's perfect design. We don't have a better plan, but that doesn't stop us from trying. Didn't stop Corinth from trying to come up with a better plan. We seek to erase God's distinctions and to make ourselves interchangeable, but to do so is really an affront to the glory of God. It is to his glory that the Father is the head of Christ. It is to his glory that Christ is the head of man and that the man is the head of the wife. And we ought to look for both the cultural markers and the creational ones to uphold that. Beloved, look to make your manhood and your womanhood bright and glorious, plain, because you're displaying in it the glory of God as you do it. Praise God, give us wisdom for that. I hope that helps. I'm sure there's unanswered questions, but it's the best I could do with it. Let's go to prayer. Father, we thank you for your word. We pray that you would grant us the grace, Lord, to discern it, to apply it, to live it in a way that honors you. Lord, in a way that honors your good plan as well for us as husbands and wives and in our worship. Lord, we pray we'd walk humbly in it. We would be, Lord, wise and discerning, and we just pray that your glory would be so clearly on display here, Lord, as we live our lives and our families, our marriages, and Lord, as we worship together. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Would you please stand as Ron comes and leads us as we sing, Take My Life and Let It Be. Number 534.