Order in the Church

Order in the Church

First Corinthians chapter 14, starting in verse 26. What then, brothers and sisters, whenever you come together, each one has a hymn, a teaching, a revelation, another tongue, or an interpretation. Everything is to be done for building up.

If anyone speaks in another tongue, there are to be only two, or at the most three, each in turn, and let someone interpret. But if there is no interpreter, that person is to keep silent in the church and speak to himself and God.

Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should evaluate. But if something has been revealed to another person sitting there, the first prophet should be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that everyone may learn and everyone may be encouraged.

And the prophet's spirits are subject to the prophets, since God is not a God of disorder, but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints, the women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but are to submit themselves, as the law also says.

If they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home, since it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. Or did the word of God originate from you, or did it come to you only?

If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, he should recognize that what I write to you is the Lord's command. If anyone ignores this, he will be ignored. So then, my brothers and sisters, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in other tongues.

But everything is to be done decently and in order. Let's pray. God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the opportunity to freely come and worship by singing spiritual songs, by hearing the proclamation of your word, Lord, and to worship through the fellowship of the saints.

You are a gracious God who has been kind to us beyond our wildest expectation. Lord, your greatest kindness is your salvation to us through your Son Jesus and his blood, who has redeemed us and rescued us out of the pit and set us as sons and heirs to your kingdom.

Lord, we just ask your blessing on Josh as he preaches your word this morning. Lord, that your spirit would be active and working in our hearts, that we would be convicted and encouraged by it. Lord, that we'd be conformed by your word to the image of your Son.

So, Lord, we ask for your grace and your peace as your word goes out over us and covers us. It's in your name we pray. Amen. So, today concludes a block within 1 Corinthians. Pretty much everybody agrees that chapters 11 through 14 are a cohesive unit that are trying to give order inside the church, that are addressing specific problems that are going on during the Lord's Day gathering.

And so I'm going to go through the section quickly here. Repetition is the key to learning. There's a lot of repetition today. This text is pretty simple if you know the object that it's talking about.

And then Paul will highlight the main idea, which is everything that's done in the gathering of the saints is to build up the church. That is the litmus test. If it's not to build up the church, then it's not to be used.

It's not to be displayed. But if we go back and we started in chapter 11, we had my favorite topic of all time. We talked about head coverings, all right, at the beginning of chapter 11. And what we learned, and it actually ties up, so if you look at the block, you begin in chapter 11 as he starts this new line of thought, and there is the command for women to be covered when they pray and prophesy.

And then at the end of chapter 14, which is the end of the block, we get an instruction that women are to remain silent if they have questions. They're to ask their husband, which I would say is their covering.

And I think Paul is making the same argument. If you remember back, the position of your elders here are that the husband is the covering, that it is not a cloth, that Paul was largely being sarcastic in that text and saying, when you put a cloth on and you continue to do this stuff that's disgraceful, the covering is not doing any good, whether you wear a cloth or not.

That is our position. We hold that pretty open-handedly. So this section was key to my interpretation of the beginning of chapter 11. It's like, how can women rightly pray and prophesy with a cloth covering on and then later be silent and not speak for it's disgraceful for them to do so, directly in context?

Then it moved on in chapter 11, and he talked about the Lord's Supper, Communion, or the Eucharist, and he talked about how that must be properly administered and observed with the markers being sobriety, humility, joy, and unity.

The table is what brings everyone together in a place that had a lot of factions. Remember, that's where the letter started. Some are of Paul, some are of Apollos, the extra holy ones are of Jesus, that sort of thing.

And so the Eucharist is to bring everybody together. It is in unity. There's not to be these divisions. There's not to be people warring and lording over other people's conscience, that sort of thing, directly in context.

And then we get to this section that we've been on. It starts in chapter 12, that God gives spiritual gifts. There is no clean listing, and this is what gives us trouble today. There is no clean list in scripture that omits the gifts that we don't really like to talk about in Baptist and Presbyterian land, specifically healing, tongues, and prophecy.

Prophecy is listed in every single list of gifts given in the New Testament. And so we make weird exegetical distinctions when we say, oh, that one ceased, but helps teaching, administration, mercy has not.

And then Paul reiterates and just doesn't let us escape that way by telling the Church of Corinth to earnestly seek prophecy. He reiterates that today, so we have to deal with that today. That chart starts in chapter 12, and then Paul gives the thesis of this block in chapter 13.

Many people think that that's the thesis of the whole letter. I disagree strongly. I think that's coming next week. But in 13, he gives the thesis and the rules for order for what goes on with the gifts, the Eucharist, head coverings, all that sort of thing, and that is that if you don't love, all your spiritual gifts are worthless.

It doesn't do anything for the Church because love is the central marker of a Christian. If you don't love your brother, you're not a Christian. And if you are a Christian and don't love your brother, you need to repent with fear and trembling.

Christians love the Church. Let me be very emphatic about that. In a world where it is confusing, and I was talking to Kelsey this week in the car, and I was like, you know, we make these things complicated.

Really, the simple fact is Christians are pretty easy to identify. They love the brothers, and they bear good fruit. If they don't, then we don't treat them as Christians. It doesn't matter what their mouth says.

The enemy has always sent invaders in that speak sweet words and have rotten actions. That's what 13 is about. And then as we moved into 14, it's a complicated section, and we spent several weeks on it.

Spiritual gifts, we found, are the proof of Christ's victory. They are the spoils given to his people. Spiritual gifts are to bring unity and humility, not division and pride. The Church needs spiritual gifts to exercise the power that God has given the Church to accomplish her mission, which is to make disciples and to baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and to teach them all that God has commanded them.

So the Church has to examine and discipline, and that's where we end today. There is a rubric in place. There is a procedure in place to govern the expression of these gifts. Order in the Church. But let me tell you, Church, I am about that today, and that's what we're going to do.

But there is something you need to know. If you have a spiritual gift, what you do if you're a Christian, did you know that? You probably have multiple spiritual gifts in different measures. Some people are given some measure of a gift of teaching and a huge measure of a gift of helps or mercy, okay?

These things are not egalitarian. Remember, there is no place for that in Scripture. There are lots of measures for the glory of God. If you are not exercising your spiritual gifts, you are actively hurting the mission of the Church, even as we speak.

So I give a story to my shame that shows many of the places we're going today. It was a long time ago, many years ago. I was about 17 years old, and I was at a congregational meeting of a Baptist Church, and this Baptist Church, it was straight up congregationalism, okay?

There was not proposals made by the leader on the stage. It was, we're going to vote on everything, all right? And in our bylaws at that church, there was given that any staff hires had to be confirmed with a unanimous vote of the congregation.

No dissent. So as a 17-year-old boy who was able to vote, because again, right? Baptists, they're wild sometimes, all right? So as a 17-year-old, I'm voting, and this man is brought forth. He had been the music minister for a while.

He is going to be the youth pastor also, all right? And I like the guy. We had known him for months, and here comes the vote. He's presented, and I'm given the paper ballot, and all of a sudden, there was a burning in my bones.

And I knew I must vote no, and there was no reason in my mind, you know? And I thought, this is the stupidest thing. I can't do that. I'm voting yes, and it was almost like the humorous scene in Liar Liar where the guy, where he's trying to write that the pen is a different color from what it is, and he can't do it, and I'm sitting here, and I'm like, I'm voting yes.

This is stupid. There's people's lives on the line. I don't know anything, and the call in my heart was no. It's no. It's no, and I vote no in obedience. A few minutes later, after the votes had been counted, it was not a large church.

The votes are counted, and they are announced. 99 yes, 99 no. The pastor announces, our bylaws say that it has to be a consensus vote, but we're going to go ahead and say this was probably a kid who didn't know what they were doing and put no.

We're going to move on. To my shame, I said nothing. Now, to look objectively at the story of a teenage boy, it would have taken some courage to stand up because I had nothing to say, and this is where we get into the mystery, guys, is because we have bad guys that co-opt a lot of language, right, and you'll hear derisively.

I've been told this derisively. We don't go by the burning in the bosom. Look, we're not Mormons, but at the same time, if I had been called to account and said no, I voted no, and then the next question would come, why?

And I would say, I just don't know. I don't know. I don't have an answer. There is not a good answer. Months later, a church from before called ahead and informed the leadership of the church that the man had been caught in moral failings, and he was dismissed.

So the question that makes us uncomfortable is, did I know something? Was that an impression? Are we going to be lame, or are we going to call that what scripture calls it? It was prophecy. Does that mean I'm a prophet?

I don't think so, but at that time, there was a thing that was undeniable. I could not do otherwise. I could not explain it, and yet I was obedient to the call and disobedient to edify the church, because what I did was I took my spiritual gifting, and I hid it, and I did nothing, and what I should have done was bring it out for examination so that the body could deliberate, and I took something from the body that day, but one of the main themes that we have here is that, thankfully, God uses our sins, our mistakes, our cowardice, and he uses them to grow and to sanctify not only ourselves, but the body around.

See, my examination of this section in 1 Corinthians 14 has been tremendously aided by this thing that I had in my past, and there's another instance like it, not as applicable today, where I was saved from tremendous heartache and pain by something the Lord just told me.

I can't say that it's something other than that, and this is why it's hard to convince me otherwise. These things have not ceased. I don't know that they're normative. I don't know how often it happens, but I know that twice in my life it's happened, and I knew, and there was no doubt about it.

I couldn't do otherwise, and today I have thought on that many, many times. I've told a couple of you guys that story already, and the walking out from that is this. I have learned, and there is greater condemnation for me if I fear to bring something before the body.

I should have been more afraid when I was 17, and I will confess that I am very afraid now to not do it. We follow the law or we follow nothing. That man should have not been given the staff position because one person in the congregation was against it, and that's on me, and so I preach this, and I look at this confusing stuff with a through line in it, and that is that God is a God of order, not confusion.

God is not a God of disorder, chaos, panic. He wants you to hear His Word. He wants you to understand it, and He wants you to obey it, and anything that gets in the way of that is not of the Holy Spirit, and so you guys all know that there is a backdrop.

Many of you guys come out of it. There is a backdrop of terrible behavior when it comes to these gifts that we're talking about, and there's very little experience with any positive outflow because in our strain of the world, a story like what I just told you where many of our brothers and sisters would go, yeah, that happens all the time.

In our strain, they go, man, he's kind of crazy. He might have been lying about that. Now, brothers and sisters, I know that you don't believe that I was lying about that story. I know you don't because you know that I'm not a liar, and you also know that I am not here to try to glorify myself because there was some kind of urging, and that is the bedrock of how this stuff operates.

With no church discipline, but more importantly, with no love in the church, then these things go crazy. On one side, with the exact sin of Corinth, where we elevate tongues to the spiritual gift of the gods and where you are the guru if you can speak in tongues, which is ridiculous.

But to the complete other side, where many of you are comfortable today, this stuff's over. That's the lazy way out. That's the way that you don't even have to think about what chapter 14 says. Let me ask you, what relevance does chapter 14 have to you today if these gifts have ceased?

The answer is zero relevance. It's only about prophecy and tongues, and so we can look at them and say, well, that was great for a church at Corinth. Good thing we don't even have to worry about that chapter of God's word anymore.

Not for us. Maybe it can tell us that we shouldn't all be singing different hymns at the same time. Did we really need to be told that? No, no one's doing that. That's why it's about these gifts. And so what I want to posit to you today, after a characteristically long intro, is point number one, this is actually not all that complicated.

That's point one. This is really not that complicated. So let me read through. I'm not going to read everything today, but I want to read through and I want to walk through this because what's critical for us is to understand what the tongues are and what prophecy is.

We've done that, and I'm going to do it in short form today. 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.

If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or three at most, and each in turn, and let someone interpret. But if there's no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God.

Let two or three prophets speak and let the others weigh what is said. If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged.

And the spirits of the prophets are subject to prophets. For God is not a God of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. All the churches in that time of the saints are all the churches of the saints.

See, the word of God does not change. There is historical context, but we are a church of the saints. If you are of the Holy Spirit, then you are given spiritual gifts. We've learned in Ephesians 4 that that is the inheritance.

God won a victory through Christ, and Christ gave gifts. If you don't have gifts, you're not his. Simple as that. You're not a spoil of the victory if you don't have gifts. Now, which gift do you have?

Hopefully prophecy. But if not prophecy, because I'm taking what the apostle says, right? But we're all given gifts. We're all given gifts. So our confusion and hand-wringing over this really comes from a couple of things.

We either make scripture subservient to our own experiences or observations, or we make it subservient to looking at the bad behavior of some and swinging the pendulum as far away from that as we possibly can.

And that's what we've done. So what we get very clearly from this text, prophecy is to be earnestly sought after. It has been given throughout the ages. You guys know this. I told you a story. I would bet that 75, 80 percent, if not all of you, have a story that's very similar in your life.

See, the gift of prophecy is alive. And what we have to do is do it with order and be discerning and understand that God speaks that way sometimes. And when he does, it is to be taken soberly, scripturally, and in community to where we can discern and test.

Because remember, one is given a gift of prophecy. Another is given a gift of testing the spirits. And these two work in tension with each other, right? Prophecy, testing of spirits. Testing of spirits says, uh, I don't think that's it.

And the prophecy guy slows his roll a little bit, and then we deliberate. You guys ever seen anything like that? Does 14 mean anything to us or not? And that's the question that we have. So the Word governs all.

The Word governs all. And I'm beginning with the end of this section talking about prophecy, because I think we need to understand a few things. Your prophecy, your prophecy is not to be delivered like you are Moses coming off of Sinai.

Please understand that. There is no one today who is that kind of prophet. That office has unequivocally ceased. And the reason we know that is not from observation. The reason we know that is because John, who wrote the last book of canon, said that if anyone adds to or subtracts from these words, that they are false, that they will burn.

We know it's closed. There is no more Moses coming. Okay? So we're not talking about that. Let's not be silly. So when you get a word, and you think that you have a prophecy, please understand that. That may be from the Lord, but it needs to be tested and discerned.

You don't get to come as if you've been given tablets and declare God's will on the body, and they must obey you. That's not the way the gift works. Remember, look at what Paul does. He invokes legal language that is to be examined by a few people.

That when you say your prophecy, you're not to defend your prophecy. Did you get that? You say your prophecy, and then you're silent while the others deliberate. You're not pleading your case. You say the thing, it gets listened to, and then, and then, we hear the word when it makes it through that thing.

Through that check, you never get to shoot off in a disorderly fashion. Never. That does not build up the body. It confuses, and it destroys. The purpose of prophecy is to build up the body. If it doesn't do that, it's not from the Lord, and you need to stop it.

If you get rebuked, and you have, like, let's say that you have had that feeling, burning in your bones, right? And you deliver prophecy, and that thing does not come true. It's not right. Then whatever you felt is wrong, and you should not listen to that again.

And you should be disciplined. Does discipline mean thrown out of the church? No. It means that you should be asked to repent for your false prophecy, and if you don't repent, then you are going to face the disciplinary process.

And repent means don't do it again. Got it? 180, it doesn't mean saying you're sorry. It means that you do not act on that again in that way. It's not that complicated. It's just never practiced. Why?

Because the church is a country club. Because membership's not important, and because when you get disciplined, you just run away, and the megachurch down the street will take you in with open arms, because you're a walking check.

And I shouldn't go too far, but there are many among us who are like that. Okay? You know, you know there is no bonds of church discipline, because as we've lost community, we've lost that accountability between churches.

That's something that has to be built back. It is good for you to have that kind of accountability, so that you can't break up with your boyfriend in high school and say, God told you to do it. That is taking the Lord's name in vain.

Do you understand that? You should not do that. We laugh, because that's an acceptable sin. That is a serious breach of the Ten Commandments. When you invoke God's name to do something that you wanted to do for your petty reasons, you have sinned greatly against the Lord, and people die and burn in hell for that kind of sin.

It's not about saying a wordy dirt. It's about making God's name common. It's not common, and we don't get to invoke him. And that's what happens when you try to raise yourself up through these types of gifts.

The gifts of speaking, tongues, prophecy, teaching, preaching. That's why James says not many of you should become teachers. That's because when you teach, when you take on that mantle, you are using God's name to invoke power behind what you say.

And if what you say is what I want to say, then I'm taking the Lord's name in vain, and that's what that commandment means. I think we've lost that tremendously. Now tongues, when we look, we have to remember everything he said.

Remember, Paul said that prophecy is a gift for believers. That's why when someone gives a prophecy, the whole church is to hear this thing, to examine it, because it's for us. Tongues is for unbelievers.

Remember, it is for the message to go to someone who doesn't understand, who doesn't hear it. And so tongues are languages. So if there's people who speak in different languages, God wants his message to be heard.

But there are rules. No matter how many people are in here, let's say we have six different languages, guess how many you get to talk in the church service? Three at most. What about the others that get to hear the gospel?

Doesn't matter. Paul says if you don't believe this stuff, you're not a prophet, and you're not speaking in tongues. And in fact, you're one of the bad guys. Two or three at most. That's what that means.

That could get awkward in a cosmopolitan area like Corinth, right, where there might be as many as 10 languages spoken in that place. Two or three at the most, because more than that, nobody can understand.

It gets incomprehensible. And if it is incomprehensible, you should not speak it at all. That's what this says very clearly, right? If you can't interpret it, which you must pray to be able to interpret yourself.

Remember he said that. If you can't interpret it, if no one's going to understand, it should not be said. And if you speak a tongue yourself that no one else understands, no one should even know about it.

Does this solve all of the questions and the mysteries? I think it does. If there's a French speaker in here and someone interprets, starts speaking in French the gospel, I think we're going to understand what's going on, and we're going to praise God that he's given that gift.

But we're not going to have six people jumping up doing it. Do we see tongues in the church right now? I don't think so. I think the reason why is because we all understand each other. Do you speak in a prayer language?

That's fine. I don't need to know about it, and neither does anyone else. Because what we're going to be tempted to do is go, oh man, they speak directly to God, and I don't. You all speak directly to God.

There is one mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ. That means that you speak to Jesus Christ. Did you know that he's God? So you speak to God directly every day when you pray, multiple times a day when you pray.

You do not need to speak in a tongue to speak directly to God. If he gives you that gift, then you should glorify God, and if no one understands it, we shouldn't even know about it. What's the point? You're trying to glorify yourself.

Pretty simple, right? He even invokes other things. Singing. We should all sing together and sing the same song. Nice, right? Just like tongues. The lesson, someone's given that, right? It should be presented by the one who's gifted to teach, and it should not be interrupted with confusion.

Can you imagine? That's what we see with a lot of the bad behavior. Is that somebody is teaching a lesson, and then three people start frothing at the mouth, speaking in tongues, and rolling around on the ground, and jumping over pews, and they say, oh look, look at the spirit moving.

And rightly, rightly, our brothers who have swung to this complete side, it's like, these are done, because they're looking over there, and they're going, that's demonic, man. And you know what? It might be, because there's a lot of confusion going on there, and we know that Satan likes to sow lies, deceit, confusion.

So we shouldn't act that way. There's no quarter for it. Does Corinth get to write Paul back and be like, oh, I don't know what you meant by that. No, they don't. It's very clear what he meant by this.

No more than three tongues, no more than three prophecies, sing the same songs, have someone preach the lesson. This is easy. Do you guys agree? It's pretty easy, isn't it? If you don't, if you're not being crazy and thinking, oh, is it a prayer language?

It doesn't matter if it's a prayer language. That has nothing to do with the gathering, right? Okay, just so, I hope I wasn't having a stroke this week. I'm looking through this stuff, and I'm like, man, it just seems fairly simple.

But listen to this. When we neglect these standards, we actually are promoting a God that's not God. Because when we say that God is a God of confusion, then we worship a false God. He is a God of peace.

This is a rebuke to Corinth. Corinth is to stop the disorder that they're doing. They are all trying to speak in tongues at the same time, women and men, right? They are all trying to prophesy. It is a spiritual one-upsmanship.

While someone's committing adultery, there's multiple lawsuits going on. People are getting drunk at communion, and then they're trying to show how spiritual they are in the midst of all the sin by giving miraculous gifts.

And what confuses me, the only thing that's not simple about this, is guess what was going on at Corinth? They were being overflowed with spiritual gifts. And we go, how? The first 10 chapters of this letter, we're going, this place is crazy.

And yet, at the same time, spiritual gifts absolutely flowing out of this church. You know why? Because it goes back to Acts, when Paul was sent there, and he turned the synagogue upside down, because the two leaders came, and they became part of this church.

And what happened at Corinth is that God had his outpost there. Remember, Paul was going to leave, and God said, nope, you go back in there. I've got men in there. And so Paul goes back, and that's this church.

This church has been marked by power from the very beginning. In many ways, they would put us to shame today. You know why? Because one thing that they really believed was that God is God, and he is powerful.

They had forgotten some very important stuff. But what they didn't forget was that they were called to a ministry of power, and they display it. Now, as we make the turn, we see that there is a reminder as he's working it backwards.

Remember, he brought us to the gifts, he gives us order, and then he tells us about hierarchy. The women should keep silent in the churches. They are not permitted to speak. They should be in submission, as the law also says.

There is hierarchy. What are women supposed to do when they have questions? They are to ask their husbands at home. What are women supposed to do when they have prophecies? They are to tell their husbands, and their husbands act as the firewall, the covering.

If a woman takes off her covering, it is a disgrace, and it would be better for her to mark herself like she's a prostitute. That's what chapter 11 means. He's not telling women to shave their heads, and he's not telling them that hair is their covering.

What he's telling them is that if you take off your covering, which is your husband very clearly in chapter 14, if you take off your husband, then you look like an adulteress or a prostitute, or somebody who is consorted with the enemy and should be shamed.

It's disgraceful to do that. This is not a novel idea in scripture. In fact, he says, was it from you that the word came, or are you the only ones it has reached? That's what the law says. The law. Christ is over all.

There is a hierarchy in this place. First, Jesus Christ, Colossians 1 .18. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

Jesus Christ is the head of the church. There is no one equal with him. There is no one on his level. He sets all of the marching orders, and that's what Paul reminds Corinth of at the end of this chapter, and he's going to really remind them of that next week.

Elders are overseers, so we have Christ as the head, and then he appoints under shepherds to oversee the people. Hebrews 13 .7. The reason I picked this is because it's not the normal word presbyteros here that's talking about leaders.

It's actually the word despotos, like despots, okay? Leaders. Here's what it is. Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account.

Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. We're not all in the same boat. The ground is level at the foot of the cross. We have to be smarter about our categories, okay?

We are all saved the same way. We are all saved by the same God. We are not saved by works, and yet all Christians perform works. It's what I was talking to Joel about last night. We're saying we have got to start learning some categories, and one of the categories is this.

We are not egalitarians in the body, right? There are hierarchies, and then we have this final one. It goes down to the family. First Corinthians 11 .5. Every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head.

Is she dishonoring her own head? Who is the head of the wife? That's the husband. When the wife prays or prophesies outside of the covering of her head, she doesn't dishonor herself. She dishonors her husband.

It is the same as if her head were shaven. She makes him look like a cuckold. Do you understand that? If she should have shaved her head anyway, she makes it look like he married a girl boss who's lording it over him, and to the world it looks disgraceful, and to the church it looks disgraceful.

How can this man lead anyone if he can't lead the only person that he must lead, right? And you guys have all seen this. Men, this is a challenge to you. Lead your home. Lead your home. It is disgraceful if you don't.

It is unnatural. It is abominable, and it is destroying the church, the family, and the country, even as we speak. That's what it is. I hate feminism with the burning fire of 10 ,000 suns. I can tell you that.

There is no more destructive force, and yet I understand that we all have very feminist leanings in the church. How could we not? We are in an utterly captured country and state with feminism. It's unbelievable.

So this stuff sounds normal to you. This is a huge middle finger to the culture around us, right? And I use that explicitly to say this is unconscionable for the community around us to hear stuff like this.

This is poking the idol right in the eye, and here it is. Wives, let's say you hear from the Lord, and I don't disbelieve you. Let's say you hear from the Lord. Do you know that the church does not need to hear from your mouth the words that God gave you?

You are to tell your husband, and then he can vet it, and the world around us shrieks. Even now, we're trying to decide if we should have female officers in the church in conservative denominations. We are awash with this.

The apostle does not mince words, does he? Is this confusing? Is it confusing at all? So as elders, here's the deal. We do not advocate. We do not throw away this idea. The head covering thing is in place.

Husbands are covering their wives, and here's the deal. Wives, you need to get in the practice of honoring your husband by asking him. Honor your husband by asking him. Seek his counsel on spiritual things.

Seek his counsel, and help me out with this, guys. I have to do better here. We have to do better here. Help me to not sin, and help your home to be put together. Wives, do not come right at me, okay?

Now, we don't have to be pedantic and ridiculous about this, right? But if there is a do not cuckold him by coming to ask me, ask him. And then if he tells you, hey, go ask Josh or Corey about that, then by all means do it, okay?