This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to day five of our look through First Corinthians
chapter 14, this great chapter about healthy qualities of public worship. And
Paul's talked to us about the edification principle and the maturity principle
and the unity principle, thinking about others as we worship, thinking about God
as we worship. Having walked all through that, now we get to the last part of
verse 33 and verse 34, and Paul throws us a real question.

Listen to what he says in these verses. As in all the congregation of the
saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to
speak, but must be in submission, as the law says.

Wow, what is he talking about here? Is he talking about prophesying when he says
women are not allowed to speak? Is he talking about prophesying and not allowed
to preach?

Is he talking about speaking in tongues? Women are not allowed to speak in
tongues? I don't believe he's speaking about either of those.

In fact, the next verse, I believe, makes clear to us what he's speaking about
here. We can't take this verse out of context and understand it, so you gotta
read the next verse. The next verse says, if they want to inquire about
something, they should ask their own husbands at home, for it's disgraceful for
a woman to speak in the church.

So he's talking here not about preaching, not about speaking in tongues, he's
talking about asking a question of your husband. So obviously, he's talking
about two people, it would seem to us, sitting to each other, and the wife
leaning over and asking a question. Now, why doesn't he say this about the men?

Because men never ask questions. We're too prideful to do that. He's talking
about somebody who doesn't understand what's going on in church.

Actually, he's talking about something that was happening then. When we read,
it's disgraceful to speak in church, we think, does that mean, let's just cover
this before we get into the meaning of this verse, does that mean he's talking
about any speaking at all? He can't mean that.

Not if you've read all the book of First Corinthians. The context makes clear
that he's talking about some kind of disruptive speech here, even disrespectful
speaking that's prohibited, that's happening in the church. And to understand
what was going on here, you need to understand that in that day, men and women
sat in different sections of the church, often on different sides of the church,
or one behind the other.

So when the Bible says, ask their husbands at home, it's not like she's leaning
over to ask a question. For a woman to ask her husband a question in the church
service meant she had to yell it out from side to side or from front to back.
And this was happening in Corinth.

And so Paul says, this isn't working. This isn't working because it's causing a
disruption in the worship service. Now, let's get into the deeper issue here
about women speaking in churches very briefly, although these verses aren't
about that, I don't believe, about women preaching in a church.

While scripture says to me clearly that the senior pastor of a church should be
a man, and we can get into that in other books of the Bible, it also says to me
that women preached and taught in the churches. Philip, one of the early
deacons, had four daughters who prophesied, the book of Acts tells us. Priscilla
and Aquila taught individuals together.

And most significantly, Paul himself, back in chapter 11, talks about a woman
prophesying in a worship service. He's just concerned that she'd do so with her
head covered, but he talks specifically about a woman prophesying, which is
preaching in a worship service. So to take this verse and say Paul is
discounting what he said just a couple of verses earlier is to not read verse
35.

Verse 35, to me, makes it clear, this is about someone asking somebody else a
question in the church. And in this church, it was women who were yelling out
the questions to their husband, and Paul says, it's disrupting the service. It's
for you, once again, it's not for others.

He's talking about yelling out in a service when somebody else is speaking. He's
also talking about the culture they lived in. There's also some of that truth,
where in that sense, there would be some who came in and saw, as we talked about
in chapter 11, saw women in Christ who now had freedom in Christ demanding it in
a way that was immature.

And in that, people who came to worship actually would have more questions than
answers. In chapter eight to 11, Paul talks about eating meat to idols and all
those issues of our freedom in Christ and how we give up our freedom for the
sake of others. If demanding your freedom in Christ keeps others from hearing
the good news, it's not freedom you're exercising, it's immaturity.

That's what he's saying here. Let me say that again. If demanding your freedom
in Christ keeps others from hearing the good news, it's not freedom you're
exercising, but immaturity.

And sure, the women had the freedom to say, I have a question, I don't
understand what's going on, to yell it out, or is that guy crazy in what he's
saying? They had the freedom to say any of that. But Paul says, do that at home,
because it's disrupting the public worship service.

As we read through this chapter, Paul sums it up. Everything he's talked about,
about us worshiping together by reminding us that we're not only free in Christ
when we worship together, we're also accountable to God and we're accountable to
one another when we worship together. In fact, in verses 36 to 40, as he ends
this chapter, he talks about five specific things that we are accountable to
when we come to worship together.

For the worship service to glorify God, I've gotta remember these five
accountabilities. Verses 36 to 40. Did the word of God originate with you?

Or are you the only people it has reached? If anybody thinks he is a prophet or
spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I'm writing to you is the
Lord's command. If he ignores this, he himself will be ignored.

Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy and do not forbid speaking in
tongues. But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way. In those
verses, Paul talks about five things that we're accountable to in worship.

Number one, we're accountable to God's word. Did the word of God originate with
you, he says? Are you the only people it's reached?

I'm accountable to God's word. When we worship together, we worship preaching
and teaching God's word, but also we're accountable to God's word. We cannot
worship in ways to totally ignore God's word or act like I'm the sole owner of
God's word.

And that gets to the second accountability. The second accountability, we're
just walking through these quickly, I'm accountable to fellow believers around
the world. Are you the only people it has reached?

As I worship together, as you worship together in your church, what you do
reflects the character of God in your church, but also it can reflect the
character of God around the world. So, and you've seen this in the news, if a
church does some crazy thing in a worship service just to attract other people,
just to get a crowd, newspapers can tend to pick that up, and actually the word
of God, the name of God can be diminished in a sense in people's minds, not
diminished in actuality, but diminished in their thinking around the world
because they read this newspaper story and they think, oh, those crazy
Christians. I'm accountable to fellow believers around the world in the way that
I worship and the things that I do.

We're accountable. And so, for instance, at our church, at Saddleback, there are
things that we would not do in a worship service or things that we would not do
in the way that we do things because we realize our accountability, not just to
our own church, but also to fellow believers around the world. Accountable to
God's word, accountable to fellow believers.

A third thing we're accountable to is the Lord's command. Acknowledging says
that what I'm writing to you is the Lord's command. Now, in many ways, that's
the same thing as God's word, but that makes it more personal.

Jesus is the head of the church. So, in the end, it's not what idea can I come
up with for worship. I might come up with 100 ideas, but then I've got to take
those ideas and say, Jesus, what do you think about these?

What direction do you have for us? And with many of those ideas I might have for
worship, I look at those and I sense, well, the Lord's saying yes, the Lord's
saying no, this is a good idea, a bad idea at this time. But there's some of
those things that I look at and I realize, God has commanded us to do this or
God has not commanded us to do this.

So, for instance, Jesus commanded us to baptize. He commanded us to take the
Lord's Supper. Any forms of worship that totally leave out the Lord's Supper or
baptism, now, the Bible doesn't say you have to take the Lord's Supper every
week or baptize every week.

I'm not talking about how often you do it. I'm saying whether you do it or not.
If you totally leave out things that the Lord commanded in worship, then it's
not worship.

If you look at the New Testament, the Bible says we're to sing to each other
with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. That's why we sing in worship. We're
accountable to the Lord's command.

A fourth thing we're accountable to is to the Spirit's gifts. Be eager to
prophesy, don't forbid speaking in tongues. Be accountable to the gifts that the
Spirit has given to your church.

Be accountable to watching how those gifts can be used in your church. Now, with
speaking in tongues, they may not be used in the public worship service, but
that doesn't mean you say you can't have a prayer time with the Lord where you
speak in tongues and talk to him. I forbid you to do that.

Paul says don't forbid doing that. In the public worship service, the leadership
of the church has to decide what's going to happen or not. In my private time with
the Lord, for me to say I forbid you to do, to practice a gift that God has
given you, Paul says don't do that.

Be accountable to the gifts the Spirit has given. There's a lot of depth behind
that one because the truth of the matter is the mix of gifts that God has given
into your church in many ways determines what that church does, how your church
makes an impact on the world. And there's a final thing that Paul says to be
accountable to.

First, God's word. Second, fellow believers around the world. Third, the Lord's
commands.

Fourth, the Spirit's gifts. And then finally, he says be accountable to proper
order. We talked about this yesterday.

God is a God of peace. And one of the things you have to be accountable to in a
worship service is everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way. Why?

So the new person can understand. Why? So that it's not just for me or just for
us.

We understand it 'cause it's goofy and it's crazy and we've always done it this
way, but the new person coming in won't understand it. That's one of the reasons
you're accountable to that. The point is we're accountable.

In worship, we are free, but we're also accountable. And in that accountability,
we are together looking at God and who he is. So we come to the end of this week
looking at worship and what it means.

There's some practical things we've talked about this week about tongues and
prophecy and how and when to use what. But my prayer for my life, for your life,
is that you walk away from this week of looking at 1 Corinthians 14 with a new
depth of worship in your life. In fact, I want to pray for the next time you're in
a public worship service.

Lord, I pray for myself, pray for everyone listening to this prayer right now.
That the next time we walk into a public worship service, we'd have a new sense
of your presence, that you were there, a spiritual sense of your presence. We'd
have a new sense of the reason that we're there, to reflect who you are, not
only to ourselves, but also to the others who are around us.

Lord, in one sense, we can take a worship service and think it's just an hour,
an hour and a half, two hours out of my week. But in another sense, we can see
that you're there. We can see that you're speaking, that you're working.

So help us to see that worship service we spiritualize the next time we walk in,
and do something in us. Do something in our prayers for those around us that
would not have happened apart from our faith. Use our faith in that worship
service we pray.

In Jesus' name, amen. Next week, we look at 1 Corinthians 15 together. 1
Corinthians 15 is one of the great good news chapters in all the Bible.

If you need some good news in your life, do not miss next week.