[0:00] I thought someone sent me a memo today that this is dress up Sunday. Did I get the wrong memo?
[0:13] What's up with that? They said, hey, dress as nicely as you can and do not be a distraction to anybody in the church. So I thought I would just dress as nicely as I could and not be a distraction to anybody in the church.
[0:28] How are you guys doing? Ah, come on. You guys doing well? You know, I think about... Now, if you're new to Watermark, this is how I dress all the time.
[0:42] This is how all the pastoral staff dress all the time. My name is Tobin. I'm one of the pastors. I'm a teaching pastor here. I'm joking. This is not how I dress all the time. But, you know, we're having fun as a family of God, and we're trying to figure out what does it mean for us to go on a journey with God and to worship Him.
[1:01] And we've been looking at this... You know, this is terrible because it's like the first Sunday back. Everybody's new back. Everybody's coming back. And we've got the passage that no one ever wants to preach on, right? So when I tell other pastors in America what we're going to preach on today, they're like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my whole life.
[1:16] You should go to do something fun. But I think that one of the things about preaching through a book of the Bible is you don't skip a chapter. So we're hoping to teach God's worth faithfully.
[1:29] And I'm looking at the first verse, and I just keep thinking through my head, what does it mean for us to imitate Christ? Because Paul's saying, imitate me as I imitate Christ. So don't imitate me if I'm not imitating Christ. But if I'm imitating Christ, imitate me.
[1:42] Therefore, imitate Christ. Christ. And been praying for that as a church. You know, when we prayed about starting this church, we prayed that God would allow us to start a church family that just loved each other, that we accepted each other, that we were going on a journey together, and that we were going to learn from each other.
[1:59] And we knew that when we came together as a church family, we were going to be different, coming from different backgrounds and expressions. And I fully assume that a lot of people in here aren't in the family of God yet.
[2:09] They're here exploring, and they're trying to figure out what it means to be a follower of Christ. And there's probably some of us in here who thinks that we're in a family of God, and we're not in it yet either because we're kind of misunderstanding what it means to walk with the Lord.
[2:24] But in this passage and in this book, one of the things that comes out is as we walk with the Lord, we imitate Him, and we act like Him. And so we're in this book of Corinthians, and the Corinthians are just this crazy group of church people.
[2:42] I mean, they're planted in probably the most immoral city in all the ancient world. It was wealthy. It was just out of control and everything that did, excess to the max.
[2:54] It was a lot like Hong Kong. It was a major shipping port. And in the middle of this, this small little church community came in, and all these people came to know the Lord. They came to Christ.
[3:05] They became Christians, and they were experiencing this freedom of what it meant to be a Christian, what it meant to walk in grace, what it meant to have God's forgiveness, what it meant not to be performance-based in their lives.
[3:17] And as they got this freedom, they still had this old nature that they were trying to deal with, and they didn't do very well in dealing with it. I mean, they had these Christian freedoms, but they used it to the abuse of other people.
[3:32] And when the church didn't imitate Christ, it confused people. It confused people within the church, and it confused people outside the church. And that's what these chapters are all about.
[3:44] It's about confusion. It's about freedom and confusion and people not acting the way they're supposed to act. And what we see as Christians is that we always struggle with these ideas.
[3:55] We struggle with balancing these ideas of authority and discipline, knowledge and love, freedom and responsibility. We struggle with these, and we kind of vacillate.
[4:06] We go back and forth. What does it mean to be gracious? I struggle with them as a parent. How am I gracious to my kids? But then how do I also bring authority in there? And this church, this Corinthian church, they did terrible at that.
[4:22] I mean, every time they tried to do that, it always turned out about them. It was always about their pride. It was always about their self-centeredness. It was always about their ego. It was always about their selfishness.
[4:32] It was always about their self-authority. And these themes led throughout all the life of the church, and it just caused mass chaos and confusion, and it was hurting people in the church, and it was hurting people out of the church.
[4:43] And in chapter 11, we get to another one of these stories of people doing what they want to do, and they're causing this chaos, and they're struggling again with, what does it mean to have freedom? And their pride is coming in, and it's hurting their worship.
[4:59] It's hurting a fellowship like this. It's hurting their families. Their families are getting hurt. And people aren't obeying God, and they're not giving God the glory.
[5:09] They want themselves the glory. And so this is what's happening in this church, and you're going to think this is like the dumbest thing ever. But there are women who are praying and prophesying in it, which is great.
[5:22] I mean, if you looked at any culture in that time, the Greek, the Roman, and the Jewish culture, the women had no authority. They couldn't speak in congregations. They couldn't speak in the fellowship.
[5:33] They couldn't speak in the temple. They were subservient to everybody. They were basically treated as property. But when Paul and Christ came in in the Gospels, what they did, Christ did first, and then Paul took on the mantle of preaching the good news.
[5:50] They broke down all these barriers of sexes. And so in the Christian church, for the first time in the history of the world, there wasn't a difference between man and woman. There wasn't a barrier there that man and women were seen as equal in essence and dignity and everything they did, so that when we stood before the Lord in church, and this never happened, we read these things and we go, yeah, so what's the big deal?
[6:12] It's a huge deal. For 2,000 years, people did not do this. And so this is the first time people are actually doing this. And they're trying to figure out, well, how do we do this?
[6:24] And how do we do it well? And so they're, for the first time, they're standing in this freedom of grace and forgiveness, and they're struggling. They're struggling with their faith, and they're struggling with their freedom.
[6:37] Now the church, what we've talked about throughout this whole time is their motto has been, everything is permissible, which is probably not a good motto for a church. But the Corinthian church's motto was, everything is permissible, everything is good, we have freedom in Christ.
[6:52] And so what happens was that there are these women who came in, and they were probably married, and they're praying, and they're bringing prophecy. Prophecies are words of encouragement, instruction from God. This is what God's doing. But when they did it, they stopped dressing culturally appropriate.
[7:07] I mean, they just felt like they were free to do whatever they wanted to do. And so they went into these gatherings, and they are dressing actually in ways that were provocative, like me.
[7:20] Before I got up, my wife said, wow, you distract me. I said, thank you very much. But that's what these women were doing. They were dressing in provocative ways.
[7:32] But what they were, not just dressing in provocative ways, but culturally, and listen to my heart here, this is what these women were saying in their culture. They were saying, we're dressing this way because we reject the idea of authority.
[7:44] We reject the idea of submitting to authority. We don't want to be treated as women. We want to be different within creation.
[7:57] And the church struggled with this because when Christ spoke and he set up this idea of equality, it changed the world, and specifically, it changed the world in the church and in marriage.
[8:13] And in the church and in marriage, everyone was seen as equals. But these ladies came in and they were expressing their freedom in ways that were just kind of freaking people out.
[8:27] And so when the people saw that and they came in new to the congregation, they didn't know what to do. I mean, they were like, whoa, that's how the barmaid dresses in the pub.
[8:38] And oh, wow, that's how the prophetess dressed in the temple where I used to go have sex before I became a Christian. And it was causing all this tension. And when you went to the women and talked to them, they would just say, like they should say, we're free.
[8:53] We can do whatever we want. We're equal. We're on the same platform. And so we are going to push aside all these cultural boundaries. But as they were doing this, it was just causing mass confusion in the church.
[9:06] I don't know if I can, I'm saying it very well. My wife tells me sometimes I'm not a very good communicator, even though I like to think I am. But when Christians came in, they were confused. And when non-Christians came in, they were confused because how these women were dressing and how they were acting, they were just blurring all the lines of gender and gender differences and authority.
[9:23] And basically when you came in, people said they're attacking God. They're attacking God's creation. Now you're going to laugh when you hear what they did because when we think about this, we think, well, that has to be the dumbest thing in the world.
[9:37] But they did this. And what they did was they stopped wearing their head coverings in worship. Because before, in all these cultures, Roman, Greek, and Jewish, all the women wore head coverings.
[9:48] And so these women and their freedom in Christ and how God has changed them, they stopped wearing their head coverings. They stopped wearing them in the worship and they stopped wearing them in the public. And you know what? Some of them even let their hair down. Wow.
[10:00] And you're thinking, well, that has to be the dumbest thing ever. But that's what they were doing. And you know what? Some of them even cut their hair short. And when they did this as Christians and they came into this community, they just were causing confusion.
[10:15] And Paul doesn't ignore it, which is very interesting to me. But Paul talks about it, but he doesn't necessarily talk about exactly what's happening, but he talks about the motives behind what's happening.
[10:25] and Paul looks at our heart. And he talks about our heart and he talks about the hurts that we have and the struggles that we have with our hearts. And he tells me and he tells us and he tells the women in this church and in our church and men in our church and in that church that you and I are always going to struggle with self-interest.
[10:49] That you and I are always going to struggle with pride. That you and I are always going to struggle with our willingness to place ourselves apart from God. We're going to strive for our own glory.
[11:02] We're not going to strive for God's glory. We're going to strive for our own glory. And that's what we talked about last week in church. That you and I have this continual struggle of are we going to follow our own selves or are we going to follow the Lord?
[11:15] And in this situation the women were perceived as following themselves. So what I want to do in just the time remaining I want to talk about two or three topics in this passage that stick out to me before I get in trouble.
[11:30] I want to talk about headship and what headship means. I want to talk about head coverings and what they meant back then and what they mean now. And I want to ask us some questions.
[11:41] Okay? Is that okay? So hopefully I'm not distracting you. But you know you look at this you notice in the passage right after Paul if you look at your Bible or in the passage you look at it right after Paul teaches to them in the beginning he basically tells them to be imitators of Christ and very first verse two he gives them a praise he encourages them because they've been trying to follow his teaching and they're trying to do exactly what he said to do but in verse three he comes in and he basically says this but I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man and man is the head of a woman and his wife not every woman a woman and God is the head of Christ so before you get angry I just want to break this down really quickly and I want to tell you what I've been learning the first thing we see here is that God is the head of Christ that means that Christ submits to God's authority and to understand how we live in church and society as God's people and how we we live in the family we have to understand this idea of authority it's God it's Jesus it's man and it's woman and if we get these things out of whack and we just focus on the bottom two then we lose focus on what God has meant for us to do and I believe we lose the blessing that God wants us to have as God's people because I think this is about blessing and God wants to take you and I to a place where we flourish and we feel his presence but we struggle with that because we want to have our own authority as we do that so Jesus who is God submits to God the Father so God is Jesus' head so God the Father is Jesus' authority now just play with me here okay so Jesus is 100% God he's 100% man he's eternal he's a creator he dies on a cross he's one in the same essence of God but he defers himself to God
[13:41] God the Father is his head and as he defers himself to God what we see here is it does not make Jesus any less it doesn't make Jesus any less than he can be it doesn't diminish who he is or his character it doesn't take away his value it doesn't take away his worth it doesn't take away his dignity it doesn't take away his identity it doesn't take away his competency it doesn't take away his significance all these things I've struggled with and I've heard people struggle with me on these things but in the Bible the idea of headship just doesn't do that headship has nothing to do with superiority and headship has nothing to do with value the Father and Jesus have the same essence they have the same value but what we're told is they have different roles and different functions and somehow in eternity past I don't understand it but Jesus said in the triune Godhead
[14:43] I'm going to submit to God the Father and he willingly submits to God's authority so my question as we look at this text and we just understand the Gospels my question is this does that make Jesus weaker by Jesus submitting to the authority of God the Father does that make him less than God it doesn't because headship and authority have nothing to do with greater or lesser it's just a role that's being played there okay look at verse 3 again Christ is the head of every man so men you have the responsibility to submit your lives to the headship and authority of Christ do you know that I think sometimes as men we just want to skip this verse and we want to go to the next verse because it's more sexy but this is what he says he says men
[15:48] Christ is the one who leads you are the one who follows Christ is the one who leads you are the one who follows this means that men are not led by their job men are not led by their career as Christians men are not led by their feelings men are not led by their competencies men are not led by what they do good at men are not led by Cafe Pacific men are not led by JP Morgan men are led by God so men what Paul is telling us is that you as a follower of Christ in everything that you do as a man you are led by Christ so here's my question is that true men is it true maybe
[17:00] I should ask your wives your wives would be able to tell me if it's true or not but this is what we have to ask ourselves as men under this authority of God Jesus man and woman this means that men cannot lead their family as they feel like this means that men have to submit first as the head to Jesus as the head of their lives it means that men are humble servants to their wives and their kiddos it means that men represent God in their home you know if you read the Hebrew there's this play on words it's almost like that men are this mirror and men reflect God's glory and so as God shining his glory before the brokenness before our mirror was cracked we just reflected God's glory to our wives and our kids and everything else but when sin came in it just broke all these things and we have a struggle with that and the problem is that we often forget our responsibility and we just think about our authority we think about what we're supposed to do in our responsibility but we forget that we're called to serve and love and nurture and take care of our spouses verse three guys are you feeling it
[18:25] I feel it verse three now Paul says that man is the head of the woman Paul teaches this in verses three and verses eight and verses nine and Paul as he always does he's like the perfect teacher he doesn't just give you an opinion he just goes back to the very beginning of how things are meant to be and how they were created in the beginning and he goes to this place called a garden and in chapter two of Genesis what you see is that God created man out of the dirt man is like a mud clod right and he created woman out of the side of the man that Eve the woman was created to be a partner to man in Hebrew it actually says these words same but different and actually if you've ever heard me do a wedding ceremony I did it for Oscar and Celeste just recently one of the Hebrew words basically says that woman is a rescuer of man that the man needed rescuing that the man was not complete and so the woman was created different and she was given different roles as a helper for the man now
[19:36] I've gone back and forth on this helper Christina and I were talking about this we can't do this in this culture because the helper has a bad connotation in this culture and no one is going to miss it here and they're going to freak out and they're going to think of their helper but in the Bible that's just the best word there is you know that the Bible only uses helper four times it says that woman is the helper of mankind it says that Jesus is the helper of man it says the Holy Spirit is the helper of man so woman God Jesus Holy Spirit that's that's I would say that's pretty good company right I mean that's that's that's the all-star team that's that's that's that's as good as it gets you're on the all-star team if you're with Jesus and the Holy Spirit and God you're you're you're on the all-star team but there's a struggle here and the issue is that women were given different giftings and they were given different giftings so they could help the man and
[20:48] I'm going to say this because I believe it with all my heart and you know when I was studying medicine so this would have been I graduated in 87 I was going to medical school women are exactly the same they're typically identical the only problem the only issue of difference was because of culture but if you just look at them yeah biologically he's a little different but everything else is just culturally they're just different and you know now no one ever talks about that now in medicine they say that's terrible because there's a massive difference in how the different sexes are wired and how they work and you know I believe that God did this for a purpose and we believe this in this church this is what God's word says there's a gender differences are massive and they're important and that's how God made it if Christina were just like me we would be so boring and we would never get anything done and think about this too right you know by definition a helper has to have two things going for them one is the helper has to know how to do something that the other person can't get done and the second thing is the helper has to be willing to help so if you come to my house at six o'clock at night
[22:07] I tutor my kids I'm their helper and I tutor them in math and science and geometry and the reason I tutor them is because I know more than they do I can fit in and I can do things that they can't do that's what makes me a helper I help them because I have the ability to do things that they cannot do now I do not help them with Canadian history who knew there was so much about Canadian history right I just thought it was a part of northern Montana and anybody didn't like Montana they just went up into Canada but I cannot help them I cannot be their helper in Canadian history because I cannot even pronounce all the French names correctly but I can help them in everything else and so to be a helper to my kids I have to be having something that they can't do on their own I have to be able to do that and then I also have to be willing to do that you know there's sometimes
[23:07] I'm just not willing they come in can you help me with that I'm like I just don't have enough time I'm tired can you just go do it on your own I just can't do that you know but we see in this passage that woman was created differently and she was man's helper and if there are differences my belief and I think the Bible teaches really clearly that these differences must be good they must be good because God wouldn't create anything bad the problem is in Genesis chapter three one chapter later sin comes in and sin comes in and just totally devastates us and it takes these differences and it twists them and it corrupts them instead of nurturing the woman now the guy is ordering the man and all these things are a concept of sin coming in and just taking these giftings and these differences and just twisting them and changing them if you look at the passage again in verse 11 he says however in the
[24:12] Lord neither woman is independent of man or man is independent of woman that there's just this sameness in their identity and their essence and their values they have different functions and have different roles can I be honest with you and I try to be very honest and you know you laugh at the things I share and 98% of the stories are true I change some names sometimes just to protect people I feel like we need to be honest as a family right Christina is so much better than I am I mean I think she's so much more gifted than I am she's funner than I am if I were God I would have made the woman the head of the household because after counseling men for 30 years I just think women just think so much clearer and guys can focus on one thing and then they can't get their focus off that one thing but there was something in it that
[25:13] I would have said it makes more sense and sometimes Christina is doing stuff and I just want her to do I just want to follow right and she looks at me she goes hey no that's not what God meant for us in our roles you're to be the leader you're to lead where is God taking us what's he calling us to do and for some reason in Genesis before sin comes into the world God places man in authority over his wife in two major institutions in marriage and in the church and what we're told in this passage is that Jesus submits to God and he reflects God's image back to him as a mirror that man submits to Jesus and he reflects his glory back and woman is called to submit to man and she reflects his glory back and both man and woman submit to God and they reflect his glory back and I don't understand it but what I know is true that if we stay within God's parameters and his rules and things of authority how he created things that if we do this
[26:18] God has this massive blessing for us it's God's best in our life if you come to marriage counseling you're going to hear us talk about that over and over that if you want God's best in your life the first thing you need to understand is there's an authority structure and how we work and God has called us to do that even though sometimes it's really difficult and there's abuses and you have to work through those abuses and so somehow the women in the church of Corinth they were just dressing or they are not dressing or they are letting their hair down or they're cutting their hair and all these cultural social cues they were just being falling apart and what they were doing is they were sending a message to everyone in their church hey we have freedom we want to do it for ourselves we don't care about authority we don't care about genders we don't care about the roles all these things that God meant for as a blessing within the church just kind of fell apart and they caused confusion and chaos does that make sense I mean I went around my elbow to get to my nose to explain everything but I think all these things are really important because this is how
[27:19] God has made us and this is how God wants us to flourish and if we don't do these things we don't flourish and so the women were just using their freedom and they were doing something and it just was inappropriate and Paul had to come back and said this is why we do these things and this is what we do the next thing I want to look at is head coverings and he talks about that from verses 4 through 16 and in Jesus day and in Paul's day most men wore hair that was short and most women wore hair that was long if you go to the Coliseum if you go to Rome if you go to the Vatican all the statues that you are going to see of men all of them have short hair the only ones that don't have short hair that have long hair are the slaves that are being led away in captivity behind a Roman carriage so barbarians always had long hair and male prostitutes always had long hair so if you see those things those are not normal people and if you go to the Vatican and you go to Colosseum and you see all these things all the statues of women had long hair or their hair was covered and had a veil and only the women who had short hair or the women who were bald they were temple prostitutes or they were bad girls and if a woman cut her hair in
[28:30] Paul's day it was a symbol of rebellion it meant that she didn't want to be under male authority that she didn't want to follow her husband it meant that there was a blurring of gender that she wanted to do the same things that men did and all of this is because in culture in Jesus day and in Paul's day in Rome and in Greece and in the Jewish culture that the woman was seen as the woman the hair was seen as a woman's expression of her glory and her beauty and her hair was only to be enjoyed by her husband so a woman would never uncover her hair in public because that was something private for her husband but in church the women came in and they just felt like we're free in Christ and they wanted everybody to know that they were free in Christ and so they were moving their head covering and they're cutting their hair and when people came in they were just distracted they were just confused and they go what's going on here because culturally they're acting in shameful ways and they're acting in ways that basically say
[29:31] I want to have authority in our life and that's the struggle that we all have that's the struggle of the church of Corinth and that's your and my struggle that what we've said in our life and as we struggle with control and we want to have control of our lives and so the fact that the women were praying and prophesizing and teaching that was amazing because for 2000 years no one ever did that but the problem was how they did it and Paul said that how points to a heart that is not sensitive to the people around you and you are using your freedoms and you are hurting people am I digging into a big enough hole does it make sense so it's about the heart and God is looking at our heart and Paul is looking at our heart so what does that mean for today at watermark no we're not going to hand out shawls or things like that culturally short hair is head covers no because it's not a part of our culture it doesn't attest to anything in our culture most people in here would have no idea what that meant and what that was about and so
[30:48] I just been thinking so what does it mean for a woman to be under the authority of her husband what does that look like today I don't know it's a hard one I mean because last name but the biggest thing I could think of was that for a woman to be under the authority of her husband meant that she talks well about her husband to people around her that when she's out in public and when she's out with her friends when she's not around her husband that she speaks well of him and she praises him and she talks about how he's providing for them passage is talking about our hearts he's asking us this question how are our hearts today verse 16 ends and he basically says to them this hey this is what
[31:56] I know from God's word this is what all the other churches are practicing as we come together in God's word but if you want to be contentious in the word there in Greek is very interesting it means if you want to strive for victory if you always want to fight if you always want to be right if you always want to get your way then he says I don't have anything else to say because people already see your heart okay so I'm going to be a little less distracting because I'm burning up can I share with you my frustrations you can't tell anybody this right because my wife has not heard about any of the stories last week I'm very proud of you guys thank you so much but you know when I first started in ministry I was with a couple other guys and we were in a group and it was going really well I was actually the chaplain of one of the largest athletic universities in
[33:01] America the University of Texas so I was a chaplain of the University of Texas in charge of the spiritual well-being of the students and the athletes and the coaches and leading studies and all that but there got to this day when I just got so frustrated with my leadership I got so because they just didn't understand what we were doing and why we're doing it and how we're doing it and they're giving me this authority like you can't do that because this this and this and you can't do these things because this this and this and I was just so angry I went out and got my ear pierced and I wore an earring and they go you got your ear pierced yeah I can do whatever I want I'm in authority I'm in control and I walked around for like four months with a pierced ear now there's nothing wrong with a pierced ear I mean it's great I thought it was cool right but the heart the heart behind why I did it that's what was wrong and so the parents would bring their kids athletes to recruit to the
[34:07] University of Texas and I was sitting there as a chaplain and I had my earring in the students thought it was so cool like wow the chaplain has an earring that's just a cool thing because you know in the 70s and 80s no one was doing that right it wasn't cool back then I started the cool okay no one else was doing that back then but the parents looked at me like well good night I don't know what kind of person we're going to put our kids under this guy walking around with an earring and I had this one military guy he called it an ear bob and he goes well you got that ear bob on huh and I go yep and I'm proud of it but you know after like three months I just got really frustrated and I realized you know why am I doing this I'm doing it because I'm angry why am I angry God Jesus man I'm angry at God because God put me in this place and I can't control my own destiny and I'm going to be angry with God and I'm going to get an earring and finally
[35:10] I said that's so dumb so I took the earring out took a hot shower popped that little bulb girls you know what I'm talking about right and I just filled up the next day it was great then about seven weeks later we had this come down from the authority above us and it was like the most unrealistic unreasonable thing ever and I was so frustrated I went back in took a needle stuck my earring back in my ear I'm in control I'm in charge I can do what I want I don't need to listen to you guys and after about a day I'm like oh man that's so dumb what am I doing am I really trusting the Lord do I really believe that he's in control of everything even when my authority is terrible do I really trust that he's above that and he can take care of that am I really trusting is my heart really searching him do I really know that he has my best out for me or do I have to think I have to get my own thing done because if I don't get my own thing done then it's never going to get done does that make sense
[36:16] I've been in churches before in Hong Kong you know and I walk in we're talking and I'm about to preach and someone comes walking in they have F-U-C-K across their shirt and they walk into church right and I'm like wow that's that's interesting and so I go up to them like hey is this your first time at church and they're like I don't know you know I learned not to ask that because usually when I ask that people go no I've been coming for like two years I'm like okay but I said you know is this your first time at church and they go yeah it's my first time and I'm just trying to figure out what this Christianity thing is all about and I'm like oh that's great and you know I love your shirt but if I went up to him and said is this your first time at church and he goes no I've been here for like three years I'm a Bible study leader and I'm leading a community group then we got a problem right because that's just distracting right now you can't tell anybody this because this is a true story but
[37:18] I'm sitting in the church and I'm about to get up and preach and one of the leaders walks up and they're wearing biking shorts in church so they're wearing biking shorts in church right so I'm sitting down in a chair and the guy comes walking up and he's just wearing these really tight biking shorts and I'm just I look up and I go whoa okay that's just something you don't see every day right you know the guy's smuggling grapes in his shorts right I don't know I'm sitting there going and for the next couple minutes I'm like okay I gotta pray I gotta pray how am I gonna get this out of my mind I gotta pray I gotta pray dear Jesus please help me not think of biking shorts as I preach okay amen it's a distraction right did he know that he was distracting people maybe not probably not hopefully not but just being aware that whatever we do and how we do it we're doing it for the
[38:22] Lord and we're trusting him we're taking this freedom and we're using it for God's glory and we're making the people in our community flourish and we're making the people in our homes flourish because we're trusting the Lord to take care of us and we're gonna trust him to walk with us does that make sense three questions and we're done first question is this for all of us in here right now singles and marrieds and people at different stages of life how are we doing with the authority figures in our lives God has put leaders above you maybe God has put a spouse above you how are you doing with that authority figure are you rejoicing in the person that God put above you because you know that above that person even if they're terrible there's God and he's gonna take care of you are you struggling are you thinking maybe if I don't get out of this and I'm not gonna
[39:34] God's not gonna help me and God's not gonna take care of me and I gotta do this so I gotta get out of this thing because it's not good how are we doing with our authority figures this is huge for me guys you can ask my wife every time we go through customs there's just something about a custom agent and sitting there and trying to make me justify my wife and ask questions I just go crazy and it's just about this guy having authority over me and after all the TSA probes coming out and 99.4 cents get by without anybody else knowing about it and he's trying to ask me to justify my wife and I'm sitting there and I'm like I'm going crazy and Christina's like grabbing me settle down settle down I think a lot of us are like that in our marriages and with our professors and with our bosses and in our church so how are we doing with that authority structure
[40:42] God Jesus you how are you doing with that are we honoring the Lord with how we handle it number two husbands are you submitting to Christ are you fulfilling the role that God has given you of loving and cherishing the one who came to rescue you the one who came to complete you the one who is different in so many different ways but God brought them into your life to enrich you to strengthen you and to point you to him are you cherishing and loving your wives are we putting the glory of our wives and our kids before our own glory or as men are we more worried about our own glory than taking care of our family do you see your wife as your perfect gift if you don't the passage says that you have the same problem that the
[42:02] Corinthians have wives are you submitting to your husbands are you supporting them are you speaking well of them in public in front of other people are you respecting them are you encouraging them are you completing them are you teaching them are you helping them and even as you do this do you know that even as you do this it does not diminish one iota from who you are as a woman your character how God sees you it actually makes you stronger in God's eyes you realize that it brings glory upon your head and it makes you stronger one last thing most of my friends who are non-believers I talk to most of them struggle with this passage most of them struggle with the heart of it and when
[43:06] I talk to my friends who don't know Christ yet and we go into dialogues and conversations for a long time it almost always comes down to the issue who's going to have authority in their life who is going to have authority in their life often sometimes in these conversations I look at them and I just say you know ultimately what you're telling me is that you want to be God and sometimes if we're really honest they kind of smile kind of coyly and say yeah I do and that's the issue that they are struggling with they don't want to be diminished they don't want to lose control they don't want to lose their personhood they don't want to be seen as less than a person if they submit to God you know what I think many of his Christians in here also struggle with that same thing we struggle with the idea of submitting to the Lord because we feel like our life is going to be out of control
[44:09] God is not going to take care of us he is not really good I can't really trust him he doesn't really have my best in store he is not going to do it we struggle with this and what I want you to know right here is that God is so good and God gave you his word and this authority structure to put that you could have the best life possible if you were to trust him Philippians 2 says that Jesus submitted to God the Father he put his glory to God and in doing this he became great because he did it he walked in his pathway we know the reality of what it means to serve and be under authority we know that
[45:14] God is good and you can trust him my prayer is that we as a church would never forget who we serve we never forget the gifts that God has given us we never forget the families and relationships that he brought around us we always remember that he brought him to us because he wants to he wants us to flourish I pray that as we are an example like this to the rest of the community of Hong Kong lives have changed things would be different so how are you doing with your authority father thank you for this day I thank you for your son who shows the way he changes everything by being equal in every way but he chooses to submit his life to die on a cross so that you and
[46:18] I might have new life in hope father I pray for us as a church I confess I mean just the stories I told today but there are so many other stories every day and this issue of am I going to trust you am I going to allow you to be the authority in my life or am I going to grab onto that authority and try to live out life my own way and if I do that Lord your word says that there's consequences to that and things become disordered and confused and it hurts the whole body of Christ and I pray for us as we come before you that help us to think about what does it mean for us to imitate Christ this week as we go on this journey as a family and as our biological families and in our workplace but I pray for us as we think about serving you and walking with you that we would never do it in our power and our own strength but we would never do it in our own authority but that we would to guard us
[47:36] I pray for the marriages in here I know that some are having troubles we always have difficulties in our marriages we always have rough patches and I pray Lord that you would work in the hearts of the men that you would humble them that you would help them to understand what it means for them to follow you to submit to you to help his family flourish in your women I know that this passage has been incredibly abused and misused and comes across more like this is what we don't want you to do but it has nothing to do with what we don't want you to do it has to do with our heart behind how we do what we do I pray for the wives in here Lord that you would help them to heal the hurt and the pain I pray that they would see your son who's taken the pain the cross and gives ultimate forgiveness and in their faith and in their walk with you they would continue to submit these things to you to trust you
[48:39] I pray that you show them today what it means to talk well of their husbands in the marketplace or wherever you send them help them to show an air of respect not just for outward appearances because in their heart they deeply understand your mercy and grace towards them Lord I pray for our kids especially who are modeling and watching they don't just watch the parents they watch the singles they watch the attitudes and the actions as a church I pray Lord that we would be clear and unconfusing that when people come in here they would realize that the focus is on Jesus and him alone and how awesome and wonderful is his works and miracles so Lord we come before you and we need you we're desperately in need of you because we are broken sinful people who you are healing and redeeming moment by moment may we take this word of authority cling it to our hearts and may it change us we love you we love you we pray these things your son name amen