When I was coaching baseball at the local high school when it was open, discipline was never a major problem on our team. The reason for this is because I had a simple rule, everyone received the same consequence when one player stepped out of line.
Case in point, we had a player named Ryan on our team; he was a freshman and pretty disrespectful when he started playing for me. I had a rule on the team that since we were sharing the field with the softball girls, the guys were not allowed to take their shirts off for practice. One hot day, Ryan got fed up with my rule, because he was hot, and wanted to be cooler, so he took off his shirt. I told him to put it back on, and he told me no. Well, when one received a consequence, the whole team received it.
Now, I never had my players run just to run, instead I had them run basses. They would sprint from home to first, side shuffle from first to second, sprint from second to third, and then side shuffle to home. I told the team that we were going to run the bases until Ryan put his shirt back on. Eight times they went around those base paths non-stop. Finally, one of the older players said to me, “Coach we need water.” I told them, that once Ryan put his shirt back on they could get water. That’s when they started in on Ryan to put his shirt back on, but he wouldn’t budge. A couple more times around the bases, and this time another player asked for water. I told them the same thing, except this time I added, “I’m going to go get me some water for myself, so I’m going to turn my back, and if when I turn back around that shirt is on Ryan, then we’ll stop.” As soon as I turned my back, I heard Ryan scream as ten tired and angry players chased him down and put his shirt back on him.
I never had another problem with Ryan after that. In order for any team to work well, the first thing that needs to happen is order. The way in which we work with each other for the betterment of the rest is extremely important.
And it’s this idea of having order, that brings us back to our summer sermon series, where we will be covering another controversial subject in 1st Corinthians 14 starting in verse 26. And as we open up to 1st Corinthians 14:26, let’s recap where we are.
Paul writes the letter to the Corinthian Church because they were physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually tearing each other apart. Paul writes to bring unity back to the Church by calling them to deal with the issues that were causing disunity in both their personal relationships with each other outside and inside the Church gatherings. So the first 10 chapters focuses on the believers’ personal relationships with each other, while the last six chapters deal with the issues in the worship time.
And the major issue that was causing disunity in the worship time was the use of the spiritual gifts, which can be an issue today. And so we walked with Paul as he explained the gifts. Paul lets us know that, the gifts are given by the Holy Spirit, for the uniting of the Church, that we are to desire the gifts, but more importantly we must purse love in everything we do, because it is love that is the greatest uniting force in the Church.
This brings us to where we are today, as Paul now takes us from understanding the gifts and their role, to how the worship time is to then proceed.
But I want to give two words of warning, first we must remember that we are to purse unity through the love we have for each other. When we get our eyes off of loving each other as Christ loves, then no matter what we do today, we will step in the direction of disunity. Second, the passage we’re going to read today is one of the passages in the Bible that people use to call Paul a misogynist, and it might ruffle some feathers, especially the women in our congregation. I think though, by understating the whole passage as one complete thought, we can work through what Paul writes here.
So let’s read together 1st Corinthians chapter 14, verses 26-40.
26 What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up. 27 If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. 28 If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and to God.
29 Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. 30 And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. 31 For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. 32 The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. 33 For God is not a God of disorder but of peace—as in all the congregations of the Lord’s people.
34 Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. 35 If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.
36 Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? 37 If anyone thinks they are a prophet or otherwise gifted by the Spirit, let them acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command. 38 But if anyone ignores this, they will themselves be ignored.
39 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. 40 But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.
Now, did Paul just say women are not allowed to speak in church? Yes he did, so let’s walk through the whole passage and see what Paul is driving at, and then we’ll deal with that part.
It is here that Paul gives us the skeleton of what a corporate worship time looks like. Paul doesn’t give us a strict liturgy or point by point “this goes here and that goes there” schedule. Rather, he gives us four parts of the worship that should happen. First, people can present a hymn. In the Greek the word is psalmos (psal-mos’) and that should get your spidey sense tingling, because, yes that’s the Greek equivalent to the Hebrew word for Psalm in the Old Testament. But it doesn’t just mean a Psalm of the Old Testament, but also the act of making music through instruments. In other words, Paul is telling us to make music. In the the 19th, verse of the 5th chapter of his letter to the Ephesians, Paul adds to this idea of music by writing, “…speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord…”
Psalms represent the Psalms of the Old Testament, hymns represent the theological creeds of the faith, such as the doxology or the song we sing, “I Believe”. Spiritual Songs are those songs that the Spirit moves us to sing or to write; they are modern songs that God gives us. So the song, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” was once a spiritual song, and is now a hymn.
Next Paul tells us that we need a teaching. In other words, we need the Scriptures to be opened and we need the layers pulled back so we can go deeper in our understanding. Every time we come to the worship gathering of the Church, we should be asking God to show us at least one new thing from the Scriptures that we didn’t know before. This is one thing I ask of God, and no matter how bad the teacher or preacher is, God always delivers, because he himself said, (paraphrased) “My word will not return void.”
Thirdly, we are to have a revelation. This is more spiritual. This can be done, because the Spirit reveals something to us, about our relationship with God, about our relationships with each other, or even an insight into ourselves. Or it can be someone speaking to us, that gives encouragement in an area that needs encouraging. This is a spiritual mystery and the reality is, it’s different from person to person. You know what we’ve come to call such a revelation? Testimony. A sharing of what God has done, or what we have learned from God that we want to share as an encouragement to others.
Then Paul gives us the placement of tongues or more specifically the use of gifts in general. It’s here that we mentioned last week that we know that tongues is not an uncontrollable expression, but in the setting where the church is gathering for worship, it is a purposeful action.
But I want us to notice something about what Paul says about both the gift of tongues and the gift of prophecy.
In verse 28, concerning tongues, Paul says, “If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and to God.”
In verse 29, concerning prophecy, Paul writes, “Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. 31 For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. 32 The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets.”
You know what that means? It means there is a time and place for tongues, and there is a time and place for prophecy. Both are able to be controlled, both can be silenced or spoken when needed. To put this whole first section into perceptive then, Paul let’s us know that there are times and places for everything in the corporate worship of the Church. And it’s to make this point that Paul in verse 33 writes, “For God is not a God of disorder but of peace…”
When the Church gathers for worship there’s not suppose to be chaos, but rather orderly and intentional worship. So if you have a gift of tongues, but no interpreter, guess what? Paul is saying be quiet, because that can cause disorder. If you have the gift of prophecy, but won’t be analyzed by other people? Sit down and be quiet. If you don’t have a song to sing, or a teaching to give, or a revelation to be shared, then Paul is telling us to be quiet so that the Church can worship in an orderly fashion. It’s kind of like that old saying, “If you have nothing nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.” Except in this context it’s, if you have nothing to add to the worship, then be quiet so as not to cause disorder.
Speaking of being quiet, let’s move onto the subject that everyone is waiting for. How is Jeremiah going to navigate this?
First, this controversial part comes in the context of everyone being told to be quiet unless they have something to add to the worship time. So when Paul writes in verse 34, “Women should remain silent in the churches.” It’s not out of the blue, he’s not picking on women, but rather dealing with another problem that was affecting the Church as a whole.
Remember when we first started in this letter, we talked about what was happening in the city of Corinth? We compared it to modern cities, like sin city itself, Las Vegas. But it’s not just the sexual sin that was going on. Throughout the Greek and Roman world, pagan priestesses played a major role in the worship of the gods. This practice seems to have been carried over into the Church, because Paul mentions a similar situation in the first letter he sends to Timothy. Paul writes this in 1st Timothy 2:11-12, “11 A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.”
The most likely situation that Paul is addressing, is that the Greeks and Romans had put women in a place of spiritual authority, this led to the use of sex as a form of worship. This is possibly because women were viewed looked to for their sexuality, rather than their worth as a person. We covered that earlier in the letter to the Corinthians when we looked at how Paul dealt with head coverings, and how to have a shaved head was a sign of prostitution in the ancient world. But since God created a structure by which society was to follow: God, man, woman, and that was being rejected by the people of Paul’s day, Paul gives a way to bring ourselves back to God’s original design. Sometimes we make restrictions to stop a problem dead in it’s tracks. On the high school girls softball team that ran parallel to the baseball team, the coach would have the girls bite their pitcher facing shoulder to keep their head from moving off the ball. I went out and bought a very large bra and told the guys that if they kept taking their eye off the ball, they’d wear the bra until it was fixed. So in Paul’s calling for women to be silent in the Church, to our modern ears it sounds harsh, but let’s look at the words Paul uses to relay this silence in 1st Corinthians 14.
Paul uses two phrases, “keep silent” and “no speaking”. The term “keep silent”, comes from the Greek word sigaó (see-gah’-o). The term means to be silent or to keep secret. It has the connotation of holding one’s peace, or one’s tongue. In other words, having a question answered during the worship time is not the right time to have it answered. This makes sense, because in verse 35, Paul talks about the woman waiting to ask their question of their husband after the worship time.
In the greater context of keeping the worship time streamlined, this makes sense as well. It’s one of the reasons why, during the winter, we hold our sermon discussions on Sunday nights. That’s a perfect time to discuss the topic of the sermon more in-depth, but in the corporate worship time itself, if we answered every question, we would quickly get bogged down and maybe even find ourselves not talking on subjects that would be uplifting.
We know this to be true in our personal lives. Have you have had a conversation where you started out with one topic, but within a couple of minutes the whole conversation changed and you ask yourself, how did we get here? In a discussion, the topics can switch really fast, and the smaller the group, the better everyone can follow what’s being said. But as the group gets larger, the ability to follow a discussion gets hard, and then multiple conversations begin to happen, and we lose track of where we were going in the first place. And so holding off on asking a question and waiting for a small group to ask the question is a good way to get your question full answered.
Then there’s the second phrase “no speaking”. The term “no speaking”, comes from the Greek word laleó (lal-eh’-o) which means to talk. This term carries with it the idea of chattering without purpose. In other words, having conversations for the sake of conversations, but not for the benefit of building up the Church. They say that men only speak about 7,000 words a day, while women speak 20,000. And I know ladies that you have to repeat yourselves, ‘cause guys don’t listen, but that still means there’s another 6,000 words unaccounted for.
But seriously, any type of conversation that is not geared toward lifting God up in worship and encouraging each other, in the corporate worship time that would cause disorder, is being rejected here. Paul rejected it from those with the gift of tongues, he rejected it from those with the gift of prophecy, and he is rejecting it from anyone who would just chatter away.
Now I want to focus on the word “disgraceful/shameful” in verse 35, because how could it be disgraceful or shameful for a woman to ask a question? The Greek word aischros (ahee-skhros’) means to be shameful, disgraceful, base, or improper.
When taking into account chapters 11 through where we are in 14, here’s the thrust of everything: Paul is bringing us back to God’s original created order. We know this because of him mentioning the law in verse 34. Paul is calling woman to that submissive role, just as he has been calling the whole Church to it’s submissive role. And when each of us puts themselves in the role God created us to be in, the work of God is unhindered in that area. When we engage in trying to exert our desire over God’s order, we revert to our base sinful desire. We become improper in how we worship. This is a disgrace, not just for the women, but for every believer.
When we misuse the gifts, we are being disgraceful. When we tear each other down, or extort money from each other, or go behind each other’s backs to cause disunity, we have become disgraceful. Paul is addressing one problem that was facing the Church. Pagan worshipers were bringing into the Church pagan worship practices which were rejected by God, and one of these was using a woman’s sexuality as a way to worship. Paul is then giving a command to be more orderly, this has in it the harsh words of telling women to be silent, but by submitting to this, Paul is calling women into their created role, which as Jesus says, is yoke or burden that is light (Matthew 11:28-30). By submitting in this area, there is a freeing of burden onto God. Not just for woman, but for men as well.
But let’s take a moment and think about the results of what Paul is calling women to in this passage. By the wife or daughter waiting to discuss their question outside of the Church corporate worship time, it would challenge the husband to listen and understand what was said in that time. That means he has to stay awake, he has to take his role of spiritual leader of the family seriously, he has to study the Scriptures as well. One of the greatest weaknesses of the Church is men. We do not take our role of submission to God seriously and look where our society is because of it. If wives and daughters would look to their husbands and fathers as spiritual leaders, that would aid them in fulfilling their roles.
This would also open family communication. How many families sit and discuss spiritual issues? Not enough. The majority of conversations we have in families revolve around school, chores, TV, and discipline. We need husbands and fathers to speak spiritual truths into our lives.
The statistics speak to this: If no parent is attending Church, a child has a 6% chance of holding onto their faith when their older. If only the mother attends, it jumps to 15%. If only the faith attends, it jumps to 55%. If both attend, it jumps to 72%. (https://nickcady.org/2016/06/20/the-impact-on-kids-of-dads-faith-and-church-attendance/). Personally, I see the failing of the fathers in spiritual matters, as a continuation of Adam’s original failing with Eve, and our current societal problems as a result. Ladies, help us become the men God intended us to be. Your role is greater than you know.
Now the reality is, in our society husband and fathers might not be around, due to a whole host of reasons or if they are, they might not be spiritual leaders of their household. Ladies, sons, daughters, pray for your husbands, and fathers. They might be jerks, they might be absent, but keep praying for them that God would get a hold on them.
And if you don’t have a husband or father to be that spiritual leader, it’s a greater time to push into as our Father. It’s interesting that Jesus constantly points us to God the Father. Time and time again Jesus points to the Father, and tells us that the Holy Spirit will remind us and lead us into all truth. And so, if you have questions, I encourage you to always seek God in his Word, that’s why a lot of our challenges are to seek God. But that’s not all, we have each other. In our small groups of friends, in our relationships with each other, we can find answers and encouragement. That’s why we must drive our conversations away from the woe is me mentality and into a focus on Christ and what he has done. In these smaller groups we can find an appropriate time to ask and discuss our spiritual questions.
Paul isn’t telling women to shut up, he’s calling all of us to worship God in a way that honors him and each other. To not bring into the worship time, things that can be dealt with at other times in our week.
If you have a question about the sermon, I usually hang around for a while after the service, and I’m available throughout the week. We encourage you to ask for songs to be sung, and to speak encouraging words to each other. We seek to walk through the Scriptures together and make them as clear as possible. We are in this together, each of us needs to work on speaking for the betterment of others, and learning with each other. And a part of that is learning when not to speak, which can be harder than speaking up.
So today, my challenge for you is to write down one of three things: A song that you would like to sing in the coming weeks, an insight you have about God’s Word, or an encouraging word for the congregation. And next week, I’m going ask those that desire to share, to speak up. Both women and men, and we will seek that time to be an orderly one.
Let us lift each other up, by knowing when to speak, and speaking words that would up lift each other. So that we can be a people distinct from the world, as a light is in darkness. Amen.
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