Head Coverings?

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I want to invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me this morning to 1 Corinthians chapter 11 and we're going to read verses 2 to 16.
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The title of today's message is Head Coverings, asking the question that so often goes along with this passage.
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Now, I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you.
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But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ.
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The head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.
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Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven.
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For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short, but since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head.
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For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.
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For man was not made from woman, nor woman from man, neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.
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That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.
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Nevertheless, in the Lord, woman is not independent of man, nor man of woman, for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman, and all things are from God.
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Judge for yourselves.
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Is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears his hair long, it is a disgrace for him? But if a woman has long hair, it is her glory, for her hair is given to her for a covering.
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If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God.
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Let's pray.
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Father of mercies, as we come to a passage which has, in many ways, weighed on my heart for several months, in fact, since the beginning I began to preach this book, this passage has weighed on my heart because, not because I fear what it says or because I fear reprisal of people, but because, Lord, I want to make sure that what I say is correct and that it would not be in opposition to you, to your word, to your truth, or to the convictions which you've placed within me.
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So I pray, Father, now, as I have before, keep me from error.
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And I pray, Father, that you would open the hearts of your people.
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Lord, God, to the men and the women in this room, Lord, that they might have a right understanding of this passage.
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Lord, that men would not use their position of authority to lord over their wives, and neither, Lord, would women use this passage as a reason to rebel.
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Lord, may we see what you have built us for, what you have created us for, what you have designed us for, Lord, is to your glory.
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And Father, as I preach, oh, Lord, may the Holy Spirit speak through me, for if he is not present in the message, it will have no effect.
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I pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.
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It was my original goal to do one message on 1 Corinthians 11, 2 through 16.
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But when I came to the pulpit last week, you may remember that as I opened up, I said, you know what, I don't think I'm going to be able to get through everything that I wanted to.
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And so last week I attempted to divide the text and I only got to two verses.
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So today my goal is to get through all of the verses because I think we have gone over the part that I think is most critical and often most controversial, and that is the passage which states very clearly that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband.
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And that passage often comes with a lot of cultural baggage and frustration because it seems as if in that passage to a lot of people, Paul is trying to subjugate women or somehow exalt men in a way that would be certainly out of vogue with modern sensibilities.
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And so last week I spent my entire time preaching, trying to explain what Paul was saying in that and that with the position of the man in the home, there is a position of authority, a position of headship, but also a position of responsibility that comes with that.
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With power comes responsibility, with authority comes responsibility.
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And so my goal last week was to try to help establish that this isn't in any way an attempt to make women inferior in the sense of spiritual inferiority or anything else, but to simply understand that God has created men and women differently.
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And that shouldn't be as controversial as it is.
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That shouldn't even be something that we're afraid to say.
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However, in our modern context, it is.
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Just this last week, a man who dresses like a woman won a cycling event where he won against all the other women.
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He was the winner in the women's cycling event.
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And when you see him standing on the podium where there are three people, there's the first place, second place and third place in their positions of having won, he doesn't even look like a woman.
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He's not even got a haircut that you would think would be traditionally feminine.
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He just looks like a guy standing there having won the female prize.
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And every sensible person is saying this is ridiculous.
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There was a, I don't know if you know what MMA is, MMA, UFC, mixed martial arts.
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There's a man who dresses as a woman who says he identifies as a woman.
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He crushed the skull of a woman in an MMA fight.
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Because, of course, he's built much differently.
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He has a different type of chemistry and physicality and build.
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And so when he got in to fight the woman, which is, you know, from when I was from a very young age, you don't hit girls.
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Well, he didn't hear that rule, apparently, because he got in and had no trouble fighting.
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Cracked her skull.
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And then triumphantly raises his hand in victory.
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Oh, how far our culture has fallen.
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So last week we talked about that.
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There's a difference between men and women.
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It's biological.
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It's necessary.
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It's biblical.
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And to deny such a thing is foolish.
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Dangerous.
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And it's it really is a bane on our culture.
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It is it is it is demonstrating the foolishness of political correctness and all the rest.
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Today, we're going to go into further, go into the text further, and we're going to see that that Paul is going to use a cultural example to explain this principle.
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He's going to talk about head coverings.
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And as I said, the title of the message today is head coverings with a question mark.
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And the reason why I put the question mark there is because this this subject of head coverings often comes with a big question mark.
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And I mentioned this last week, I want to reiterate again.
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I actually have spent a lot of time thinking about this, actually more more than just the time since the beginning.
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First Corinthians, several years have I have I thought about this passage, prayed about this passage.
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And even before I preached this passage, I called upon our elders to consider it.
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And to study it and to give me what they're where they are on this, because there is not a unilateral position on this particular text, meaning not all theologians land in the same place on this text.
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And Dan Wallace, a biblical theologian and Greek scholar, rather, Dan Wallace says there are actually four places where conservative believing evangelicals tend to fall, four positions that they tend to take.
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And so what I'd like to do, even though my intent was to put this in the bulletin so at least you could see the four positions, I'm going to give them to you and I'm going to tell you where I believe we should fall.
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And I believe the elders, having spoken to them all and met in council in session, I believe we would agree.
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But I want to give you the four positions because it's important that you understand these things.
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The first position is this.
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It's not applicable for today at all.
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This entire passage, verses 2 through 16, only had a application to the first century and none of it has anything to do with today.
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None of us agreed with that because even though we said that we believe the symbol is cultural, we believe that the principle has application to today.
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And so you have to understand there are some people who say that even the principle doesn't apply to today.
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We did not go there.
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OK, so that's position one.
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None of it applies to today.
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I don't believe that's true.
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The second position is that the hair of the woman actually functions as the covering that Paul is referring to here.
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And we see this in verse 15.
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He says her hair is given to her as a covering.
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Now, this position, I think, is more tenable.
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But I do personally see a distinction in the text between the hair and the covering of the hair, even though Paul does say in verse 15 that the hair can be a covering.
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So there are some who take the position that we really don't need to concern ourselves with it simply because a woman's hair by itself functions as a covering for her.
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So put a pin in that because we are going to come back to that and address it a little later.
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But that is another position that says we really don't have to worry about it because a woman's hair, as long as she wears her hair long, it functions as a covering.
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OK, position number three, physical head coverings are required today and physical head coverings would apply variously to various contexts.
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But it's always something.
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And you say, well, where who believes that? If you've ever been in a Mennonite church or we've had Mennonites visit here and we have since being the pastor, we've had people visit our church where you could tell by the very outside appearance and dress that they were that they were Mennonite.
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And typically what you would see is the women are dressed in long skirts, go down to the ankles, usually a lot of denim.
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I don't understand why, but it tends to be popular, long denim skirts.
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And I'm not making fun, I'm just saying it's very common.
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And then on their head is a white, looks like almost like a napkin that's held together under their chin by a very thin piece of cloth that works as a tie.
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And they wear that on their head.
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And that is their answer to this passage.
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They're saying they're they're seeking to be obedient.
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And so they wear a napkin like head veil over their head.
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And that may differ culturally, may go to a place where all women are expected to wear hats or something else.
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But typically that is an answer to this to say, yes, the physical head coverings is the is the have to.
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And because it's a have to, we'll have a standardized practice where all women will wear the the veil, whatever type of head covering it may be.
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So that's the first three.
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It's not applicable today at all.
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It's applicable in referring to hair, but not to actual coverings.
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And the third is that it's the actual covering and you have to wear it.
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The fourth position is the position that I'm going to espouse.
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So I saved it for last.
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And that is this position that the head coverings themselves.
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In the first century were a meaningful symbol, and that symbol represents a principle that is still applicable today, even though the cultural symbol has changed.
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Does that is that a long you want me to do it again? The head covering in the first century was a meaningful symbol that represented a principle.
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And while the symbol is not used today, the principle itself is still applicable to today.
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Head coverings in the ancient world, in the first century church specifically, had a purpose.
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And Paul tells us we don't have to wonder what the purpose was.
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Paul says this, the wife wore a veil on her head or a covering on her head as a sign or a symbol of submission to her husband.
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And this is culturally significant because what the sign meant then is not necessarily what it would mean today.
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So there is a sense in which we don't simply relegate it to culture, but we say, yes, there is a culturally significant symbol that's being used that we could say, OK, that's a culturally significant symbol there.
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And what was the meaning? The meaning was that it was submission.
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The meaning behind the symbol was a sign of submission.
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Here's the thing.
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It wasn't a fashion accessory.
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It had a purpose.
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It was to show something.
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And it had a defined meaning that everyone understood.
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Honestly, I want to ask you this.
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If you wore a head covering today, would everyone understand its cultural significance? Would they be confused by it? Would it maybe even get confused with other religions such as Islam and things like that? Yes.
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So head coverings today have a different cultural meaning than they did in the first century.
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Can we at least agree that today there would be a different significance? But in the first century, there was an understanding of what it meant and the purpose behind it.
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Now you say, well, what today could you compare that to? Well, I've sort of racked my brain on this and thought about some things and I thought about this.
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You know, when we get married and I am not saying that this is a one to one.
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I'm just saying here's an example of a cultural example in our day.
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When I got married, I gave my wife a ring.
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That ring was not a fashion accessory.
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I didn't have any money.
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I couldn't give her a fashion accessory if I wanted to.
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That ring was barely any diamond at all.
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It was like diamond dust.
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It was I didn't have any money, but I gave her a ring as a symbol of my fidelity to her.
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She took it and she put it on as a symbol of her accepting of my fidelity and a reciprocal fidelity to me.
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And now she wears that ring.
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She's a little better one now.
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I bought her a better one later.
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But the one she wore at the beginning was actually my grandmother's ring.
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And like I said, this is a little small ring, but she wore it as a symbol of our relationship.
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It wasn't a fashion accessory.
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She didn't wear it just because it went with her clothes or because it matched her shoes or because it brought out the twinkle in her eye.
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She wore it as a sign of the relationship that we were in.
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So we understand the concept of meaningful symbols.
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Right.
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You understand that when a man sees my wife's ring, he knows better than to come up and ask her out for a date.
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Because that meaningful symbol that we place on the hand is to identify to everyone else, she is married.
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And I know everybody's looking at my hand.
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I don't wear a ring and I know a lot of men do.
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I have a absolute aversion to having things attached to me.
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I wear clothes because I have to, but I don't like anything on my hands or my ears.
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This thing is about to drive me crazy.
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I don't like, so I don't wear a ring.
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And my wife, she almost tried to encourage me to get a tattoo just to have something.
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We'll talk about that another time.
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But what I'm saying is, I don't, for me, I should probably.
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But it's a comfort thing.
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But with her, she wears it all the time because of the symbol of that relationship that we are in.
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And so we understand cultural symbols.
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That's all I'm trying to do is connect it to something today.
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In the first century, a woman wearing a head covering in worship was a symbol of the culture of submission to her husband.
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And while I said cultural symbols change, but the principle it represents stays the same.
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The meaning of the symbol is that there's a distinction between men and women, particularly this distinction was in the church, in the corporate worship.
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And the ultimate principle is this.
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You're going to hear this several times, but this is the ultimate thing.
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Men ought not try to look like women.
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Women ought not try to look like men.
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There should not be a blending of the two in worship.
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There should be a distinction of the two in worship.
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Makes sense.
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All right, now let's go to verse four.
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We're going to actually start going down the text and I'm going to read and make comments.
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This is my way of exposition, as I normally do.
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I'm going to read the text.
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I'm going to make comments on the text as we go.
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Beginning of verse four, since we got to verse three last week, we'll start with verse four today.
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It says every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head.
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But every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head since it is the same as if her hair or her head was shaven.
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For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short.
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But since it is a disgraceful, it is disgraceful for a wife to cut her hair off or shave her head, let her cover her head.
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Now, again, the principle is this in the first century culture, men and women dress their heads differently unto the Lord.
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Women covered their heads.
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Men did not.
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Paul is arguing that if a man did cover his head.
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It would be dishonorable and that if a woman did not cover her head, it would have been dishonorable.
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Why? Because it's an exchanging of roles, it's an exchanging of of the cultural norms for men and women.
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By covering his head, a man would be putting himself into the role of a woman by by uncovering her head, a woman was putting herself into the role of a man.
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And men and women are to have distinguishing characteristics.
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And as I said, culturally, this may change, but principally it stays the same.
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Verse seven, he goes on with the same argument for a man ought not to cover his head since he is the image and glory of God.
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But a woman is the glory of man for man was not made from woman, but woman from man.
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Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.
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Now, this passage gets a lot of question marks raised and they say, oh, my goodness, a woman is the glory of man.
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How demeaning is that? Before you allow your mind to go there, before you allow your mind to go to this is somehow a putting down of women and an exaltation of men.
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I want you to consider something.
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Both man and woman are made in the image of God.
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Genesis one says God created them in the image of God, male and female.
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He created them.
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Right.
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Genesis one, twenty six and twenty seven.
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Right.
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But both were not made at the same time.
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Agreed.
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Both were not made in the same way.
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Agreed.
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OK.
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All right.
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So we know that they were both made in the image of God, but they were both made at a different time and both made in a different way.
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What was the what was the way that man was made? God made.
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He took the dust to the ground.
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He formed man and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.
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And then man was in the garden and he had all of the animals there and he was able to name them and he had a relationship with them as the one who was the dominion king of the of the of the of the garden.
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And God says there is not one among them that's fit to be your suitable partner.
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God's not going to allow him to partner with a giraffe or an elephant or a monkey or a goat.
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He says you have to have a partner and it has to be one like you.
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So I'm going to make a suitable help meet.
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People don't like that word.
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They say, oh, that's that's bad grammar.
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It's not.
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It's a word help meet.
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It means one who is fit for help, one who meets the qualities of the complementarian helper.
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Right.
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And so God produces the first anesthesia, puts Adam to sleep, and he performs that initial surgery where he reaches into the side of Adam.
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He pulls out from Adam a rib and he creates around that rib a woman.
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Different, but of the same race, of the same type, of the same being, but a different being, he was man, she is woman.
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And many of you have heard this, especially if you've ever been to a wedding where this has been quoted, but it said that God took Eve from the rib of Adam.
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He did not take her from his head so that she might lord over him, neither from his foot that he might trample upon her, but under his arm where he would be her protector and partner in life.
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And there was a sense in which the rib is an interesting place where he would take her from.
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But Paul uses that example to say this.
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He says man came not from woman, but woman from man.
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And in that woman became the glory of the man.
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And how glorious is she, guys, much more than we, how much more beautiful, how much more elegant, how much more graceful, you know, is our wives.
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We understand the glory of a wife, the beauty and benefit and blessing of a partner.
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And in that sense, she's the glory of the man.
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It's not diminishing her, it's saying the power and blessing that she's been given as taken from man and look what was made out of what came out of him.
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He was not good alone.
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In fact, of all the things in the garden, all the things in the world, God said this is good and that's good and this is good and that's very good.
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But it's not good that man should be alone.
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That's the very first time in the scripture that it says anything is not good.
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Because everything else is good.
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Up until then, he made the light, he made the day and night.
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He separated the water and the world and all these things.
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He said, oh, this is good, good, very good.
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But it's not good that there be just him.
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We also need the her.
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And when woman was created, she was the glory of man.
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And it didn't take away the fact that she was a special creation.
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Man didn't make her.
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Man didn't take out his own rib and fashion her.
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God did it.
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And it doesn't say she doesn't bring glory to God.
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She does.
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She's made in his image.
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But she's the glory of God and the man because she came out of him.
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So we move to verse 10.
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That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels.
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Oh, boy.
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That passage by itself has been rent apart and treated poorly because people say, I don't understand what it means.
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And they say it's controversial because the plain meaning is not obvious.
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Who are these angels and why do they have anything to do with the issue at all? Why are they even in the conversation? What does this mean that she ought to wear something on her head because of the angels? I wrestled with this a little bit, but I think I I believe that I understand Paul's meaning.
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And I will tell you this, if you're taking notes or what have you, I would compare this passage with first Peter 1.
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First Peter 1.
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12 says this.
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It says that the salvation that we have, the gifts that we have are things that angels long to look into.
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Angels care and look into what we have.
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Do you know what angels don't have that you have? A savior.
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God never sent a savior for the demons.
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You realize when the demons fell, there was no redemption.
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There is no opportunity for faith and repentance on behalf of a demon.
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So the Bible says that angels look at what we have and they look at it with awe and they look into what we have and they're amazed at what we have.
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So I believe this.
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And and maybe maybe one of you want to argue with me.
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I believe that that when we worship, there is a sense in which angels see what we do and they are engaged with what we do.
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I do believe there is an angelic realm and I believe that angels are among us.
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The Bible says sometimes we entertain angels and don't even know it.
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So I believe that it is safe to assume that when we are worshiping, angels look at what we are doing.
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And if they look at what we're doing and we're doing it improperly, then it would be a scandal unto them.
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If angels look at what we're doing and we're doing it in a way that is not the way that God has prescribed, then to them it would be a wonder, why would they disobey God? Why would they do what God says don't do? And to them, it would be, as it were, a scandal.
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And so Paul is making the the point to us, if for no other reason to do what is right, know that you're being looked upon by heavenly bodies who want to see it done right.
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And not wrong.
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You know what the Bible says about worship? And remember what I said about 1 Corinthians 11 through 14, it's all about corporate worship.
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What the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 14, it says that all things are to be done decently and in order.
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I did a series on worship several years ago and it was titled Decently and in Order, because there is actually supposed to be order in our worship.
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Our worship is prescribed by God.
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We operate on something called the regulative principle.
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Do you know what the regulative principle is? The regulative principle is this, that worship is to be regulated from scripture.
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That we do those things that God calls us to.
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This is why we don't have interpretive dance and miming and all kinds of other things and worship.
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We do what God calls us to do.
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We preach, we pray, we participate in the sacraments, we sing hymns, songs and spiritual songs to one another.
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This is what God has prescribed.
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And thus, this is how we worship.
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We worship according to the regulation of the scripture.
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That's the regulative principle.
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Right.
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And part of the regulative principle is that God has assigned men and women differences in the worship.
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I wonder what angels think sometimes when they see what's going on in some churches.
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And you know what this is a reminder of, really? Worship is not about us.
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Worship is about God and what we do in worship is supposed to honor God.
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And when we do something that is not honoring to God, first, we're shaming our head, which is Christ.
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And that's wrong.
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But we're also scandalizing the angels.
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Verse 11, nevertheless, and the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman, for his woman was made from man.
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So man is now born of woman and all things are from God.
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And these two verses, Paul reminds us that ultimately both sexes are important and necessary.
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As a woman, you will never be completely independent of a man.
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And as a man, you'll never be completely independent of a woman.
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And you say, now, wait a minute, I'm not married.
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I'm not dependent on a man.
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At one time you were because there was a time when you didn't exist.
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And if a man and a woman didn't come together, you would have not existed.
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Right.
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You're never independent of the union of man and woman.
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Even if you're not married, you're not independent of having come from the relationship of a man and a woman.
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No one comes from two men or two women.
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Even though that's becoming increasingly more difficult to have to say and even more unfortunate that we even have to say it.
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But in the end, verse 12, all things are from God.
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Everybody's dependent upon God.
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Right.
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There's a sense in which all men have a dependency on women.
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All women have a dependency on men.
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But at the end, all people have a dependency on God.
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You are not independent in this.
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People want worship to be so.
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So not only do they want it to be about me, but they want it to be about me.
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It's not about us.
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It's not for us.
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It's not to us.
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It's to God.
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I said years ago, it was in a little different context, but I was talking about ethics.
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And I said there's sometimes God calls us to do things that are just hard.
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Right.
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It goes against what our natural flesh wants to do.
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And yet the reality is, if we do life the way the author of life intended life to be done, that has to be the best way to do life.
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I'll say it again, if we do life the way the author of life intended life to be done, that has to be the best way to do life.
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And so if if God intends for us to worship a certain way, if God intends for us to understand worship in a certain way, that has to be the best way to do it.
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If we do anything else, we're trying to improve upon he who is perfect.
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Verse 13.
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Judge for yourselves, is it proper for a wife to pray with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is disgraceful for him? But if a woman has long hair, it is her glory, for her hair is given to her for a covering.
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Again, this particular section alone is sometimes subject to rigorous debate because the question now involves not only hair coverings, but hair length.
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And boy, hadn't that been an issue of great debate.
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And it says something, it says men naturally have shorter hair and women naturally have longer hair.
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This immediately raises a question, though.
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Mike and I were talking about John MacArthur this morning because the question is, well, how long is too long for a man? How short is too short for a woman? And I do believe this is this is a time where the Bible is not attempting to give us a strict literal rule, but rather a principle, because there's a sense in which hair length is not a universal rule.
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If you go into the Bible and you look up the Nazarite, who was who was a man, a Nazarite who was dedicated to God, what was that was the characteristic of a Nazarite? He had long hair, he didn't cut his hair.
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Samson never cut his hair until he told Delilah that that was where he was receiving his power from God.
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And what did she do? She cut his hair.
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And at that point, the spirit of God left and his strength failed him.
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Likewise, there are some feminine haircuts which may be shorter than others and yet still be very feminine.
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So I think it's hard to proclaim a fast and strong rule about this.
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But I do believe there's a principle.
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What is the principle? Here it is real simple.
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I've said it from the beginning.
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Men all look like men.
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Women all look like women.
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And if you're intentionally or even unintentionally blurring the line of sexual demarcation, then there's a problem.
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I ain't saying every guy has to look like a lumberjack.
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Necessarily.
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But how do we judge this? And not necessarily how do we judge each other? How do we judge ourselves? Right.
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Well, here's my answer.
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And I do believe I can stand on the scripture on this one.
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Paul uses a cultural example.
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So I don't think it's wrong for us to use a cultural example.
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So I'm going to use a cultural example.
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In our culture, women wear dresses.
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So if I come in next Sunday and I'm wearing a dress, you feel free to rebuke me.
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And Jack's like, uh-huh.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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But you understand what I'm saying? If I'm intentionally seeking to blur the line of my particular gender or sex, I am doing so in disobedience to God.
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In our culture, women paint their fingernails.
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They wear makeup.
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And I would argue that this passage is saying that if a man is doing those things in an attempt to blur the line of his masculinity, that that would be wrong.
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Women have a much wider range of clothing options.
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And my wife and I were talking about this.
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You know, women can have a suit that's cut for a lady and it's made that way.
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Women can wear pants.
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You know, it can happen.
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But at the same time, this is a difficult thing to talk about because it starts getting into the area of opinion.
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And I don't want to sit here and stand on opinion.
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Opinion doesn't matter.
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Some people say women should never wear pants.
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Maybe culturally at one time that was true, but today I don't think anyone sees a woman in pants and says, oh, she's trying to be a man.
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That's the that's the issue, right? The issue is, is she trying to blur the line of masculinity and femininity? And you say, Pastor, does what we wear matter? Yes.
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Our dress matters.
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The Bible's replete with passages that warn us about how we present ourselves.
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Primarily, here's the primary focus of how we present ourselves.
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You want to know what it is? Modesty and godliness.
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Modesty and godliness.
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If what we wear is a modest, Peter very clearly tells women that we ought to dress modestly.
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And if we don't do so, it's wrong.
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And it doesn't have anything to do with whether or not you wear a tie or suit or jacket in worship.
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Those things are cultural norms, very irrelevant in the grand scheme.
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But when a person is intentionally attempting to take on the characteristics in their dress, which are intended to blur the lines regarding sex, that would be an affront to the design of God.
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Don't blur the lines.
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How many of you ever heard the phrase metrosexual? It was pretty popular a few years ago.
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You never heard it? OK.
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Metrosexual was, I don't even know if they use the term anymore, but metrosexual is a man who is heterosexual.
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Not not a person who proclaims to be gay or anything like that.
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But a metrosexual is a heterosexual man given to the enhancing of his appearance with fastidious grooming, routines, beauty treatments, fashionable clothing, often accompanied by tight fitting pants.
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OK.
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Now you got the picture? That's a laugh really hard.
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That's that was known as metrosexual.
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OK.
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Here, I want to say this by itself.
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There's nothing wrong with anything I just said.
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A guy being clean, healthy and even fashionable is no crime.
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Maybe a fashion crime, but it's not a crime.
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Here's the point, though.
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Anything can be taken to an extreme.
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When that becomes a blurring of the line of the traditional feminine masculine division, that's when we have the problem.
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When a man is including makeup, painted fingernails, effeminate behavior, effeminate speech, attempting to blur the line of his masculinity, that's where the issue becomes a problem.
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There's things called guy liner and mascara.
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These are things sold to men in an attempt to try to blur the line of masculinity and femininity.
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And it could easily be seen how the ultimate goal here is one that would oppose God's design of distinction between men and women.
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Beloved, ultimately, this is the point.
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The line between men and women is not irrelevant.
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The culture says it is.
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The culture is trying to demand that the line between men and women is irrelevant.
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But science, history, experience all tell us that's not true.
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But the most important place it tells us that's not true is the Bible.
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The biblical testimony is enough.
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It's an important line in the structure of the world, it's an important line in the structure of the home, it's an important line in the structure of the church.
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And when that line is removed and there is no differences, then we remove the very diversity with which God created us.
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I want to close with this verse 16.
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If anyone is inclined to be contentious.
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We have no such practice, nor do the churches of God.
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I want to tell you that particular verse is not really super easy to understand, but I want to I want to I want to use I don't often do this.
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I want to use a contemporary translation that might help.
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And you might say, well, the ESV is contemporary.
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Yes, but it's I want to use a translation that maybe tries to find the meaning.
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This is a different translation of the same verse.
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This is how things are done in all the churches, and this is why none of you should argue about it.
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Essentially, what Paul is saying here is that those who want to argue about the principle that men and women have to be distinguished within the church ought to know that this is the way it is in all the churches.
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Now, remember, Paul's writing in the first century and Paul is saying within all the churches.
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There's a distinction between men and women.
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So if you want to argue with this, you're not just arguing with me.
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If you want to be contentious about this, know that there's no other practice anywhere else that you can appeal to.
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There's no one else you can appeal to to say you're right about this.
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All of the churches are doing the same thing, and if you're appealing to something else, it's not within the church.
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You understand some people just live to fight, right? And I've never seen an issue more fightable than the issue of men and women in the church.
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People are willing to take this to the mat, and John Calvin on this passage said this, he said, You'll never have an end of contentions if you are disposed to contend with a combative person until you have vanquished him, for though he is vanquished a hundred times, he will argue still.
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Even if you even if you overcome his objections a hundred times, he'll continue to argue because he's not arguing from the text.
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He's not arguing from Scripture.
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He's not arguing on behalf of God.
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He's arguing because he's contentious.
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And Paul says, If any among you be contentious, just know this, you have nothing to appeal to.
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Most contentious people I've ever dealt with in ministry have been over this issue.
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I'm not lying.
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I'm not exaggerating at all.
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The most contentious people I've ever dealt with in ministry have been over this issue, the distinction between men and women.
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It's been more and more objectionable than Calvinism.
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It's been more objectionable than my views on anything else that I can think of has been the issues of men and women.
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I, in fact, I have a hate letter.
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I get it periodically, I'll get a letter of hate.
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Usually it comes online.
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Not often do people sit down and handwrite you hate mail anymore.
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They'll do it online.
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It's faster and gets to you quicker.
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So I got a file of those.
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But I have a handwritten note that was delivered to me by U.S.
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Postal Mail that tells me just how evil I am because I would not affirm a woman as an elder in the church.
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What's their favorite passage? Galatians 328.
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There is neither Jew nor Greek.
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There is neither slave nor free.
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There is neither male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.
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See, pastor, there's no difference between men and women.
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And shame on you for saying there is.
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And I say, first of all, you don't like Paul until he agrees with you, because Paul wrote that.
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But second of all, a few years ago, my daughter confessed Jesus Christ.
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I baptized her in the water right behind me.
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And at that moment that she confessed Christ and she was born again by the Holy Spirit of God, at the moment she was born again, she became my spiritual equal in Christ.
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But I am still her daddy.
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And the position in our home of my leadership and my authority over her as my daughter didn't change just because she and I are equal in Christ.
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Does that make sense to you when I say there's a distinction to be made, even if there is spiritual equality, there is a distinction to be made in the home and in the church.
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And just so no one misunderstands my words, I'm not saying my wife and my daughter are both under the same type of authority either.
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But my wife is under my authority in the home and under my leadership and under my protection and under my responsibility, and she likes it that way.
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Because when things happen, she knows I'm there.
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Somebody breaks in, I don't hide behind her.
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This is the most countercultural message you may ever hear.
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In fact, I would say this, this is the message that would cause people to walk away.
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But everything that I have said, though it may be laughed out of modern schools of thought, is the principle set down in Scripture.
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There's a difference between men, there's a difference between women.
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And I will say this, man, if you are in your home and you are not taking the role of responsible leader of your home, you need to repent.
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Woman, wife, if you are in a home and you have your husband there and you are not submitting to his leadership, but usurping it or shaming him in his leadership, then you need to repent as well.
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And other women in the church who may not be married or other men in the church who may not be married, you need to be an encouragement to these people to do that, not a burden upon them.
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You say, well, what do you mean? Well, let's say you have a married woman and an unmarried woman, the unmarried woman hears that the married woman is submitting to her husband.
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Well, I wouldn't do that.
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When I was married, I didn't do that.
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Well, maybe you should repent of 30 years ago.
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I don't like that.
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Okay.
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Older women, what are you supposed to do for the younger women? Teach them in godliness.
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Men, you see a man not leading his wife.
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What do you do? I know they're all tough to deal with.
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No, you don't be a misogynist.
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You be a man and you go to him in love and you say you love your wife and you lift up your wife and let me pray for you and your wife.
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And if you don't know how to be a man to her, I'll help you be a man to her.
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And I'll send you home every night with a calling of God to go home and love and pray for your wife.
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There's nothing sweeter in this world than a loving rebuke from a friend who is a true friend.
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And men love each other and encourage each other to be good husbands, wives, women love each other and encourage each other to be good wives so that we, as a church, can stand fast on the word of God and be confident that we are seeking to live out that parable of the gospel, which is Christian marriage.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you.
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I thank you for all that you've given us.
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I thank you for the truth.
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I thank you for the love that you've given us.
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I thank you for this word.
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I thank you for the call to repentance.
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Lord, I feel it in my heart.
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There are things I have failed so many times as a husband and a father.
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I have failed so many times to take the right position of leadership in my home and shirk that responsibility and handed it over to my wife and ran away to play.
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Father, forgive me for my sins and help me to stand firm and rightly as the leader of my home.
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I pray for the men of this church that they would do the same.
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Love their wives as Christ loved the church, not lord over her and step over her and walk over her, but love her.
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And may we learn from Christ what that love looks like in Jesus name.
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Amen.