Roll for Initiative: Finding Order in God's Design

The sermon today is called Roll for Initiative.

Roll for Initiative.

Now, I know that means nothing to any of you, so I'm going to teach you.

Unless you're super nerdy, like super nerdy, you're not going to understand what that means.

So I happen to be super nerdy, so let me introduce you to my nerdy ways.

When you play games like Dungeons and Dragons you ever seen those big See?

I told you to my nerdy ways.

When you play games like Dungeons, dragons you ever seen those big see?

I told you, super nerdy, you've seen those big dice that have 20 sides.

Okay, so those are the dice.

You don't use normal wimpy dice with six sides, you use the big dice.

So in those games what you have to do is you have to.

Nobody knows who's going to go first.

So you set up your board and your game and you're playing your game, but each turn nobody knows who they're going to go first, and so you have to roll for initiative.

So each turn they roll this big dice and whoever rolls highest gets to go first, and then they play their turn.

Again, super nerdy, it's okay.

Well, why do you have to do that?

Because there's an order.

We like order, we need order when you're going into a restaurant and a beautiful elder lady is walking right by you.

You open the door and who goes first?

The lady, right, you right.

We love this type of order because it shows honor to people, and so order is good.

You know who goes first.

You know this order.

That's what we're talking about today.

You're like, why is this the introduction?

Well, because today we're in 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, which we've been going through, the book of 1 Corinthians, and we get to the part of 1 Corinthians where Paul begins to deal with some of the meeting, the issues that they were having in their weekly meeting at church, issues that they were having in their weekly meeting at church.

1 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

So they had come.

Remember, all these people came from either super religious Jewish synagogues or completely pagan, non-religious, or pagan worshiping demons.

So they were a bunch of people and Paul was establishing a brand new church.

Church wasn't something that anybody knew about or anybody knew how to do, and so they had a lot of things going on, and so Paul was helping them understand the order, how to have an orderly church.

Okay, so we're going to be talking about the first thing that he talks to them about is women and men and their relationship in ministry and the leadership of the church.

So let's start reading and then we'll start talking about it and see what kind of order God has for us to be able to be organized in our churches.

So in 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, it says it starts this way.

1 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

It says imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.

So this verse probably should be at the end of chapter 10 because it kind of wraps up that whole conversation of chapters 8 through 10 where Paul was talking about how to love people.

Paul says they can just look at him for an example of how love works.

Okay, so he loves them all the time.

He loves them when they don't deserve it, when they don't earn it.

He just loves his church.

He loves them so much, but mostly he loves them because the point of 1 Corinthians basically is this it's the whole lesson.

It goes from God to you and then from you to others.

You're a part of God's distribution channel, of his love and his life, and it's very, very orderly.

Okay, jesus lived with this order in his life.

He received love from his Father every morning and then he would give that same love to his disciples every day.

It's very organized and God loves that.

God loves God.

He's a God of order.

He loves order and order is good.

Water flows downhill, right?

Could you just imagine the chaos?

If water didn't do that?

It would be wild.

We just have waterfalls everywhere going every which.

But no, it's very organized.

Even creation itself is very organized.

So what does it look like when Paul says to imitate Jesus?

What does that mean?

It doesn't mean imitate him in our own strength or with this mentality.

I got this.

Watch me imitate.

I'm going to try to live my life like Jesus.

Watch me do it.

Okay, that's not what it means, but it does mean to choose to do what he did through faith in the life of Jesus living inside us and that's called his spirit.

So, in other words, I'm not depending on myself to try to look like Jesus or try to imitate him in my own strength, but I'm depending on his life living through me.

Jesus never asked you to live the Christian life.

God never said you could be a good Christian.

He said I can live the Christian life through you because I'm Christ.

I am the Christian life and I offer you my life to live through you.

We are.

And so why does he do this Because we are called or we're invited, you could say, to represent the family business.

When you are adopted into God's family, when you're born again, you are, you're part of his new family.

Let's say it's like a restaurant, like a family restaurant, except our restaurant doesn't change its logo.

What are you talking about this?

What are you talking about this?

It's the same thing, sneaky.

Okay.

Our church, our family logo is love other people and serve them and save them.

Be a part of a living family.

For your experience at church that you're a part of a family that just loves people?

I hope so, because you matter to us, each and every one of you guys that's here.

We love the little.

That's so great.

Thank you for bringing them.

You know we love every age, we love every, and a family is never the same when it's missing just one person.

Right, six boys, and we're hoping that all six boys are able to travel here Two from Colorado, two from Florida, one from Phoenix and John you're here.

Two from Colorado, two from Florida, one from Phoenix and John you're here.

Yay, we're hoping that all of them will be able to travel here for Christmas this year and we're not sure it's going to happen.

But pray for us, because that would be awesome if we could have that, because it's not the same when you're missing even just one of them.

So what does it look like to love your church family, to be a part of your church family?

Put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, bearing with one another and forgiving one another If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you.

Love is our brand.

You could say Forgiveness, you know, merciful, gentle, patient and helpful.

These are all descriptions of our brand, because love is our brand and everybody has value.

Everyone is equal in love, the most you know, productive person to the least productive person, from the oldest to the youngest, from you know, we're all part of one family.

Why?

Because we're one body.

You're like, why is he speaking to one body?

And each of us has different parts to play.

The body has a purpose or a role.

See Role for initiative.

See it.

That's it.

God makes it easy to know what your role is.

God makes it easy to know what your role is.

Again, your role doesn't mean how valuable you are, but you will have a role to play and in the family of church there's a perfect order that will help us and that they feel their value if we can trust God with how he feels.

Okay, all right.

So now we begin with Paul dealing with the church and something that had gone out of whack in this church, because back then they had pagan temples and in those temples the top, most spiritual people were women.

They were called the priestesses of the temples and the way that you would worship at those temples was through prostitution, and so the women were in charge because they were the most spiritually in tune, as women generally are.

They're the most sensitive, they're the most in tune to you know the things.

That was the pagan world, as they were very, very in charge.

But God wants his family, his church, to look like a family with fathers and mothers, a family with fathers and mothers, that you remember me in all things and keep the tradition just as I delivered to you.

The word traditions there means the basic teaching Is Christ and the head of woman is man and the head of Christ is God and the head of woman is man and the head of Christ is God.

And it's about this idea of submission to God's life that God has a plan for you and when you submit to that plan, it's how God's love for man is Christ.

Well, jesus was equal to God, god, his Father.

Jesus was God, but there was a Father God and there was a Son God.

He said I don't do my own will, but your will.

He said I do nothing of my own accord.

These are all things that Jesus said to his father.

He woke up every day and he looked for life and for what he would do that day, all of his own desires to do of God, the Father.

Why he was teaching us how to be human and he said it's not in doing your own thing, that's not the design.

The best way to be human is by allowing God to guide your life and live.

He wants to give them when we accept his authority and his fatherly place in our lives.

If we don't know or believe that life flows from him like water flowing downhill, our life flows from him.

Hill, our life flows from Him, his life under the total authority of His own Father To submit to Him in that exact same way, to only do His will.

They should be focused completely on doing the work of god, to sacrifice and deny themselves to be the leaders of their that.

Men should be the first to sacrifice in order to lead.

And he said and allow their husbands to lead and allow the men who are up or losing out.

It's about helping everyone to be blessed to the most way, to cause each person to experience the beauty of a loving family.

Because how many of us come from broken families?

Our moms maybe failed in certain areas and God says this is the most perfect way for the partnership is more beautiful and fruitful and lovely for both participants structure.

Men should lead with self-sacrifice, lead with complete selflessness, giving up our lives for the people that we're called to love.

And women should reinforce the love of God through their support of those who lead Some Love of God through their support of those who lead.

Some people feel that they have to bear this authority, that it's an unbearable burden, and I really do understand that, but they feel like it means I have to say I'm inferior, I'm nothing, I have to recognize this other person as superior.

But that's not true.

Okay, so give God a chance to explain how organization and order is.

I want you to remember the relationship between God the Father and God the Son.

They are completely equal in their being.

A man praying or prophesying, having his head covered dishonors his head, but if he prays or prophesies with her head uncovered, dishonors her head, for this is one and the same as if her head were shaved.

Okay, so he introduces the idea that in church, women should have a cover on their heads and men shouldn't and this is a very, very foreign concept to us, okay, when we come to church.

Well, let me explain.

Back then, it was a custom for both Greeks and Romans that if a woman was out and about outside of her home she had to wear a veil.

You could only see their eyes.

It was not nearly that restrictive, but it was common that the only women who were outside and didn't have a veil were prostitutes, and that went into the worldly custom of those temples I was talking about, remember.

So that's the idea.

Okay, the only women in that culture who didn't wear a veil, saying I have a relationship with somebody in my life, those were prostitutes.

So life was very dangerous without a covering, because men would treat these prostitutes very poorly.

And when we hear head, I want us to think of the head of a stream, like the head of a river is the source of it.

So we can think of it that way.

It's the source where God wants to send his blessing through, or you can think of it as the love faucet.

I love that illustration.

I made that one up.

There's a way to mess with your love faucet where your love is supposed to flow through, and that way is always pride.

Our pride can cut off the flow of love.

Jesus always lived with humility.

He always surrendered and submitted to his Father, and it says Jesus was the happiest man to ever live.

How do those two things go together?

He never did what he wanted.

He was anointed with the oil of joy more than his fellows.

That means he's the happiest person that ever lived.

Come with never getting what I want.

That's what happens.

He was led by his father every day and then he led his disciples.

He received love from his father.

It's not covered.

Let her also be shorn.

But if it is shameful for a woman to be shorn in the Corinthian culture when a wife's hair was longer than her husband's, it showed submission to his leadership.

It was not or that they should be submissive to every man, because that's not true either.

It's teaching that God's orders in public displayed that she trusted in the people that God had put in her life.

Okay.

So then it says for a man indeed ought not to cover his head, since he is in the glory of God, but women is the glory of man, for man is not from women, man is not from woman, but woman, what?

Okay, I was tracking with it until, okay, what does that have to do?

Basically, they had in the ancient world.

Okay, then it had to do with the roles that were played in the creation story.

So everyone was constantly thinking about creation story, spoke into our purpose for life and the order, and he says, basically, adam was created out of dirt.

And did I send you a meme this week?

No, I didn't, I forgot.

Okay, adam was created out of dirt and Eve was formed out of Adam's rib right.

So in some way he says this shows us, the original design was for men to lead and for women to be the object of his love or his counterpart.

And what do I mean by that?

Adam was created.

He was all alone, right, and God and him, and they're just, they're friends.

He was all alone, right, and God and him, and they're just, they're friends.

And God's like I love you, adam.

Adam's like great, I'm alone.

And then God's like I want you to name all these animals.

And so Adam's like okay, mr and Mrs Beaver, mr and Mrs Giraffe, mr and Mrs Shark, mr and Mrs Dinosaur, mr and Mrs Platypus, all my favorite animals, mr and Mrs Hippopotamus.

So he starts to notice why is there a Mr and Mrs of all of these things?

And they seem like they all really like each other.

Where's my counterpart?

And God took him and said Adam, that's a really good question.

Would you like a counterpart?

Adam's like yeah, because I have all this love inside me.

I want to love.

I want to love.

I'm created to love.

I'm created to pour my life out and love.

But it's just me, adam.

This is why I made you A counterpart for my love.

Oh, but God, you have the Spirit and you guys all love each other.

Yes, we do, but I want a counterpart.

I want someone that I can fill with my love and they can respond to my love.

Isn't that amazing, adam, would you like that love?

Would you like that love?

And Adam's like yes, I do.

And God's like okay, adam, would you like that love?

Would you like that love?

And Adam's like yes, I do.

And God's like okay, adam, you're going to have to die, but I'll raise you back up.

But for you to get this love, you have to die.

And Adam's like for me to have a counterpart to be able to pour my love out and receive love.

I would gladly die, and God's like you don't say I also want a counterpart and I also would give my life to be able to create a bride out of my own body, a bride out of my own body.

And so God put Adam to sleep because he didn't actually have to experience the death, and so the fact that there are men and women and they become counterparts and relational and poor love, that whole image is a picture of how much God loves it.

You don't say I'd love.

Then he brings in the angels and I'm like what is he talking about?

They watched the whole thing, they watched it all, and to them they know the whole reason.

They created the bride of Christ.

All people who would turn and be forgiven would be filled with the Spirit, and so they are new creations.

They are now the bride, the counterpart of God, the bride of Christ, the most beautiful thing in the world that Jesus would share his divine life in us.

Angels are just like flabbergasted.

This is incredible.

This is amazing.

So Paul says in your church, we glorify this, they're sensitive to it.

They saw the whole reason for it.

And so he says because your church, we glorify this, they're sensitive to it.

They saw the whole reason for it.

And so he says because of the angels, they saw the whole reason for it.

They saw the whole reason for it.

And it seems like they're grieved by our prideful rejection of God's perfect plan and will for our lives.

But even if he says man was created first, it doesn't mean they're more important at all.

Because look here the next verse he says Nevertheless, neither is man independent of women nor women independent of man in the Lord.

For as woman came from man, even so now all men, men, come through women, but all things are from God.

So this shows for us the interdependent relationship that we all have together.

We all have our role, our part to play.

The body only works when all the pieces work together, part part of one body, each with a different role and a different gift.

So what is your gift?

So some men have the gift of teaching, some women have the gift of teaching.

Does that mean a woman can never teach?

Absolutely not.

That's not what we're talking about here A woman can teach.

I thought some woman was like, yeah, you're preaching now, there's just going to be order.

Right, there's just going to be order.

It's not going to.

This is never a.

You can't stand up.

It's all about order.

It's all about order.

1 Corinthians says Judge among yourselves.

Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered?

Does not even nature itself teach you that?

If a man has long hair, it's a, but if a woman has long hair, it's a glory to her, to her for covering.

But if anyone seems to be contentious, we have no such custom.

So here to wrap it up in today's culture, for us today, we no longer view women wearing head coverings as a sign of submission.

That just doesn't exist here.

In most modern societies, scarves and hats are simply a thing.

If you want to, you can do that.

However, it's a personal choice and it is not something that should be used to determine spirituality or someone's life or someone's heart, because it doesn't show any of that.

The real issue here is the heart attitude of trusting God's authority, god's order.

Like Jesus trusted his father and Jesus got his counterpart, he was able to find somebody that was able to respond back to him with the same love that he is able to pour out love.

And men having long hair doesn't mean that they aren't godly or leaders anymore.

That just doesn't exist in our culture today anymore.

But a man who refuses, but a man who refuses who continues to make selfish choices, that does dishonor himself, that's not a self or that's not a godly.

So God wants his family to have fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters, for all the people that are here, important for each person in God's family.

In our culture there's many voices that want to reject God's order and organization, and they may believe it's old-fashioned or repressive.

But God still wants to bless His church with love and grace, and he revealed that the way to do it efficiently and effectively is through the way he designed.

So what is our response to be?

And this story was told in that book.

So Watchman Nee was the greatest pastor that's ever lived, had just an incredible heart for God.

Okay, so this guy?

So this was in the 1800s and the church in China.

There's parts of it that the woman wore.

I guess that was his name Watchman, should we wear head coverings?

This woman asked him.

Watchman, should we wear head coverings.

This woman asked him and Watchman said okay, I know, but here's my answer for you.

I wish I could wear head coverings to honor Jesus.

I wish I had a thousand head coverings I could wear to honor Jesus.

I wish I had a thousand head coverings I could wear to honor Jesus A thousand times.

If Jesus could receive one more moment of glory and honor.

That's life.

That's what Jesus was experiencing every morning with his father.

He was receiving so much love that he didn't care at all what happened to him that day.

Every sermon, we have a response.

We have to decide how we're going to respond, and so I'll always encourage you to respond with humility and faith.

That is our response to the gospel.

So, with humility, we can.

His ways are not our ways all the time, right, and he might just know how families.

So, with humility, we can say yeah, god probably knows how this is best instead of me or the podcast I just listened to.

And then, with faith, we can trust and we can believe that his intention is to give us the most amount of joy.

Okay, wasn't too scary now was it All right?

All the ladies are like right on, let's go.

All right, you can write all your emails, your angry emails to Dana at.

I have a special prayer request.

Brad and Amy's daughter, julia, had to go to the emergency room, so if we could all just pause and lift her up to the Lord.

Father, we want to lift up Julia to you and ask that you would be just taking care of her and giving the doctor's wisdom.

I pray that she'd be able to get in to see doctors quickly and that the emergency rooms wouldn't be too busy this morning.

Father, please help that family to be able to trust in you and see your healing hand in their life.

And, father, I pray for every single person here, lord, that as we have looked into your word today and we've discovered your truth, father, that you would give us a blessing in our heart to be able to know, god, that you love us, you care about us and you desire to pour out blessings in our lives.

Jesus.

We are sorry, lord, that so many times we're consumed with how we think we could get more, how we think we could be respected or what our role should be, instead of, lord, jesus, just receiving your love and allowing you to take care of how you use us.

Lord, we are your vessels.

We are empty vessels for your use.

Jesus, transform our hearts so that we're not constantly looking for more, but, jesus, help us be satisfied in your love.

There's nothing else that we need.

In Jesus' name, we all pray.

Amen.