First Corinthians 11:1-9 Behavior of men and women in the Church

So today we're gonna start in chapter 11, and we're gonna start on a topic, you know, we've talked about marriage. Paul had a bunch of different issues in the church in Corinth. So this issue is gonna be about the behavior of men and women in the church, in church gatherings, and also possibly in the home situation too.

So we're gonna look at the first nine verses of chapter 11. Okay, so just as a background, the first verse, actually most people think the first verse probably should be, you know, the divisions of our New Testament Bibles are not inspired. Somebody made some decisions. So this verse probably fits better with the previous last three verses. Let me just read the last three verses in chapter 10. And I think you'll see that this fits better with that.

And we're gonna cover it today, but it really fits back in chapter, chapter 10 so verse 31 of chapter 10 says whether you eat or whether you drink whatever you do do all to the glory of God give no offense either the Jew or to the Greek or the Church of God just as I also please men in all things not seeking my own profit, but the profit of the many, so that, or with a purpose that, they may be saved."

So, you know, this is about Christian liberty, and Mike did a great job in showing us about that, how what we say and do may be perfectly allowable, but maybe it will hurt a brother or sister, maybe it will prevent them from knowing Christ. And Paul says, knowing Christ is of such importance, I'm going to, to my best ability, try to please all men, so they'll come to the same knowledge of the Savior.

So that's kind of the context of, so this verse kind of fits along with that. It says, be imitators of me, just as I am also, just also am I of Christ. I hope I read that right. Okay, so let's look at this verse a little bit. So as I said, this verse, most people believe, most exposers believe this fits with chapter 10. And, you know, it's talking about Christian conduct. So let's look at a few things. He says, be imitators of me.

And actually, the interlinear, I think, actually is a little bit better because it has this, it shows the verb become. which is kind of an important verb. So let's just look at the verb here. The subject is the implied you. You Corinthians become, and this is one of my favorite verbs since it was one of Hal's favorite verbs. It's amazing your teachers that you've been under. I come to like this word genomai, come into a new state of being. something you never were before. And so it's interesting, he's telling the Corinthians, and it's gonna sound like, oh, Roger, you're telling me something that maybe sounds kind of strange.

He says, you become imitators. basically. And if you think about that, we've already come into a new state of being as believers. In our position, we're complete in Christ. So we don't need to come into a new state of being in that respect. This is speaking of coming into like growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus.

It's that idea. And he uses this word imitators, which is mimitas, like a mimic. But really it's not that idea. A mimic is someone, a mime, you know, you watch, you see mimes perform in theaters and on TV. You know, they're very good at doing things that mimic something else. They can do doors opening or faucets, you know, all kinds of wild stuff. But this is not, we're not to become mimics of price. So it's different than that.

So it's the idea of a living example by faith. Our operation is by faith. We operate in the domain of faith. That's our main, we come to the Lord by faith and we walk by faith. So faith in who the Lord Jesus is. So Paul's saying, you know, the example that I show you is my walk of faith, if you will. So, and it's of me, of Paul. And then here's one that already talks about another church. This is a church, and we're studying this in our Sunday school class.

1 Thessalonians 2.14, the A part. For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus. that are in Judea.

And in this case, they were imitators in the sense that they imitated, if you will, they went through lots of suffering. I mean, that's not an imitation that we kind of take on very lightly. Yes, I'll become, give me some suffering. I want to jump right into that. Well, what Paul was saying there in Thessalonians was that, boy, I saw that you persevered under suffering just as we saw in Judea.

So that word mimic is the idea to follow after, to become like. It's your living act of faith as you live the Christian life. So that's the first part of it. The second part is just as I also am of Christ. So Weiss brings this across as even as I am an imitator of Christ. So Macaulay points out Paul's conduct from verse 1 is to be to be imitated to the extent that it mirrors the conduct of Christ. And I've kind of already said that.

And then Constable kind of, and this I thought was good, he kind of, you know, Mike, we just spent three weeks of Mike telling us about Christian liberty and what Christian liberty is. He says, well, Constable kind of observes, well, Paul recommends that his readers follow his example of exercise and limiting their Christian liberty, glorifying God and giving no offense. So it really, I think Constable maybe hits closer to why this verse and why it fits back. This is speaking of Christian conduct. It can apply generally, but it's really focusing, I think, more on Christian conduct.

And then lastly is kind of my thought. I was thinking about this. It says be imitators, but I was thinking, wow, as a believer in the Lord Jesus, Paul has taught us in In Galatians 2.20, I am crucified with Christ.

It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Just think of that. We have Christ living in us. We don't have to be out there necessarily looking to anyone else. We look to the Lord by faith. We walk by faith.

And we're to realize that he wants to live his life through us. and that can only be accomplished by us walking by faith in trust and dependence upon Him. So as marvelous as this verse is, it's like, well, this is just, this is the beginning of the door. The place where you want to realize that you want to be is allowing the Lord to live His life through you. Okay, so that takes care, I had to tidy up after Mike. You know, Mike's, he can be a messy guy sometimes.

He leaves extra verses just kind of floating out there around the sanctuary. Gotta clean up those verses, okay. So we cleaned up verse one here for him. He called me and I thought, Roger, I didn't, I'm not gonna cover verse one. I said, okay, Mike, no problem, no problem, okay. Plus I think it's a really cool verse, so anyway. I feel like I'm J. Vernon McGee sometimes. Every verse is the coolest verse since the last verse, right? Amen, that's right, amen. Isn't that amazing? Okay, well as usual, you know, we kind of really thank our brother Macaulay. I really, I like his, he outlines God's word amazing.

So here's his outline of two through 10. We're actually only gonna cover two through nine, but okay, the first part is a section on praise. Just verse two is gonna talk about praise. Paul's gonna praise the Corinthians. And this is very characteristic of what, and we'll see that in a second, very characteristic of Paul. Then he's going to remind the Corinthian church about headship.

And that's going to be a critical thing because we're going to get into this whole area about head coverings. And it isn't a hornet's nest and head coverings. I mean, it's just, you know, people have just gone off the deep end with head coverings. It's just gone over the banks and down the hill. So anyway. And then lastly, we're going to see the kind of the nitty gritty of all that. Head coverings should be head coverings for men.

The Jews had head coverings. Think about this. It's something I kind of learned in studying this. What do you think about when you see a Jewish guy praying? Is his head covered or uncovered? It's covered. He has this shawl over himself. Well, Paul has, this is revolutionary.

He says, men, don't you dare have a head covering on. It's basically this. So actually, in this talk about head coverings, we got the thing for the men. So if you were an observant Jew, you'd say, wait a minute, I can't have my head uncovered. You know, that's an affront to God. Paul taught that and then he tells the women and then they say about the women and there's some special deals we got to work through there but so it's this is interesting territory so the last part four through ten or four through nine just for this week and the next week we'll get we'll get part two I'll get to tell you what I think about head coverings or I'm passing out head coverings next week no I'm joking Anyway, so I gotta keep you alive here so that you'll come next week, right?

Okay, so that's the outline here. Okay, start verse one. This is a praise verse. This is pretty cool. Now I praise you. So he continues this discussion. The subject, I'll just go down. So I praise you, the Corinthians, and he's talking about bestowing or applauding them. So what is he praising them about?

And it's a practice, so I'm going to backtrack just for a second and talk about Paul's typical, in his writings, and actually in writings a lot in the New Testament, praise comes before some word of sharp rebuke, some condemnation. And think about the book of Revelation. What do you think about when you see the churches, there's like seven churches, right? He goes to these seven churches. What do you think about? I just remember, like Ephesus is the one that comes to mind.

He says, I know your deeds. you toil and your perseverance. He says, I know you have good deeds, he's saying, and you toil and you persevere. But, in verse four, but I have this against you, you have left your first love. So he first tells them about their good things, and then he tells them about the things that he has issues with.

And that's probably the way we live our lives with our children and grandchildren. We usually don't come out right immediately. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we do. But many times we tell them the good part first. You say, what's the good news or the bad news? So usually you want to hear the good news first. Maybe. Or maybe you want to be cheered up the second time around or whatever. Anyway, Paul's practice was good news first, praise first, then talk about the issues.

So that's what's happening here. And we'll notice that this word, I praise you, Mike's gonna get to cover, I do not praise you, or I will not praise you. He gets to cover the two negatives there down the road here at peace in 17 and 22. So Paul will praise people, he praised the Corinthians, but he also, I will not praise you. He wasn't, you know, he told them the true deal. And he called a spade a spade, as we'd say. Okay, so let's get on.

And here's why he's praising them. because you remember me in everything. everything, ah, how that, so you remember me, it's a perfect tense, the perfect tense is cool because it kinda combines, basically, you've remembered me in the past, and you continue to remember me up into the present, so it's not a one time, oh hey, you remember my birthday, you know, 10 years ago, thanks a lot, no, I remember it continually, I remember it in the past, and I continue to remember it up into the present, so that's the force of this here. So here's how Weiss brings it across, this verb tense, you remember, because you have kept me in your remembrance in all things at the present still do have me in your thinking. So it shows that continuous up until the present idea. In everything, okay, in everything, so actually it's all things without exception.

So I was thinking about what he might be praising them. In all aspects of their ministry, he was praising them for the fact that they accepted his word, that they appreciated his ministry with him in Corinth. So it's the total effect of his ministry in Corinth. So the second part is that you hold firmly to the traditions. I couldn't help, whenever I see the word tradition, you know, I think of, I think of, you probably know where I'm gonna go here, right?

You know, you think of the play, right? You think of Fiddler on the Roof, right? And what's the big thing? Tradition! You know, the guy sings, I love that play, it's one of my favorites, so anyway. But this, get that out of your mind, scratch that out, you know, put an X over that thinking about, that's a bad tradition. We're gonna talk about the good tradition here. So let's look at it. Hold firmly. So first of all, he says hold firmly to the traditions, plural. So hold fast is the idea to retain in a spiritual sense, and you're to continually hold fast. And tradition is the idea of handing down or handing on.

And that's pretty well fit, so you could say, with traditions that we see in our society. But I like this a lot, and I use this a lot, on studying this, but Macaulay points out, and Scripture supports it, there are traditions in Scripture that are bad, and the Lord calls them out, he calls them on the carpet for that, and there are traditions that are good. And so let's look at both of those. So the bad traditions in scripture, most of the ones we see, are the uninspired Jewish traditions. And you can just, without even, just kind of go through your mind.

So one of the ones is about Corban. Remember Corban? Corban was this thing that it was like a, what do I want to say, it's like a tax evasion. Tax evasion scheme. Corban was something in the Jewish tradition where they could set aside things for God and say, well that's Corban, That can't be touched. You can't take that money. You can't take that money from me because I put that, I dedicated that money to God and that's untouchable. I don't care if I owe whatever. You can't touch that money.

So it was a scheme. So basically the Lord has called the battle on that. And actually I chose the amplified version for this verse so it brought out the full, all the words in it. So in Matthew 15, 6 it says, so for the sake of your tradition, the rules handed down by your forefathers, that's kind of defining there.

You have set aside the word of God, depriving its force and authority and making it of no effect. And then actually in Mark 7, 8, which I didn't write up here, it says, Neglecting the commandments of God, you hold the traditions of men. So immersed in that Jewish tradition is holding to traditions that lived and were generated all throughout the Jewish culture. you know there were just a ton of those okay now to the good ones good traditions the best example of that is the Apostles teaching and we see that in 2nd Thessalonians 2 5 15 rather so then brethren stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught whether by word of mouth or by letter from us and there's also a similar verse in in 3.6 there, a similar idea in 3.6. So traditions typically are talked about, they were taught the Word of God either verbally or in the letters like Paul wrote. They were taught verbally the Word of God and that was called traditions. And it says, handed down to you and I was saying you know a good a good example of a tradition and some people think it's only a tradition you know so if you mentioned the Lord's table to somebody not familiar with Scripture they may think well that's just what you guys like to do you like to have the Lord's table well no that's part of Scripture that's something the Lord asks us to do to remember him so people may misunderstand traditions that Christians do and But Christian tradition should be based upon scripture.

This is kind of the bottom line. So let's go on here. So we're finished with the praise part. So now he starts off gently. He starts off, he wants to establish before he gets into the strong rebuke, he wants to tell them something about their relationship to God. About men and women, their relationship to God. Okay, he starts off with, now in contrast to verse two, I desire you Corinthians to understand, and this is Oida, to know, to have knowledge of, it's the idea of facts, she wants you to factually know this. Paul wants the Corinthians and us to have the following knowledge. So there's three statements that come up in this verse. In fact, I didn't even read the verse, that's kind of terrible. I went off and didn't even, so let's read the verse.

It says, but I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man and the man is ahead of the woman and God is ahead of Christ. So I'm just going to kind of do it in from God downward order if you will. God to Christ, Christ to man, and man to woman. Now you may not like that order. You may object to that order. You may say, well, wait a minute. Men and women are equal in the Lord, and you're absolutely right. I'll show you the verse that you can tell your husband or tell whoever. You're totally equal in the Lord. There's no difference.

But God has an order. Is Christ fully God? Yes, He is. But He, of His own volition, accepted the place to come and die for our sins. So the order that God has in His universe doesn't depend on, isn't, I mean to say one is not as qualified or one is not as equal. Christ is equally God as is God.

Okay, so let's go on. So let's dig into the nitty gritty of the verse here. Christ is the head of every man. So we just kind of break it down. So this is another one of my favorite verses, favorite verses, favorite verbs. It's a me, the state in which something continuously exists. So Christ continuously exists as the head. And when you have this structure of a subject complement, it points out that the subject is being identified as the head.

And the head in scripture is this word, I can't pronounce the Greek real well, I'll just skip that part. Metaphorically, the head or chief, one to whom others are under authority to. So he's saying that every man is under authority to Christ. So as a believer in the Lord Jesus, you probably have no problem with that, right? Okay, well, amen, okay.

And it's every man, actually the word for man, sometimes we'll see the word Anthropos use, which speaks of mankind. Well this is a different word, and I'll show it to you later. This is the word Aeneir, and it's for an individual man as distinguished from a woman. And that's gonna be important because he wants to talk about the man's role and the woman's role.

Okay, and it has a definite article, so there's only, and this is not very shocking, there's only one head. Jesus Christ is our one singular head. And as Macaulay points out, this is what we see in our society, or we should see, every institution must have order, and order requires authority. There must be some kind of structure. And we see when there's not authority or a structure, things fall apart. And our society seems to be full of that. Many things just totally fall apart. There must be order. And so what we're going to see here, Paul's going to describe, he wants to have order in the church, so he wants to describe what God's plan is for order in the church. Okay.

So in this Verse, he doesn't do it Godward down, he puts man and woman in the middle. Anyway, I don't know, I can't give you a good explanation for why he does that, but I just want to cover it the way he did it. And the other thing interesting is, the translators didn't help us here.

If you notice the word, it says, the middle part of the verse says, verse three, it says, and the man is, then italicize, the head of a woman. And that's going to be kind of important. So the head, V is actually there in the original. So it could be better rendered, the woman's head is a man. So this is a question of article, definite article, and we see that so many times, and we use that all throughout the understanding of scripture. So here it's, there's no definite article for head.

So Merriman emphasize, he says, this emphasizes the fact it's a quality of headship. So what the thought here is not, what's trying to be acquired, is not the fact that the man, he is the head, you know, I'm the head. No, it's the quality of his headship.

He used to be, and scripture describes this, you know, in many places, many different verses talk about what kind of leader he's, what kind of headship he used to have. He used to be a loving leader. He used to do things that only Christ, only happened to Christ. He used to, love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it so he used to be a loving leader So it's the qualities of headship that are in view here.

So here's the part. So it's important to remember that the authority and function does not imply superiority in nature. Man and woman are equal within the Lord. And I'll just read the verse for that. So women, write it on your wrist and just show it. I'm equal, I got you. Okay, here it is. This is the one you want to quote. This is talking about your spiritual state with the Lord.

I'm kind of getting going overboard here okay so you probably know it 328 says Galatians 328 says there is neither Jew nor Greek slave or free male or female all are one in Christ So in the Lord's eyes, a woman and man are equal. A woman doesn't have any... She's not higher than the man, the man's not higher than her. They're all equal in the Lord, just like a Jew or a Greek, just like a slave or free.

We're all one in the Lord. We all come by the same path. The Lord is all by faith. So the point is here that man's headship really occurs in two realms, and I think this is important. I was studying through this, and I came across this kind of late, this statement by Macaulay. I said, boy, this really helps, because we tend to want to make it more global. And not to say this isn't good advice globally for the entire of mankind, but scripture only talks about two realms that the man is ahead or has authority over the woman.

It's in marriage, that's in 1 Peter 3.1, and the second is in the church, 1 Timothy 2.11-14. I didn't quote those out, but those are the two places. Look those verses up if you want. So we have to be careful when we talk about the headship of man. God is careful about His words, so we need to be careful as well.

And then the third part, and God is the head of Christ. So we have the definite article here, proceeds head, God the Father, He's the only singular head, and that's not true, of Christ. God the Father and the Son are equal in essence. If you look through Scripture, if you look at God's essence, He's holy, righteous, just. Those qualities are talked about, actually they're talked about for all the three persons of the Trinity, but they're equal in essence.

But, in function, what happened? The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world, right? And then if you look onto the Holy Spirit, when Lord Jesus left, the Spirit had a function. He sent the Holy Spirit. So that happened after that. So the Son, and it also says in Scripture, the Son does always what pleases the Father. I like the passages where it says, I always do what I see the Father doing, implying he's pleasing him he's always his focus so the son being totally equal with the father doesn't mean that in his function of his life living out his life he will have a different function than the father and the spirit and in the in God's design of man and woman the woman will have a different function than the man has So now we go into verse four. So now he starts out with head coverings. Here we go with head coverings.

So starting with verse four, Paul will now give direction to the church of Corinth about praying and prophesying. And just to remind you, we're gonna talk about prophesying more down the road, but prophesying, if you look at the, it's kind of core ideas, it's a telling forth. It's not so much talking about telling of the future, even though it's kind of involved historically, It's a telling forth of God's word, proclaiming God's word. That's what prophesying is about. So he's gonna talk about direction to the Corinthian church in terms of prayer and prophesying in the church.

Okay, so the issue here, if you look at the last part of the verse, the issue is about disgracing or shaming his head, that's Christ. So the verse says, every man who has something on his head while praying or prophesying disgraces his head. So the issue here is about disgracing his head. So in this case it's about Christ. From the previous verse we learn that Christ is the head of a man, so he's disgraced. So we've got head here in two senses, his physical head and his spiritual head.

And it's every man again here, and like I mentioned it's a Greek word anere, for man, that's distinct from a woman, has a different Greek word. So the idea is not having anything. The literal Greek is hanging down over. And I kind of think of the prayer shawl that the Jews had, hanging down over their physical head.

So what I found, and actually not every commentator picked up on this, but Paul's teaching is in contrast to the Jewish custom of having head coverings while praying. That's not often pointed out. They're so wrapped up in the woman's head covering, they never get to the men's thing. They never talk about that.

But this is what was interesting. Okay, so that's verse 4. Okay, so we read these first. Now women, you don't, you know, I'm going to leave fast after the service. I'm joking, I'm joking. I'm going to have potluck, so you want to come beat my head or whatever you want to do is fine. Okay.

Alright, but every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying disgraces her head, for she is one and the same as a woman whose head is shaved. That's verse 5 and verse 6. For if a woman does not cover her head, let her also have her hair cut off. But if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off, or her head shaved, let her cover her head.

So, this, you know, just reading that, you say, boy, there must be some kind of problem going on here, because Paul, he's not, he's not mincing any words. He has some sharp words there. He said, boy, he knows, if you don't, if all your head's cut off, you gotta cover your head with this and that.

So, you know, there was something happening in the Corinthian church, and it seemed like it was something to do with women not being appropriate for their culture. That's what I, so I looked around, what am I going to say about this? I don't know. I don't, you know, it's hard to understand, I find. But if you look in the culture of the time, so I found, actually I found Merriman was the best one I could find. So I'm going to use him. But what's the issue here? What's the main issue here again?

It's about disgracing her head. And that's her husband. So the issue here of those two verses is about by whatever she did, not having something over her head or having her hair cut off and then not having something on her head. Whatever it was, it was disgracing her head, her husband.

So this is from Merriman. The culture of the day for women was as follows. Women wore head coverings in public. Apparently they didn't go out, if they were in public, they wore a head covering. And we see that actually today in the Middle East, in the Arab countries.

I don't think you can go, you can't be out there unless you, if you don't value your life, I guess you can be out there. But you better have a head covering. Okay, now we get into the kind of the one, who didn't have head coverings? Well, it wasn't the best of the society. Prostitutes and thieves were the exceptions. They didn't have head coverings. And then the other part of the thing is the hair being cut off. It seemed like that was a designate or made something they did to prostitutes that were convicted or I don't know, and criminals, their hair was cut off.

So that was part of it. So let's continue on here. There's a few more thoughts here, a few more things from Merriman. The real problem is that women's attitude to male authority. So here's something interesting that I saw and then I found somebody that talked about it too a little bit.

If you notice I underline, in verse six it says, for if a woman does not cover her head, the verb do not cover, is in the middle voice. And if you guys, we talk about this on and off a little bit, but the middle voice is typically for one's own benefit.

You do something for your own benefit. So it seemed like that Maybe they were trying to make a statement, the women that were involved in this, you know, they were doing this for their own benefit, not covering their head for their own benefit. He said what benefit would be if you're going to get shunned or whatever it is. He doesn't describe what happens. This is advice to the church. So it's interesting that it was for their own benefit.

The woman's hair was part and parcel of her head covering. And Paul's gonna point that out. He's gonna point about the value of her God-given hair later on. I'm gonna cover that next week. The woman needed to assume her rightful role in her relationship to men. Okay, all right. So now I'm gonna leave those verses. You may say, you've hardly done anything in those verses, Roger. You just kinda skimmed through them. But I don't know what else I can say at the moment.

Maybe next week I'll think a little bit more about it. says there's a problem, Paul addresses a problem, and he basically says your head should be covered. That's what it is. Okay, let's go on. The next verse, actually he's going to talk about things that are going to give us more insight here as we go on.

For a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of men. So he's going to talk about this God's creation here again, and it's going to kind of influence what our picture here hopefully for a man ought to have his head covered okay the word ought here is to be bound to be bound or obligated to perform a duty so the picture here I kind of like this. The picture here is to have nothing, this is talking about the man, it has nothing between his physical head and his spiritual head. And that's kind of a new, that's kind of a new picture, right? Because Paul's presenting this and it's in opposition to the Jewish customs.

So two reasons are given for the man having no head covering, but he's going to relate it to the woman too, being the image and glory of God, it's literally from the Ellen here, So the verb here is to be, alive, exist. So the first thing was man was created in the image of God, but we know that wasn't the end of the story, right? As we read more, we go down through Genesis and we get to Genesis chapter 5, and what do we see? We see that Adam It says when he had his son Zeth, his son Zeth was in the likeness and image of God. No, of Adam. So man fell. So the image has been marred. It's a fallen image. And women have that same situation. All of creation fell and that affects their offspring. So we have a fallen image.

Okay, but the point here actually seems to be the glory. Man also is the glory of God. So how is he the glory of God? In this sense, how is he the glory of God? And then we're gonna see an incredible statement about the woman. So man also is the glory of God.

First, because he was created prior, and chronologically he was the first to be created. Second, because he was created to reflect God's authority in a special way. But the woman is the glory of men, or glory of a man. So, once again, here we are. We have God's plan. One might say, why, you know, I thought I, you know. I'm gonna go through the account and you judge for yourself.

I mean, is it, is a woman at disadvantage of being created from out of Adam? Is that a disadvantage or an advantage? It says here, but the woman is the glory of a man. That's kind of interesting. I haven't fully, taken all in but that's it's it's neat the woman is the glory of a man the reason for this is given in the next two verses so you'll answer part of my my question I was posing here it's a creative order okay so let's start with this for man does not originate from a woman he literally from the Greek and he is not out of a woman as a source that's not how it happened In Timothy it says, for it was Adam who was first created, then Eve.

And we're going to see that account here shortly. But the woman from man, from the original it would be the woman out of a man, out of a man as a source. So here's the account. I kind of took some words out to get it all on the page here. So here's the account. You know it well.

So the Lord God took one of the ribs of Adam, that's why I eliminated Adam, one of his ribs, closed up the flesh at that place, fashioned it into a woman, the rib which he had taken from the man, and then he brought Eve to man, and the man said, this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. And that's really important because we just saw that in the original language from this verse, it's out of man, out of man, that's a key, match those two up. Okay, for indeed, man was not created for the woman's sake, but the woman for the man's sake. So once again, this goes contrary to what you may hear today. So here's the scriptures that support that. Out of the ground, the Lord formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky.

But for Adam, there was not found a helper suitable. Boy, I love that word, helper suitable. It has its... has ideas both physically and emotionally and in so many ways, the woman is a helper suitable. Then the Lord God said, it is not good for man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him.

So the woman is to be the glory of God, I think, in those aspects. She was made specifically for man. But that does not mean that a woman is not equal to him in the Lord, and actually not equal in a lot of other ways. So let's look at, I have a one, my closing thought here, and this is Constable. says furthermore kind of jumps into a paragraph I just kind of pulled out furthermore woman is a glory of man because God created Eve to complete Adam God did not create the man as companion for the woman but the woman for man's sake and we just saw the verses that support that and the last paragraph here is when Adam saw Eve for the first time Actually, I had one guy, one pastor I heard, he had the word, wow.

He was amazed. He was totally amazed. And we say, totally blown away. He gloried in her. Neither of these verses refer to the subordination of woman under man, though many interpreters have read this into the text. Rather, they refer to her as being in man. And I would say, I wish he had said, out of man, because that's just what we just saw from the text. So she's out of man, and she's to be his glory.

And you know, you just think, wow. Lord, you know, if I only didn't have a sin nature, I could really, things would really be great. But we do, and it doesn't, things aren't as harmonious and as beautiful as they could be. And they will someday. May I close in prayer, and then we'll just have music. Dear Father, thank you so much, Lord, for your marvelous creation, Lord. It does boggle the mind. It just boggles the mind how You created the creation of man, and you have a plan and a purpose, and man was created first, and woman was out of him, and she is to glorify man, and not that man is to be puffed up, but we're all ultimately to glorify you for the marvel is your creation, Lord. We pray that as we look at these verses, and we'll revisit them again next week, that you would give us insight and understanding of what you have in mind in your church. In Christ's name, amen.