This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, this is Pastor Tom Holliday, and I want to welcome you to 1 Corinthians
chapter 11. This is day one of our look through this chapter that has lots of
questions about it, but also tremendous amount of inspiration and a tremendous
amount of difference that can be made in our lives at the point of worship.
These chapters, beginning with 1 Corinthians 11 and then 12 and 13 and 14, are
all about how to have an outstanding worship service, how to have an outstanding
worship experience in your life.

And I'm expecting, I'm hoping that you'll hear in these steps we're going to
look at the next few weeks, some actions, some attitudes to avoid in worship and
some to embrace in worship so that your worship experience is changed. Paul
discusses worship in these chapters, 11 to 14, and he tells the Corinthians to
stop blending in and to start standing out, to stop acting like the world around
them when they worship and to start acting like Jesus Christ when they worship.
In chapter 11, verses 1 to 16, he says, "In your attitude towards your Christian
brothers and sisters, you have to act like Christ in order to have a great
experience of worship.

" In chapter 11, 17 to 34, he says, "In your attitude towards the Lord's Supper,
you have to have the heart of Jesus in order to have an outstanding experience
of worship. " And then in chapters 12 to 14, he says, "In the practice of
spiritual gifts in the church and in the worship services, you have to have the
heart of Jesus, the heart of service, in order to have outstanding worship
experiences in your life. " Chapter 11 particularly points to how to solve some
problems that were eroding the worship experience of those who were in Corinth,
but there's also some deep principles here for us.

And then this chapter is going to use some local examples to unveil for us
eternal principles about how worship can be a strength in your life, about how
worship can be a strength in any church. Now, as with chapter 8 and 9 and 10, we
talked about meat offered to idols in the temple. We don't do that anymore.

We have to look back to what they were doing then, some of their practices and
principles then, practices then, in order to draw out the principles for today.
We may not face their specific issue, but the eternal truth is just as relevant.
Now, with that in mind, let me begin reading chapter 11, verses 1 to 10.

I want to warn you, as I read this, you're going to have some questions. We're
going to answer some of those today and some of those tomorrow. But today, I
want to particularly focus on what's the overall truth here.

That's where you begin. Chapter 11, verses 1 to 10. Follow my example as I
follow the example of Christ.

I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to my teachings
just as I pass them on to you. Now, I want you to realize that the head of every
man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.
Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, and
every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head.

It's just as though her head were shaved. If a woman does not cover her head,
she should have her hair cut off, for it's a disgrace for a woman to have her
hair cut off or shaved off, she should cover her head. A man ought not to cover
his head, since he's the image and glory of God.

But the woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman
from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.

For this reason, and because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of
authority on her head. Now, as I read those verses, if there's not some
questions in your mind, then you probably weren't listening. Let me start with
the overall principle here.

You go from the overall to the specific. And the overall is the Corinthians
questions. They had written to Paul and asked him some questions, and one of
them was, "Should a woman cover her head during a public worship service?

" We would call it like a shawl today kind of a thing, a covering over her head.
And Paul's answer is yes. Now why?

Let's look at the reason why, and then we're going to address some of the
questions in this passage tomorrow. Why was it so important to Paul that she
cover her head in worship? Because she was not worshiping alone.

She was worshiping with other believers. And this gets us to the first of three
keys to outstanding worship that we're going to look at this week. The first key
to outstanding worship is you use your freedom to serve others in worship.

You don't use your freedom just to serve yourself or demand your rights. You use
your freedom to serve others in worship. We have freedom to worship, but we also
have freedom in worship, but we have to be careful.

The wrong kind of freedom can turn worship into a free-for-all. Instead of a
joy-for-all, it becomes a free-for-all. You take what could be a life-changing
experience and you make it into sort of a sideshow where it's all about what
this person is doing in the worship service.

The wrong kind of freedom in worship is the kind that calls attention to itself
and not to the Lord. And here's what was happening in Corinth. Here's where all
our questions come.

The women in Corinth weren't wearing veils. Now to many of us today, that
doesn't seem important. If you live in certain areas of the world today, it's
very important.

They felt free because of their new relationship with Christ to no longer wear a
veil in a worship service. Jesus didn't say they had to wear a veil. They were
living with unveiled hearts before the Lord.

So couldn't they take their veil off that they might usually wear during a
worship service? That they'd always worn during worship services? Maybe they
felt that taking the veil off made them sense their closeness, their
relationship with the Lord in a deeper way.

So what's the big deal? Why did Paul say not to do it? Well, to understand this,
you have to understand that head coverings were a part of their culture.

And the church was having to deal with how do we bring the different cultural
customs of Greeks and Romans and Jews together. Now again, many of us don't
understand this unless you grew up in certain parts of the world where women do
cover their heads today and sometimes their faces and understand the issues that
go along with this. We don't understand this.

We have to look back to understand this. And in that day, Roman men covered
their heads when they went into worship. Greek men did not cover their heads in
public, but Greek women did.

Greeks, in fact, had male slaves who wore coverings on their heads and female
slaves shaved their heads. Prostitutes in the Greek culture cut their hair short
and they wore no covering in public. Jewish men and women wore a covering over
their heads, especially for worship.

They still do. They shaved the head in the Jewish culture of a woman who was
caught in adultery. So you can see in that culture, I've just gone through this
very quickly.

You can do more study about this if you'd like to. In the culture of that day,
what you wore on your head or didn't wear, how long your hair was or wasn't, it
was extremely important. The veil was more than clothing.

It signified some important things. In verse 5, it was a sign of dignity. Paul
talks about honor.

In their society, it was the prostitutes who did not wear veils. And Paul's
writing and saying, "I understand you have freedom in Christ to do this, but
don't you understand it's a distraction to others in worship? Why wouldn't they
be wearing a veil?

" In verse 3 and verse 7, Paul talks about the fact that it was a sign of
authority. It signified both the woman's relationship to her husband and to the
Lord. And what Paul is saying here is, what says freedom to you says impurity or
says rejection of authority to others.

Now someone could say, a woman could say easily, "That's not what I'm thinking.
" And Paul is saying that's not the point in worship. The point in worship is
not just what you're thinking.

The point is also what other people around you are experiencing. In Corinth, the
woman's uncovered hair was a symbol that drew attention to itself. And this
expression of freedom could cause some to lose their focus on God and the
worship service.

It made the individual worshiper more important than God who was being worshiped
or those that they were worshiping with. And because of that, Paul says, "You
must not do this. " You see, any time I get a feeling in worship, I can do
whatever I want without any thought of how it might affect somebody else, I'm
free in Jesus, I've got it wrong.

Worship is a shared experience. So there's a deep principle here for us. Now, in
talking about this principle, the first question most of us have is, is God
telling women today to wear veils?

That's easily answered by asking, is anyone outside the church wearing a veil in
the culture that you're in? If there is, if you're in that kind of a culture,
then you have to deal with this reality. But there's a deeper principle here.

And the deeper principle is because we worship together, we are responsible to
one another in worship. Paul talks about that in verses 11 to 16. He says, "In
the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of
woman.

For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes
from God. Judge for yourselves.

Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not the
very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it's a disgrace to
him, but that if a woman has long hair, it's her glory? For long hair is given
to her as a covering.

If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice, nor do
the churches of God. " Now, again, that stuff about long hair and women and
nature and what it teaches us, we're going to talk about that some more
tomorrow. I want to focus on the key point today, and the clue to what was going
on in Corinth is found in verse 16 when Paul says, "If anyone wants to be
contentious about this.

" They were being contentious about it. Instead of being in a worship service
and having that be a place where they express their love to God, it had become a
place where they demanded individual rights. And out of doing that, they were
destroying their worship experience together.

I come to worship God, so what should I care about what other people think? Paul
says, "You should absolutely care about what other people think because you're
worshiping together. No one worships alone.

We worship in community. It does matter because we worship Him together. We do
not worship independently," Paul says.

Man's not independent of woman. Woman is not independent of man. We are
worshiping in unity.

Now, for most of us, what we get caught up in here is the veil. And, okay, I get
it that that's what they did then, but what about today? What are some
modern-day veils?

Well, it could be what you wear today. A guy could wear some kind of a shirt or
some kind of clothes. A woman could wear something that drew attention to
itself.

Anytime you wear something that draws attention to you, to itself, anytime
you're walking into a worship service thinking, "I wonder if anybody's going to
notice my shirt today. I wonder if anybody's going to notice my cap today.
Wonder what they'll think of my glasses, these sunglasses I've got.

I wonder what they'll think of this dress or this hat. " Anytime you're thinking
of that, you know, you're trying to draw attention to yourself. That's a
modern-day veil.

Now, it's the same as with meat sacrifice to idols. This is not a matter of
letting a stronger brother control you by saying, "Oh, I'd be hurt in Christ if
he didn't wear a suit and a tie and a top coat and a top hat every week to
church. " That's what I think would honor God.

That's a stronger brother trying to control you. This is about you giving up
freedom for a weaker brother, a weaker sister, so that what you wear in worship
does not distract them from the Lord. It could be what we wear.

What we sing or how we sing. Sometimes people raise their hands in worship out
of just love for the Lord. There's other times I've seen in worship services,
they raise their hands in worship in order to be noticed.

And if you're doing it to be noticed, "Wow, look at me. I hope somebody sees me
doing this," if there's any thought of that, do something different. It can even
be the look of a building.

A church can decide to build a building in such a way that when you come into
that building, all you notice are the chandeliers. All you notice is the carpet.
All you notice are the beautiful whatever.

Now I think church buildings should be beautiful, but that beauty can also
distract sometimes. It can cause us to focus on ourselves and not on the Lord.
That's a veil.

Anytime I'm doing something in worship that makes me think, "I wonder if people
are noticing me now," Paul is saying here, "Set that down. Let that go. "
Because worship is something that we do together.

Let's take a minute to pray together. Jesus, we want to worship You. We want the
focus to be on You.

Yet we're all individuals, and it's easy for us to get the focus on us. So I
pray. We pray together that through Your Spirit within us, You would cause our
worship experiences to become more and more focused on You.

Whatever church we're in, wherever we're celebrating who You are, let the focus
come more and more on You. We ask this, Jesus, in Your name, amen. Tomorrow
we're going to look at some of the many questions that this passage causes us to
ask.