Sometimes we call services like this a worship service, and really it's our desire, every aspect of our service, not only follow what the Bible teaches, but also that we have a heart of worship. Now worship is our response to God. He's worthy, and so it's worth-ship, we're worshiping Him. And we certainly do that by lifting our voice in appreciation, right, in gratitude, in songs, together. It's an evidence of the Spirit's work in our life. We also gather around the word of God together, right? In an attitude of agreement, we wanna take God's word as it's given, and listen to it, see what God has for us. But then at the end of the service, we also have another aspect. You may not consider worship, and it's our invitation. And we have it, and I believe it's important, but one of the reasons we have it is so we can respond to God's word. And sometimes God speaks to me through things that have nothing to do whatsoever with the sermon. And there have been times I've gone forward at the end of a service, I've kneeled at the front, and I've just prayed because God was dealing with me. Sometimes it had everything to do with the message that was presented. But I wanna encourage you, if God speaks to you in the service, it's a right thing for us as Christians to respond and worship to God. And sometimes that means submitting to Him in some area, committing to obey in some other area, maybe confessing sin, or maybe to pray for somebody else that God put upon your heart. But don't ever feel that if you come forward, people are gonna look down on you. Never, never is that the case. we are here because we're gathered together as as broken people who could only be saved by the grace of God and we come as needy people and every one of us honestly in our own hearts every day needs to fall at an altar and say God I need you today because we're weak and we're needy And so, and if you're here today and you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, this is also an opportunity at the end of the service to come say, come forward and I'll come shake your hand and you'll say, I need to know more about being saved or becoming a Christian. And we would love to take you to a place, take you to a private place and show you from God's word what it means to become a child of God, to be saved. And we see God do that. And so, anyway, we're here to worship the Lord. So worship with me by turning in 1 Corinthians, the book of 1 Corinthians to chapter 11. Well, we gather to worship God. Satan is ever the disruptor. He wants to stop what God calls us to and what God enables us to do. Satan is always seeking to confuse, to contort, to twist up what God has in mind for us. In 1 Corinthians chapter 11, we're gonna look at a passage today where we're gonna see what God has to say about a particular issue that Satan has in many ways twisted people's understanding of. And it should be our desire. We should be more concerned about being irreverent than we are concerned about being irrelevant. The world is on a downward path to destruction, right? But in Jesus Christ, we have hope. And so our desire should be to reverence Him, to worship Him, to live for Him, and to honor His precious Word, which is true, which will always be true, and it will accomplish everything that God set it out to accomplish. So we can trust God and we can trust His Word. You ever notice that sin seeks to shock our sensibilities? Aren't we gradually conditioned by the ever-expanding boundaries of what is acceptable behavior? Things that were unthinkable 10, 20, 30 years ago are not just accepted, but they've become expected. 1971, Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar was released on Broadway. The play-turned-movie implies a romantic relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. At that time, that was unthinkable. 2003, Dan Brown published the book, The Da Vinci Code. In it, he was speculating that Jesus had been actually married to Mary Magdalene. At the time, it was unthinkable. Churches responded in protest. In 09, a blockbuster movie was released starring Tom Hanks. My page didn't want to turn. 21 years later, 2024, Summer Olympics in Paris, France. We gathered around to watch the opening ceremonies, as many of you probably did as well. And what did we find? A reinterpretation of Da Vinci's The Lord's Table as a drag show. It was on a bridge in front of the Eiffel Tower. A few days later, the Olympic Committee apologized. Oh, we didn't know. Yeah, right. They planned those things out like 10 years in advance. It was intended to shock our sensibilities. Satan is ever seeking to stretch the boundaries of what is permissible, moral, acceptable behavior. Sin always seeks to shock. Should it be the desire of the church to shock the world? Should the church defy God's design? Shouldn't the church demonstrate God's design by clarifying a right relationship to God and a right relationship with one another? Some of you were probably born in the 50s. And maybe you grew up around or were a hippie. Moved into the 80s and 90s and you were a yuppie. And now you are nearing or are a retiree. What the Bible says in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 may come as a shock to your sensibilities because it's not the world in which you grew up in. But God gives truth and he gives clarity in regard to gender and gender roles. And what I'm gonna speak about this morning, again, it's not politically correct, but it is correct. And it's God honoring. And we're gonna take God's word as it's given. We're gonna believe it and we're gonna follow it. And we're gonna seek to honor God not only in our own personal lives and in our homes, but in God's church. So in this chapter, Paul's answering the Corinthians questions. He's continuing that. And there was a question they had about a shocking ministry practice. It was unconventional in their own culture. And while he does this, he addresses his own concerns for them as a church. What's gonna be required is faith. The church is not only going to have to believe what Paul is saying, but they're going to have to believe that this is God's word for them. True faith accepts and adheres to God's truth. Will you agree with Paul? Let's begin in verse 1 or verse 2, excuse me, verses 2 through 16. We'll look at today. He says, Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the ordinances I delivered them unto you. The ordinances are just the things that Paul had said to them. He had talked to them. And Paul had a good relationship with the church at Corinth. Now, there were some things. There were some people who had formed factions against him. There were those who had submitted the idea that perhaps he's not an apostle, but for the most part, Paul commends them for being the kind of people who listened to what he had to say, who considered it and sought to put it to practice in their life. That was true of them. It's a good question to ask ourselves. Is that true of us as a church? Are we the kind of church who takes in God's Word and says, yeah, we're going to believe that and we're going to do that? That's a good question to have. And we'll look at two principles that Paul gives in this passage in regard to gender and gender roles within the church. And the two, I'm gonna give you the two points this morning right away, okay? The principle, number one, of headship. Number two, the principle of using your head. And he's gonna cover these in these next few verses. So beginning here with me, follow along beginning at verse three. He said, I would not have you to know, or I would have you to know That the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God. Let's bow for just a moment and pray and ask for God's help. God, open to our eyes today your truth. We believe this book not only is inspired of your Holy Spirit, it's relevant, it's urgent, and it's necessary. I pray that we would grab hold of your truth today, and that we would seek to implement it into our lives. We would adhere to your truth. If there's one here today who has never responded to Your offer of salvation, O Father, open their eyes today. Help them to come to You by faith, in Jesus' name, amen. Will you agree with Paul's principle? First of all is the principle of headship. He gives us in verse 3 the example of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ demonstrated submission. We see the submission of the Savior. We're told in Romans 5.19 for as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners. That was Adam by the way. Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden, and because of Adam and Eve's sin, we are all born with a sin nature. That's a desire to please ourselves rather than to please God. As I recently heard it defined, sin is doing anything I think, say, or do that makes God mad or sad. That's a good definition. I like that. It's what displeases God. Now, God, you say, well, how do I know what God wants? Well, He's given us His word. the unchanging word of God and God does not change and his word does not change so he exposes to us our need we are all sinners so back to Romans 5 19 as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners that's all of us so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous well that obedient one was the Lord Jesus Christ he obeyed his father you say well isn't Jesus God yes Jesus is 100% God and 100% man he is equal with the Father, and he is equal with the Holy Spirit, though they have different functions. But Jesus Christ in his earthly life, we find him time and again submitting to receiving power from his heavenly Father. And Jesus is our example. So Paul says that in verse three, the end of the verse, he says, and the head of Christ is God. There was an economy. There is an economy inside of the Trinity. And the Heavenly Father has authority over the Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus Christ. We find throughout Scripture that they all work together. Ephesians chapter 1 is a great reminder of how the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are engaged when a person gets saved, how they're involved, bringing conviction to the heart, exposing the Word, and choosing before the foundations of the world, and shedding blood for our sins. It's all part of God's eternal plan. And it's a wonderful plan. And just as Jesus Christ submits to his father's will, you remember in the garden of Gethsemane before Jesus went to the cross, remember he was praying and it says, as it were, great drops of blood. He was in agony. And you remember the words of Jesus Christ in the garden before he went to the cross? What did he say? Not my will, but thine be done. He submitted to the authority of the father. When I was a boy, I grew up in a rural town in northern Wisconsin, and there was an older man in our church, an older gentleman who had made an invention in the 50s. He had been home, and he had been working on his family farm. His brothers had left for the big city to make the big bucks, and his mom said to him, Paul, if you stay here, God's gonna bless you for staying and helping and taking care of your mom and the farm, and so he did. He was only able to have a third grade education, but one day, as he was working on the farm, he was thinking through a problem. There were people who had invented mechanisms to clean out barns. Now, if you want to know why you need to clean out barns, we can talk about that later, okay? And there's a problem, because often they would use either ropes or chains, and the ropes would break, the chains would get so much friction, and there's so much incredible pressure put on those chains, when they would twist and turn, it was a disaster, and it was very, very difficult. to make them work. And so while he is there with his third grade education and working the family farm trying to honor God and serve the Lord in this church, he just came up with an idea and he took a couple of pieces of wire and he bent them and he made for a different kind of chain. He called it the hook in the eye. It's almost like an O with a J on the end of it. And by making those kinds of links, not only could that chain turn and maneuver, it could be one continuous loop through the barn. And rather than have the stuff that gets cleaned up dumped down into a pit, he could have it raised up and then dropped into the spreader. If you want to know what the spreader's for, we'll talk about that afterwards. But it was revolutionary. And he did very well. It was very, very successful. But one of the things I think about with those links, that hook in the eye system, every one of those links is interdependent on one another. Now, they could be adjusted. They could be repaired. Anywhere on the chain, it was easily accessible. And I don't know that they use the same thing still to this day. But at the time, nobody had seen something like that. In many ways, in the Christian life and in the local church, we are not only interdependent on Jesus Christ, we are interdependent upon one another. And we are interdependent by gender. And that's what Paul's going to be talking about here. He says in verse three, I would have you to know that the head of every man is Christ and the head of every woman is the man. And the head of Christ is God. Some of you are just ready to close your Bible and get up and walk out. You say, I've been taught something different my entire life. I thought something different my entire life. You're talking about masculine leadership, which is something that God instilled from creation. And he'll talk about that in this passage. But it's something for us to be aware of, for us to know. And the fact that there was a controversy 2,000 years ago only reminds us that there's gonna continue to be controversy, not just 2,000 years ago, 6,000 years ago. It's gone on since the creation of man and fall. He says in verse four, every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoreth his head. But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered, dishonoreth her head, for that, is even all one as if she were shaven." Now, this is going to be a little complicated, okay? This is a complicated passage. Just because it's complicated doesn't mean we ignore it. You say, well, some people differ on that opinion because it's so difficult to understand. No, no, no. What do we do? We take God's word. It's sufficient. We listen to what God has to say, and if we have to find out what it means, we do. We study it. Because God's word is final, God's word is perfect, and we're going to trust it, and we seek to implement it into our lives. So we see the submission of the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, but we're also gonna see the submission in church behavior. Now we need to understand the culture. To understand this passage, we need to understand what was going on. Number one, for a woman to have short or shaved hair, or to be uncovered, not to have any kind of veil on her head, denoted some things, okay? It was a cultural cue that that woman was A, she was perhaps single, married woman, wore the shawl. If she was married, it indicated that she was either a slave, a prostitute, She herself was guilty of adultery or she was willing to commit adultery. I would liken it in some ways to a wedding band. If a woman just stopped wearing her wedding band and she goes about the town and she is advertising that she is available. Some women who are found guilty of adultery, they would actually shave their heads. It would remain shaved for two years. until she was reconciled with her husband again. So that's the culture we're talking about, okay? It's different than 2024, I understand that. But we need to understand the passage, we have to understand the culture. The other thing you need to understand is that Greek women in this culture rarely appeared in public. It's just how it was. They were kept in seclusion. I'm not saying that's right. I'm just saying that's what they did. So it's very rare for women to be out and about. Now, we've talked before about the fact that Corinth was an incredibly immoral city. It was vile. And outside of one of the temples there, the Temple of Aphrodite, there were temple prostitutes. We understand this was a wicked city, but there were some cultural customs that the church needed to pay attention to, they needed to be aware of, because inside the church something different was taking place. They were shocking the outside culture by the behavior, the decorum of the women in the church. Verse 70 says, for a man indeed ought not to cover his head for as much as he is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of the man. So we see this cultural consideration, but also I want you to understand the context. Paul is not saying in any way, the Bible never says that women are of less value than men, that women are less important or less human or less anything, no less. Men and women, according to creation, are made in the image of God, we're told in Genesis. They're equal in essence, but they are unique in functions. There are distinct responsibilities that God intends for men to have and women to have. When it comes to the Church of Corinth, I want you to understand something. The Church of Corinth, while they had listened to Paul's advice and had followed it for the most part, when they were alone, they didn't always play by the rules. I mean, some of you grew up in homes, and you remember a time when mom and dad left you alone, maybe with your siblings for a time, and maybe you got into some mischief. I remember the kinds of things we did when I was a kid, and my parents were gone for a little while. We had these basement stairs that went down, and you could, you know, there was a handrail, but you could stick your head under the handrail, and we would pile up mattresses and jump off the stairs onto the mattresses. I mean, I remember rolling up cut pieces of paper and lighting them and pretending to smoke around the house, you know? We were wicked, weren't we? But the Corinthian church, without the supervision of the Apostle Paul, and they needed to learn to become self-sufficient, but sometimes they got into trouble. And this is one particular area of the Apostle Paul who had brought the gospel to this wicked city, who God had used to see these people through. It was the power of God on display through humble Paul's preaching. God used it. And he considered them his children and he was their father. Boy, he loved the people at the church at Corinth. He was concerned for them. But when they brought up this question, now, what about women being uncovered in the church? Now, something else that was taking place in the church at Corinth is women were both praying and prophesying. We're going to find out in chapter 14 that God has an opinion. He has a thought about women's role in the church. And it's not to be preaching in the church. It's not to be pastoring in the church, not over men anyway. And we're gonna look at that in a couple of weeks here. So our context is that men and women are equal in essence, but they have unique functions. Here the Apostle Paul's gonna lay the foundation for his future teaching on gender responsibilities in the church. Again, chapter 14, if you wanna read ahead, if you wanna write this down, 1 Corinthians 14, 34 and 35. And then one other passage we'll talk about when we get there is 1 Timothy 2, 9 and 10. Let me just repeat those in case you want to jot them down. 1 Corinthians 14, 34 and 35, 1 Timothy 2, 9 and 10. It's not our place to reassign genders. Amen? Neither is it our place to reassign God-given gender roles. So number one is the principle of headship. God teaches it. Scripture informs us of it. Continue on with me. Verse seven, again, he says, as the man indeed ought not to cover his head, for as much as he is the image of the glory of God. Now, quick word about the men. In both Jewish and Greek cultures, it was common when they practiced their religious rituals that they would cover their heads. And the Apostle Paul is calling for a distinction between the men and women in the church. It's some kind of, he's recognizing a cultural thing. Again, women who went around town with their head uncovered or their head shaved, it was a sign of reproach. And Paul is actually seeking to protect the women in the church. He values them. He values their ministry. He doesn't want that kind of reputation to be associated with followers of Christ. And so the instructions he's giving here, you think, well, he's being so harsh on them, and why would he give any, I mean, who is he to tell a woman how to dress? He was actually, his desire was to protect them. His concern was for the gospel of Jesus Christ, and for those who would communicate it. We see God ordained gender roles. In verse 80, it says, for the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. This is speaking of creation. You remember? taken the dust of the ground and created Adam. And then he'd put him into a sleep and he had taken a rib from Adam and from that rib he created Eve. In other words, so the woman came from man. Now, why was the woman created? Because Adam, like all men, needs help. And God provided someone to help him. You say, that sounds so sexist. That sounds so misogynistic. No, it's biblical. Men are needy, and God provided a perfect match to meet the needs of man. She's called woman, out of man. It says in verse eight, for the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. Verse nine, neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man. Verse 10, for this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels. Now, I'm gonna get back to this in a minute. This is a very confusing passage, very difficult, but we're gonna look at it. The idea of her having power, she has authority over her own head and what she does with her head, her hair. Verse 11, nevertheless, neither is the man without the woman, neither is the woman without the man in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man by the woman, but all things are of God. So even though women came out of man, Paul says, but by the way. Everybody was born from a woman. It doesn't happen without a woman. And so there is an interdependence that we see, these God-ordained gender roles. F.W. Robertson makes a comment about the veil. He says, the veil was a representation or is a symbol of dependence. And just like the links in a chain, just as Jesus Christ in a sense was dependent upon his father. A woman is dependent upon a man. It's essential, not only for reproduction, it's essential for life. It's God's design, his perfect design. And so what the Apostle Paul is doing is last week, as we looked at the previous three chapters here, chapters 8, 9, and 10. He was talking about meat that was offered to idols. In a sense, he was saying, don't just do what the culture around you does. Give thought to it and understand their significance to what you're doing. If you're fed it and you don't know it, don't worry about it, but if you do, you have a responsibility to buck the system, to resist the culture, and to honor God. In this passage, he's saying, There are some areas where you need to pay attention to the culture around you, where you live. And you might say, well, this passage has nothing to do with us today. There are principles here. Somebody has said it this way. Stories illustrate and laws legislate. How do you say it? Yeah, legislate, that's the word. But principles guide our lives. And we need God's principles, and this is a passage, I think, full of helpful principles for us to navigate life in a wicked world. Paul was writing to a people who were living in a wicked, wicked city. How were they to do it in a way that honors the Lord? We don't have to be eagle-eyed, but we had better not be ostriches either, okay? You don't have to spend your life studying culture to know what's going on. But at the same time, don't bare your head or hide yourself from it either, because it will impact our influence of the gospel. In fact, back to chapter 10 and verse 33, he says, even as I please all men and all things, not seeking my own profit. but the profit of many that they may be saved. That's his heart. Paul's heart is the gospel. He wants people to see their sinfulness and the grace of God and to receive the gift that Jesus Christ gave through the cross of Calvary. That was Paul's heart. That should be our heart. And as we talk about issues like this, we need to see it from God's perspective. Don't take Jesus Christ out of this passage. It began with him saying, with Paul saying, Christ is dependent upon the Father. Man is dependent upon Christ. Woman is dependent upon the man. And we see this mutual linked dependence that's essential for God's plan to go forward in the world. The gospel's transforming power should be the thing that shocks the city, not careless Christians. And so it was taking place in the church, there were women who were prophesying, who were praying in the services publicly, who were exerting authority over men, and they were doing it in a way that was shocking to the culture, uncovered. And he said, it's just as though, it's just as bad for you to do that. He doesn't even address the issue of them preaching or praying here. He'll get to that later. He's just addressing the fact that they were doing it without the head covering, which was a cultural norm, which was totally acceptable. And when they did this, this was, I mean, it's like the drag show at the Olympics. This was like, that was shocking. Like, whoa, they're doing what at the church? Are you kidding me? It was shocking, okay? The thing that God wants to shock our community is not dangerous stunts. It's the power of the gospel to change lives. Harry Ironside was a preacher and evangelist and pastor. And he had once been a part of the Salvation Army Church out in California, but he had since differed with some things in belief. And on a Sunday afternoon, he was walking through the streets of San Francisco. And he heard a band playing and he heard some people talking and about 400 people gathered around. And it was some of his old chums from the Salvation Army Church he was a part of. And so he went over and he thought he might see some people he might remember and recognize and spend some time. And so he listened to some music and one of the people there, a little girl, saw him and she knew who he was. Oh, Dr. Ironside's here. Dr. Ironside's here, and one of the men who was leading the little program out of doors in the streets of San Francisco said, Dr. Ironside, would you be so kind to give us a word? He was a world-renowned preacher, an expositor of the word. And Ironside began to, and he shared the gospel, shared his testimony. And there was a man, a well-dressed man leaning over against the lamppost. And he looked like somebody, but he didn't know who he was. But that man took out a business card, writes something on the back of it, and passes it over to Ironside. And Ironside immediately recognized the name. He was a man who spoke on the behalf of socialism and agnosticism up and down the West Coast. He was kind of well-known in that area. And on the back of the card he had written, I would like to debate you next week on the topic of Christianity versus agnosticism. So Harry Ironside reads this, goes to the man, he says, okay, excuse me, I take it back. He wrote him a letter in reply. I will debate you next Sunday. Although I have a meeting scheduled at three o'clock next Sunday afternoon, I can see if I can get somebody else to do it, but here are the conditions. I need you to bring me one man. who came and heard you speak, and he was a down-and-outer, and his life was a wreck. But because he heard of your teachings on agnosticism, his life was transformed. He's become a better man, a moral man, a worthwhile citizen. because of the teachings of agnosticism. And he says, and secondly, I want you to bring me a woman who's lived a life of ill repute, and she heard your teachings on agnosticism, and her life has been entirely transformed. If you'll bring me those two people next week, I'll be glad to debate you, and I will bring with me 100 of the same, whose lives have been transformed, not by agnosticism, but by the gospel of Jesus Christ. The man never showed. Because there's only one thing that can truly transform a life. It's not moralism, and it's not education, and it's not an economy. It's Jesus Christ. He changes everything. That's what shocks the world. Hey, Blue Lake, let's shock the community, and let's see lives changed for Jesus' sake. Let's see the gospel do something to shake this town for Jesus. He can, right? This word is true. He died for all. That whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Guess what? There's some people who need saved. There's some homes that need restored. There's some people who've been living together that need to be married. There's some people who have committed abortion and their hearts are grieving and they need to know there's a Savior who will forgive them for their sin. There are those who have followed the lead of the world. They followed the bend. They don't know who they are. They don't know why they're here. They've considered taking their lives. And they need hope. Guess what? We have it! We have it! And his name is Jesus. So it's the principle of using your head. We're mutually dependent upon one another. But there's also the fact that the gospel transforms a life. Rebellion always restricts, but faith brings true freedom. What the Apostle Paul was doing here, he was not foot binding. He was not shackling women. They weren't becoming the handmaid's tale, whatever that is. What he was doing was giving liberty to the women to be who God made them to be. The greatest freedom men and women you will ever experience in your life is for you to be who God made you to be. Men become more manly, women become more womanly, and together, God is glorified. The problem was the church at Corinth wasn't always relying on the Word and the Lord. They had a tendency to rely upon themselves, upon the flesh. And a flesh-powered ministry will always produce fleshly results. Carnality creeps. And a pastor can be carnal in the pulpit. And a church can serve the Lord and do all kinds of things and do it in the power of the flesh. By the way, that's carnality. It doesn't have to be illicit or immoral or unethical. Sometimes it just needs to be powered by human flesh. And what will that produce? Carnality. Carnality produces carnality. Women in the name of Christian liberty were stepping so far outside the cultural norms so as to shock the community. Outward expression exposed an inward attitude. These women and these churches were not trusting God but themselves. Have you ever noticed that when people resist God-given Biblical norms for home and family when people resist that they don't just like dislike it like they become Kamikaze warriors, I mean they are in it for everything. You know they are they are willing to die For their concept of gender and family roles Why are they so hate filled? Why are they so angry at us? Because they have believed the lie of the serpent. Their eyes are blinded to truth. And if they believe what you and I say, if they believe the truth of the word of God, it's going to expose a need in their own heart. Now, the reality is we all have that same need. And I'm not saying those out there are a whole lot worse than us in here. I'm not saying that because every one of us are vile before the Lord. And as soon as I begin to think that the real problem is out there, those people and that, whatever, when I begin to think that way, what is that exposing? The horrible sin of pride in my own heart. It's right for you and I to say the most wicked and vile thing that has ever taken place in the entire world is the exact same thing that's taking place right now in my heart. We are all desperately in need of a savior. Robertson said, fanaticism defies nature. Christianity refines it and respects it. Christianity does not denaturalize, but only sanctifies and refines according to the laws of nature. Christianity does not destroy our natural instinct, but gives them a higher and nobler direction. God wants you to be more, better, fulfilled, complete. It says in verse 14, Excuse me, I don't want to skip any verses here, but I will go back here. I think we're at verse ... Oh, the angels. Let's go back to the angels in verse 10. Consider the audience here. He says, for this calls out the woman to have power over her head because of the angels. So she's to have authority to put the head covering on her head. And it says because of the angels. I don't know if you realize, I don't know if you saw one today, but when believers gather together to worship God, there is an angelic presence. We have an audience today. Certainly we have the audience of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have the presence and power of the Holy Spirit available to us. But scripture teaches that there are angels in observance. Paul would say, as he unveiled the mystery that Jews and Gentiles were one church, he says, angels and demons alike observed that and they were surprised by that. And Paul is saying here, the behavior that was happening in the church would have been something that would have been unsettling to the observing angels. Let's remember, we gather in the name of Jesus to worship Jesus for the glory of Jesus. When you choose a church, are you choosing it for you or for him? When you serve in the church, are you serving for you or are you serving for him? We are here, we're gathered to worship the Lord, to serve the Lord together. But it's the Lord. It's about Him. It's not about my fickle preferences. It's about the sufficiency of His Word. God gets the praise. Why? Well, He's omnipotent. He has no limit on His power. He's omniscient. He knows all things. He is perfectly holy. He deserves our worship. He deserves our everything. are all. Continuing there in verse 13 or 14, where am I at? No, 11, forgive me. Nevertheless, neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, so even the man also by the woman, but all things are of God. Now, verse 13, judge in yourselves. Okay, make a choice here. Is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered? I just want you to see that first word there, that word judge. It's to come to a clear decision. Sometimes as we talk about areas where Christians don't always agree, we always talk about it as some kind of nebulous, fuzzy idea out there that some people believe this and some people believe that, and we really don't have to make up our mind. That's a lie. You need to land the plane. You need to come to clear convictions based on the Word of God, either what it clearly says or principles that it teaches. Every one of you. You need to search the scriptures to see if those things are so. You'll be like the Brians who are noble because they search the scriptures. So you need to be in the word. And if you're, you know, there's some great resources out there, but if your only spiritual diet is the daily bread or your daily devotional, hey, they're helpful. But if that's all you're getting, you're not getting enough. You need to be in the word of God. That's where the Holy Spirit of God speaks to us. It's where he shapes and changes our thinking. And that's where we come to clear understanding of how we are to live in this world. Nobody in this country has any excuse of not having access to the scriptures. Our missionary, Josh Hedges, is in Chad right now, and they're working, completing the die translation. It's gone on for over a decade. They've been working to give these people one Bible in their language, and by next year, by next summer, they should be able to hold it in their hands. Praise God. Pray for Josh as he's wrapping this up. But how many do we have access to? We have Bibles everywhere. They give them away for free at Goodwill and the thrift stores. I mean, anywhere, you go to the Pat's Donuts, and they'll give you a Bible. I mean, everywhere in this town, there's Bibles everywhere. The question isn't, do we have access to the Bible? Does the Bible have access to us? Can we let God speak to us through his word? Do you agree with the Apostle Paul? It says in verse 14, death even nature itself teach us that if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him. But if a woman have long hair, it is glory to her, for her hair is given her for a covering. And he says, the natural person looks around and says, hey, there's a distinction in our culture between genders. Now, up until World War II, for a man to have short hair, I mean, it may have reached the back of his neck or on his shoulder. It may have been considered, you know, short hair. You look at our founding fathers, you know. After World War II, everybody, you know, clean cut is clean cut, and it's never going to touch your earlobe. And then you get old enough, it starts growing out of your ears. You're in trouble, you know. So every culture is going to have their own ideas and distinctions. I could take you to places in Uganda today where men are coming to church and they're wearing silken ladies pajamas with an R and an L, Ralph Lauren, and the men are wearing that to church and they feel that's masculine. And every woman of the church has a shaved head. I can take you there, and you say, well, they have a completely different concept of male and female identity there than we ever, yeah, they do, in a lot of different places. But every culture has their own. It's important for us to recognize there are distinctions between the two. The apostle Paul is encouraging the church, hey, look around, be aware, and realize there are specific gender identities in any given culture. I know, I know. Satan is trying to mix it up. He's trying to stir it up. And I'm not calling for ... I mean, the Scottish Highlanders wore woolen kilts. I mean, they were skirts. And most of our Bible were written by men wearing dresses, okay? So this is a whole different ... But what I'm saying is this, there is distinctions that should be evident in not only the function within the church, but the identity in the church. And Timothy identifies there are ways you can be distracting. Last Monday morning, I opened my news app and there's a big sign that says Vanity Fair. And there's a lady who was at the Oscars last week, I don't know who she was, but she's wearing this dress that looked like giant bubbles. I just busted out laughing. And again, if she came to our church and sat in the front row, I mean, everyone would be looking at her crazy for these big red bubbles that she was wearing. And Apostle Paul says in 1 Timothy, he says, don't distract people from what you're here to do. Nothing wrong with looking nice. Nothing wrong with coming to church in a way that shows reverence and respect for the Lord. But if you see this as a runway, a way to flaunt your wares, you came for the wrong reason, you're coming with the wrong attitude. We all have to come with a humble attitude to seek to honor and worship the Lord, to please Him. In every culture, I mean, it changes. It changes over time. And where we served in Denver, Denver had a different attitude than the Midwest. You go to New England, I mean, they have a different attitude and sometimes different cultural norms per community. So it's okay to recognize that. I know we live in a globalist world where everything is available to us through the touch of our finger, right? It's there. And he's saying to this, essentially Christians, just pay attention. Study the word, but also be aware of your community. Verse 16, he says, but if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God. The Apostle Paul hears, he says, don't make this, don't fight over this. Here's what other churches are doing. They recognize, as far as we know, the only church that had women who were preaching and praying in public was the church at Corinth, and he'll address that later. But he says, What you're doing is a shock to the culture and it's not a good testament even to the other churches. So what do we need to do? Number one, recognize Christ's authority in the church. Jesus Christ is the head, not you. Then reinstate Christ honoring gospel ministry. Our goal is to get the gospel. Michelangelo was known as a sculptor, but for four years he laid on his back on a custom-made scaffolding painting, the Sistine Chapel. There's nine sections. It begins with creation, the most famous picture you're probably familiar with of Adam's hand reaching out to God's and there's just a small gap between it. It's a picture of man's need for the gospel of Jesus Christ. And each of those panels from the Old Testament scenes points to the fact of man's depravity from Eden outward and the last panel is Noah getting drunk after the flood. And it's reversed, so you start by Noah and you make your way towards God's ideal, what God intends. As we look at any issue, as we look at scripture, we almost always must go to what God intends for the church. In this matter of roles within the church, is there a place for preaching and teaching in the church? Yes. Who has it been given to? Well, teaching is given to all. And women, I think you can preach to each other. I think you can preach to the children. I'm okay with that. But the role of a pastor and preaching from a pulpit in a church, no matter what the culture says, no matter what Christianity today says, it's off limits for the church, according to God's word. On Wednesday night, we talked about Philip's four flowers. Philip the evangelist had four girls who were prophetesses. They never married. But these women, they were known by, they were called by God, not to fill the office of a prophet, but to use the gift of a prophet. And they did. And they were known for that. Just a little bit is said of them in the Bible. But it's a little window to me. You know what, women? God wants you to give truth. I think of Priscilla and Aquila, a husband and wife team, who the preacher of the day, the outstanding orator by the name of Apollos, was preaching. And as they listened to him, they picked up on something he didn't have quite right. They invited him, I don't know if they came to their house for dinner, I'm not sure if they were eating Lee's chicken, or if it was raisin canes, probably had some sweet tea there, but they said, Apollos, we love you. Man, God has his hand on you, God's using you. And perhaps, perhaps it was Priscilla who said, but, there's something you have wrong. The Bible says that this husband and wife team made the way of God, explained it more perfectly. Apollos, corrected his doctrine, his understanding. His preaching from then on was transformed. Why? Because of a husband-wife team. Praise God. God has a place and a use for all of us in his church, men and women alike. But it's important for us to recognize that there's distinctions between God-given roles in the local church. So do you agree with Paul? Do you agree with Christ? How we worship matters. It matters to Christ, it matters to his church, it matters to our community, and it even matters to angels. How we worship matters. Worship and service that accepts God's framework for worship, and not our framework for worship, is one that brings him great glory and accomplishes his will. It's right to maintain a distinction in worship. It's right to retain dignity in our worship. It's right to align with Christ in our worship. Do you agree with that? It's right. God supplies his Holy Spirit to natural roles, and he supernaturally infuses them for the gospel ministry. But we have to trust him to do that. We have to trust that God will work through his word to work his way. We live in a world that's kind of incapable of any more shock, right? I mean, everybody came out of COVID with pink hair and tattoos. Like, whoa, what happened here? The whole community is like that. We live in a world that's incapable of shock. But they haven't seen anything yet, right? So the gospel of Jesus Christ changes a life. That's what will shock our world. That's what's going to shock our community. That guy did what? That lady did what? Do you know where they're from? Do you know what they were like? Are you kidding me? What did that kid go on to do? The gospel of Jesus Christ is still changing lives. Do we believe that? The Corinthians had this testimony that they were willing to receive Paul's teaching, it tells us in verse two, and do it. Do we have that reputation? God, this is what your word says, I'm just gonna do it. I'm gonna trust you with it. What Christ commands, he enables. Can we agree? Can we worship? with Christ, are we linked to him in faith? Trusting God's will and his word will do what he wants. Father, I thank you for your word today. Thank you for this passage. It's challenging for me and probably hard to be understood today. But more than anything else, we want to do your will. We want to worship you. And you have given some instructions to us by your Holy Spirit of how we're to best do that. Father, the greatest need in our world today is for us to understand, for human beings to come to the place that we realize there's something separating us from you. We need to make a link by faith. And we know between the gap between Adam's finger and your finger, you sent your son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shed his blood to wash away our sins so we could be united with you, so we could depend upon you for Eternal life and eternal living. Help us, Lord, to grow in our faith. Help us as a church to honor you and your design for our church. In Jesus' name, amen.