Well Ordered Worship

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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So, for the last five weeks, we have trekked through 1

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Corinthians chapters 12, 13, and 14 as we've looked at the Apostle Paul's teaching on the spiritual gifts.

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And during that time, over these last five weeks, we've seen Paul develop a robust theology of these gifts as he's moved through his letter correcting many of the

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Corinthians errors. All of these issues, tongues, and prophecy, and unity, and division.

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And if we look back over the last five weeks, what we'll realize is that we've covered a lot of ground.

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There are a lot of passages in the Bible that people memorize that are in chapters 12, 13, and 14.

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So, by way of just the quickest review, we've seen that Paul taught that there are many distinct gifts, speaking gifts, serving gifts, but there is one

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God. We heard that there are many members and yet one body.

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We've heard that there is a diversity of gifts that God has given us, and we've seen a few of those.

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And yet, it is one church. We've looked at the absolute necessity of every member of the body, even when these members are not prominent or presentable in the church.

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We've learned about the primacy, the necessity, the characteristics of Christian love.

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That passage that everyone reads at a wedding, 1 Corinthians 13, love is patient and kind.

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And we saw God's intended purpose for these gifts. Steve preached that a few weeks ago, the edification of the church, the building up of the church.

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And then last week, we wrestled with the important role of the mind in worship.

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And this afternoon, as we round off our study in 1 Corinthians 14, we find ourselves looking at Paul's final instructions on the application of these gifts.

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And this is really, if you know Scripture, you know this is how Paul works. Paul lays this foundation of doctrine and theology, and then once everything is established and firm, he builds upon it with meaningful application, with practical things that we can do in our lives with this doctrine.

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We see this, for instance, in books like Ephesians and Romans, where Paul spends several chapters, 3 chapters in Ephesians, 11 chapters in Romans, building this doctrinal, this theological foundation.

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And he unpacks whole categories of theology, the doctrine of God, sin, predestination, adoption, justification, regeneration, sanctification, and a whole host of other doctrines.

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And then he translates that rich theology. He translates that deep doctrine into rich practice, into deep practice.

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In a single word, Paul will take, like one of his favorite words, therefore, Paul will unleash sound doctrine that transforms into sound application.

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And if we know Paul, or if we were to meet Paul, I'm sure he would say that he is a lover of good theology, but even more so he's a lover of good living that is informed by good theology.

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And so what we see here in this last section in 1 Corinthians 14 is

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Paul taking this theology that he has built in chapters 12, chapters 13, chapters 14, all practical theology, but he takes that theology and he is now going to bring it to an end with this final capstone, this final applicatory or application comment.

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And so that's Paul's goal in our text for today. If we were to summarize this whole text in one sentence, we'd say that Paul here shows us how we are to take all of his teaching on the use of the spiritual gifts, and he shows us how we can apply this in decent, orderly, peaceful, and God -honoring worship.

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How do we worship God in a way that is decent, that is orderly, that is good, that when he looks at our worship on a

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Sunday afternoon, he is pleased and not disgusted? It's a pretty important idea.

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Paul shows us what well -ordered worship should look like in the weekly meetings of the church.

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Now, I said you might be tempted to slumber this afternoon because we've looked at a lot of these things already.

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One of the things that Paul does when he recaps and applies is he builds on the doctrine he's already taught.

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And so you'll be able to look at every point I have today and say, we've heard that before, but this is why you need to pay attention.

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The church today, even if we don't feel like it's our church, the church today desperately needs this kind of counsel that Paul is about to give.

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We need this inspired text because our chief activity as a church, when we come together, children, maybe

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I'll ask you, what is our chief activity? What is the very first and most important activity that we do when we come together as a church?

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It starts with a W. Worship. That's right.

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The church comes together to worship. Worship is the church's chief activity.

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And so it's best that we order our worship in a way that it pleases God. We need to offer worship to God that is acceptable to Him.

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We must do it on His terms. That's why God has given us this very text, for that purpose, to worship

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Him rightly. And we need this counsel today. Maybe we feel like we need this counsel more than the other, but we need this counsel today because regretfully, much of the worship that we see in some churches today, at least,

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I don't want to pick on churches today, it'll sound like that, but some of that worship cannot be described as decent or orderly worship.

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Sadly, many churches, just like we have, have studied 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14, and then they go on to not only misapply the texts and do exactly what

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Paul has told them not to do, but one of the greatest contributing factors to the disorderly worship of these churches is that they have not studied, they've not understood, and they've not remembered this text that is before us today.

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If people would just bring this text before their eyes, we would see a dramatic difference in the worship of that church.

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So we're going to jump right in. Last week I gave us a long introduction. Hopefully this week was a bit shorter, mercifully shorter.

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We're going to get right into the text and see what it has to say to us. So we're going to begin in 1

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Corinthians 14 and verse 25. 1

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Corinthians 14, excuse me, and verse 26. Paul writes,

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When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation.

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Let all things be done for building up. So here

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Paul is going to take all that he's taught, and he prepares us how to apply it. And he kicks off this section, just like we said, from doctrine to application, using that word therefore.

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He uses this time the question, what then brothers? So in light of everything that I have taught you, what are we to do now?

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And Paul asks, it's a question that's affectionately posed to these brothers and sisters. I think every time you see

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Paul use that word brothers, brethren, brothers and sisters, he's saying we're brothers and sisters in Christ.

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You've gotten it wrong, but now what do we do about it? It's a term or it's a statement of affection.

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Now that you have these instruction on gifts, unity, tongues, prophecy, love, the mind, what shall we do with it?

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And here Paul gives us the very first point of his application in this text. It's in verse 26.

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Paul tells us, he tells the Corinthians, well -ordered worship requires every member.

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Well -ordered worship in the local church requires the contribution of every single

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Christian, every single believer that belongs to that local church without exception ever.

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Paul begins, he says, when you come together in verse 26, meaning when the church is assembled, when all of the

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Lord's people meet together, that's all of you on the Lord's day, when everyone comes together, this is what church should look like.

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And I'm not sure you guys know that I have a strange love for history. I have a love for the cultural context of the

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Bible. And so I find this to be a fascinating glimpse into the life. If we were to transport ourselves into first century

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Corinth, what a well -ordered worship service would look like in Corinth. If you were to walk in the front door of the

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Corinthian church, what would that service look like? And how does that instruct us? Well, this is what we see.

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Paul says that various people should contribute a hymn. People are coming together, they're contributing songs.

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It's the Greek word psalmos, which means a psalm or just a song accompanied with music.

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Others, he says, come with a lesson. Maybe you guys have heard the word didache.

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There's a church history book called the Didache, and it means instruction, doctrine, or teaching.

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So people are bringing songs when they come together for worship on Sunday. People are bringing lessons, instruction, doctrine.

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People, he says, come with a revelation from God. Maybe that's prophecy, tongues, interpretation.

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And it's not an exhaustive list. But what Paul shows us is that the church was a place where people contributed to the worship of the church.

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It shows that there was a communal and a collaborative aspect to the church's order of worship.

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The church would come together to sing, to pray, to preach, to fellowship. And everyone had input in some way.

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No one was left out as a mere observer. And this is something, if we look around, even as we look at the weaknesses in our own church, this is something that has largely been lost in the church today.

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This communal, this collaborative enterprise that is the meeting, the worship of the local church.

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You see, you can learn a lot about a church and their ecclesiology. That's the doctrine of the church.

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Just by looking at the language that they use and by even looking at the furnishings in their church building.

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So if you were to go home and one of your Roman Catholic friends was to invite you to church on a

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Sunday morning, the very first thing that they would probably say, they wouldn't say, will you come and join me for worship?

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But they would probably say, would you come and join me at the mass? And if you were to walk in the front doors of that building to participate or to observe, hopefully, the mass, what you would find is that at the front and center of that basilica, probably a multi -million dollar basilica with intricate stained glass windows and gold trim and ornate wood decorations, at the very center of all of that would be the altar.

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And there at the mass, the priest, the Catholic doctrine would claim, the priest offers up the sacrifice of the mass, putting

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Christ to death once more for the remission of sins. There's a participatory element to the mass, but few

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Catholics would argue, if I were to say that is primarily a sacrifice and it's a spectacle.

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If you were to walk into a Catholic church, what is happening in the mass is a spectacle to be observed.

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And at the very end, at the very, very end to participate in. If I were to, kids imagine this, get us into a time machine and transport us back to the 17th century, 1600s, just after the

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Reformation, maybe 17th century Geneva. If we were to live in that time and a friend were to invite us to church, they probably wouldn't say, hey, do you want to come to church with me on Sunday?

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What they would say is, would you like to join us for the sermon this Sunday? And the reason that was, was because following the

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Reformation, the reformers completely abandoned this idea of the mass and the sacrifice on the altar and taking the role, taking the place of the mass in the altar was the preaching of the word.

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Powerful, expository preaching. If you were to go to the sermon in the 17th century

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Geneva, perhaps, what you'd find as you walk into the building is that there would not be an altar at the front of the room, but there would be a massive pulpit.

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When you went to the sermon, you'd see the pulpit. And if you go and look at John Calvin's pulpit in Geneva, it is such a large pulpit.

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It needs a spiral staircase to get up to the lectern of this pulpit.

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And so, even though I love the Reformation and I love reform doctrine and I love what the

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Puritans and people like John Calvin brought to us, if you went to church following the

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Reformation, you went to a sermon and not even to the church. And today, if we look at the language that many pastors and church growth strategists use, we wouldn't be invited to the mass.

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We wouldn't be invited to the sermon. We wouldn't even be invited to the church. We would be invited to the worship experience.

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The worship experience. If you read any New Age books on church planting or on the design of a church or church worship, it is all about the experience.

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And if you were to walk in the front doors for that worship experience, you would not find an altar, you would not find a pulpit, but you would find a stage.

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And there aren't preachers, there aren't priests, there are performers. The church meeting in our modern day has become a performance.

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And if we think about all of this, if we think about even how the reformers came closest to it, all of these groups in some way missed the mark.

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But here Paul takes us back to the intended shape, the intended structure, the intended order of the worship of the church.

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And Paul says here, when the church comes together, it's not a spectacle, it's not religious theater, it's not

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Christian themed music or a concert or a TED talk. It's not even a sermon alone, as good as good sermons are, but it is an assembly.

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When you come together, God's gifted people, every person in the church, every believer in this church is to serve each other by contributing wholeheartedly for the mutual edification of the body.

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And we see Paul hinted that in other letters to other churches. In Ephesians 5 verse 18, he says,

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Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery. We would all agree on that.

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He says, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. I remember I had a friend, he lived with us for a period of time and he always talked about, he came from a very charismatic background, he always talked about,

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I just want to be around other spirit -filled Christians. And when he had this idea of what a spirit -filled

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Christian was, a spirit -filled Christian was someone that spoke in tongues, that believed in prophecy, and that was surrounded by miracles at all times.

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And I love that brother, but that in his mind was a spirit -filled Christian. Well, in Ephesians 5,

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Paul shows us what a spirit -filled Christian looks like. He says, don't be drunk with wine, for that is debauchery.

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But he says, be filled with the Spirit. This is what that looks like.

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Addressing one another in psalms and hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the

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Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. That's what it looks like to be filled with the

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Holy Spirit. You come to church and you contribute. When the spiritual gifts are working right in a well -ordered church, it is a church full of people contributing.

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He quotes here from Colossians 3 as well. Colossians 3 .16, he says,

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Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Brothers and sisters, what does it look like for our church to have the word of Christ dwelling in us richly?

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If people were to come to this church and say, of all the churches I have ever been to, or have ever seen, in that church, the word of Christ is dwelling richly in all of them.

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Would it be accompanied with signs and wonders, tongues and prophecy? What would that look like?

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Paul says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thanksgiving in your hearts to God.

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It seems that Paul is trying to make a point that spirit -filled worship, when you take all the spiritual gifts and you put them all together, it's not this performance, this show of signs and wonders, but it's just the ordinary means of Christian men and women who have the spirit of God, who have the word of God, and who are loving, edifying, and building each other up.

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That's what well -ordered worship looks like in the church. Now let me ask you, brothers and sisters, do you have a biblical view of well -ordered worship in the church?

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When you think about spirit -filled worship, when you think about a church or a person that is filled with the

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Holy Spirit, is this what you think of? Or do you think of other things, the spectacular things, the prominent things?

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This is a common kind of thinking, but it's a wrong kind of thinking. So, brothers and sisters, we've asked you repeatedly over the last five weeks, you know, how are you serving?

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What is your gift? How are you using your mind? All of those things, and Paul says it one more time, and so I'm going to say it one more time.

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What role do you play when this church meets on Sundays? It doesn't have to be the prominent.

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It doesn't have to be spectacular. It doesn't have to be attractive. It just needs to be active. What is your role in this church?

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Are you known to be like a Barnabas, a son of encouragement? When everyone comes around you, man, that guy encourages me.

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Are you the person that always has a word in due season? Are you a person that has no words ever?

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And you just say, let me pray for you now. What is your contribution to this church?

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Today, as we put together our worship service, I asked Sam and Kate, what songs would you like to sing?

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I'm trying to put this into motion. Bring a psalm. Bring a hymn. Bring a spiritual song.

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Brother, thank you for sending me a psalm or a hymn this week. We haven't gotten to it, but send us hymns.

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Contribute to the worship of the church. And then Paul says this, he says in the second part of verse 26, that all of these things are to be done for the building up.

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The oikodeme, that's a word that you'd expect to hear on a construction site, around carpenters and masons.

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It refers to the building of a house. And what Paul pictures here in well -ordered worship is that a well -ordered church is first a church where everyone has a part to play.

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We can keep everything neat and tidy if only one person does everything, or if only one or two people do everything.

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But what God desires most of all is that we all contribute, that you are all a kingdom of priests.

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A well -ordered church is a church that works together for the common goal of building each other up into God's perfect spiritual temple.

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And this is something that we ought to pour our lives into, something we ought to organize our lives around.

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Speaking about this passage, I really like what John MacArthur said. He said, we are to be lost in the edification of others.

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And so that should influence the way that we spend our time, the way that we spend our money.

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Brothers and sisters, hear this, the time that we go to bed on Saturday nights and the time that we wake up on Sunday mornings, the time that we arrive here for worship, the words we say, the songs we sing, even the time that we leave, all of these things should be informed by this desire, by this sense of opportunism to serve the church.

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Every single Sunday, every single Thursday the church comes together, we have the opportunity to serve one another.

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And if only every Christian knew the vital role that they play, that you guys, that you yourselves play in the life of this church.

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What an awesome effect it would have on the health of our church if everybody knew that every time we come together,

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I am to contribute, I am to bring something. It might not be to everyone, but even to one person.

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The next thing that Paul writes in verse 27 is this. We see in verse 27 he writes,

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If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three. I want you to pay attention to what

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Paul writes here. And each in turn, and let someone interpret. But if there is no one to interpret, let each one keep silent in the church and speak to himself and to God.

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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.

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For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and be encouraged. And the spirits of the prophets are subject to prophets.

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For God is not a God of confusion, but of peace. So what we see here is that Paul tells us that at most two or maybe three people should be speaking in tongues when the church meets for worship.

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And they're not to talk over each other, but each person is to take their turn one at a time.

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And what we see about this gift is it's not an ecstatic utterance, meaning that it can't be controlled.

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But that every believer, at least in this time, that had the gift of tongues could harness that gift.

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And they were subject to each other, so that they didn't have to talk over each other.

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And in keeping with the main thrust of everything that Paul has said about tongues, up until this point,

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Paul says that if there is no one that can translate what is being said, he says, let each of them keep silent.

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They can pray quietly, they can speak to themselves, but they are not to speak a word out loud.

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Paul says, in as clear of terms as you can possibly say it, if there is not an interpreter, if it does not engage the minds of your hearers, if it does not edify the people around you, and you feel the urge to speak in tongues, don't.

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Be quiet. Remain quiet. And I don't know about you, but when

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I read these words, the very first thought that comes into my mind is how many churches act in complete ignorance of this passage.

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Again, not to be hard on those churches, but whether it's complete ignorance or even worse, whether it's just a total disregard for this text, there are many

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Christians and many churches that today simply choose or don't know the word of God well enough to obey the commandments of God, this one included.

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Many churches would be so much healthier and so much more obedient to the Bible if they would just read these words in this passage.

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I can think of countless times that I've gone to churches where dozens of people break out,

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I'm sure many of us have been there, dozens of people break out and speak in tongues, and they're speaking in tongues over top of each other, and in a way you would think that that church itself has become cessationist.

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The only difference is that the only gift that has ceased in that church is the gift of an interpreter. There's no interpreter to interpret these tongues.

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And Paul says, no, if there's no one, be quiet. I don't mean to be harsh again to these churches, but historically, this type of ecstatic utterance that Paul is talking about has more in common with pagan worship.

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In this setting, with the Corinthians in mind, it has more in common with pagan worship than with biblical

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Christianity. That's the kind of behavior that Paul is teaching directly against.

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But Paul does commend speaking in tongues, interestingly enough. Almost entirely up to this point,

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Paul has told us all the things that we shouldn't do with tongues. But here he does. He commends there should be at least two, or at most three, he says, people speaking in tongues.

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And what are we to do with that in this context? Do we say, yes, we need to speak in tongues.

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We need to work this up. We need two people today, three people next week. How are we to apply this text?

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I think that, for one, we can appreciate that this was a unique time in redemptive history.

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You've heard me talk about that before, and that God not only permitted, but empowered particular signs and wonders both to confirm and to proclaim the gospel in that setting.

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And so it would be perfectly fine if churches were to say, we do not believe that this gift is no longer used, and therefore we do not practice it.

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You as an individual Christian are well within the realm of orthodoxy to say that, as far as I can tell, the

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Lord no longer uses this gift. You can also be well within the realm of orthodoxy to say that God does allow that gift, but it must be done decently and in order according to the precepts of God.

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In my experience, I was thinking about it this week, just wrestling with how do we apply this text.

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I thought, I've only ever seen tongues used once biblically, where I thought, that is the perfect use of tongues.

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And if the setting in our church was exactly like that, I would say, we should speak in tongues too.

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But before you run away, this was the setting. So in the church that sent

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Steve and I and my family to plant, and Jason as well, in the church that sent us, at one time they had a thriving

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ESL conversation ministry. And so what we would do is every Saturday, we would invite our neighbors, who are

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English second language speakers, to what we called the conversation cafe. And at the conversation cafe, we would speak about all sorts of issues.

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If it was Halloween, we would talk about the origins of Halloween. Or if it was Canada Day, we would talk about Canada Day.

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But we always incorporated a biblical worldview and the gospel.

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We brought the word of God and the gospel to bear on all of these conversations so that these ESL students could learn

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English and hear the gospel. And one of the fruits of that ministry is that that church became very rapidly multicultural.

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We went from being a prominently gentrified white North American church to having

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Ethiopians and Somalians and Kenyans and people from Mexico and Southern America and Eastern Europe.

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And it was absolutely wonderful. And I remember on one particular

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Sunday when we started singing in tongues, and what happened in that setting was this, that the person that was leading the worship said, this

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Sunday we're going to sing this verse of this familiar hymn. We're going to sing it in English.

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And then we're going to sing it again in Swahili. And then we're going to sing verse two in English.

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Then we're going to sing verse two again in Swahili. And three and then four and then five and then six.

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And what we did was we sang the whole song in English and in Swahili.

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You could say we were singing in tongues. Now, you would say, people would stop and say,

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Shane, that's not what Paul's talking about. He's talking about the gift of tongues. And I agree. But I think that this follows the spirit of what

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Paul is trying to say. And this is what I mean. This is when tongues, we know, is being employed biblically.

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Firstly, when we as a church sang Swahili, we sang for the edification and for the upbuilding of our

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Kenyan and our Rwandan brothers and sisters in Christ. And it was a way for us to bless them, to richly bless them and build them up as they got to share their language and their culture, for sure.

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But even more importantly, because they were able. Think about this. You travel across the world.

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You move to this cold, harsh climate with a bunch of people that don't speak your language.

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And six months after meeting them, you're in that assembly, that church with those people, and you are singing the praises of God in your own tongue, in your own heart language, and people are joining you.

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It was biblical because we were able to build our brothers and sisters up. They were able to use their heart language.

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They were able to engage their minds with the words that they were singing rather than questioning their pronunciation or their grammar or to wonder about the definition of a word that they were singing.

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The words of those songs were able to minister to their souls and to ours at the same time.

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And then secondly, even as we sang in Swahili, for us as English speakers only, we knew or at least trusted that we understood the words that we were singing.

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We could hear the familiar tune. And can it be? We could read along with the

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English words. We could compare the English words to the foreign words that we were singing and we could watch.

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And as I was writing this, tears started coming to my eyes. You could watch the joy on your brothers' and sisters' faces from that culture as they got to sing the praises of God in their language even as a bunch of Canadians butchered the words to that song.

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And so it built them up and it edified the whole church. And so if you're going to practice the gift of tongues, if you're going to practice tongues,

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I would say that's what tongues needs to look like. It needs to build up the whole church. Everyone needs to know what is being said.

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And I would venture to say that in this time, in God's redemptive history, that is the best way to worship in tongues.

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And it's the kind of worship I think that reminds me of and that helps me to look forward to heaven.

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Revelation 7 -9. After this, John says, I looked and behold a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the

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Lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands and crying out with a loud voice.

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What language were they crying out in? We don't know. But crying out in a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our

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God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. That's what biblical tongues looks like when it's done decently and in order.

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We speak it for the edification of the church. If it can't be edifying, if there is no interpreter, we don't speak it.

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And as I said, what churches would benefit from if they remembered this verse, if Christians would say to their pastors or to the leaders of their church, why do we let people speak in tongues like this if it says that we shouldn't?

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This is God's Word, is it not? Then Paul says in verse 29 that we should apply the very same diligence in the exercise of the gifts of prophecy.

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He uses prophet. We don't believe that there is the office of prophet anymore simply because in the New Testament we don't see the qualifications for the office of a prophet.

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We have the elders and the deacons. But still, what we see here is the use of discernment.

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To piggyback from last week, the use of the mind in this prophecy.

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And unlike what we often see today, we don't see that prophecy was just readily received, that it was just believed wholesale without any questions or without any discernment.

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In Paul's day, there was still a clear distinction between a true prophet and a false prophet, a distinction that we would do well to revive today.

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Is what he's saying true or is it false? And so these prophets, Paul says, their words were weighed carefully.

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They were examined. They were discerned. And then anything that didn't pass the test was discarded.

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And so we would listen to every person and then people would examine that and say, is it true?

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And we see that Paul taught this in other places when he wrote to the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 5.

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He said, do not despise prophecies, but test everything, test everything, hold fast to that which is good, abstain from every form of evil.

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You're going to take some, you're going to hold fast to it. The rest, you're going to discard it.

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You're going to put it aside. John wrote in his epistle to test the spirits.

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And one of the ways that he said that we test the spirit is we weigh that prophecy, that claim, that truth claim, that claim that this is divine truth from God.

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We put that beside the gospel and we put that beside the revealed word of God.

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And if it aligns, then we might be able to agree. But if there is no alignment, it gets cast aside as false.

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This is how the Bereans, we remember the Bereans, this is how they weighed Paul's teaching.

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They asked, does it agree with the word of God? And I think that,

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I fear that many of those who claim to be prophets today, if we were to weigh their words in the scale of God's word, they would be found wanting.

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And then Paul shows us in verse 33 the very motive for this well -ordered worship. Some people might ask, why can't we talk over each other?

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Why can't we run around in circles? Why does God concern himself so much with decency in worship?

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In verse 33, we see why. For God is not a God of confusion, but of peace.

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Our motive for orderly worship is nothing other than the character and the attributes of God.

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We worship God according to his person, according to his character, according to the way that he has revealed himself to us.

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God does not want us to worship a God that we fashioned after our own image in any way that we desire.

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But God wants us to worship God on God's terms. And so that's why we worship in a way that is decently and in order.

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And what that means is, when we come together on Sundays, brothers and sisters, as a church, we're a small church, there's room for all kinds of difficulty and disruption and distraction and all of those things, but our worship cannot be chaotic.

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It must be decent. It must be based on the word of God.

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When I think about the best image, the best picture of this that we have in our Bibles, I think in the

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Old Testament, in 1 Kings 18, if anyone remembers the scene with Elijah and the prophets of Baal, and they're going to offer up a sacrifice, 1

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Kings 18, and we read about the prophets of Baal, as they were trying to get

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Baal to light up this offering that they were providing, it says that they cried aloud and cut themselves, after their custom, with swords and lances.

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It is the custom, after their custom, it is the custom of pagans to worship in an indecent way.

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But what did Elijah do? So Elijah stacked the cards against himself, he had water poured on and around this altar that he expected

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God would light up, would accept the sacrifice, but he doesn't run around, he doesn't dance, he doesn't fall over, he doesn't scream and cry.

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It seems in a very orderly way. It says this, Elijah prayed, O Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known this day that you are

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God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word.

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And he prays a bit more, and then the altar lights up aflame.

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This is orderly and decent worship that reflects a good and sovereign God that we worship.

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Next, Paul looks at the second part of verse 33. This is a controversial one.

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He says, As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent. I want you to see something here.

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There's actually three uses of that word silent. Silent in verse 28, those who are speaking in tongues and there is no interpreter, those who are prophesying and then someone else has a prophecy, they should be silent.

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And then Paul says, The women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission as the law also says.

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If there is anything that they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

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Could you imagine reading this text at a feminist rally? Now, we've already looked at these details in chapter 11.

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If you want to hear the full theology of this, I would encourage you to go to the website, listen to it.

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It's chapter 11, specifically in verse 5, where we start to see that pop up.

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I'm not going to repeat myself. But what we see in orderly worship, in worship that pleases God, is this well -ordered worship recognizes gender distinctions.

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I find it really interesting, probably not a coincidence, that churches that abandon these instructions about worship in tongues and worship in prophecy, typically also abandon gender distinctions and gender roles in worship.

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That's a common theme. And yet, the worship of the church should reflect this distinction.

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It is okay that God has made men and women different and yet equal.

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And we see this work itself out really clearly in Paul's writing in 1 Timothy 2, verse 11, where he says,

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Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.

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Rather, she is to remain quiet. Here he says that a woman should remain silent in our passage in 1

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Corinthians 14. He says, and this might make some people red in the face, that it is even shameful for a woman to speak.

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Now, what does he mean by all of that? Well, I think if we read it in the context, first of all, we see that in 1

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Corinthians 11, verse 5, Paul says that women can pray and prophesy with their heads uncovered.

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So he's not talking about this silence that is across every spectrum, all circumstances in every meeting of the church.

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But reading this text in its context, I think what we see is that Paul does not want women to be arising and to be publicly questioning, to be challenging.

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Even if you look at the context of weighing prophecy, he doesn't want wives and women weighing the prophecy of other men and bringing, especially their husbands, but other men's teaching into question.

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And it appears from this context that that's exactly what the women were doing. If we think about the

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Greco -Roman context that they were in, women were not, we might say, actually, women were more of an oppressed class.

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Women were not treated well. And so when Paul introduces submission, it was not a new idea, but perhaps the newest idea that Paul addressed was that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church.

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But what Paul is saying is that now that you're believers, and even as we weigh prophecy, and even as we contribute, this does not mean that women now break out of the role and the place that God has created specifically, especially, lovingly, perfectly for them.

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But rather, we still maintain, even as we all contribute, the gender distinctions within the church.

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Orderly worship recognizes these distinctions. It's something that we must stick to, regardless of how popular or unpopular it is.

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And I'm so glad that this quote came from a sister in Christ. A sister in Christ wrote this about this text, this doctrine.

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She says, It is not the business of the church to conform Christ to men, but men to Christ.

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It is not our business to make Jesus Christ attractive to the world around us.

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It is not our mission, our objective to make Christ palatable to an unsaved and ungodly world.

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It is our mission to conform ourselves to his perfect word. Our mission strategy, our discipleship strategy, should not be like the world, but must be radically different from the world, as we preach the gospel to a lost and dying world.

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The world and the average Christian do not need a church that looks, thinks, and acts like the world, but a church that is not afraid of being radically different in order to please

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God and to please God alone. I've been reading a book recently by Ligon Duncan.

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They share this instance where he was standing. He spoke at a women's conference about women's ministry.

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This reformed man, this complementarian man, speaking in front of a vast sea of women, speaking about the women's role in the church, the women's place in the worship of the church.

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How would you feel if you're standing in front of all these women? I'm so glad what he preached. He preached this.

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He said, in the middle of his address, he stopped and he urged these women. He said, hold your pastors accountable.

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He pleaded with them not to let the elders in their church get away with abusing Scripture and mistreating women.

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But what he meant by abusing Scripture and mistreating women was this, not to treat women like men and not to treat men like women.

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He said, sisters in Christ, I challenge you to regularly encourage your pastors and elders to be faithful to Scripture, especially in the areas that they are most afraid to touch.

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I saw this text and I'll be honest, I'm afraid to touch it. It is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

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But frankly, he says, one of those areas is male and female role relationships in the home and in the church.

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Some good and godly elders are somewhat intimidated about declaring the truth of God in these areas precisely because they respect their sisters in Christ.

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And it's true. We respect our sisters in Christ. They fear that they will appear to look down on women or to think themselves as superior or to have fallen to some sort of traditional chauvinism.

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And then he says, women have the opportunity to encourage their leaders, repeatedly saying, we expect you to teach the full teachings of God, even when it is uncomfortable for us, even when it's not politically correct.

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We want to hear all that God has to say for us. And he urged these sisters to keep their leaders accountable.

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And so even as I preach this text and as one person might be tempted to dull the blade, here

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Paul says, God has made you man and woman. Husbands are to lead, to love, to sacrificially serve, and the women are to submit to that leadership.

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And what happens when all of this is put together is this actually promotes order, not only in the church, but it promotes order in the families.

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Because what do the women do then? Rather than standing up and interrupting their husband as he preaches or to interrupt someone else's husband or some other man while he preaches, they go home and they ask their husband, what did he mean by that?

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And it's not because the husband necessarily knows the answer, but they can look at it together. It's not because the husband is smarter.

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It just promotes discipleship and worship within the family. Matthew Henry says, when the apostle exhorts

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Christian women to seek information on religious subjects from their husbands at home, it shows that believing families ought to assemble for promoting spiritual knowledge.

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And so it shouldn't be odd when a husband or a wife go home and they talk about what they heard in the sermon on the

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Sunday. That should be normal. So it's not pinning the woman under the man so much as putting them together to learn together under the

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Word of God. And I would put forward that it also promotes a vibrant women's ministry in the church.

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Women, you have roles. You have important things to contribute to this church.

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And one of the most important things that you have to contribute to this church is the life and the ministry of other women in this church.

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And I think about Titus 2. Older women likewise would be reverent in behavior, not slanders or slaves to much wine.

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This is Titus 2, verses 3 and 4. They are to teach what is good and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self -controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands for what purpose that the

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Word of God may not be reviled. Decent and orderly worship puts men and women in the right place that the

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Word of God may not be reviled. And then lastly, we see in verse 36 this, that well -ordered worship is regulated by God's Word.

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This is my last point. Well -ordered worship is regulated by God's Word. And I'll make this one quick.

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Paul says, Or was it from you that the Word of God came? I don't know how often

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Paul was sarcastic, but this is a sarcastic question. Did the Word of God come from you? Or are you the only ones it has reached?

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If anyone thinks that he is a prophet or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things

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I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. And then listen to these words.

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If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. So my brothers earnestly desire to prophesy and do not forbid speaking in tongues, but all things, here he goes, should be done decently and in order.

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Here Paul introduces us just a little bit to what some people call the regulative principle of Scripture, that when the church comes together, our worship is regulated by the

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Bible. And that means when the Bible tells us to read, to pray, to sing, to have fellowship, to have the

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Lord's Supper, we have those things. And when the Bible doesn't tell us to do interpretive dance or art behind the pulpit instead of preaching, as much as we love art, brother, anything else that is not commanded in Scripture, we don't do it when the church meets, because the

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Word of God regulates the worship of God. So we sing, we preach, we pray, we read, we see in the ordinances the

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Word of God. The Word of God has authority. And if any of us in this room want to be spiritual, if you want not just to be known as spiritual, but to be actually spiritual, man, that brother or that sister, they are a spiritual person.

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They are a mature person. What is the mark of a spiritual person? What is the mark of a church that is recognized by God rather than not recognized by the

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Word of God? That they take the narrative, the poetry, the prophecy, the law, the covenants, the epistles in this book, and they do it.

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And they do it when the church meets. And that is well -ordered worship.

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Why are churches disorderly, chaotic, and indecent? It's because they do not regulate the worship of God according to the

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Word of God. If only churches would say, some churches at least would say, what does the

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Bible say? That is what we will do when we meet for worship, no more and no less.

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In any church that takes a cavalier, take -it -or -leave -it attitude about the importance of informing our worship by Scripture, Paul says they are not recognized as being a true church.

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You can have church on the front lawn of your building, but if you want to be recognized by God as being a true church, you're a church that is regulated, your worship is regulated by Scripture.

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And I'll finish with all of this. All of this is possible. All of it is made possible through the perfect, atoning work of Jesus Christ.

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We get to worship on Sundays. We get to come together as a church, not because we deserve to, but because Christ died so that we could approach

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Him in worship. And so He gets to decide not only when and how, or when to do it, but how to do it.

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And this worship, worship that is orderly, that is peaceful, that is decent, that is done in according to God.

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Decent does not mean dull. But it's passionate, it's in spirit, and it's in truth.

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That is true worship, worship that's regulated by the Word and in spirit and in truth.

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And I'll finish just with a little illustration from the life of Charles Spurgeon.

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He once wrote this, he said, My life seems to me like a fairy dream. I am often both amazed and dazed with its mercies and its love.

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How good God has been to me! I used to think that I should sing among the saints as loudly as any, for I owe so much to the grace of God.

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And I said so once in my sermon long ago, quoting those lines.

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Then the loudest of the crowd I'll sing, he preached, while heavens resounding, mansions ring with shouts of sovereign grace.

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And so Spurgeon, as he preached, said, When it comes time to sing, I'm going to be the one to sing the loudest.

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He said, I thought that I was the greatest debtor to divine grace and would sing the loudest to its praise.

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But when I came down out of the pulpit, there was a venerable woman who said to me, now this might be in contradiction to what

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I just said in point three, but there was this venerable woman that came to Spurgeon and she said, You made a blunder in your sermon this evening.

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I say, I dare say, I made a dozen, Spurgeon answered.

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But what was the particular one you have in mind? And she said, Why, you said that you would sing the loudest because you owed most to divine grace.

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But you are but a lad, you're a young man. You do not owe half as much to grace as I do at 80 years of age.

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I owe more to grace than you, and I will not let you sing the loudest.

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So brothers and sisters, when we come together for worship, may it be orderly and may it be loud.