Is That For Us? | Pastor Chris Kouba

Grab your Bibles, open them up with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 11.

1 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

1 Corinthians chapter 11.

1 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

I want to welcome all of the men and the women at our correctional facilities and those that are joining us online.

Let's give them a hand and celebrate so many folks that are with us.

Hey, it's really good here to be in the room with you and just excited to be able to be a part of what God is doing here at United City.

We are continuing or really starting a new series, but we're continuing in a look in the book of 1 Corinthians today.

And the title of this sermon series over the next few weeks is called Against the Grain.

We're gonna actually take a little bit of a break next week.

I'm actually really excited for you to have a chance to meet a new friend of mine, and it's gonna be somebody that I hope is a good friend of our church in the days ahead.

But we've got Brian McCormick, who is the director of Breakaway Ministries in College Station, an incredible Bible study on the campus of Texas AM.

So ridiculous.

But anyway, okay.

He's coming next week, though.

Brian is awesome.

He is really, really good.

I actually just interviewed him on my podcast uh this past week about Gen Z and what it looks like to reach men that are Gen Z, what it looks like for Gen Z listeners of our podcast to be able to step up in their life and in their leadership as men.

I encourage you to check that out.

You're gonna really, really love Brian.

So he's gonna be here next week.

We're gonna get out of the series for one week, but then we're gonna continue on after that.

Excited about being able to walk through the end of the book of First Corinthians here in this series that we're entitling Against the Grain.

The Against the Grain is actually an idiom, and here's the definition of what it means: it means something that is different than what is normal or usual.

As we have walked through the book of 1 Corinthians, we have seen that it is a book that is filled continually with the Apostle Paul writing to fix a broken church.

At the beginning of the series, we called it uh red flags, and we looked at what are some of the different red flags that it needed to go and address, and it begins to address those very forcefully and very clearly.

We've been looking the last few weeks at the blurred lines, what happens when the culture says one thing and the scriptures say another, and if you don't know what the scriptures say, it leads to some blurriness.

And so we looked at what some of these issues and we talked about some of the things that are taking place, and what we see here is that now he moves in the end of the book of 1 Corinthians to specifically speaking about the church.

Let me remind you the book of 1 Corinthians was written to the city of Corinth, the city of Corinth was a super liberal city.

It was super progressive, it was it was a pagan city, it was a sexually promiscuous place, it was one that was really flaunting itself in terms of how much it was pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable.

And so what you have is a young, immature church being met with this super liberal city, and it started to bleed over.

And so what Paul does at the end of the book of 1 Corinthians, he begins to address, hey guys, this is what you're supposed to do in the church.

I've given you some instructions on individually, but now this is what it looks like to operate in the church because what you saw was a church in chaos.

There was no order, there was no structure, there was no rules as to how we operate and what is acceptable way of interacting and what we're supposed to do.

And so what we see in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 through the end of the book is instructions on how to live as the church.

1 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

Today we're gonna look at 1 Corinthians chapter 11, and there's two different topics that are gonna be addressed.

1 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

The end of the book of 1 Corinthians 11 actually talks about the Lord's Supper.

You had some people who were abusing the Lord's Supper, some folks who weren't waiting around for everyone to be served, some folks who liked the grape juice so much they drank more and more and more of it.

They got drunk before the whole thing started, right?

You had others that basically were kind of keeping it all to themselves.

It was just this chaotic scene.

And so what he does is he gives us some instructions on how to operate with the Lord's Supper.

I've already preached on this in the past, so I'm not gonna preach on it today, but we are in fact going to take from the Lord's table together to conclude our services today.

Let's begin reading, though, in verse 2 of 1 Corinthians chapter 11 to see what the other topic is that we are gonna spend some time looking at today.

1 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

It says, Now I commend you because you remember me and everything and maintain the traditions, even as I delivered them to you.

But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head cover uncovered dishonors her head.

It is the same as if her head were shaven.

For if a wife will not cover her head, then she would should cut her hair short.

But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head.

For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image of the glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.

For man was not made from woman, but woman from man.

Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.

That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.

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

For as woman was made for man, so man is now born of woman, and all things are from God.

Judge for yourselves, 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 long hair, 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.

If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God.

Pretty easy, right?

No big deal.

All right?

No problem on this one, okay?

This is one of those times whenever we at United City Church we say that the Bible speaks.

And what we say when we mean that is that we want to let the Bible speak louder than anything else that the culture would possibly say.

It would be a lot easier to not have that as one of our core values, and we just skip this section.

In fact, whenever you've read the Bible and maybe you've come to 1 Corinthians chapter 11, you're like, that's kind of weird, and maybe you've moved on and not taught two seconds about it.

1 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

But what I want to encourage you to do, and by the way, if that's what you've done in the past, I don't want to make judge you, I want to encourage you to keep reading, but I also want to encourage you, don't do that in the future.

Whenever you come to a hard passage, you should ask a couple of questions.

One, what is cultural?

And then what are the principles behind the cultural principles that apply even to me today?

And that's exactly how I want to approach this passage.

Here's how we're going to handle this.

First of all, I want you to look at your neighbor and I want you to say, We got this.

I want you to look at your neighbor on the other side and say, I got this.

Okay.

Today's a big boy pants message, okay?

We're going to have to all put our big boy pants on and we're going to have to listen intently.

I'm going to ask you to take notes.

I'm going to ask you to listen up.

I'm going to ask you to make sure that you're with me as you walk through this because I'm going to be more teachy today than I probably am on a usual Sunday morning.

But I promise you it's going to be worth it.

Here's how I'm going to tackle this passage today, okay?

First, what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk you through what are the cultural uh implications of head coverings and what that meant for that day.

So, what are the cultural implications for that day?

Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you two timeless principles that apply from this passage that are found throughout all of God's word that still apply to you today.

Two timeless principles.

And then at the end, I'm going to give you three points of application answering the question, why should I even care about this?

Okay?

I'm going to tell you about the culture, give you two timeless principles, three applications that you can walk away with.

Are you ready?

So you're ready.

Here we go.

First, let's discuss what it meant for a woman to wear a head covering.

In the city of Corinth, I told you it was a super sexual, it was a super liberal city.

And what you had was a situation to where a lot of the pagan gods had this idea that basically as long as you offered up a sacrifice, that's really all you needed to worry about.

And then essentially you could go and live your life totally separate from anything that you made a sacrifice for, meaning your religion and your life were separate.

And so because of that, you had promiscuity going all over the place.

And what you saw was that some of these pagan temples, they would go and they would bring their offering and their sacrifice, and then as they would leave, they would hire a temple prostitute, literally a woman at the temple who was there basically for them to be able to perform sexual fantasies on, and they would take them back home and see no separation between those two things.

I'm telling you folks, unless you know what God's word says, what happens in culture always happens in the church.

Okay?

You gotta be a warning.

Like the crazy that's going on out there, if we don't know exactly what God's word says that we should do, it's gonna end up creeping up into the church, and that's exactly what happened in the city of Corinth.

Some of this promiscuity was also taking place.

And the way that it was taking place is that women would come into the worship gathering and they would essentially wear their hair uncovered.

They would wear their hair long.

In that day, wearing their hair long was essentially saying, I want everybody to know that I'm available.

I am I am ready to date and looking for a man.

That's essentially what it would be saying.

In our modern day equivalent, it would be like somebody dressing in very promiscuous clothes and not wearing their wedding ring.

It was like, I want to make sure everyone notices me.

I want to make sure everyone sees me.

I want someone to come and desire a sexual relationship with me.

And what Paul is saying is like, don't do that.

Don't act like that.

Instead, instead, he says that you should come with your head covered or wearing a veil, which was not a contentious thing to say.

It was a very normal thing to say in that day.

In fact, if someone was to come into the church service and they had their hair covered, it would essentially be like they're announcing, I am happily married under the authority of my husband.

It's the opposite of coming with promiscuous clothes, not wearing a wedding ring.

It instead says, No, I'm I'm gladly taken.

I'm with I'm with him.

And he's saying that's how you should act.

That would not be seen as a controversial thing back in those days.

He says if you don't do that, it's the equivalent of basically you just shaving your head or wearing your hair short.

What does that mean?

What it's saying is that back in those days, if you were to shave your head or you were to wear your hair very short, it would mean that a woman was dressing like a man.

And he's saying, don't do that.

Not only is that a distraction, but that is also a sin.

Look at verse 4.

Verse 4 begins to walk us through what this looks like.

It speaks of the men, says that they should not wear their hair covered in worship, because essentially by doing so, it meant they were dressing like a woman.

So essentially what Paul is saying is this don't be a cross dresser.

Like, like, don't, that's that's weird.

All right, don't do that.

Don't, don't, don't do that.

You want to make sure that whenever you go to church, you don't dress like a woman, and you would do that by kind of wearing your head covered.

Now, the reason why this passage is so confusing is because those same cultural uh explanations don't apply to us today.

We know that if a man has long hair, it doesn't mean that he's cross-dressing, it just means that he has long hair.

That's all that it means.

If a man wears a hat today, it's probably not some sort of spiritual statement.

It's most likely a fashion statement, or he hasn't thought about his hair and he just grabbed a hat and put it on.

That's kind of how this works, right?

And so therefore, it's not the same as it would be for us today.

Uh if you wear your hair long out as a woman, it doesn't mean the same thing as it did then.

Uh then it would mean that you're trying to basically announce your availability.

And today, that's not how that would work.

It just means that you have long hair and that you're wearing it in a styled way.

If you have short hair as a woman, this doesn't mean that you're trying to cross-dress or look like a man in our day.

Instead, it just may mean that you live in Houston and it's really hot and it's really humid and you're just trying to make your life a little bit easier on yourself, okay?

Uh, what I want you to see, the question also becomes why does this matter for us?

Like if it's not the same, what are the principles behind the directive that we can walk away with and still apply?

It all goes down to verse 3.

Look at what it says.

It says, But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

This verse right here introduces a concept that is universally hated, and that's the idea of divine order and authority.

Everybody reports to somebody.

Everybody is supposed to recognize the authority that has been given.

It says here that the head of every man, he's got a leader, his leader is Christ.

It says there that the head of a wife is her husband, that the woman, hers is the man, and then the head of Christ is God.

What we see here, we're gonna look at this in just a minute, that even in the Godhead, there is order in the midst of the whole system.

Here's the deal: you cannot like divine order and authority, but it doesn't make any difference as to whether it's true or not.

I don't like always the fact that there's authority.

In fact, if I was to leave here today and I was to go and drive over the listed speed limit, which I may have done in the past, okay?

And a police officer comes up behind me and a police officer pulls me over, I cannot like the police officer.

I cannot like the fact that he's got the authority to pull me over.

I cannot like the fact that he might choose to, rightly so, if I'm exceeding the speed limit, give me a ticket expressing the fact that not only have I done something that is illegal, but I have to be accountable for the actions which I have chosen to do.

I can say, well, I don't like this and it doesn't change anything, I still have a ticket that I have to be accountable for.

Because ultimately I know that that police officer was put there ultimately to keep me safe and to keep everybody else safe.

And so, therefore, even if I don't like the authority that they are expressing in my life in the moment, it doesn't change whether it's good or not.

Instead, it's a gift given to me and given to you.

We've got police officers that do that.

In the same way you've got a boss.

Let's say you got this boss, right?

And the boss, his his does his goal is to help lead to make the organization more efficient and lead to make the organization better.

You may not necessarily like your boss, you may not think your boss is really good at that, but it doesn't change the fact that they're still your boss and you still report to them.

We also know that whenever we live underneath good bosses who show good authority and who put our interests ahead of their own and who lead in such a way that is really good, then that's an awesome thing.

We love working for a good boss.

It's not an oppressive thing, it's not a thing that holds me back.

It instead is something that I love.

On the other hand, we know that if you have a team, and the team it sounds really good that we're not gonna have a leader, we're all just gonna all be the leaders, and that sounds really good until you have a practice and then no one knows what to do.

Or then every you go into the game and no one has plays and no one's let telling everybody else what they should do.

And so what happens in a team to run effectively, what they'll do is they'll identify a team captain, or maybe they have a coach that comes in, and what happens that coach begins to bring order and structure, and that coach begins to lay out plays and a vision of where they're gonna be able to go, and he helps people operate, and we know when we're on a good team, it's not oppressive, it's a good thing.

Folks, I want you to know God's word has this same concept of divine authority and structure that is applied to the context of marriage.

We see that in places like Ephesians chapter 5 and 1 Peter chapter 3, but what we also see is that this idea of divine order and structure is also applied in the context of a local church.

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention 1 Peter 3 · chapter mention

A man is under the authority of Christ and he's a submit to that authority.

A woman is under the authority of her husband and she is submit to that authority.

So let me just mention to you a few principles.

I want to shift now to the two principles that are timeless, that are found all throughout God's word, that we can pull from this passage that we can apply to us today, okay?

First principle is this God made men and women equal.

Don't miss this.

God made men and women equal.

This is so important for you to see because you read the cultural stuff and you're like, I don't, I don't really know what it's trying to say, but it doesn't sound real good for women.

Like, you guys don't have a lot of that's that's not what it's trying to suggest.

What I want you to actually see is how the Bible is shows this repeatedly that God made men and women equal.

Culture has done a lot of different ways as to how they've addressed the topic of gender.

We're kind of seeing that stuff play itself out even right now as to what a man is and what a woman is.

I mean, we're like we're like debating that and trying to kind of figure that out.

God's super clear on what it is, and he's super clear on what they're supposed to do.

The culture, though, they've tried a couple different approaches.

One approach that they've tried is that of feminism.

Feminism basically says this women are good, men are bad.

And men have been oppressive to women throughout generations and throughout history, and so therefore, it is our responsibility in all things to make sure that we rise women up and we lower men down.

That is the goal.

That's what we think is the idea.

This same idea has crept into the church over time.

The other opposite of that is chauvinism.

This says that men are the ones who should be favored and women should be lowered.

Men are the ones who are in charge, men are the one who lead, and women are dumb, and women are not smart, and so therefore they should be seen and not heard, and that is how things should operate.

Now, please don't come up to me in the lobby like a couple people down at the first service, and like, yeah, I think we should go back to that, whichever one of those are.

They're both wrong.

Like they're both wrong.

Let's just make that clear, all right?

Like, yeah, it's not funny.

Like, it's wrong.

Instead, what we preach and teach here at United City Church, and what I believe is from the Bible, is an idea called complementarianism.

Let me explain to you what this is.

This basically says this God made men and women equal but different.

And therefore, we celebrate all that God did.

I want you to take your phones out.

I want you to take a look at this resource because some of you are like, compla what?

What are you what are you talking about?

I want you to take a look at this resource, okay?

This is like a double click on the word that I just said.

It's gonna list uh a resource that's gonna have some podcasts, it's gonna have some articles, it's gonna have some books, it's gonna basically give you a lot of background explanation that I don't have the opportunity and the time today to be able to give adequate resource.

But I don't just want you to hear me throw out a word and just move on like, oh yeah, that makes total sense.

I want you to see where I'm getting this from, and this resource is designed to help you have a greater understanding of what complementarianism means.

Uh, this is what we believe here at United City Church.

God made some male and God made some female, and that's a great thing.

We believe that guys should act like guys and women should act like women, and that both genders are equal but also different.

And instead of that causing division, we see that as something to celebrate.

We want to celebrate the equality and we want to celebrate the diversity.

Both of these things when it comes to the issue of gender.

Let me explain to you first about the idea of equality.

Look at Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

Let's go all the way back to the beginning, and I want you to see what it says.

It says, Then God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness.

I want you to notice it's God's speaking in the plural.

What this is, is this a theological word called the Trinity that we believe in here at United City Church, and we believe is key to being a Christian.

It's the fact that there is one God who exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The word Trinity is never mentioned in the Bible, but we believe the Trinity is taught all throughout the Bible.

And so, therefore, this is a foundational thing, meaning this the Jehovah's Witness or the Mormon who's really, really good who knocks at your door, they mess this part up.

And when you mess who God is, then everything else falls apart.

This is why it's so important.

We believe there's one God who exists in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And what we see in God's word, it shows us is that there is a relationship within the Godhead.

There's a relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And we see that that relationship does not make any of them inferior, but their structure and order, even with how they relate.

I'll show you that in just a minute, okay?

But look at what it says.

This is the idea.

Let us make man in our image and look after our likeness, and then let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

Big assignment.

Here's what he says.

So God created man in his own image.

In the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them.

This is where we get the idea of gender.

What I want you to see is this you can't wake up one day and decide that you don't like what God made you and that you just want to change it.

That's not your decision.

What instead God's word is super clear, like he has given you his gender, given you gender, but I want you to also see he's then stamped you with his image.

Like, you know, like back in the day, whenever you used to read physical books, I haven't bought a physical book in many years, but I used to have physical books all the time.

And I used to have one of those little book stamps that basically was like on the first page, and it was basically saying, This belongs to the library of Chris Kuba.

It was like my way of saying, This is my book.

That's what God has done with you.

He's literally stamped his image on you.

So according to this verse right here, what it's suggesting is this is that a way that we can live out the way that God has created us is by being male if God made us male, or by being female if God made us female, and living out that image that God has placed on us in its fullest expression.

So just because the culture is trying to take over gender doesn't mean that we should allow it to.

We should instead allow God to have his say, not only in who you are, but how you're supposed to live that out.

Now, Genesis chapter 2, here's what it tells us, okay?

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

It tells us that God puts Adam there in the garden.

He's made all of the animals, he's made all of the creation, he's made all of the vegetation.

He tells Adam you're in charge of all of this stuff.

And then he looks at the situation, he takes a step back, and he notices and he's like, Oh, that's not good.

Adam is all by himself.

He's he's he's that's not gonna be a good thing.

Folks, we know this to be the case.

Guys in the room, we know this to be the case.

We dudes would love to have a dude weekend, but after like three days, we're gonna burn the place down, all right?

Or we're gonna kill each other.

That's just how it works.

And so at the end of the day, God knows enough to know it's not good for that dude just to be over there by himself.

He's gotta have a little bit of help.

And so look at what it says, Genesis chapter 2 and verse 21.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

So the Lord God caused the deep sleep to fall upon the man.

And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.

And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

I want you to take very clear where are your ribs located?

Right here.

God doesn't make the woman above the man.

God doesn't make the woman below the man.

Where does he make the woman?

Right next to him.

My sidebar.

This is so important because if you have this mentality that's either chauvinistic or feministic, you've messed it up.

Instead, what we want to see is that God has created men and women to be equal.

It is a vital piece of what God wants to do, not only in our lives relationally, not only in our families relationally, but also in what God wants to do in his church.

God creates Adam from the side to show the equality between them.

And in fact, he reiterates this, 1 Corinthians chapter 11.

1 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

Look at what it says in verse 11 and 12.

Let's read it again.

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

For as woman was made for man, so man is now born of woman, and all things are from God.

We get lost in the head covering stuff, and we don't miss.

Hey, God knew what he was doing.

Like he set this thing up for a purpose and for a reason.

First thing I want you to see is the timeless principle from this passage in 1 Corinthians, found throughout all of God's words, is that God made men and women equal.

Second thing though I want you to see is this God made men and women different.

God made men and women different.

We see it in 1 Corinthians 11 by just the cultural stuff that goes on here.

We see that women, you're not supposed to wear your head uncovered and show that you're available, but instead you're supposed to live under the authority of your husband by the way that you dress.

Men, you're supposed to dress in a way that show that you follow Christ and mutually honored your wife.

And we know that even though the cultural differences aren't the same, we definitely know, despite the fact that the culture is pushing against this, men and women are supposed to be different.

Men are supposed to act like men, and women are supposed to act like women.

In the home, we know this to be true.

Let me show you how I know this, okay?

Because the Bible tells us that in Genesis chapter 3, which everything we've talked about happened before the fall of man.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Meaning this was God's design from the very beginning.

Genesis chapter 3 comes along, and we see that the end that the Satan begins to tempt Eve, and Eve eats the fruit that she's not supposed to eat from.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

And then it says at the end of the chapter that God comes onto the scene, and you know what he doesn't do?

He doesn't say, Hey, Eve, what did you do?

He comes on the scene, and what does he say?

Adam, where are you?

Men, let me make this super clear to you.

Whether you want to be the leader of your home or not, that's not up for your that's not up for debate.

It's a matter of whether you're a good one or whether you're a bad one.

God's word is super clear you're gonna stand before him and give testimony to how you lead your family.

And I don't tell you that to beat you up.

I tell you that to say, man, I want to help you.

Like I'm vested in you doing a good job in your relationships.

I started a podcast a couple of months ago specifically designed for men.

I mentioned to you Brian McCormick, we just interviewed him about Gen Z men and what that looks like.

But we talk about marriage, we talk about parenting, we talk about all these types of things.

I'm learning this with you, but I would simply tell you this I just set too many men sitting on the sidelines hoping for the best, not being active and proactive and trying to be who God's called them to be.

And I believe God actually wants you to thrive.

He actually wants you to soar.

I actually believe that our culture and our churches are dependent upon this way more than who's elected president on Tuesday.

Like you being the man that God's called you to be is the most important thing that you can possibly do.

And so, men, I want to help you.

I'm not getting on to you, I want to help you.

All right, I want to help you in the midst of all of this.

The context, though, that we have specifically in this passage, though, is found in church leadership.

1 Timothy chapter 3 in the book of Titus gives the qualifications for church leadership.

1 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

It says that the office of pastor or elder is meant to be the primary teaching ministry, is meant to lead in the governance and the guidance of the local church, and that this role is reserved for qualified men to be in that position.

Because of this, we hold that the senior pastor of United City Church must be a qualified man and he will be held with the accountability that is afforded to that position.

However, it is important to point this out.

This doesn't mean that a woman can't lead or teach in a church.

Look at 1 Corinthians 11 5 with me again.

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.

It's very easy to look at the end of that verse and be like, what?

What are we talking about?

And miss what I want you to mainly see, which is the first part of this verse, which is this.

He was giving instructions to wives who were praying or prophesying in the church, not telling them that they couldn't, but instead telling them how they should.

What does this tell us?

This tells us that women play a vital role in what God is doing in the midst of a church when under the divine order, and they're not fulfilling the role of a senior pastor.

In the scripture, we see Mary and Hannah and Holda and Deborah all give spirit-inspired revelations from God.

And so we know that this is something that is that is that is profitable.

In our church alone, Rachel Seaver, you heard from her earlier, Becky Sandoval, Jennifer Fanning, Elvia Powell, Debbie Taylor, Denise Smoot, all of our women's Bible study leaders, God has blessed this church with incredible women who help lead that make us a complete church.

I believe that the Bible teaches that the senior pastor is reserved for men, but I believe that women can and should do anything else in our church.

We have women who teach and preach in many of our settings.

We have women who baptize, we have women who sing and pray and lead on our teams.

I personally will not have a woman that preaches here on Sunday morning because I believe that this pulpit ministry is so closely tied with what the scriptures say is the role of a pastor-elder in 1 Timothy chapter 3 and in the book of Titus.

1 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

And so therefore, I don't want there to be any confusion or any question as to what the divine order is in Scripture.

That being said, I want to be a pastor who celebrates and elevates women in every other possible way in our church.

Back in those days, women were nothing.

And Christianity was so revolutionary because it elevated and gave a voice and value to women and said, Hey, not only do we need you, but we want you to be a part of what I'm doing here by building this church.

Folks, men and women are equal.

But men and women also are different.

And those differences bring the uniqueness and the unity of our expression as a church.

Look at your neighbor and say, I still got this.

Yeah, that was weak.

This is gonna be tough.

Woof.

Everybody take a deep breath.

Let's talk about why you should care.

Talk about why you should care.

First one is this, okay?

Here's the application.

Don't be a distraction in worship.

Don't be a distraction in worship.

What gets lost in all this cultural stuff is that at first it doesn't seem super relevant.

But you go back to verse two and it says it's really about passing down the traditions in an orderly way.

How do you make sure that worship isn't chaotic?

How do you make sure that worship isn't a problem?

And so the specific example that's being used here is don't dress in such a way that causes distraction to where people are looking at you, they're not worshiping God.

In 1 Corinthians chapter 11, at the end of the chapter, when it talks about Lord's Supper, it's very clear about saying, hey, this whole Lord's Supper thing, it's not about you.

1 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

Wait your turn.

Sit there patiently, don't get drunk before you get in the process, okay?

If people show up late and that's the you have to wave around for them, wait around for them.

Defer, live in such a way where you treat others better than yourselves instead of demanding your rights.

We saw this in 1 Corinthians chapter 8 through 10.

1 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

So let's practically, what does this actually mean?

It means don't be a distraction in worship, don't wear clothes to bring attention to yourself.

It's fine to dress up, it's fine to dress down, it's fine to look nice.

But make sure that your clothes are not too flashy, revealing, or so expressive that people are looking at you, they're not worshiping God.

I want you to be as expressive as you possibly can in worship.

I just don't want you to be a distraction in worship.

Right?

So we want to make sure that we balance these two things and understand what is gonna be okay for me not to be a distraction.

Practically, let me give you some other advice on what this looks like in our day today in 2024.

Show up on time.

Do you know how distracting it is when you show up late?

One of the things I love about our stadium seating is the additional seating that we've got and the way the room feels.

One of the things I can't stand about our stadium seating, everybody knows when you're late.

We're gonna have an invitation time here in just a moment because we're a church that believes in public next steps.

It's one of our core values.

And whenever we have that invitation, it is not your transition to leave early.

Especially you people in the balcony.

Because one of the things I've discovered, I've learned the last couple of weeks, is that when you leave, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

It's really loud, all right?

And so what I'm telling you is don't leave unless you're making a decision.

Our services, we work super hard at making sure that our services are about 65 to 70 minutes total, which means this when you come, know that going in.

So here's what I'm gonna tell you if you have to go to the bathroom, hold it.

Some of you like, I got really gotta go.

I know.

Hold it, all right?

Because here's why you don't want to be a distraction.

You don't want to be a distraction.

In the midst of the time of invitation, that should be a time whenever you are praying and you're expecting and you're asking and believing that God may have a time for somebody else, even though it may not be my time, it could be the time for somebody in front of you or somebody around you for them to make a decision.

And so you want to come to church early, dressed appropriately, ready to go to experience God in worship, praying, God, would you do something powerful in the next hour in our midst of our church?

Can you imagine what God would do at United City Church if you had a bunch of people who showed up on time praying before the service even started?

Can you imagine what God would want to do in a spirit-filled room where it's just so obvious that whatever people walked in with, they immediately are being met, but no, God wants to do something to me today.

God wants to meet me, so don't be a distraction in worship.

That is the point of the passage in 1 Corinthians chapter 11.

1 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

Look at the next thing I want to give you an application.

Why should you care?

Operate fully in your gender roles.

Operate fully in your gender roles.

This sounds crazy that I have to say this in our culture today.

But what I'm gonna say goes against the grain.

Men should act like men and women should act like women.

Ephesians chapter 5 is super clear.

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

You are to submit to Christ as your leader, and it gives very instruct, very clear instructions, men.

You're not to lord over your wife, you instead are to sacrifice for your wife.

You're to serve her, you're to lead in such a way that models the relationship between Christ and the church.

Women, you should serve and lead and give under the authority of your husbands and submit to the leadership that is over you in the church.

Men and women should operate fully in these roles, not as an old, repressive, outdated system, but instead seeing them as a protective covering given to us by God as a picture of the divine order.

Without question, there are bad examples of this.

Without question, there are men who have led their wives and led their homes in such a way that is outside the bounds of what God has described and outside of what God allows.

There's no question about it.

We know without question there are men who have led in the church who have led in such a way that are outside of the scriptural limitations and that are outside of what God says, and who've done it in a way that is not gracious and filled with salt, as the scriptures say in the book of Colossians.

However, we must not allow bad apples to throw away the whole divine order.

We instead have to say this: God's word actually says that teachers will be judged with greater strictness, according to James chapter 3, meaning this: we should submit to the authority in the church that is under us, knowing they got God to stand up to.

James 3 · chapter mention

And so therefore, you're turning them over to the Lord and letting it be God's problem to fix them.

In the same way, 1 Peter tells us that women, you by submitting to your husbands, actually turn him over to the Lord and let the Lord be the one that fixed him more than your words.

Men, it tells us that if we don't lead the way that we're supposed to, the end of verse 7, it tells us, 1 Peter chapter 3, verse 7, that our prayers will not be heard.

1 Peter 3:7

What does this tell us?

This tells us that whenever we follow and operate fully in the gender roles that God has given to us, then we allow God to do what God can do, and we don't try to take what God never wanted us to do on ourselves.

Final point of application.

Worship God for what he has done and how he has made you.

Worship God for what he has done and how he has made you.

We serve a good God who creates good, appropriate order for our good.

And we are told to not only embrace that and receive that, we are told to worship him for his good gifts through our gender, but also through his structure.

Genesis 3 tells us that part of the curse is that women would try to have the leadership of their husband, and that husbands would abdicate their leadership and try to give it to their wives.

Ever since then, gender wars have been marked our culture.

We also know that God tells us that he sent his one and only Son Jesus to die a death on a cross, that he rose from the dead, and he invites us into a relationship with him.

Where our sins can be forgiven, and we can be invited to help be a part of the process to recover and restore his good design.

Folks, what I want you to know is while the culture screwed this thing up and they don't really understand it, and they're debating it and trying to legislate it, God's clear.

And he invites us into a relationship where not only can we have clarity in how things are supposed to be, but we can actually live out our calling in the way that God has made us and experience the joy and the fruit and the hope and the peace that comes with living in his design.

1 Corinthians 11, it gives us instructions on how to remember that and how to celebrate what God has done by taking of the Lord's table.

It tells us that the cup and the bread symbolize the body and the blood of Jesus, which was shed for us.

What an amazing message we got to hear this morning.

I hope the Lord showed himself to you in a fresh, new way.

Hey, if you made a decision today to follow Jesus or a decision for Christ, we would love to process that with you.

And so text the word next to 55498, and someone from our team will be more than happy to reach out and process that with you.

If you missed the message or you missed a note or two and you want to go back, don't worry.

We've got the option for that as well.

It's gonna be available on Spotify as well as Apple Music.

This has been an amazing morning.

We love you guys so much, and we hope to see you next week.

Bye bye.