Turning on the Lights! – Tuesday, October 15, 2024. Let’s talk about the ORDER of our worship.
Good Morning, Good Morning my brothers and my sisters and welcome to Turning On the Lights for Tuesday October 15, 2023.
today, we go back into 1 Corinthians – chapter 11 to be exact – and we talk about the order that SHOULD be inherent in our worship services.
The church gathers for some very specific reasons and those reasons are not ever to be a distraction to the gathered or a deterrent for the unbeliever.
Let’s talk about this today – I pray that it causes you to think and delve more deeply in your faith.
God bless you and keep you and we will talk to you again on Turning On the Lights!
This is a video recorded copy of the FaceBook Live event of Turning on the Lights! – Tuesday, October 15, 2024. Watch here via the YouTube link!
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This is a transcript from the audio of this episode of Turning on the Lights! – Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Good morning. Good morning, my brothers and my sisters. Welcome to turning on the lights. Welcome to the church town church of God. Look at it. It looks very nice. It’s all cleaned up from the service of the ordinances that we had had on Sunday. The grandkids and I came in and cleaned it all up yesterday. Looking good, looking sharp. The choir loft is kind of empty. We got a lot of chairs over there for feet washing. That’s about all that needs to be done yet. You’re looking at the sanctuary. We’ve been dealing with insurance and IRS and all these different things and people say, Well, okay, fine. How old is your church? Well, I’m like, well, it was founded in 1833. Oh, so you’ve been grandfathered into a lot of these different things. So I guess so I don’t know. All I know is we want to make it right. We want to make sure that we’re on solid ground with the governmental structures. I’ll tell you what I don’t like. When the IRS starts poking around, they want to know the names of people who attend. They want to know the names of people in leadership, they want to know the name, they want to know like your daily or weekly average attendance. They want to know your doctrine. They want to know statements of faith and all and they get really busy. I didn’t like that at all. And we’re working with that. Let’s just put it that way. Yeah. So anyway, got to maintain that legal status. Right. Good morning, Renee. We are. I don’t mean to get right down to business. I usually talk a little bit about something. It was a busy weekend, wasn’t it Renee? I talked about the service of the ordinance on Sunday. Saturday was just as busy leading up to Sunday, not only in preparation, but other things going on in my life and on the lives of other people. And then Sunday is that that that service is always jam packed, right? There’s lots of moving parts with the Lord’s Supper and feet washing and time in the word and prayer and song. Special pieces. This week we have a lot of special music, a lot of fun. We got brass here with us this week. It’s going to be a combination of brass, organ, guitar, piano, lots of good stuff this week. I’m really looking forward to it. Also, Randy Simpson has a special concert here Thursday night. I haven’t been mentioning it because it’s odd that it’s a Thursday night, but it was set up well in advance. So just got a message. Okay, Sue. Um, finally. Okay, but what I was saying, people are so fun. Yeah, so Randy Simpson is going to be a Thursday night. I can’t remember Sue, you’re funny. Okay, get right cryptic messages at this time. Okay. But I don’t I can’t remember who is special guest is but if it’s a Thursday, it means that somebody big time is moving on through and Randy wants to set up a concert, and that’ll be on Thursday so I’ll probably be popping over here. Good morning, good morning. We’ve got Vermont, we’ve got North Carolina, Pennsylvania, we’ve got California, all represented here and turning on the lights. Maybe you listen to the podcast. Maybe you don’t. But if you’re going to get that podcast out there I need everybody right so I need everybody who listens to this to go to Apple or Spotify and subscribe to the podcast. Rate and review it. Okay, why? Because then it will pop up. If there is somebody who is lacking Christian teaching. If there is somebody who thinks that the church is all stuck up and snobby, whatever the case may be and they begin to search for things to listen to, it’ll pop up. We don’t make a dime off of it I don’t make there’s no money involved none of that stuff I don’t care if there were, it wouldn’t be mine anyway it would go right to the church. But at any rate, there isn’t. But we do. What can happen is if you put in for any sort of sickness or debauchery boom, there’s 1000 different podcasts about those things. But if you’re trying to search for Christian teaching or down to earth Christian teaching whatever the case may be, we got to get this thing going. It is there’s there’s several hundred a couple hundred subscribers, but let’s keep it going. Download rate and review all of that stuff and that’s not a promotion for any other reason than we need good Christian teaching in the world you like red pen logic I don’t know if you subscribe to that but you should. The guy is fantastic. There’s a lot of good Bible study there’s a lot of good Bible teaching out there on social media but you do have to look for it. You don’t have to look for the garbage, the garbage, just turn on your phone, but you have to look for the good stuff. So let’s let them find turning on the lights father we pray that your word will go out this morning. And in the name of your son Jesus Christ hearts will be warmed heads will be turned repentance will happen, and your kingdom will grow in Jesus name. Amen. So good morning everybody and welcome we’re still talking about churching. Right. And that’s what we do a lot of turning on the lights is about church, churching. It’s a lot of ecclesiology. It is a lot of theology, relative to the church now. This is unique, because you can’t really compare apples to apples with Old Testament synagogue, Old Testament temple, Old Testament gathering and New Testament church, the church that was begun on the day of Pentecost and is led by Jesus Christ himself and the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit is unique. It is as we are taught the secret that was hidden from both men and angels. This idea, right, we read through the Gospels and we know that the disciples of Jesus Christ were confused as to who he was. This Messiah, not what we expected. When is it when is he going to reign right when is he going to bring down the fire when is he going to take down the empire. And what we’re what they learn is that the kingdom of God is the spiritual now spiritual kingdom of God, that is existing on earth to convert hearts and minds to the understanding through salvation, that is made possible through Jesus Christ. The tip of that spear is the church. Now people are getting together intentionally for what purpose to perform Old Testament sacrifices and know to hear the good news that the Messiah has come and that the Messiah ministered the Messiah willingly sacrificed himself on the cross for humankind, that the Messiah rose again bodily defeating sin and death and the power of sin and the power of death over your life. All of those things. Now the church comes together for that purpose. We hear about attractional churches. We hear about seeker friendly churches. I don’t know any other way to do church. Good morning Rosie representing Vermont. Nice snow, I’m coming up to go scan. Fantastic. Right. We’re participating in the ordinances that demonstrate our faith and help us to remember who God is who Jesus is what Jesus did all of those things. The church is bird on the day of Pentecost in every language that there is and then persecution comes in the church spreads out around the world, and these little gatherings pop up all over the place. And now the good news is being spread the church as we call it is the tip of the spear of the kingdom of God. And it is different and it is unique and understanding what we’re doing here is important like I said, is it seeker friendly church, is it liturgical not liturgical creedal non creedal. We’ve taken it and we have divided it and we’ve done all kinds of things to it. But when we read in Scripture, and we can extrapolate from the letters what church looks like sounds like is like. That’s what we try to do. Once again, I always say one of the greatest benefits that I have as a pastor is not being well churched in my youth, or, and in my adulthood for that matter. All I know is the Bible. I don’t have, I didn’t come into this with any preconceived ideas, other than spending about a decade in a United Methodist Church before they went wacko United Methodist Church, and it was a very liturgical very creedal very formal. I like that. I didn’t know any other way, but when you become responsible as a leader for that you’re like okay, I want to get this right. How do you know where to get it right, scripture, scripture, scripture. And so everything that I try to create help. Forgive me Lord, everything that I try by the power of God to create here at church town is through the Word of God. It’s why we don’t take an offering. It’s why we don’t divide families in church. It’s why if it’s not in Scripture, I don’t want it if it is in Scripture, I want it. And one of the things that we see in Scripture is order. And you see all of this craziness that has to turn people off to Christianity, maybe it’s attractive. I don’t know, but all this wailing all of this impartation all of this holy laughter all of this running around, you know, and those are supposed manifestations of the Holy Spirit in individuals and in congregation, and there’s chaos and there’s disorder, and there’s people behaving or supposed pastors wishing people down and wishing people down and hands growing and all kinds. What I don’t see any of that in Scripture. And you see people praying for the Lord’s will to be done you see different miracles in the new church in the early church that are there so that the legitimacy and the authority of the early church may be established through the power of God. And you see from the earliest stages and Corinth is the perhaps the best example of it all, how a well meaning church ordered by the power of God and his word the good news that Christ lived died and rose again went off the rails very quickly. So today we want to look at first Corinthians 11, and we’re going to begin 11 and 12 are very, very important chapters as Paul tries to teach again that worship of the Lord Jesus Christ is not chaos and disorder and disruption and distracting worship of the Lord is ordered. Right, it is, it places your mind and your spirit in sync with God’s spirit. It casts your eyes on Jesus alone, not on what that person is babbling on about beside you, or over here screaming and yelling, or some look at me pastor flying down on a tether. None of that. So let’s read a little bit. But in the following instructions. This is beginning with verse 17. So let’s do some of this do all of 11, because there’s a lot of 11 that really you want to take things out of context. I’ve just given you the context of the disorder and the chaos that is the church of Corinth of the pagan religions, right, the sexual worship cults that have infiltrated the church. And Paul’s going to set these right and it’s men and it’s women and it’s children, and he wants to set them right I am so glad that you always keep me in your thoughts. Excuse me. This weather, how does it go from 80 degrees to 55 degrees. There’s no storm there’s no anything. It just in, you know, Monday yesterday I couldn’t talk very much anyway Renee if you’re watching you know it was pretty loud there at the wedding. The wind in the trees right this we got the dry leaves and then you got the wind, and there’s dry leaves. And then there’s the sun and the sun rises shouting over the storm. So yesterday was not a good voice day for me. And now here we go. I said the other day, I went like two months without mowing grass. And now in October, I’m mowing it twice a week. Craziness. I’m glad that you always keep me in your thoughts and that you are following the teachings I passed on to you. I know I can’t. I can’t stop every five seconds but Paul does a great job of what we call couching his criticism. And then Josh there’s Josh lucky, and he would play football for me I would say Josh. That is an incredible effort. I haven’t seen effort like that. You know, all week long now. When you see the offensive tackle do this you really should do that. And that’s what I want to see out of you, but your effort is incredible. That’s couching. Right, so you got to compliment a criticism, a compliment, and it’s a proven way for people to be able to receive criticism, much better. And yes, Brian, your passion when you’re preaching is admirable. You can tell your love for the Word of God. I have a question about that verse that you exposited right but I enjoy sitting and listening and learning. I’m going to receive that criticism, much better and Paul does that all the time. tree stand out in God’s creation. I hope you don’t have it too loud will be scaring all your dear friends away, not your dear friends, and maybe if you’re going to shoot and kill them. They’re not actual friends. Just saying. But Paul’s couching this I’m glad that you follow the teachings that we first gave to you. Here’s one of those big Christian, but But there is one thing I want you to know the head of every man is Christ, the head of one woman is man and the head of Christ is God, a man dishonors his head if he covers his head while praying or prophesying, but a woman dishonors her head if she prays or prophesies without a covering on her head for this is the same as shaving her head. Yes, if she refuses to wear a head covering. She should cut off all her hair, but since it is shameful for a woman to have her hair cut or her head shaved. She should wear a covering. Now let me read through some of this because this these are the parts that we kind of skip over. A man should not wear anything on his head when worshiping for man is made in God’s image and reflects God’s glory and woman reflects man’s glory for the first man didn’t come from woman, but the first woman came from man and man was not made for woman but woman was made for man for this reason, and because the angels are watching a woman should wear a covering on her head to show she is under authority. No, that’s all anti woman. No, it absolutely is not. Did you read the first section? Right, the head of man is Christ in the head of Christ is God and there is God the father. There is Jesus Christ, the living word and the head of the church and he covers the church and he covers man and man covers woman and man and woman together cover children. There is order. And to symbolize that order Paul is talking about head coverings. Are you covered? Now there is absolutely and this is the tradition why many of you older folks that are listening here today watching here today, and we still do it at church town, especially at Easter time, women wear their hats to church. When my neighbor friends, they and they head off to church in their long skirts and their long hair, they have their hair up and they have these big beautiful hats on. It’s gorgeous. It’s wonderful. But it’s very much tradition to the beginning of the early church. And what we can extrapolate from this is not a bunch of rules and regulations as to how to dress. But the order and the structure of human society. And of the ecclesia. The order in worship. So there needs to be a foundational principle that play here. And so, so there will not be chaos. Children are not running around telling the parents what to do so husband and wife understand their roles with one another and their roles within worship. It’s not any form of lifting one particular sex up and putting one particular sex down is discussing how human beings exist together. In good order, under the authority of Lord God Almighty. And I will tell you that I, as a man, you both feel the freedom of that because you are empowered by Christ and you feel the weight of responsibility of that, or at least if you’re a man listening today you should feel the weight of responsibility for that. And what I hear from godly woman after godly woman is how freeing and empowering it is to not have to concern themselves with living out the roles of a man and a woman both. They have a good man in their life, who is living out his role and assuming that responsibility and what I hear, obviously I’m not a woman, but I hear from godly women godly wives is how empowering and how freeing it is to live their roles as women. Their personhood as a daughter of the Most High. A man does not have to assume both roles, nor should he, and a woman does not have to assume both roles nor should she. And now we begin this the foundational principles of God the Father Almighty. We have the sacrifice of his son, Jesus Christ who is our Savior and the Lord of our lives and the head of the church. And we have the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit that makes the church, so much more than just a gathering. So much more than the Elks Club or the white circle or whatever the case may be. The Lions Club. We are empowered we are bound together by the power of God’s Holy Spirit, and we are empowered by God’s Holy Spirit with actual spiritual gifts that we are to exercise to demonstrate the kingdom of God on earth to all, and to expand the kingdom of God on earth to all. It’s different it’s unique. It is ordered. So, there is no commandment saying that you shouldn’t women shouldn’t wear hats in churches or whatever the case may be. This is why it is frowned upon if a man walks into church and has a hat on it’s like hey, take your hat on your off you’re in church. I was always taught that as well. And still that’s probably even more traditional for a man take your hat off in church. This is for a woman where I had in church, but all of it from this little section is trying to get this wacko church in Corinth, that is out of control in order, and in order to get in order, you need foundation. And that’s what’s happening here. Now we do like to cherry pick will get in you know when he talks about women prophesying or and both women being silent in church. We do like to cherry pick which verses we want to use. But all of it, we must look at collectively scripture informs scripture. And just as the letters to the churches are the first commentaries on the Gospels. Whenever we find a concept, even in one of the epistles, we must open up all of scripture and examine how God the Father has exercised this principle throughout history. Not just in a verse that he used Paul to help get a church in order. I hope that that makes sense. We get such a narrow thing we want what we want. And then we will use scripture as some sort of crazy reference book and we’ll look through it that verse that supports what I think that verse that supports what I think, and then we’ll do these huge theological constructs or these ecclesia logical constructs about how church should go based on what we think we think and then we go to scripture to back us up. And we know that that’s wrong, because the exact opposite should be true. Scripture should be informing us. Period. You say okay well this is an interesting concept. Is this the way it should be open up the rest of your Bible and find out, out, open up the rest of your Bible and find out. Do gospel songs follow what you’re talking about too? I’m not quite sure of that question, but I’ll tell you this. The best hymns. Old from Luther, right old. To new are theologically sound and tell the story of from unconversion through conversion to life in the spirit. Whenever we sing a song, whenever we sing a song whenever we explore a new him whenever we explore a new song. It may be very simple in its nature how great is our God. That’s a more modern song it’s older now but more modern song. But we want to make sure that it is sound and that it speaks of the gospel. The good news of the resurrected Christ, and that it’s not teaching anything else and that it’s not just going off in some direction about how God loves you and whatever the case may be, let’s get some order to follow the same theme. Let’s get some order in that song. And let’s take the singer of that him from approaching the cross through the cross. Those are the best him’s and we sing them in their entirety. I was taught that and one of that’s one of the best things that I was ever taught early on as a pastor don’t don’t don’t break up him’s and sing two verses of this and a verse of that and I know the best ones tell the whole story. So sing it. Okay. So, in the Lord’s people women are not independent of men men are not independent of women there it goes oh it sounds oppressive to me. It’s not women are not independent of men and men are not independent of women I just preached that at the wedding on Sunday. And the whole picture of marriage is the fact that there was one human created the Adam, the human, and he realized that it was not good for this human to be alone. There is no helper suitable for him, and scripture even says that they went through all of the animal kingdom, and there it just to prove this point right there is no helper suitable for this human. So I will create the opposite sex of course God knows all of this from the human, the human will become divided into male and female. When we talk about marriage, holy matrimony, the holy relationship of marriage, we talk about reuniting the human. One, two, and then through holy matrimony two become one flesh. Often people interpret that statement as, you know, sexual, and the two become one flesh, but no, it is the picture of humanity, the human being divided being reunited in marriage. So man is not independent of woman and woman is not independent of man, we are meant to be in relationship one with the other. We are meant to fulfill one another. We are meant to complete one another. It’s true. It’s true you don’t have to be that sappy but it’s true. For although the first woman came from man every other man was born from a woman, whoa, including the Christ of God. And everything comes from God, he never strays from that foundation. Judge for yourselves, is it right for a woman to pray to God in public without covering your head? Isn’t it obvious that it’s disgraceful for a man to have long hair? And isn’t long hair a woman’s pride and joy? For it has been given to her as a covering, but if ever anyone wants to argue about this, I simply say that we have no other custom than this. There’s a key word. And neither do God’s other churches. Custom. Is this a decree from the Lord? This is an interpretation. This is how the Lord is using Paul to bring unity and structure and purpose, particularly to the church in Corinth. But this letter would be circulated. There needs to be order. There needs to be a foundation. There needs to be structure. There needs to be purpose. And these are the customs that we will follow in order to get there. Does your church follow those customs? Feel free. But they are customs. They’re not the 11th commandment. Christ did not hang on the cross and say, “Cover your head while you worship me.” We must understand these things because we’re going to read in other epistles and other from other authors. Other things about other churches. We’ve got to look at the whole. And that’s where I come back. That’s harder work. That’s not just easy. A woman shall not exercise authority over men. What don’t you understand about that? Well, I’ll tell you what I don’t understand about that. All the other thousand times in scripture when women exercised authority over men. So can we go there and see what’s going on? God’s not schizophrenic. God does not contradict himself. “I, Paul,” is a pretty important statement. “I, Paul, do not allow.” Paul is inspired by God’s Holy Spirit, but Paul is by no means Jesus Christ himself. You see what I’m saying? So when we look at all of these things, my point is that we open up all of scripture. That’s the way that I was taught fundamentally is that scripture informs scripture. So if you want to examine a particular topic, open up all of our holy scriptures, because we do believe that the canon, all 66 books, are the divinely inspired, infallible, never fails in their purpose, infallible Word of God. So let’s take a look. Right? Let’s take a look. He goes on to talk in particular about the Lord’s Supper. Let me read this and then we’ll, excuse me, pick back up on Friday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday morning. “But in the following instructions, I cannot praise you.” Because Corinth has turned the Lord’s Supper into a food orgy, into a drunken debauchery food orgy. “In the following instructions, I cannot praise you.” Right? Remember the couching? “For it sounds as if more harm than good is done when you meet together. First, I hear that there are divisions among you when you meet as a church.” We talked about that. “And to some extent, I believe it. But of course, there must be divisions among you so that you who have God’s approval will be recognized.” He says there’s got to be divisions because those who are actually following God should stick out like a sore thumb. “When you meet together, you are not really interested in the Lord’s Supper, for some of you hurry to eat your own meal without sharing it with others. As a result, some go hungry while others get drunk.” What? Don’t you have your own homes for eating and drinking? Or do you really want to disgrace God’s church and shame the poor? What am I supposed to say? Do you want me to praise you? Well, I certainly will not praise you for this. “Coming together and interpreting the Lord’s Supper as some sort of giant, well, supper. Instead of the way the Lord did it to be representative of his sacrifice and the shedding of his blood for the atonement of sin, you lay out a table and you have at it.” And that is not only sinful and reflects poorly of the Lord. Look at all of the people who can’t even afford that. You won’t allow people in the church who can’t afford to provide for the Lord’s Supper. What an example to the poor. What a great outreach. Get out. All of this is for us. Come on. Paul says, “I can’t.” No, absolutely won’t say a single good word about that. “For I pass on to you what I received from the Lord himself on the night when he was betrayed. The Lord Jesus took some bread and gave thanks for it. Then he broke it in pieces and said, ‘This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, he took the cup of wine after supper saying, ‘This is cup of the new covenant between God and his people, an agreement confirmed with my blood. Do this to remember me as often as you drink it. For every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are announcing the Lord’s death until he comes again.” Order. Order. It’s not an all you can eat buffet. It’s not an open bar. There’s order and there’s structure and there’s purpose. This is what Paul is trying to get across. And he says, “If you go about this eating and drinking in an unworthy manner, you’re bringing condemnation upon yourself.” Which you are. You’re mocking what the Lord has taught us to do in remembrance of him. The Lord was not a glutton or a drunkard. That’s not a representation of our Lord. So there you go. What do you think about that? So there you go. Teaching 1 Corinthians. That’s chapter 11. And the theme is order, structure, foundation and purpose. We’re going to pack it in for today. I hope that you have an incredible week. I’ll see you in a couple of days on turning on the lights. Make it a good one. Be safe. And good Lord willing in the river, don’t rise. We’ll see you Thursday morning for Turning on the Lights.
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