So I do want to review for about maybe five minutes or so. So we talked about last time. Particularly, I mentioned a book by someone named Francis Schaeffer who wrote a book in 1984 called The Great Evangelical Disaster. And he talked about how the way that particularly strongly feminist interpretations of the Bible were infiltrating the church, that caused people to have an undermined view of scripture in general.
Basically, when you say," Oh, it can't mean this," and you start to say," Well, it's gotta mean this." And in a subconscious way, we often will interpolate a more culturally palatable meaning to the text. Well, then in a subtle way, you've actually taken away the authority of scripture there. And it was a powerful quote. Again, you can go back and listen to that. So basically, the idea is that these passages have been a beachhead that the world has used to destroy the authority of Scripture.
Now, interestingly, I actually want to press the point a little bit further here. I didn't mention this last time, but I think it's worth mentioning this now. In the Protestant evangelical world, there's a whole group of people. They typically call themselves complementarians. Now, I think a lot of you know that term complementarians. So I think of people like John MacArthur, John Piper, Wayne Grudem, Al Mohler, very well-known, very talented speakers.
The ESV Study Bible, which I know several of you have, is a classic kind of complementarian Bible with the study notes there. But interestingly, the complementarian position has been forcefully attacked from the inside by so-called egalitarians within the Protestant Church who basically point the finger at the complementarians and say," You all are not consistent." And in particular, they look at how complementarians look at 1 Timothy chapter two. We're not gonna look at this passage.
First Timothy 2 is a passage where it says that women are to learn in quietness and in submission. And Paul then appeals to the precedent of Adam and Eve. And the complementarians are quick to use this passage and say," See, this is grounded in creation. It's grounded in something timeless. Therefore, we need to do this today." Well, what the egalitarian response is is basically you all are extremely inconsistent.
You're a bunch of hypocrites because that exact same logic is used in 1 Corinthians 11, and you don't tell people to do that. So I want to read you just a couple quotes just to show you this phenomenon. One is from a self-described Christian feminist.
Her name is Rachel Evans, who says this," Anyone who says that Paul's instruction regarding the women at Ephesus," that's first Timothy, where Timothy's in Ephesus when Paul writes the letter," are universally binding because he appeals to the creation narrative to make his point, can be consistent in that position only if they also require women in their church to cover their heads," as Paul uses a very similar line of argumentation to advocate that.
And this was an essay where she makes the case that women should be ordained and teaching. And she basically says the complementarians are complete hypocrites. Give me another passage. This is from a very well-known Bible commentator whose name is Craig Keener. And he says this, in the one, who's an egalitarian, in the one passage, 1 Timothy 2, Paul does not want the women of a certain congregation to teach. In the other passage, he wants the women of a certain congregation to cover their heads.
We take the argument as transculturally applicable in one case, but not so in the other. This seems very strange indeed. I'll give you a final ones from an author named Grutheus.
If Paul's creation order rationale here, again, talking about First Timothy renders universal and transcultural, the prohibition of women teaching authoritatively, then why doesn't Paul's creation order rationale for women's head coverings in 1 Corinthians 11, make the wearing of headgear a universal and transcultural requirement for women in the church? So hopefully that's clear that they're being skewered on that side by people who are saying you all are hypocritical, inconsistent people.
You can't choose the one and not the other. And you know when you ultimately get into this mode where you're picking and choosing, I mean, in some sense, the egalitarians are at least a little more consistent. The egalitarians are saying like, let's, let's read it all through a cultural lens. The complementarians are kind of picking and choosing and saying like," Yeah, we want to do this one over here, but not this one over here." That puts you in a pretty vulnerable position.
It is safe to say that a hypocritical position is a vulnerable position. And a hypocritical position is a position that is waiting to be unraveled. And I believe that the last 50 to 100 years have exposed the vulnerability of the, again, the typical Protestant complementarian view. Hopefully everyone's tracking with me here. I think it's a very important point. So here, we strive for consistency. We don't want to be in no man's land.
We don't want to we don't want to be in this place where we're picking and choosing passages and say," This one's creation, uh, rooted in creation. So we're gonna do that one. This one's is as well, but now we're gonna ham and haw and wave our hands and not follow that." Okay, so we're not gonna fall prey to that. So again, just to review a little bit from last time before we jump into some new material.
I centered my message last time on the issue of why the head covering is not a cultural phenomenon, why it is in fact transcultural. And again, go back and listen to this to hear more detail, but we talked about the word paradosis, the word tradition, and we talked about how that's related to the word paradidomi, which is to, to deliver, to hand over.
And Paul says explicitly in the beginning of this passage, he says," I, Paul, am the one who brought this tradition to you Corinthians." And he commends them for following that. He says very clearly that this came from the outside. This came from apostolic practice. This was not a Corinthian practice that existed beforehand. Next, I showed you how it does not align with the culture of the time.
And I showed you pictures, and I passed around pictures' cause I never wanted to see with their own eyes, pictures of how, in particular, men were covering their heads. And I cited the scholarly paper of Richard Oster. There's a few other reasons. So number one, just to recap, number one, paradosis his traditions as an external. Number two, I said Paul brought it from the outside. Number three, it doesn't even align with first-century practices. It was countercultural then. Number four, God's nature, the Trinity.
We see this headship order that he roots his argument in. Number five, we're gonna see this later on, that he grounds his argument in creation in the first couple chapters of Genesis. Number six, we'll look at this next time. He talks about the angels, who obviously are outside of our local culture. And finally, I want you to look at this with me. So look at 1 Corinthians chapter one, verse two. So again, please do turn with me to these passages.
I think it's very important that everyone lay eyes on these verses and that we all own these concepts and verses in our hearts. So in 1 Corinthians chapter one, verse two, he makes very explicit who the intended audience is. He says in chapter one, verse two," To the Church of God, which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours." Okay, so he explicitly identifies his audience here.
So first, it is the Corinthians, but who's the other audience that he's speaking to? Everybody everywhere. Everybody everywhere who calls Jesus their Lord. It's pretty clear here. So this is not some local little group. So he's talking to the believers in Alexandria, the people in Rome, the people in Israel, the people in Asia Minor. And there's a wide variety of customs and practices that exist across these places.
And he's saying," This is for everybody here." So even his opening verse tells us very clearly, he's not making this some highly provincial, highly bound practice. We also talked about how, especially in our day, but certainly from the very beginning sin of from the Garden of Eden, that Satan loves confusion, and he loves to insinuate that God is not reasonable, that he does not have our interests at heart. And we need to keep in our mind that we will have whispers from time to time, like," Oh, this is too extreme.
Oh, this is too hard. Oh, this is crazy." But this is Satan's tactic from the beginning. To very craftily tell us, this is crazy. God does not have your best interests at heart. If you do it my way, or if you do it your way, you'll be better off. We talked last time about how, and this was inspired by John Chrysostom, how Paul does not use the language of master slave. He uses the language of head and body, which is a much more organic, cooperative relationship.
We also talked about how in the Bible, there is the case to be made that you can think of the Bible, at least one perspective on the Bible, is that it is laying out for us a way to order our lives and a way to live our lives that is healthy and strong. And I talked about how various companies, very successful companies like Apple and Microsoft and Google and all these places, they succeed because they have the right people in the right roles.
And I read you that quote from Elizabeth Elliott, who she said," This arrangement, talking about the universe, is a glorious hierarchical order of graduated splendor, beginning with the Trinity, descending through seraphim, cherubim, archangels, angels, men, and all lesser creatures, a mighty universal dance choreographed for the perfection and fulfillment of each participant." And we elaborated on that last time.
And then we also talked about, and this is the conclusion of the summary before we get into new material, about how each gender, both male and female, images a different set of God's attributes. And there's overlap certainly, but that we talked about how the male, the man, is called to image the attribute of loving authority was the phrase that we used. Whereas the female, the woman is designed and called to image the attribute that God Himself shows of glad submission.
And of course, God manifests that through the person of Jesus. That Jesus quintessentially is the man who gladly submits to his father in heaven. Okay, so that's the five-minute summary, 10 minute summary, however long that took. So now we need to talk about a couple of other important issues here. I'm gonna try to systematically knock down the standard objections.
So one of the most common, not as common as the cultural one, but probably number two or number three that you will hear all the time is people will say," Oh, well, this is all about church meetings. Like, this is what you're supposed to do when you go to church." And this, unfortunately, has been exacerbated because a lot of Bibles, depending on your translation, there are these little titles that sit above chapters or sections.
And I remember when I was young, when I was very young, like high school, I thought they were actually part of the Bible. And until I realized later on, that these are actually from the publisher. They have nothing to do with the Bible. And so there's all these little titles here, and it's very hard to disentangle in your mind, is this in the Bible, or is this just what the publisher's saying? Because it's just right there, all intermingled.
And I'm pretty sure, I'm not 100% sure, but I'm pretty sure the Bible that I had growing up had as the title over 1 Corinthians 11, I should have looked. I actually have it in my office. It says, I think it says," Instructions for public worship." So I grew up on the NIV, the 1984 NIV, and I'm pretty sure that that's what it has as the heading over that.
And so you're colored and heavily biased right off the bat when you start reading this to think like, oh, now I'm entering into the section about public worship, right? And it's not a very subtle subliminal message that gets put into you as you read this. So is this right? And depending on, like I said, your translation or your edition of the Bible, you might have something similar there. Do you have one, Malcolm? Oh, head coverings, yeah. Okay. So how are we going to deal with this?
Well, it's very, very, very easy. And in fact, I'm sometimes kind of shocked at how simple this objection is to overturn, and yet so few people just pay attention to the text. So what we're gonna do to look at the objection, how to defeat this objection, is by turning to 1 Corinthians chapter 14 first. So turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 14, and let's read verses 26 to 35. So this is the same book, same author, same book, just a few chapters later, okay? 1 Corinthians chapter 14, verses 26 to 35.
And please read this with me. It says," How is it then, brethren, whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification. If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be two or at most three each in turn and let one interpret. But if there is no interpreter, let him keep silent in church and let him speak to himself and to God. Let two or three prophets speak and let the others judge.
But if anything is revealed to another who sits by, let the first keep silent. For you can all prophesy one by one that all may learn and all may be encouraged, and the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. Let your women keep silent in the churches for they are not permitted to speak, but they are to be submissive, as the law also says.
And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home for it is shameful for women to speak in church. Okay, same author, a couple pages after 1 Corinthians 11. Very important because, and hopefully this is obvious, but if you think about it for a moment, he's saying in strong language here in verse 34, he's saying," The women have to be silent. They're not allowed to speak," as the law says. And they're supposed to go home and ask their husbands, okay? Crystal clear.
I don't know how else you could say it in any stronger way than that. But he has said in 1 Corinthians okay, and another point here, this is clearly about the gathered meeting. Nobody disagrees with that, of any stripe. When you come together and he talks about, he even says in the church is used there in verse 28, and different people are talking in different times.
Okay, so the women are supposed to be silent and it's in the context of a church meeting, but in 1 Corinthians 11, it says that women are praying and prophesying, okay? So if you think that's happening during the meeting of the church, you have a huge contradiction, just a couple of chapters away from each other. Does everybody see that? Where he's saying silent over here, but they're praying and it even mentions prophecy here too. So the people here in 1 Corinthians 14 are prophesying.
That's the very activity that women are doing in chapter 11, okay? So I don't see any other possible way to interpret this other than to say that 1 Corinthians 11 cannot be talking about the gatherings of the saints, okay? We'll see what it's talking about in a little bit. Okay, so women are not speaking in the gathered meetings, but they are speaking. They are prophesying. They are praying in 1 Corinthians 11.
Okay, so now let's look, and this is, I think, maybe an even stronger place to see the objection fails here. The thesis, I should say, that this is just for the church fails. Go back to 1 Corinthians 11, and this is, once you see this, you'll never unsee this. It's so obvious that it will forever cement in your mind that the head covering passage is not about the church. Okay, so look at verses 17 and 18, I'll read this.
Now, in giving these instructions, I do not praise you, since you come together, not for the better, but for the worse. For first of all, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and in part, I believe it. Okay, so in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 17, he's saying he's moving on to this topic. Now, in giving these instructions, so new topic, I don't praise you. Notice how with the head covering, he did praise them, that we talked about that last time in verse two.
But look at what he says in 18, he says," When you come together as a church," and he also says," First of all," right? He's saying," First of all, when you come together as a church, and this is the beginning of the section that's gonna be about the gatherings of the saints." And it's gonna go all the way through the end of chapter 14. So it's very clear here. He's saying, new topic, first of all, when you come together as a church, I can't praise you. And he talks about the Lord's Supper.
Okay, so pretty easy to see that this is where the beginning is, where he talks about the gathered meetings. Everyone with me here? All right, good. Okay, so I know some of you know this already, but therefore, our inference is that the first part of chapter 11, the part about the head covering, must be about ordinary life, let's call it that, like the non-meeting part. And one of the places that you can see this, and just hold your finger in 1 Corinthians 11, is in Acts chapter 21.
So if you turn with me to Acts chapter 21, we're gonna look at several passages here,' cause like I said, I want everyone to master this subject. In Acts chapter 21, verses eight to nine, it says," On the next day, we who were Paul's companions departed and came to Caesarea and entered the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven, and stayed with him." Now, this man had four virgin daughters who prophesied. Very interesting.
So this is Luke here traveling with some other of Paul's companions, and they come to the city Caesarea, and they stay where? At the house of Philip, the evangelist, who's one of those original seven deacons. And then it says that this man, talking about Philip, had four virgin daughters who prophesied. So this is happening in the context of a home situation. They're all in Philip's home, and somehow I wish we had more details, but somehow these four virgin daughters exhibit this prophetic function here or there.
So what is the context here? It's private homes. Interestingly, and we're not going to look at this, but the previous chapter of 1 Corinthians, before chapter 11 is chapter 10. The previous setting is actually homes and eating meals with non-Christians. So that's the immediate reference for the head covering. So he talks about going into non-Christian's home and they offer certain food before you.
So the previous context, as well as what we just talked about with chapter 14, as well as that bridge, tells us this is talking about, like I said, everyday life. We're gonna talk more about the next time and more about the duration of head covering, but clearly, I think beyond a doubt, and this is consistent with the historic views of the church, certainly the early church, this is talking about ordinary life. This is talking about meals in people's homes, all of the non-functions outside of the church gathering.
Okay. Next issue we have to tackle is, is the head covering simply long hair? So this is in the top three objections that you will hear. And we need to look at several passages here so that we just totally nail this. And in a sense, I'm slightly more sympathetic to this view, although not that sympathetic because it's easy to see how false it is.
But in verse 15, and look with me in verse 15 of chapter 11 of 1 Corinthians, it says, in the back half of the verse, it says," For her hair is given to her for a covering." Does everybody see that? And so he's like saying like," Hey, do the head covering." And then in verse 15, he says," Hey, her hair is the covering." Right? So I see why people get that. So we're gonna spend a few minutes looking at why that can't possibly be what Paul is talking about here.
And I'm gonna give you four reasons why he is clearly teaching here that head coverings are some kind of a fabric cloth covering. Okay, so the first reason is when you start to look at verse four. Okay, so verse four, read this with me. It says," Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonors his head." Okay, so a lot of you have taken our Greek class. This is easy Greek. So the expression that is used here is kata kephales. So this for the man having something on his head, kata kephales.
Kephales is in the genitive there. And if we remember from Greek, kata with the genitive is down from or against something to that sense. So like down the head is the super literal translation for it. Now what I want you to do is write down in the margin of your Bible. I hope many of you take notes in your Bible, it's a great practice to do. Write down in the margin of your Bible next to verse four there. Write this reference down' cause we're gonna flip to it right now. Esther 6:12. Esther 6: 12, okay?
So write that there in the margin of your Bible, next to verse 4. And then after you've written that, turn with me to Esther 6:12. Esther 6:12 is a very famous story about Haman and Mordecai, and it is the place in the Bible. It's the only place actually in the Bible where this exact same expression is used kata kephales is used in the Septuagint, of course. And so look with me at Esther chapter 6:12. Okay, so this is after Haman's plot has been exposed. We won't talk about the story.
I think almost everybody here knows that story. In Esther chapter six, verse 12, it says," After Mordecai went back to the king's gate, but Haman hurried to his house mourning and with his head covered." So in the Septuagint, that's kata kephales. Exactly the same expression as used in 1 Corinthians 11. Now, did Haman all of a sudden just grow his hair really long when his plan was, was uncovered and then he ran back with his hair suddenly grown long? Well, of course not. So he was, he was ashamed.
He knew he was caught and so he got some kind of a fabric and he put it over his head and he ran back in shame to run away from his fate, which I think he felt coming. Okay, so that's the one other place in the Bible where we see that exact same expression used and it clearly is a reference to a fabric covering. I'll read to you another place where it is actually used in the secular literature as well. There's an author whose name is Plutarch, who actually lived at almost the same time.
He lived between AD 40 and AD 120. And he writes about someone whose name is Scipio. And Scipio is some famous person. And just listen to this. So he says," And as he came to Alexandria and landed, he went with his head covered, kata kephales, exact same expression. And the Alexandrians running about him entreated, begged, he would gratify them by uncovering and showing them his desirable face. When he uncovered his head, they clap their hands with a loud acclamation.
Okay, so it's kind of a random passage in secular literature. But clearly, again, this man, Scipio, he's trying to disguise himself. He's the equivalent of a movie star back there, and he covers his head, and everyone just begs him, and he lifts, lifts off his and everyone is clapping and is all excited. Okay, so just like Haman, we see that this is a cloth covering. Okay, so that's the first reason why the head covering here must be a cloth one. The second reason is that it makes nonsense of the passage.
So if you look back at 1 Corinthians again, let's go back to 1 Corinthians 11. Look at verse 6. So in verse 6, it says," For if a woman is not covered, let her also be shorn. But if it's shameful for a woman to be shorn or shaved, let her be covered." Okay, so if you treat the covering here as long hair, it's kind of a tautology. A tautology is basically a statement that doesn't say anything. It's a meaningless statement.
So if you take it as being long hair, it's, well, if a woman doesn't have long hair, let her cut her hair. Well, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense in that reading. In addition, we'll come to this as well later on today and next time as well. The whole sense of the passage, particularly when you read it as a whole, is that the woman is showing her deference and position in this headship order, and she's supposed to cover, and she's supposed to have this recognition of the divine order here.
And then to say that, okay, actually the covering is long hair, which is her glory, and then she's supposed to show her glory off to everybody. It's like, it doesn't even make sense with the whole theme of the passage, the whole flow of the passage. So it doesn't make a lot of sense. And some people argue that he's like trying to undo everything that he said in the previous verses there and that like the whole thing before it is the quote from the Corinthians, but there's just no evidence for that whatsoever.
So that's a very strained, hopeless explanation. Okay, number three, almost all Bibles have a very poor translation of verse 15. So I have yet to find any translation that I like here for verse 15. So almost all Bibles, I think King James, New King James, ESV, NIV, they all say something like," Her hair is given to her as a covering." Does anybody have anything significantly different? Okay, yeah, everyone does. All right, so here's what's fascinating. I think this is amazing.
So the word here for covering is a totally different word than it's been used before. Totally different word. So the word is peribolaion. And so peri is, remember peri is like to around, we all remember that. And peribolaion, I think one of the best translations for this is something like shawl or wraparound. And I'm going to show you, we're going to look together at a couple of places where it's used in the Bible. It's not a common word, but it is used a few times.
It's used once in the New Testament besides here in Hebrews 1, where it's translated as cloak. But I actually want us to look at the usage of the word in the Septuagint as well. So if you're taking notes, Hebrews 1:12, the same word, peribolaion is used, and it's translated cloak there. But in the Septuagint, there's a handful of uses that I think make this incredibly interesting.
So the first one is in reference to, I think most people know that the Jews had to wear this rectangular shawl, and they were supposed to put four tassels. They're supposed to tie four tassels onto the corners of this shawl. This is documented in Deuteronomy, chapter 22, verse 12. That shawl is called the peribolaion that the Jews were wearing. It has four corners and put the shawl on it and they're wrapping it around. It has a sense of it's a special garment.
It's something that, in this case, is showcasing this beauty that, well, whatever you think about the tassels, they're some kind of marker of God's presence, the blue. The word often has a connotation, this wraparound or shawl, even in English, it has a little bit of that. It's something special. It's something beautiful. So look with me at Ezekiel chapter 16. And again, hold your finger in 1 Corinthians 11. We're going to look at two uses in the Septuagint of the exact same word. Ezekiel chapter 16 verse 13.
Ezekiel chapter 16 verse 13. It says," Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing," and hear the word as peribolaion, was a fine linen, silk, and embroidered cloth. You ate pastry of fine flour, honey and oil. You were exceedingly beautiful and succeeded to royalty. So the specific parable is not that important here, but it's clearly talking about a woman who's living in a royal position where she's been given these lavish garments and food, et cetera. And her garment is called the peribolaion.
Also in Ezekiel, look at Ezekiel chapter 27, verse 7. Totally different setting here in Ezekiel, but the same sense comes through. Ezekiel chapter 27 verse 7, it reads," Fine embroidered linen from Egypt was what you spread for your sail. Blue and purple from the coast of Elisha was what covered you. The Septuagint says," What was your clothing?" And that word is peribolaion again. So blue and purple from the coast of Elisha.
Again, it's this expensive, nice garment that has been given to the recipient here in Ezekiel 27. Okay, so now turn back with me to 1 Corinthians 11. And I think this makes so much more sense when you go back and read verse 15 in this light. So in the New King James, which I read from earlier, it says," But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her for her hair is given to her for a covering." I don't think that makes a lot of sense. But now, try this.
But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given to her as a beautiful shawl or something like that. It makes perfect sense. The for is Hoti here, so it's explaining what has gone before it, and it's explaining why the woman has this glory. And again, I think this makes perfect sense. And I hope even next time to come back to this and talk about it a little bit more.
So that second part of the, of the verse here, verse 15, is explaining the first part about this glory, this special glory that the woman has. And it's like this shawl. It's like this special garment that the Israelites wore. It's like those articles of clothing we see in the book of Ezekiel. So generally speaking, if there's a new word that's used, especially with Paul, it's better to use a different word in your translation and not to use the same word because Paul is a very precise, very careful writer here.
So women have this special gift, this, let's call it the beautiful shawl that's been given to them that men don't have, and that we're going to see gives them a responsibility that they have. All right, the fourth and final reason why the head covering must be a fabric cloth and not long hair is because we have so many native Greek speakers and so many people in the early church who write about this, and they all say that it was a fabric covering.
So the very first writer who talks about this, chronologically, his name is Irenaeus, and this was right around 180 AD. And if you have the Ante-Nicene Church Fathers, it's volume one, page 327. And this is what he says," A woman ought to have a veil upon her head because of the angels." And so he's kind of paraphrasing a verse from 1 Corinthians 11. And the word veil, I looked it up in Greek. Irenaeus writes in Greek. He's a native Greek speaker.
He uses the word for veil there is kalumma, which is actually a different word than Paul uses here. So then I looked up the word kalumma in the New Testament and I said," Huh, where is that used?" Interestingly, it's used in 2 Corinthians 3:13 where it says," Moses who put a veil over his face so the children cannot look steadily at the end of what was passing away." So there's that passage about Moses having to cover his face because of the fading glory there.
And so if you look up that word kalumma, it's clearly a fabric article that is, is worn. Um, I looked up, I'm not gonna read the references, but I looked up just to give you a sense of all the people who validate this interpretation. Clement of Alexandria, a little bit after Irenaeus, says something similar. Tertullian in Tunisia has a whole book. It's a short book. I've actually been reading it. I actually have almost read it twice to prepare for this.
He clearly thinks it's a cloth and he just obsesses about details on it. Augustine writes about it. He also says it's a cloth. Jerome says it's a cloth, and Hippolytus does as well. So that's Irenaeus, who lives in France, Clement, who lives in Alexandria, Tertullian who lives in Tunisia, Augustine who lives in Hippo, Jerome, who's kind of all over the place, but Israel, among other places, and Hippolytus who lives in Rome.
So we have very widespread agreement here among people who were very close in time, many of whom were native Greek speakers who all say this is a fabric cloth. And it bothers me when people are so arrogant and audacious that they think they know better than native speakers of the language.
You know, anybody who knows anything about traveling to foreign countries and spending time with other cultures and other languages, you know very quickly that especially if there's something that's disputed, you better rely on a native speaker. I was in India last year and a lot of you know I grew up in a home where people speak, my parents spoke to me in Malayalam, but then I would always speak back in English.
And so because of that, my Malayalam is not so good' cause I never had to develop the vocalization required there. But my reception is pretty good. But what I noticed consistently when I was in India, it frustrated me so much. We'd be sitting around a circle and someone would say something in Malayalam that was a joke, and I would never get the jokes. Because jokes require, like they're usually like plays on words or more subtle uses of the language. And I would also have to say like," Dad, mom, what did they say?
I didn't get the punchline." And for me, it was a humbling illustration that if you actually want to understand the nuances of a language, like you can't barely know it or halfway know it, or study what you like go to the native speakers. It's amazing how many people in today's world think they know better than native speakers of the language, which just boggles my mind, the audacity there. Okay, so to summarize what we've done so far, we said that the context of this passage is not the church meeting.
Let's call it everyday life. Now, I do think a head covering is appropriate in church, but it extends far beyond that. And then secondly, we spent some time trying to show that the head covering is a cloth covering. It's not long hair, it's easy. And we'll see later on that the covering is intended to veil this special glory that the woman has, this beautiful shawl that she has.
Okay, so for the third and final point I want to make here, just to give a little bit of a teaser into next time, turn with me to Matthew chapter eight. So you might think, why go to Matthew if you care about the head covering here, but there's an invaluable principle that we have to learn here that is going to help us to internalize the excitement that I want us to feel about the head covering. All right, so look with me at Matthew chapter eight, and we're going to read verses eight to ten.
So it says Matthew chapter eight verses eight to ten. The centurion answered and said," Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only speak a word and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, having soldiers under me. And I say to this one, go, and he goes, and to another, come, and he comes, and to my servant, do this, and he does it.
When Jesus heard it, he marveled and said to those who followed," Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel." Okay, I think this is a fascinating passage because of one line that it's easy to read over. So the centurion says to Jesus like," Jesus, hey, you don't even need to come to my house." And here's the line that I want us to look at here for the purposes of our discussion. He says in verse nine," For I also am a man under authority." What is that? What is going on there?
Why does this man connect Jesus' power to him being under authority? Well, in fact, this man understands a very powerful principle. This man understands that Jesus' power derives from him being under authority, i.e., under the authority of God the Father. Submission generates power. We are all supposed to, in varying ways, supposed to be submitted. So in Romans 13, it talks about how we're supposed to be submitted to the authorities, talking about the government authorities.
There are passages where it talks about, uh, the, uh, the submission of, of slaves to masters, you know, bosses to employees, something like that.
And there's even a very broad passage in first, you don't have to turn to this, but in 1 Peter chapter five, verse five, it says," All of you be submissive to one another and be clothed with humility, for God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble." So there Peter is saying," All of you submit to one another." He's basically saying," Let there be a culture of mutual submission among the body." So what I am convinced is that there is a special power.
There is a very unique power that is the highest type of power, that is a submissive type of power. Now that sounds crazy, right? Like when you hear that, you think like, what is a submissive type of power? What is a submissive kind of authority? But in fact, that's precisely what the centurion recognizes in Jesus as the source of his great power. And this type of authority is way more powerful than a bullying type of authority.
The reason that people marveled at Jesus, they marveled at his words and his teaching authority and his miracles and all the things he could do is because Jesus ultimately was a submissive man. Now this is a general principle, right? If you think about it, think about a priest or a prophet. Isn't it the case that a priest or a prophet has authority insofar as that priest or prophet is submitted to God?
Like, if you kind of think about it, like, yeah, they have authority, but it is a derivative authority that comes from their own place of submission to this higher authority of God. I appreciated the passage that Earl read, I was scanning it there. You know, I think David is an excellent example of this, where David is a man who I love the scene of David dancing before God, and everybody else is too stiff and too cool to do what David was doing, right?
David had this remarkably submissive posture towards God that gave him that ability to defeat Goliath, that gave him this incredible authority and power. And I submit, and no pun intended, actually. I submit that if you look around and consider people, just think about people in your life who have a lot of authority, that almost always, if not always, they are people who actually are good submitters as well. It's a very interesting thought experiment. And people who do not submit do not have good authority.
There are these loners who have just, it's very difficult for them to derive that authority, right? So this is an incredibly important passage.
Now, a lot of people, when they read 1 Corinthians 11, they get stuck on like," Oh, this seems like it's some chauvinistic passage and how bad it is, and dah dah dah dah dah dah and hopefully we'll continue to address this." But what we failed to do, what most people failed to do, is they fail to realize that throughout this passage, it talks about men and women praying and prophesying. And we miss the pop of that because, like I said, we're so blinded by all these concerns of chauvinism and everything else.
But what we see here is, in 1 Corinthians 11, is actually a remarkable passage where women, Christian women, are now ushered in to this new era of the Spirit and given the ability to pray and prophesy. You know, it's pretty amazing. If you go back in the Old Testament and look, I tried to find an example of this. I couldn't find one. Maybe somebody has an example. There's a bunch of examples where God's Spirit comes on a man. It's like, you know, comes on David or Samson, and they do these incredible deeds.
And I was looking for an example where that happened to a woman, and I couldn't find any of it. I haven't given up yet. Maybe some of you know you can tell me afterward. But certainly, it's the case that at best, God's Spirit comes temporarily and selectively on a few leaders. And even that, it's not like general men. And they have this ability to prophesy to do these great deeds.
And one of the amazing themes, I think, of the whole book of 1 Corinthians, and Paul will unpack this in later chapters as well, is he wants the people of God to be the people of the Spirit, who have the life of the Spirit coursing within them. And that's very exciting. So when we think, if we hearken all the way back to Genesis, and we all know this, that in the very beginning, you know the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters, and the Spirit of God brought order and beauty and life to this world.
And then we see God's Spirit come on. The first person that it's mentioned in the Bible is actually Joseph, is the first person who gets the Spirit. And then the next person is Bezalel, who's an artist, who's like this craftsman who makes these articles for the temple, and then various prophets and kings. But it's very clear that it's an exciting event when the Spirit of God comes on someone and they have this ability to do that.
Now, for the last passage I want us to turn to is just, it's a familiar passage, but I think it's worth us being reminded of this. Turn to Acts chapter two. In many ways, 1 Corinthians 11 is in continuity with Acts chapter two. So in Acts chapter two, this is Peter speaking, and let's look at verses 17 to 18, where it says," And it shall come to pass in the last days," says God," that I will pour out of my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.
Your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams. And on my menservants and on my maidservants, I will pour out my spirit in those days, and they shall prophesy." So I don't know how much more clearer he can get here, but sons and daughters, menservants and maidservants are recipients of the spirit. The picture that I have is similar to what we just experienced a couple weeks ago.
We were at Niagara Falls and we watched this little documentary there at Niagara Falls where they show how when they first, people first figured out the falls, they thought like, hey, we could like put hydroelectric gear here and make electricity. And so they dammed it up. And I mean, it's gorgeous. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's absolutely gorgeous.
And they have pictures of Niagara Falls dammed up with these little trickles of water flowing out as people tried to harness it for the hydroelectric energy there. And it's just this monstrosity. It's a little bit like that in the Old Testament. The spirit is kind of this trickle. You know, it's just like coming through. But then what happens in Acts 2 is the dam breaks and this torrent of water floods out and now people are able to enjoy the life-giving power and authority that comes from the Spirit.
And so the woman, as with the man, and again, don't miss the excitement of this, has the ability now to pray and prophesy when she takes her place in this divine order that God has architected. I often brag about our sisters here. I really do. And I have commented many times that several of you, I won't mention names here, but several of you, I've heard say things that I know have this supernatural power behind them because when you've said them, it just, boom, it hits me like an arrow in the heart.
And it reverberates in my mind. Some of the things I remember years later that different of our sisters have said. And I think, where did that come from? Well, of course, this is, and we'll talk more about prophecy next time and how to define it, but this is this spirit empowered supernatural speech that God is inviting women to partake in as just like Jesus, they have this submissive type of authority or this submissive type of power. I often, and I will highlight my wife here.
I'm often amazed at her, and I sometimes love to just listen to her and look at her and study her because I see that beautiful, submissive power and authority that flows through her life. So next time, what we're gonna do is we're going to cover, in more depth, praying and prophesying, and tie together a couple more themes that we haven't yet brought in. There's one more mistranslation that we have to correct, uh, that will be very important.
And I think you'll find that this passage is this incredible passage that binds together very deep, rich themes of scripture that once you have the keys to unlock them, you'll, you'll deeply appreciate. So let's close in prayer. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word. And God, I pray that your word would not be maligned.
I think of Titus 2 and how the apostle exhorts the older women to teach the younger women to submit to their husbands and love their children and be keepers at home so that your word may not be blasphemed. And Father, we know that your word is being blasphemed insofar as people are selective and take the God of culture and allow that idol to trump the power of the Word.
Father, we pray that we would not be a people who do that, and we pray that you would work among our body, that we would have the powerful coursing life of the Holy Spirit as your sons and your daughters pray and prophesy and do great exploits. Father, we want to be the people of the Spirit that the New Testament enjoins us to be. And we want to be those who stand in that powerful history of the great prophets of old.
We want to be those who, through the power of your spirit, bring life and order and healing and your divine energy to all that we touch. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.