Head Coverings

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints.

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I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are Michael Deere and David Kazin, Chris Giesler. We are happy to answer a question about head coverings that we've had sent into our list on the website, and we do appreciate all questioners that log in and send us stuff.

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This question reads, are head coverings relevant today, or is it culturally specific to Corinth?

This is referencing 1 Corinthians 11. Right. When we get to 1 Corinthians 11, and again, in 1

Corinthians, there is more than one location in that long epistle where Paul's concern is proper order in worship.

How is the church to go through the processes of worship, the gatherings for worship, what's supposed to happen when we get together, what is inappropriate, what is appropriate?

There's a lot of helpful passages in 1 Corinthians, and this is one of them. The question is, of course, is it relevant today?

Well, all the scripture is relevant today, interpreted through the light of Jesus Christ. There are some, perhaps, ancillary cultural issues that are helpful to understand when you read this text, but I think the best thing to do right now is just read it out loud.

So, 1 Corinthians 11, and look at verse 2. Now, I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the traditions just as I delivered them to you.

But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is

God. Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonors his head.

But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered, dishonors her head.

For that is one and the same as if her head were shaved. For if a woman is not covered, let her also be shorn.

But if it is shameful for a woman to be shorn or shaved, let her be covered. For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God.

But woman is the glory of man. For man is not from woman, but woman from man. Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man.

For this reason the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. Nevertheless, neither is man independent of woman, nor woman independent of man in the

Lord. For as woman came from man, even so man also comes through woman, but all things are from God.

Judge among yourselves. Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him?

But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given to her for a covering.

But if anyone seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God. So the important thing to do in this passage is to read the whole thing.

And there are some elements to the passage that might seem weird, that seem hard for us to wrap our heads around.

However, it's important to start with what you know, that which is clear, that which you can correlate with other passages in the

Bible and build out, and pay close attention to the way that Paul builds his argument here in this passage.

I think that one of the main offenses of this passage, one of the main reasons why this passage is perhaps avoided, perhaps thrown into the wastebasket of cultural irrelevancy,

I'm getting hard to say the word, but just kind of tossed aside and not used today, is because this passage dares to claim that there is a difference between male and female.

This is one of the passages where it is stated most clearly, there is a difference between man and woman, there's a difference in the role of man and woman, even a difference of man and woman before God, in the worship practices of the church, a difference in their creation stories.

And yet, at the same time, there is a togetherness of male and female, that they're not to be seen as independent from one another.

A lot of the common cultural practices today are about feminists trying to say, we don't need men, and Sigma Male saying we don't need women, and marriage is completely thrown away.

The whole design of God for male and female from creation is being denied.

And even in the church, we are encouraged in the name of loving one another to bypass all differences between male and female.

And this passage is talking about proper order in the church, proper order for how men and women are to behave in the church, and it's rooted in the creation order.

So let's look at a few of these elements. First of all, the difference between man and woman is rooted in creation.

We are reminded that Eve was formed from Adam, woman is from man, we read.

Right, so God made Adam, in Genesis chapter 2, God formed him from the dust of the earth, and he breathed the breath of life into him, and man became a living being.

He was then given instructions to tend and keep the garden. God caused a

Noah -like parade of the animals two by two in front of Adam, and he named the animals showing his dominion over them.

However, he saw that although there was a help meet, a female to a male, with all of the different animals that God made, there was no help meet for him.

And this was to emphasize that it was not good for the man to be alone. And God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, it took a rib from Adam, and from that rib, from that wound, in the first Adam, God made the first Eve, and brought her to the man, and he gloried in her, and he rejoiced in her.

And this was a glory to God in this design, male, female, man and woman in marriage before God.

This is brought up in our passage to talk about there's a difference in how men and women are to worship, that there should be a sign of authority, a covering upon a woman's head when declaring, setting forth the truth of God, or praying, prophesying or praying, there should be a sign of authority, a symbol of authority over her head, and with the man there ought not to be.

So a lot of the discussion in church traditions and history, and even current concerns about customs and so on, immediately go to things like, well, men shouldn't wear hats inside the church building.

Okay? Well, I can accept that as a custom, and I understand that that would be problematic for a lot of people.

If I stood in the pulpit with a hat on, and I preached, that would be a stumbling block to many of my brethren.

Is the hat a sign of authority? I don't think the text is pointing to that, but there's something about, okay, so I want to know what the text means.

What does Paul mean when he talks about a head uncovered and a head covered? Because he talks about that, and he sets that up, but then he defines his own terms, okay?

In the text, he defines his own terms, and so he says that a woman ought to have her head covered, and we'll talk about the angels in a moment, but that a woman should have a symbol of authority on her head, that she should not have her head uncovered.

If her head's going to be uncovered, you might as well just cut off all the hair and have her go around bald.

Now, if that seems shameful to you, he says, then have her head covered, and guess what?

There is a covering that's given to a woman by nature, by the created order.

What is that? Her hair. Her hair. Her long hair. So, it says there's not even nature itself.

In other words, the way that God designed the differences between men and women, he started talking about created order.

He's already talked about it, and now he says, from the very building blocks of how God has made a woman and made a man, you know it is a glory to a woman to have long hair, and her long hair is given to her as a covering.

Now, I got a question for you. If God has given, by the created order, if God has given to a woman long hair for a covering, does she need another covering?

Logically, no. Right. So, if man says, okay, yes, so God has given, by nature, long hair to a woman as a glory to her, as a covering for her, and this is fitting, and this is something that is good and should be celebrated, by the way, right?

Now, should we then say, well, you know, God has given you a covering, but what you need now is something made by man.

You need a big hat. Now, if a woman wants to wear a big hat on Easter, that's fine with me.

I don't care. I don't think it's filling the requirements of this passage, mind you. Does she need a shawl to cover her head when listening to preaching or when she's praying?

Well, she might, if she doesn't have long hair, right? Think about what the text says.

It says, every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head. Now, let's take this term, uncovered.

Now, so Paul says, if a woman has a head that is uncovered, you might as well just shave it all off.

You might as well just be shorn. So, there's a state in which a woman can be uncovered and not yet be shorn.

And Paul is saying, if it's shameful for a woman to be shaved, well, it's also shameful for her head to be uncovered.

Now, who else in the passage has a head uncovered, but it's a good thing? The man.

The man. So, his head is uncovered. Does that mean he's shaved and bald? No. So, what is

Paul saying? If a woman presents herself as a man in her hairstyle, which is, you know, a very typical way.

And if you think about the debates today, think about the controversies today about men who are identifying themselves as women and trying to present themselves as women, what's one of the first things that they do to try to present themselves as women?

What do they do? So, Bosworth on this side, Amy Winehouse on this side. Right. So, they start messing with the hair.

And then, so, a woman trying to present as a man does something with her hair. And a man trying to present himself as a woman does something with his hair, okay?

And Paul is saying in the text, now, a man has his head uncovered and that's a good thing, but doesn't nature tell you that long hair for a man is shameful?

Well, he's also saying for a woman to present herself as a man, meaning short hair, trying to present herself like a man,

I'll say shorter hair, how about, I'm going to use the comparative, Sure. Shorter hair, then that is as shameful as if she was shaved.

So, what Paul is saying is she should have a symbol of authority over her head and her long hair was given to her by God for that.

But what if a woman doesn't have long hair? Was she in an accident?

Is she coming out of paganism in our current day? Is she coming off a chemotherapy?

What is it? If she doesn't have the long hair that God has granted to her by nature and she's struggling with that, then

Paul says it's fitting for her to have a covering over her head. It serves the same theological purpose.

It does. The purpose of displaying submission and respect for authority. It's serving the same purpose.

Right. So, when my mom went through chemotherapy more than once, right, so she had wigs or she had head coverings, shawls and all sorts of things to help her through that process.

And it was helpful to her, it was shameful for her to have to go around bald.

But it was a comfort to her to have head coverings that would, it would not replace her hair, but it served the purpose, you see.

I mean, even with all the technological advances that we have, it's still difficult for men to grow long hair.

And we're talking about long hair. Yeah, exactly. We're talking, you know, halfway down your back or longer. But women, especially younger women, can do it quite easily.

They actually don't need a lot of chemical help. They can just do it. It's just part of how men and women are different.

Exactly. So, when you read the text, obviously, Paul's arguing from creation. He's arguing from the difference between male and female.

And he's saying the differences, now watch this, the differences between male and female should be kept and celebrated and established in the church.

That this should be a place where male and female, the differences between them should be readily apparent. And this is glorifying to God.

It's a form of worship to recognize how God has created men and women differently. Yeah, and it's proper order of worship.

Now, what about the angels? What does it say? It says that, verse 10, for this reason the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels.

Now, when we deal with anything with the angels in the scripture, it's always helpful to actually read what the

Bible says about angels and not to go on long benders of speculation wherein there's all kinds of nonsense.

We see angels at work in the scriptures as the messengers and the agents of God.

We think of Jacob and his vision, Jacob's ladder, the angels ascending and descending upon the ladder. Christ saying to Nathaniel, you're going to see the angels ascending and descending upon the

Son of Man. We think about the role of angels ministering to Christ and ministering to his body as angels ministered to the apostles and ministered to the

Christians. We see in Hebrews that the angels are sent forth to minister to the believers, to the saints.

We see angels attending and participating in worship in heaven. As is in heaven, so we are to emulate our worship here upon the earth.

What do we expect? If Jesus was ministered to by angels in his prayers, in his wrestlings with God, in his worship of God, are we not also aided by the angels?

Is that not what they are equipped to do? All you got to do is just read what the Bible says about angels to see the relationship the angels have to the saints as one of assistance and sending forth blessings and helping us.

Have you ever visited a church and you've walked in, it's your first time there, and you walk in and you're trying to gauge what's going on there, and all of a sudden, somewhere in the middle of the service, you're thinking, can

I get out of here? Because you are so offended by what is going on.

I've been on a few services like that. Maybe something is being sung and it's like, this is heresy.

Maybe the way in which they're conducting their worship service is just grieving your soul. Maybe something is said from the pulpit or they've got the wrong kind of people in the pulpit, so on and so forth.

And you're just like, I've got to get out of here. Angels minister in the presence of the glory of God, and if they are to come to a church service and we're out of order, and we're not worshiping with proper order, and we are counter to the word of God in our worship,

I think they're leaving. I don't think they're sticking around. I don't think they're helping. I don't think they're blessing. You see? I don't think we're getting the aid and the help of God in our worship if we refuse to worship according to the order that he's given to us.

If we're denying the basics of, it doesn't matter the distinctions between men and women in our worship at our church, that's going to turn into a lot of different problems.

Not only the problem of the roles of men and women in the church that reflect the order set forth in creation that is forged in the family, but what if you have a bunch of women presenting as men, and what if we have men presenting as women?

What do we find from this text that is shameful, shameful, shameful? And I've been to shameful church services and I wanted to get out.

I don't want the angels leaving because we have shameful things going on in our church services.

So, why is Paul selecting, identifying head coverings as a sign of authority?

Why that? And I think he might answer it, that Paul didn't select it.

God selected it. And God said, this is a symbol of femininity.

So, he says, well, this is the only place that this is mentioned. He says, well, no.

Talking about the differences between men and women, men not presenting as women, women not presenting as men, dressing in the clothes of the time, getting short hair or whatever is the culturally masculine trait, culturally feminine trait.

You have to have those standards in place before you can even present as a woman or present as a man.

You have to have what those standards are. Those principles are repeated over and over. You can see it actually in the

Mosaic Law. Men shall not dress as women and women shall not dress as men. That is the principle to which

Paul is appealing. It's not just head coverings. Hey, make sure, women, make sure you have a piece of cloth on your head.

That's missing the point entirely. It's men are men, women are women.

It has been like that since the very beginning. The principle is repeated in the

Mosaic Law. It's repeated in the Law of God. And Paul is appealing to that very principle here, talking about the created order and how men and women are created differently, that they should have those different roles.

Any authority is derived from God and he makes it very clear, look, it's all from God. That any authority is all derived.

Nevertheless, in the Lord, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman.

They are distinct, but they are not independent. They are not identical, but they are interdependent.

This is subject to God's design. It's always from God. Yes. So if this passage were more,

I guess, robustly grasped and celebrated, what kind of pitfalls could we avoid in studying this passage?

I mean, one of the things is simply this, that maleness and femaleness is based in God's good creation and based in nature.

And that to present as something else is shameful, right?

So there's a lot there and it's not about, okay, women need to wear doilies on their head or some sort of cloth over their head in special circumstances.

And those who do that, I understand why they do that. I'm not saying that they're sinning. To my reading of the text,

I think they go beyond that which is necessary, but I don't think they're trying to be rebellious or disobedient.

I don't think they're trying to be prideful or so on. And I rejoice in my sisters who do that and the brothers who encourage them to do that in their, and that's, they're going to worship according to their convictions and they're going to do so in their liberty.

And I rejoice in that with them. You would consider that a conscience then issue that they want to do that, but you do disagree with a woman who has long hair.

She is living according to God's designs. She is living as a woman recognizes that then she's female.

In addition, she's putting another piece of cloth on her head. Although it's a conscious issue, you would disagree with it.

I would because again, when we look at this, I don't know how long Paul's hair was.

Right. He probably had a high and tight. He was a Marine. Yeah. He probably had a high and tight. Something. I don't know how, but men have shorter hair and women have longer hair, right?

If we say men have short hair and women have long hair and we just leave it at that, then now we're looking for the ruler and how many inches and so on.

But if women have longer hair and they're, and she, and if a woman has longer hair and maybe her hair is, you know, sitting at the jaw line and then there's another woman, her hair is sitting at her waistline.

Okay. One is not in sin and one is not more holy. You see, there's liberty in Christ.

Right. Even as we embrace the different, you know, roles that we have, a guy may have longer hair, you know, longer hair than other guy, but they're both shorter.

They're both presenting as male. Right. And so there's, they're not trying to present as something other than male.

And Paul says that that's not a subjective thing entirely. Nature itself, the way that God has designed that says there's something shameful.

Now, if you go back, you go back a few decades, what were the rock bands doing? The exact opposite.

Putting makeup on long, big hair, long hair. Yeah. Perming. Right. And then, you know, punk rock, the women, what would they do with their hair?

Cut it short. Right. Where'd they get that idea from? You know, what were they doing? The whole idea was about rebellion.

Casting off authority. So we're going to rebel against nature itself. Right. And of course, the independent fundamentalist

Baptist who were like, you know, that's from the devil at sin. Well, they weren't wrong.

Okay. But then to get out the ruler and say, your hair is touching your ears. Yeah. You know, that's, that's not the answer.

They knew Paul was right, but they didn't know what argument he was making. Right. Exactly. Yeah. There are men out there with a bowl cut, you know, that's, there are reasons not to do that, but it's not, it's not a, it's not a theological issue.

Yeah. Well, it seems pretty, that's called, it's called presenting as one of the three stooges or Kim Jong -un.

Oh man. So I have a question about some of the wording here and the issue of authority and maybe hierarchies.

So in verse three, but I want you to understand that the head of every man is

Christ. The head of a wife is her husband and the head of Christ is

God. There's seeming to be a hierarchy there. In verse five, it says, but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head.

Is there a little bit of wordplay happening here? Is he saying that she's only bringing dishonor on herself or is it claiming she brings dishonor to more than just herself, also her husband.

And we have some of that language, like say in weddings, who gives this woman, her mother and I, and I have this conversation with my daughters.

I'm in charge of you. Not I'm the boss, but you've been given into my charge to take care of you.

I have authority over you. And one day I'll pass that authority off to another man.

Correct. And in our current culture, a lot of times, and maybe this is just anecdotal, but a lot of times when you see young women that have shaved their heads, you can ask them, well, how's your relationship with your father?

And it's non -existent or rebellious or just antithetical to everything their father stands for.

And it just seems to be like, that's just nature. You're rebelling against nature and you're throwing off all of the authorities above you.

What translation do you have? ESV. Yeah. So what they do in the text is that they translate the woman as wife, because in modern new evangelicalism, what has to be stated again and again to preserve our place in a cultural positivity is that there is no sense in which on any scale that men have a role and responsibility in society for authority and women have a role and responsibility in society generally of submission.

That it's only ever in respect to the marriage relationship particularly that there is any kind of authority of a man over a woman, it's only husband and wife.

It's the only way it ever applies. And that is the neo -evangelical interpretation. However, we have problems with that interpretation when we read the

Bible out loud. Now, some translations unnecessarily become very specific where the

ESV does that. We live in a society today where feminism is so ingrained that it's so much in the water and in the air and so on that these assumptions just have to be automatically made and so on and so forth.

But that's not what the text says, right? So the text says the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man.

That doesn't, of course, that doesn't mean that every woman is under the authority of every other man.

Right. However, Paul is dealing with the types, the archetypes of male, female, okay?

And what is the general relationship there, okay? And by the way, in the wedding ceremony, it used to be who gives away this woman and the father said,

I do. Because he didn't say her mother and I, which makes sense with this text because he's the one where the man is the one with authority.

Right. Who is the young man supposed to ask for permission? He didn't go ask the mom and the dad, you go ask the dad.

Right. Now, that makes feminists crazy. They're like, you're just treating us like property and so on and so forth.

And the Bible, of course, affirms the full image of God. In the woman.

Yes. As well as in the man. This is not about being less than. That's Genesis one, both male and female, he created them in his image.

Sure. You can't get any more basic than that. But when God made the woman, he made her from the man and gave her to the man.

Was there a situation somewhere in God's very good creation where the woman stood apart from the man and they both thought of themselves as unrelated to each other?

No. And was this relationship one of absolute dominion and absolute degradation?

No. She was not made, the old trope goes, she was not made from his foot so that he would step on her.

She was not made from his head that she would rule over him, made from his side to be his help meat.

But there was a relationship there of hierarchy, of authority, which Paul is referencing here.

Paul didn't know that he wasn't supposed to say this. He didn't know.

Poor Paul. But he is talking about some principles and the way in which

God has made things. Now, he's going to go on later on and talk about. Now, think about this dynamic in 1

Corinthians 14 that sometimes we just totally miss. In 1 Corinthians 14, in proper order of worship, he says that the woman should remain silent and ask her own husband at home.

If it's simply a matter of the authority that the difference in the relationship between male and female is only ever about husband and wife, then the husband should be able to say to everyone around, hey,

I've given her permission to preach. I've given her permission to be an elder in this church, and we've talked about it, and she's under my authority, but she's good to go as a pastor here.

Once you've settled that, there should be no more differentiation between male and female, because remember, it's only between the husband and the wife that there is any kind of hierarchy.

It's not between male and female at all in general. There's no difference. They're totally fungible in terms of roles.

But that doesn't work in 1 Corinthians 14, because not only is she not supposed to be contradicting and saying, hang on a second,

I'm not sure if that's correct or not to those who are prophesying each in turn in an order. That's not what she gets to do, but she does get to talk to her husband about it and say,

I think the guy was a lunatic. I think he was totally off on his doctrine. Why didn't you say something?

Help me understand. And then the husband's like, I was asleep, sorry, or something like that. But there's a role there that persists even in 1

Corinthians 14. But in 11, when it says if she's praying or prophesies, it doesn't say anything about preaching or having that role of authority.

So when you look at the text and you have this idea of hierarchy, does she dishonor her own head? Yes. So every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, for that is one and the same as if her head were shaved.

It's not only like in particular regard to her husband only, her head being her husband.

It's a disgrace to herself. It's a disgrace to herself because what is she doing? She's presenting as if she's not a woman.

So proper order in the church went away a long time ago. A long time ago, we stopped celebrating the differences between men and women.

We stopped honoring God with the differences between men and women. So why did it go away? Well, in our culture,

I mean, any difference, if you draw any difference at all, that is an opportunity for continued further oppression.

Right. This is a defense mechanism. I tread into these waters at all with really with anyone.

But just going through the scriptures itself, this is a minefield.

It is seen really as a personal attack. You read any of these, oftentimes, you have to have a caveat and you have to have a disclaimer and you have to have this, this.

Well, it doesn't mean that you get to treat women as slaves. It doesn't mean this. It doesn't mean this.

You have to couch it. Well, our culture is spring loaded for self -defense and you read any of this and I'm not talking about radical feminists.

I'm talking about Christian women who want to understand the Bible, want to submit to God's design.

They read this and get scared. Sure. And I can't say that I blame them all that much, but they read this and get scared.

How do you address the fears of a, especially a new Christian, a new

Christian woman who has been steeped in the culture itself, has been rebellious and says,

I don't want to be like that anymore. I was miserable and Christ has reached down and saved me.

Now I'm willing to be, you know, submits to, to his, his rule, but this, how far am

I supposed to go? I mean, I'm willing to go all the way, but I don't, does this mean that, that I have no voice that I, I'm only worthwhile if I get married?

I mean, my head was, my, my hair was, was really short. I'm not trying to present as a man, not, not anymore.

What, what do I do? How do we assuage those fears? That's a good question. Paul roots this whole thing in the design that God has for, for men and women, for maleness and femaleness, right?

So he points back to the created order. So what is this passage on about? It is advocating for not only men to do what is manly according to God's definition, not some sort of pagan

Greek definition or some pagan American definition. Put the rulers away, stop measuring hair lengths.

Yeah. Or, or, or anything else that becomes a common pagan trope of maleness in a materialist

Marxist society, right? So what, what is maleness in a materialist society? Muscle mass or something, or here's my bank account here.

I drive these cars. Collecting wives as trophies or girlfriends as trophies. Yeah. So that's, so that's what gets read into maleness.

And that's why everyone, you know, like, well, that's, you know, it should be against that. And, and then what about femaleness?

You know, are we actually reading what God has to say about maleness and femaleness? What does it mean to be a man?

What does it mean to be a woman? So this passage is about, hey, it's a glory to you, a woman, that you would be given this covering, this long hair.

It's a glory to you that you would present as a woman, to present as a man is shameful. You should be, you should be delighting in the fact that God has made you a woman and rejoice in that.

Do we have more to learn about that? Sure. I got more to learn about how to be a man. And we have to go to the scriptures.

Paul was pointing us to the created order. Paul is pointing us to the scriptures to go read elsewhere, to know what this means.

And so that's what that is. Growing up into Christ, proper worship and, you know, so on and rejoicing in who

God has made us, we have to go to the scriptures to be taught what that is.

So a godly biblical woman, she rejoices in being feminine. She rejoices in being female according to God's definition, not according to romanticism, not according to the enlightenment, not according to feminism, but according to the scriptures.

Right. Now, if you read about the women who are praised in God's word and you read through that, wow.

I mean, the Proverbs 31 is an amazing passage. Hey, this is the kind of wife that any man should be desirous of.

Hey, look at, you know, look at, look at what kind of a woman this is. Go read, go read elsewhere. There's lots of, there's a lot of stuff in the

Bible that talks about what does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be a man? That's where we have to go for our definitions. So this is not about saying to women, you must take on some stereotype from some previous generation, right?

That's not what this is saying. This is saying you need to actually progress into the fullness of what does it mean to be a woman?

According to the scriptures, ain't nobody's arrived there yet. We need to make progress.

This is not about going backwards. This is about going forward. We have been regressing in our churches. We have been shying away from, we have been walking backwards down the mountain.

We have been retreating from what God calls men to become, what God calls women to become.

We've been retreating from the summit. We don't want the hard climb. We have, this is not progress.

This is regression into paganism. What is Paul talking about here? Is it culturally connected?

You bet it's culturally connected. Guess what was going on in Corinth? All kinds of sexual immorality. You know what's happening in Corinth?

Women were presenting as men and men were presenting as women in Corinth. That's what was going on.

And Paul says that shameful time to progress out of paganism into Christianity.

That's why I think this passage is very relevant. Amen. Well, I think we can move on to some of the content that we would recommend for our listeners.

If they haven't hit some of these books or podcasts or videos already. Michael, what would you have for them this week?

I would recommend look up Chapel Library. It's a ministry of Mount Zion Bible Church from Florida.

And they reprint the Puritans. And they do so for free or for like a couple of dollars.

I mean, they put out so much material. Best thing to get is the Free Grace Broadcaster.

You can sign up for it. It's a quarterly. And it comes out with a theme. And they have about eight articles taken from longer writings by the

Puritans. But it gets into bite size. And you can just read all about whatever the topic is.

Maybe it's the atonement. Maybe it's the family. They'll throw a modern author in there every once in a while. But again, you sign up for it.

It comes quarterly. It comes free. They're not asking for any cost. And they always offer you a quarterly offering of free materials.

Tracts or small books and so on. It's all very inexpensively produced. But it's great.

It's helpful. It's great devotional reading. And if you're ever teaching on a subject or if you're ever trying to research a subject, it's nice to go grab one of those

Free Grace Broadcasters on that topic and just have all of this indexed

Puritan writings right there at your fingertips. It's really helpful. David, what about you? That's great. So my family's been going through Isaiah.

And I don't think I've mentioned this before. But in case I have, I'll mention it again.

This is a very readable commentary on the book of Isaiah by Barry G.

Webb. This was written back in the 90s. And he's out of Moore Theological College.

And it's the Bible Speaks Today series. But it's The Message of Isaiah by Barry G. Webb. And I have benefited from this little volume so much.

I've listened to sermons. And there's huge commentaries that have been written on the book of Isaiah, obviously.

But this is from the back. Ever since Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue of Nazareth, Christians have gravitated to this great prophecy as the interpretive center of the

Old Testament. Here is the story of Israel, scourged by judgment and exile, and hopeful a restoration is framed by his witnesses, heaven and earth.

It's been very, very beneficial for me as especially going through the second half of Isaiah 40 through 66 and reading this through the interpretive lens of who

Christ is and reading about the servant. So I hope that it blesses you. If you haven't gone through Isaiah in a while, do so.

And if you're looking for a very readable kind of layman's commentary on it,

I would suggest The Message of Isaiah by Barry G. Webb. Barry Webb's good to listen to as well. I enjoy listening to him.

Does he have a nice Australian accent? He does. He does. And the guys at a more theological college are just on the forefront of what

I would consider to be good biblical theology. Keeps the big picture in view. All right,

Chris, what do you have for us? I have a book that's somewhat related to today's topic. It's called

Conscience, What Is It, How to Train It, and Loving Those Who Differ. And I went through this book years ago when

I was kind of struggling with some of my own convictions internally on my own, but then also in our marriage.

When your wife doesn't share the same convictions or your husband doesn't share the same conviction, what do you go with?

How do you differ, especially if you're married? Head coverings or drinking or schooling or whatever it is, there's these issues of conscience.

And so this book was really, really helpful for that. It's by Andrew David Nasselli and J .D.

Crawley. Conscience, What Is It, How to Train It, and Loving Those Who Differ. All right.

Well, I'll introduce mine with a couple of questions. Have you guys heard much about the economy lately? Like jobs, money, the dollar, anything like that?

I heard it was the best economy ever, Jack. Yeah, best ever. Jolting Joe Biden's economy. Jolting Joe.

So I've recently had a free download from a – he's actually a professor at the

Oklahoma State University. And this would be the only way I ever became a poke is if I were able to go and take his courses and get a master's in economics there.

But he has a primer called How to Think About the Economy. It's printed by the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.

It's a 139 -page or 130 -some -odd -page primer on how to think about the economy, money, markets, price and value.

It's all from the Austrian perspective. And I find the Austrian perspective most helpful when thinking from a biblical lens because they take many biblical presuppositions or Christian presuppositions and apply them to the economy.

And I think that's probably why a lot of Christians are Austrian economists. But something like that at a time like this, 139 pages, you can sit down and knock out,

I don't know, five, six pages a night and you can get through it pretty quickly before everything kind of crashes on us and you'll know what to do when that time comes.

But I'm recommending that this week. Michael, what are you thankful for this week? Well, I'm thankful for the rain that we've been enjoying.

It's been a long time since we've had some good steady rain and it's interrupted a few of my projects.

But it also has brought needful rest. So it's about trusting the

Lord and his timing and his provision. So I'm thankful for the rain. Amen. David? I am thankful that a friend of mine that I've known since some of my times overseas, you know, quote unquote, going outside the wire, came through town with his wife and we were able to have a dinner in our home.

I thought we were going to have to be going out to dinner and I was sitting there trying to arrange all of this and Amy just said, no, let's just invite them in.

Let me cook. And she had breakfast for dinner and they loved it. You guys ever had breakfast for dinner?

Do it. It's the best. It is the best. And we just enjoyed each other's company and I got to talk about some very difficult and frank things with him that he would understand.

And then they sent them back to their hotel. They were driving from Albuquerque to visit their daughter

Hope in Tuscaloosa. She's going to University of Alabama. So they just wanted to come through and saw us and they made time for us and it went slightly out of their way, but they did it just to see us.

And I'm very thankful that they came in. Amen. Chris? Breakfast for dinner. I think I'm going to do that tomorrow night.

Oh, it's awesome. Friday night, bacon and eggs. Yeah. I am thankful to be able to see some of God's providence in what he's doing in other people's lives, to hear people's testimony or things that they're going through that I've gone through in the past and can look back and say, wow, it looks very different this side of it.

And I can see what he was doing then when during it, I couldn't see what was going on.

And I'm very grateful that he allows us to see that. I get that. It's not every time.

Sometimes we won't know this side of heaven, but I am grateful for those times where he does allow us to see it.

Amen. Well, I am thankful the Lord and his providence reorders our loves and reorders our understanding of what family is for, the purpose thereof and how to relate to one another.

Chris and I were talking about this, I think last night, when family becomes the all thing, which a lot of times as Christian, we are accused of making an idol out of family, but Christ actually reorders that, puts it into place, gives us the proper love for it.

That way, he shows us how to be most faithful to that family he's given us. And when you make family the highest good, you actually, when it fails, you toss off that idol pretty quickly, whereas you're more liable to be faithful to that family in the light that Christ has given you.

So I'm very thankful that he reorders the way that we love our wives and our children, and he does so by his spirit on a daily basis, because I absolutely need his daily guidance in this endeavor, this sanctifying work.

And that wraps it up for today. We are very thankful for our listeners and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Have You Not Read?