A Can of Worms

I started a series last week calling it theology.

Theology is simply a compound word that means the study of God.

I'm taking a different approach in this series than I normally do.

So if you're new, this isn't totally normal the way that I'm doing this.

Normally I'll take a scripture, I'll break it down, I'll give you a word, a kind of a word from God from that the perceived God giving me for you and for us.

And normally I do it like that.

This time what I'm doing, this is a heavily practical, equipping type series.

I want you to think of theology not as just a cold academic term, but a journey of learning about God, seeing him as he really is, getting into God's word.

And so my whole goal, more than just trying to get you to align with me theologically on every concept, which by the way, a lot of times pastors or preachers sort of present themselves as arbiters of truth.

And, you know, I'm gonna definitely share when I feel like, man, here's the truth we need to all hear and understand and know together.

I'm gonna do that.

But I don't feel a need to make you believe everything I believe.

Um, I'm actually quite comfortable, I think, with the right tools that you have to allow the Holy Spirit, you, the Holy Spirit, his word, I just think you're gonna come up with some good stuff, and I'm at peace with that.

Even if it's uh different, slightly different, or maybe a lot different than what I come up with.

I don't feel a need to control it.

And part of it, honestly, in my life is I've seen over the journey of my life as I've grown in life experience and even depth of knowledge of God's word, I found myself sort of softening on some positions, I've hardened on some others, I've completely changed in others.

And I think that's normal.

We don't need to be ashamed of that.

I think that sincere journey is really what the Lord wants from us.

And so I was actually thinking of a quote from Horace Mann.

Uh, he said, Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you.

It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.

Anyone bear witness with that?

And so I think you know that that that's true of philosophy, that's true of theology, uh, and a lot of different things.

So that's kind of the approach we're taking.

I'm gonna give you a resource I gave you last week.

It's called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.

I think this is something that uh would be helpful to you in your sincere theological journey, and it's um it's four different things that you'll want to run Bible verses, thoughts, concepts, whatever, theological concepts through.

Uh the first one is the scripture itself.

And uh to dig deep, we uh I brought the uh the old uh microscope here because sometimes you gotta take a verse and look at it under the microscope, make sure that you're interpreting it correctly.

By the way, here is a just a good, like uh notable quotable when it comes to theology.

Bad interpretation leads to bad application.

Bad interpretation.

If you look at a lot of bad application of the scripture and you track it backwards, you would track it down to a bad interpretation.

And we should all be even a little slightly skeptical of our own interpretation.

We're not in a weird way, but in a healthy way.

Hey, am I seeing this right?

It's a good question to ask.

So, scripture.

The second is tradition, and tradition is just kind of a way of saying there's been a lot of people that's looked at the scripture, and so we have hundreds and thousands of years of people's experience and education that's been brought into vocabulary words and concepts, that it would be good for us to know as much of that as we can, because if I can see, you know, tilt the prism on a scripture or a theological concept and know multiple viewpoints, then I can kind of come to my own.

Not that I'm necessarily gonna take a tradition and just copy and paste it and call it my thought.

I'm gonna think independently, but the more that I can sort of understand what people have already learned, it kind of saves me some time.

Alright, so we have tradition.

The next is reason.

All right, does this theological concept of the scripture make logical sense?

And then the next is experience.

You know, your life experience is gonna be part of uh you wrestling things to the ground.

Alright, what I'm gonna do this week is uh I'm gonna open up a can of worms uh in the scripture.

And today I have brought a real can.

Oh, I even got some dirt.

You know what I'm talking about, Oreo cookies.

I'm gonna take a worms, okay.

I'm gonna take out a few worms today, and I'm gonna look at them under the microscope, and we're gonna look deeper because we're gonna read some things in the scripture.

Have you ever read something in the scripture when you read it?

It bothered you, it felt a little bit out of pocket.

You're reading by like, what is that?

You might put like a question mark on your Bible, you're like, I don't I'm not sure what to do with that.

I'm gonna work some of this out in front of you.

Like, I'm sort of like, I want you to see like how I might do this in private.

This is something maybe you could do like on a Tuesday.

So I'm gonna hit some specific stuff, but this message, I just want to make sure that I'm not unclear about this.

This message isn't just about the topics I'm gonna talk about.

I'm trying to arm you with a way to think through to put something under the microscope because you're gonna come up against thousands of these throughout your life.

All right?

Okay, here we go.

1 Corinthians 14, 34 and 35.

I'm just gonna read it as it is.

Women should be silent during the church meetings.

It is not proper for them to speak.

They should be submissive, just as the law says.

If they have any questions, they should ask their husbands at home, for it is improper for a woman to speak in church meetings.

God bless you guys.

It's been a great day.

We're gonna have to look at this under the microscope.

You read something like that and you're like, what do I do with that?

First of all, one of the things to think about when it comes to theology, when it comes to studying your Bible, what we would call hermeneutics, studying the Bible, is you need to understand that the Bible was not written to you, but it was written for you.

Okay?

Written for you, but not written to you.

I know that might, you might have a feeling about what I just said, almost like I'm devaluing the Bible.

No, what I'm doing is helping us make sure that we interpret correctly.

So when you're reading the Bible, you do have to bear in mind this is not written to you, but it's absolutely written for you.

Well, what does that mean?

Well, that means that when I'm reading it, I need to look and go, okay, what is this?

This is the Corinthians.

Who's writing it?

Paul.

He's writing it to somebody else.

And so I will be asking myself as I'm trying to interpret correctly, what things are written for the Corinthians, and then what things are written for everyone for all time.

And one of the things you'll notice in the Bible is that over the span of the Bible, in both Old Testament and New Testament, you have systems, you have government systems that are happening, you have family systems that are happening.

And so, understanding those contexts, you'll see sometimes it's actually quite surprising.

You would expect the Apostle Paul or Peter or or John or James or Jesus even to speak more about system reformation.

Don't hear me wrong.

Systems need reformed, systems need changed, but systems are contextual.

If the Bible was written to us, it would probably say a lot about the internet.

It would probably say a lot about digital because the the digital universe, right?

Our church itself is different because we literally have thousands of people that go to our church that don't come to this building.

So the technology then changes the systems and how things go.

And there's not a ton focused on like here is the system that you should do for all time.

It's really heart-based, it's really paradigm-based.

It's attitude and all of this.

Why?

Because systems change, but if you have a bad heart, even a good system can be corrupted with a bad heart.

But frankly, the the inverse is true.

You could give a bad system to a good heart and somehow it works.

And so the diving deep into the heart, and yes, absolutely, change systems, but you have to look at what is what's for us and what's for them.

Okay, so you look at this.

What's up with this?

Women should be silent in the church, and and and and and you know, they should ask questions of their husbands at home.

How does this fit?

Well, if we look at at 1 Corinthians, okay, the whole book, I mentioned this a bit last week, but the center of gravity of the entire book is 1 Corinthians 13 talking about love.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels.

Now, in other words, if I knew every human language and I could speak angelic languages.

Paul is using a little hyperbole here, but he's saying, if you were the most educated, smart person, most refined, but you didn't have love, he said you just make a noise.

You're like a clanging cymbal.

And then he goes through and defines love.

So he's saying everything you do should have the foundation of love.

So when you're reading something here that seems like it's degrading to someone or that it's creating a devaluing of one life over the other, you've got to understand the center of gravity, the foundation, is that that's not what Paul is saying at all.

What he's talking about in chapter 12, he talks about spiritual gifts.

In chapter 14, he's talking about logistics that are contextual to Corinth.

And so he says at the end, at the first verse, he says, Let love be your highest goal, because that's the first thing he wanted you to hear.

That's the foundation.

Then he says at the end, do everything in decency and in order.

Okay, so what would that why would women then need to be quiet?

Well, in that world, you have to understand their context is that women did not have the same educational opportunities that men had.

Most of the women in the Corinthian church were illiterate, or they were much less educated because they didn't have the same opportunities that men had.

So the way that their church was designed, even the structure of it, I look out into this church body and I see men and women sitting together, but they had men and women sitting separately.

So you had a men's section, a women's section.

And so there would be something that was happening, and because of how many people were there, and because of the way it was structured, women would start talking, and there was a variety of things going on.

You might have someone asking a sincere question because they're confused.

Okay, you had at this point in the history of the Bible, you now have Gentiles that are coming into this predominantly Jewish culture.

So you now have people that are there, like some of the Jewish women had grown up and they understood the tradition, understood the culture, but then you had Gentile women who had absolutely no idea.

Picture like somebody coming over from a foreign country, they've never seen football before, ever.

They have no idea, they've never seen it on TV, they have no idea.

They show up and you take them to a ball game, 100,000 people in a stadium.

You have you have men in tights running around with pads, helmets, slamming into each other and falling down.

Can you imagine how confusing all the questions you would have?

So as a Gentile coming into a predominantly Jewish service, men and women sitting separately, okay, the the educational opportunity is not equal.

You have people speaking out, calling out to their husband, murmuring, you have other people who are asking questions that based on the fact that they just don't understand what they're doing, it's it's it's making the whole thing chaos.

It's chaos.

Which is why, again, even outside of church, if we were having a town hall meeting, we would use Robert's rules of order.

Why?

Not because we're trying to be oppressive, but because we're trying to maximize this opportunity with this many people, we can't all speak out at once, otherwise the purpose is not fulfilled.

So the thing is about order, and he's doing it to the context, and which then you come up with a verse like this.

Hey, if she doesn't know, she has a question, have her ask her husband at home, which sounds really degrading, but it's not.

Because what he's doing is actually saying, hey, couples, take what's happening at church, go home and talk about it.

The husband now has an opportunity, he knows more because of the educational opportunity.

It's not his wife's not as smart, it's not that she doesn't have the gifts, it's not that she's she's a lesser being.

He's saying she doesn't know what she didn't know what she didn't know.

So when you get home, talk about it, bring her up to speed.

And there's even a connotation that someday, if we do this right, instead of you lording it over her that you know something she doesn't know, you guys could share it, have shared consciousness, and someday she might actually have something to say.

As of right now, in this context, Corinthians, tell her please to be quiet, because right now it's creating chaos, which is undermining our purpose.

Okay, that's under the microscope.

Otherwise, you just look at this and you're like, man, is Paul like a misogynist?

And by the way, if you have pre pre-uh conceived biases and you'd like that to be what Paul says, you certainly could make it that if you wanted it to be.

Uh, I think even sincere people, you know, I I I have a Shaylin and I have a friend, um, uh, a couple that are married, they're pastors in another state, and uh the wife and the family is Capital B brilliant.

She has her law degree from Duke.

Um, she has a degree in Mandarin Chinese, um, she does international law, and then on top of that, she's a lights out theologian.

So she gets up to speak in church, to preach one one weekend.

Probably the smartest, most educated person in the room gets up to talk about something that she knows what she's talking about.

And as she does, pockets of people get up and walk out.

They get up and leave.

And they told us this story, and I'm at first I was appalled, and then second, I thought, well, I don't know those people, I don't know why they walk out.

Some of them uh might just be mean, but some of them actually might actually be trying to do this right, and they would look at 1 Corinthians 14, 34, and 35 sincerely and go, I know I don't like it, and I know it's you know not popular, it's not politically correct, but what is so confusing about women being silent in the church, and what is so confusing about talk to your husband when you get home, and what is so confusing about improper for women to speak?

And they mean it, they're sincere, but bad interpretation leads to bad application.

And some of them, frankly, again, if they knew a little bit more, they'd be able to turn it over in their minds a little bit and go, is that what Paul is saying?

Is Paul saying that even though women have been gifted by God with the same type of intelligence, have been given the same type of gift to teach, that a woman with an intellectual and teaching gift, is Paul saying for all time, not just for Corinth, but for one church and for Columbus, Ohio, and everybody, that women shouldn't be able to talk or teach in church?

If they're looking then at this context, would they go, well then what is church?

Because we we have people that join the church digitally, so are we saying women shouldn't put out teaching content about the Bible on YouTube?

Or should we be streaming a woman teaching even though she's capable to do so?

You can wrestle with that, and you might come to the conclusion with with your open mind, open heart that that's what it's saying.

Um, but you gotta look deeper, you gotta put it under the microscope.

Uh let's let's get another worm, alright?

Because you guys did well with that worm.

I didn't even feel too much shade coming my way.

Let's put another one down there and look at it, alright?

Look at this one 1 Corinthians 11, 8 through 12.

For the first man didn't come from a woman, from woman, but the first woman came from man.

And man was not made for woman, but woman was made for man.

For this reason, and because the angels are watching, a woman should wear a covering on her head to show she is under authority.

Verse 11 But among the Lord's people, women are not independent of men, and men are not independent of women.

For although the first woman came from man, every other man was born from a woman, and everything comes from God.

Alright, so if you just read that, there's a few things going on here that seem contradictory.

Okay, so Paul's saying in verse 8 and 9 that man wasn't made for, or sorry, man was not made for woman, but woman was made for man.

But then he says a little bit later, um, that they're actually took to be interdependent, that one's not over the other one.

So what's up with this?

Well, I want to note this real quick.

We're in 1 Corinthians 11, that's 8 through 12.

If you went back to verse 5, you would see Paul, because he's talking about head coverings.

And so he's like, hey, um, a woman when she's praying and prophesying in the public worship setting, when she's praying and prophesying, she should wear a head covering, otherwise, she's dishonoring her head.

So if you think about that, he says when you if you put that next to chapter 14 that says women should be silent in church, they shouldn't speak, but he's saying, he's expecting a woman to pray and prophesy in church, but just do it with a head covering.

Now you but now you're going, so well, I thought they were supposed to be silent.

Again, you got to put those next to each other.

When he's saying this thing in verse uh eight and nine, that man didn't come from woman, woman came from man, man's not made for women, woman made for man, it looks like Paul's making a statement.

But one of the things back to looking at it under the microscope is you understand the literary style of the day and of Paul and the difference between what he was doing, what we we do now, and then the similarities.

So, for example, Paul doesn't have quotation marks, because that that wasn't part of their literary style.

So, what Paul is doing often, and this is where interpretation sometimes can be a little bit tricky.

This is why some people have, like really smart people have very different opinions about stuff.

Because it because Paul often will take and he'll make a statement, and it appears that Paul is making that statement, but what he's doing is he's defining a point of view or a perspective.

So he's defining a side of the argument.

So, for example, let's say this we weren't about church today, we were about politics, and we're gonna have a political forum and a political debate, and so I might get up and make a statement that would be a mantra, a Republican mantra, or a democratic mantra, a democrat mantra.

And by making those statements, certainly you can look at those, they mean something at face value, but that one statement has all kinds of things attached to it.

It means more than just one thing, it defines a political movement or it defines something connected to many other things.

So as Paul is talking about different points of view of men and women and how it should function in the home, he's making statements.

It looked like he's making statements, but what he's really doing is painting the edges of the debate.

So he's he's bringing up points of view, right?

So man was made for woman, but woman not made for man.

Well, think about this.

Paul's writing this letter to the Corinthians, he's sending it.

What gender do you think is going to receive and read the letter and then interpret and execute it?

The men are.

So he knows I'm writing this for the men and the women, but it's all gonna go through the men.

This this letter is not going to the ladies, it's going to the gentlemen.

So the guys are gonna get it.

So Paul, in some ways, is writing this kind of to the men, but for everybody, because he knows who's gonna receive it.

There's a specific recipient.

So he's defining a point of view.

He's saying, um, you know, man didn't come from woman, woman came from man, and man was not made for woman, woman made for man.

This is predominantly that male point of view.

For this reason, because angels are watching, women should wear coverings, they're under authority.

Now look at verse 11.

But among the Lord's people.

That's massive.

So he defines the position, but then he says, so what about you, Corinthians, in your context?

But among the Lord's people, now he introduces what I think is a deeply theological paradigm.

He says, Women are not independent of men, and men are not independent of women.

You're interdependent.

This is not about being domineering, it's about being interdependent.

And he said, although the first woman came from man, every other man was born of a woman.

He's talking equality.

And then he said, and everything comes from God.

So no matter how much power and authority you have, what's the highest, you know, you keep going up the food chain, you keep going higher.

God is on top of all of this.

Okay, you got to understand this culturally.

Paul writes this to a church that is essentially dealing with Jews who have been largely Hellenized.

They've been heavily influenced by Greco-Roman culture.

So although they're predominantly Jewish, and now some Gentiles are entering, they're really more Greco Roman.

That's why the whole New Testament is written in Greek.

Okay, so so think of it like this.

Let's say, let's say you're from your family's from Italy.

Okay, Italy's the motherland.

And so you have ancestors from Italy, but you're American.

You're a few generations into America now.

You're really more American than Italian, so to speak, but you know about the Italian.

Culture because we we do some of that still, and I don't speak Italian, but I kind of understand a little bit of Italian because my grandma spoke Italian and and we did a little bit of this and that.

But predominantly you would say, my culture is I'm American.

Okay, that is very similar to what they were dealing with.

Now, what did it mean then to be Greco-Roman?

Well, one of the concepts in the Greco-Roman Empire was that the emperor had what was called pater familias, father of the family.

So the emperor, the Caesar was the father of the nation.

And depending on the Caesar, depending on what type of leader, was he an iron-fisted leader, was he a more benevolent leader, that would affect the culture that would ultimately go down into the family where the father of the literal family was the Pater Familia.

So if you had a culture where you had a strong-handed, oppressive leader, that leader was empowered with ultimate authority.

And that ultimate authority included the power to be able to put somebody to in prison, put somebody to death, to scourge someone, okay?

And depending on how they led, that might have been their weapon of choice to dominate.

And that then played into the home where actually fathers were empowered legally, all right, to be able to, if your daughter committed adultery, you could put her to death.

You could sell your children to pay off debts.

Okay, you could arrange or refuse marriages of your children.

And so as Paul is talking about this to fathers, you'll see where he's talking about the father being the head, which the head represents authority, it represents provision.

And so, like he'll say in another portion of scripture that the um, okay, the the man is the head of the woman, Christ is the head of the man, God is the head of Christ.

And so what's he doing?

He's talking about the system that they have, the authority, the provision, the power.

The point being, not that we are now empowering men to be domineering, iron-fisted, selfish beings, to oppress those underneath.

He's going all the way up to God.

In fact, again, this fingerprint is all through.

Okay, this is where we go into the microscope, but then we pull up a drone and look at everything.

Think about Ephesians.

Ephesians 6, 6, 1.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

Well, of course, it's potter familias.

If I don't, he's gonna kill me.

Ephesians 6 4.

Fathers do not exasperate your children.

Ephesians 6 4, fathers do not provoke your children to rage to anger.

He's talking about the type of leader.

Ephesians 5.

Okay?

The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.

And then later he says, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church.

Why?

He's saying, look, you got potter familias.

It is in the culture.

It's there, it is what it is.

Instead of him going in trying to fix the system, he's going, look, within that system, this is the type of potter you should be in your familias.

And so he's like, love her like Christ loved the church.

How did Christ love the church?

Well, he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but he emptied himself, humbled himself of his divine rights.

He served, came not to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom, to lay down his life, to sacrifice, to love in that way.

So Paul is going past the system into the heart to shape it.

Look what Peter says.

Look what Peter says in 1 Peter 3:7.

1 Peter 3:7

Husbands, give honor to your wives.

Treat your wife with understanding as you live together.

She may be weaker than you, but she's your equal partner and got God's gift of new life.

Well, you read that, and some people start working their neck out.

Like, what do you mean, weaker than him?

What does he mean by weaker?

You know what he means?

He means the man generally can pick up more weight than the woman.

That's basically what he means.

He means that if you guys get in a fight, a fist fight, the woman is at a disadvantage.

That a woman has a fear for her safety.

And so he's saying, don't take the power that you have and use it to instill fear and dominance.

Okay?

He's saying treat her with honor, treat her with understanding.

He's saying, yes, she's physically weaker than you, but that should not be your leverage to have everything your way.

He says, uh, she's your partner and your equal partner in God's gift of new life.

And look at this.

He said, treat her as you should, so your prayers will not be hindered.

Whoa! He's saying, look, you might be able to get away with it in the home.

But ultimately, God's gonna see it all.

And he said, if you you do that that way, then the one who's the ultimate covering over you, the authority over you.

Alright, so don't get high on your power.

Just keep so so, okay, so what does all this have to do in the church?

Is this about creating male dominance?

Is this about uh you know, putting women in their place?

Is that the spirit of this text?

Absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

It's about more transcendent principles of theology, that you would look at the glory of God.

We would look at the authority of God, we would look at the power, the provision of God.

Again, part of having a head, whether it was a head covering or for women or men not having their head covered, ultimately was a sign of honor to God and recognition of his authority, his ultimate authority.

So whether you have in the system authority and power or not, either position you're in, you just keep looking up, and at the top of the whole thing is God.

Which then helps us to actually sort of deal with another worm, right?

Of another uh portion of scripture, okay, uh, that Paul says in 2 Timothy 2, 9 and 10.

He says that women should wear decent and appropriate clothing and not draw attention to themselves by the way they fix their hair, or by wearing gold or pearls or expensive clothes.

So he's naming specific things.

Don't wear, okay, women, don't fix your hair in a fancy fashion.

Don't wear gold, pearls or expensive clothes.

Okay, and then he goes on to say, you know, for women who claim to be devoted to God should make themselves attracted by the good things they do.

Well, what in the world does Paul, you know, have against pearls?

Well, we gotta put the pearls under the microscope.

All right?

And what does he have a problem with gold?

That's a little confusing.

It seems contradictory because in the Old Testament, in the book of Exodus, the priestly ephod was made of gold and had jewels all in it.

So what's wrong with that?

So let's put let's put the hairpin, let's put the gold, let's put the pearls under there.

And so what is he saying?

Is he saying that all of the women here who are wearing gold and pearls and have their hair done nice are living in sin?

I don't think so.

You gotta put it under the microscope.

What does it look like under the microscope?

Well, here's what it looks like.

Who's Paul writing to?

Well, where's it at?

Timothy.

Who's Timothy?

He's his son in the faith.

Who else is Timothy?

Timothy's the pastor of the Ephesian church.

What's the Ephesian church?

Where is it at?

Ephesus.

What's going on in Ephesus?

Well, the whole epicenter of Ephesus is the temple of Artemis, which houses the statue of Diana.

Diana is the Greek goddess of fertility.

Part of their temple worship, temple worship was literal prostitution.

So you had male and female prostitutes, you had female prostitutes when he's naming these things, pearls, gold, the way they did their hair, the things they did, he's defining the wardrobe of temple prostitutes.

Now, what we know about Paul is that Paul's heart was that everybody, including temple prostitutes, who are in their own bondage, would come to Christ.

So this isn't even about shaming somebody, but what he's talking about is decency, order, and not having confusion.

The spirit of the same concept of what he's talking about in Corinthians, but he's naming these other things because when when art the temple of Artemis, everything revolves around that in Ephesus, and then I come into this new temple that I don't really understand, and the women in this temple are dressed like the prostitutes of the other temple that I was just at.

I have no idea what's going on here.

So I might make an assumption about that woman, or I might make an assumption about this environment and what you're about.

And actually, what we're trying to do in this temple is create the freedom that undoes the bondage happening at the other one.

See what I'm saying?

So now, again, what do we do?

We're digging deeper, we're looking at it under the microscope, we understand the context.

It's the deeper principle of within our context, honoring God, recognizing his provision, and in a way that's culturally appropriate, demonstrating that to him.

I'll give you one more thing.

You've been so good.

1 Corinthians 11.

Let's go back to that.

This is the same thing that talks about man didn't come from woman, woman from man, and blah blah blah, but you're all okay, and everything comes from God.

Look at the next verse in verse 13.

He says, Judge for yourselves.

And then he asks a question that was meant to be rhetorical, but I think it's speaks volumes.

The next two questions.

He says, Is it right for women to pray to God in public without covering their head?

Now, to that audience, the people he wrote it to, they would have read that.

Is it is it right for women to pray in public without covering their head?

They'd been like, well, no.

And we're like, Yeah, I think it's fine.

I don't think it's a big deal.

Like I'm looking around the room, there's not a lot of head coverings.

Not a lot of head coverings.

There was a lady in last service with a Bengals hat, which was offensive.

Aside from that, I don't see a lot of head coverings.

That's a cool one.

In their culture, they would have gone, no.

He says in the next thing, isn't it inappropriate or dishonoring that a man would have long hair?

Some of you are like, I wish I had hair.

Other men are like, Well, how long's too long a hair?

Now we're getting back in it.

Well, if it's seven inches, it's too long.

If it's nine, now we're back to the old testament Torah.

He's like, I'm trying to free you from that.

Are you with me?

So he says, judge for yourselves.

Why?

Well, it's not we're making everything situational and whatever whim, you know, whichever way the wind's blowing, then we're gonna do that and be tossed and you know, what's right for you is right for you, what's right for me is right for me.

He's going, look, dig deeper into the transcendent thing.

I've not come to shackle you with head coverings for the rest of your life.

I've not come to say, sorry, pearls, I mean grounds pearls, I know that it was an heirloom passed down generations, but if you wear it in church, you're disrespectful.

It's it's for us to step back and go, let's look at things like the glory of God.

Let's look at things like the covering, the protection, the authority of God.

Let's take those things and let's honor God with our full being.

And let's do that here.

And then let's also take those concepts and not just make them rituals, but ask the Holy Spirit to speak to us about Lord, how is that transforming my life?

How is that affecting the way I'm doing my paterfamilias, the way that I'm leading at work, the way that I'm relating to my family, the way that I'm relating in my neighborhood, the type of person I am.

Is this transforming me, or is this just something I'm doing, trying to get the ritual right?

So Paul is writing something to them that's for us.

And let's do our best to interpret that and others like it correctly so we can have good theology day in and day out.

Amen.

I'm gonna invite you to stand up on your feet, and I'm gonna, I want us to take a moment.

I know we've been heavy teaching in the in the head brain here, but I I think the the bigger point about God's ability to even cut through the systems of your home or the systems of the world we live in or whatever it might be, those are always going to be overhauled and changed and all of that.

To come to the heart, and today for allow the Holy Spirit to search our hearts.

Lord, is there anything in me that you want to move around?

Is there anything in me that you want to put a highlighter on?

Is there anything in me that you want to transform and renew?

And let's allow the Lord to speak to each one of us.