The National Center for Family Integrated Churches welcomes Kevin Swanson with the following message entitled, Men and women in worship. Greetings. I get the blessing of bringing the most controversial topic of the entire conference to this group. So if you want to leave, now would be the time to leave, because It's going to get downright controversial as we go. Up to this point, I haven't entered into any controversy.

But now it's going to be interesting. It is true that the matter of feminism is the most controversial topic I deal with on my radio show. If you were to predo chart or to prioritize, trying to figure out how many of the most nasty notes anybody gets, it would be the issue of feminism that brings in the most. Number two is homosexuality, and number three is evolution. So those are the three hot topics, or the three most controversial points today.

And I think the reason is because there is a battleground, and there is antithesis versus thesis, there is Christ versus the world that shows up at any point in time. It's not as if this will be the controversial topic forever and ever, But this is the primary issue today in the hearts and minds of so many people. And I pray that God will open your heart. I pray that God will open my heart. You know, I praise God for my wife, who's just so open to God's word and to the correction of God's word.

And I was just thinking of this earlier as I was preparing. I thought, wow. In all of the getting back to God's word and reforming our lives by God's word, my wife has been so gracious, and she's been there all along as we've taken this journey. And she also is willing to take the persecution that our family receives. Right now, our family may very well be the most persecuted family in America in some ways, if you were just to count the number of people that are fairly upset with the sorts of things that I say.

Now, for some reason, I've become more public than I really want to be. I really wanted to speak to God's people about things that I felt was important. But before I knew it, the New York Post got interested. And then Huffington Post and the Chicago Tribune last week, and then MSNBC, and then Fox News was down to interview. And so everybody's interested in what I'm saying, but the bad guys are not as excited about what I'm saying as those who are receptive to the word of God.

You follow me there? So it is a bit of a tension in our lives as to how public we should get. But it seems to me that if anybody is out preaching the word of God and trying to bring the thesis versus antithesis, the bad guys eventually will come after you. And if you're ever making somewhat of an impact, you know the enemy is somewhere in the middle of it. If you suit up, put the shoulder pads on, and put your helmet on, and grab a ball and start running down the field, you're going to hear a thundering noise.

And that's the other team coming after you. It's just, if you get into the game, the other team will come after you. We're learning these things. But thanks be to God that He's with us. We're in a worthy battle.

And the egalitarian issue is an important issue. Yes, it is what the world is all about. They'll tell you this is the doctrine of the Trinity for them. For us, if you compromise the doctrine of the Trinity, we'll come after you. We'll disagree with you.

We'll say that's not a good thing. There are issues that are important to us. To the world in our present day egalitarianism or feminism is fundamental to their agenda. It is what they are all about. It is what Barack Obama is all about with the Marxist socialist worldview that is being incorporated gradually in almost every developed nation as they undermine the family as the basic economic unit, as the provision for education and welfare and medical care, and they transfer that into the arms of the state at the same time they know they cannot do it unless they destroy the family.

You understand that? They cannot achieve what they're after. The largest voting block in America that goes for Barack Obama or anybody who's socialist or Marxist are single women. The only reason we have a far leftist socialist as President of the United States is because there are 50 percent of kids born out of wedlock in the present day, up from 6 percent in 1960, at least to women 30 years and younger. That's the only reason.

I mean, there are other reasons as well, but socially, if you don't have a breakdown of the family and an effort to take the daughters and the wives out from under the family jurisdiction and out from under the household economy, if you don't do that, you can't build a socialist state. It's impossible. You have to destroy the family to build the socialist State. Karl Marx knew this. It's in the Communist Manifesto.

Plato understood it. It's in his republic. These guys understood this kind of thing. So please understand that the doctrine of feminism is basic to the world. It's what they're all about.

It is their agenda. Gloria Steinem, who is the major thinker behind feminism in the 1950s and 1960s, or one of them, Betty Friedan was the other, Gloria Steinem wrote, we are talking about a society in which there will be no roles, no roles. Listen no roles, no specific gender roles, none, no roles other than those chosen or earned we are really talking about humanism. So what's she saying? She's saying, yes, I'm all about egalitarianism, all about feminism, all about totally equal roles for men and women, but what I'm really about is humanism.

I'm a humanist, and this is what I'm all about. But as it turns out, men and women are different. And that's a huge revelation to the modern world. The president of Harvard University about five years ago, okay, this is Harvard, president of Harvard University steps out and says, I think men and women may be different, they might learn differently. You're out of the game, he was gone in about a week.

That was it. That was the end of his career. Yeah, you step out and you say, I think they're different. You are going to see your reputation utterly destroyed by the world out there. But I don't care.

Do you understand? I don't care. I'm way past caring. Way past caring. They are in the middle of 120-year experiments.

I was on a radio station in Austin a couple of months ago, a station that evidently did not agree with anything I had to say. Because he's interrupting me the whole time and then he hung up on me. But I got a few things out. And what I said was, you guys are involved in an experiment and right now 42% of kids born outside of wedlock up from six percent in 1970. Half of the marriage is in a divorce.

Single women everywhere. The nuclear household shot, destroyed. It's the minority of American households, on and on and on. And he said, yeah, yes, yes. Ninety-five percent of Americans confessed to premarital sex, etc., etc.

Yes, yes, that's exactly what we're doing. He says it's an experiment. We're going to see what happens to all the civilization of society if we destroy the family. It's an experiment. Just bear with us.

I'm not going to get involved in that experiment. You follow me? Sorry. I'm exempting myself from the experiment Because I believe that God was up to something when he made one flesh out of two. I think God knows what he's doing.

And I know we have a socialist experiment that really got its start with Jeremy Bentham, my book apostate, I talk about Jeremy Bentham and how important he was in the 1780s and 1790s to develop the sexual revolution of the 1900s. I mean, remember, all these things take a while to establish, but by the time you hit the 1920s and then especially the 1950s and 1960s, it just explodes. Everything that had been planned by Jeremy Bentham, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Betty Fredan and all the others, all of that came to fruition in the 1960s and 1970s. And right now we are watching and we will watch over the next 20 to 30 years what will happen to a human society that experimented with the destruction of the family in the 20th and 21st century? It's going to get interesting.

But it's not going to be good. You can bet on that. You can bet everything on that. Wow. The power of this system just blows my mind.

Think about South Korea and compare it to China, Communist China. Think about the difference. Incredible difference. South Korea has implosion of birth rate from 6.0 in 1960 to 1.1 in the last couple of years. 1.1.

Meanwhile, Communist China takes their birth rate from 4 to 5 down to 1.6. They can't achieve what South Korea achieved and Communist China did everything they could through forced abortions, forced euthanization, or forced infanticides, even to the point where just a couple of years ago somebody had a second child, could not afford the fine for that second child. This is a Christian family. The Gendarmes came in and killed the kid right in front of them. They've been doing that for the last 25, 30 years.

And on the backs of all this forced abortion, all this forced infanticide, friends, after all of these years, all they've been able to achieve by political tyranny is a decrease from 4.0 to 1.7, 1.6. That's mind-boggling When you look at South Korea and find all they had was American existentialism and egalitarianism through universities and the media. That's all they had. And yet now look what's happened. We've exported American ideas and effectively have undermined very much these families in places like Korea that did not have anything of a Christian heritage like we had.

That's one reason why the birth implosions are so serious, way more serious than us. Well, as I said, I just really don't care about kowtowing to the feminists and what they want to do to destroy the social order because they are doing that. I'm telling you, I'm reading the front page of Atlantic magazine, Time magazine, all the liberal press. Almost every other week I deal with another story on my radio show. And you need to tune in from time to time to kevinswansons.com if you want to know what's going on in the world because it is amazing what is happening.

The millennial generation is not doing well at all. It's not promising at all. We've seen books and articles, End of Men, The Demise of Guys. And the most astounding survey I have seen in my life happened a couple of months ago when I saw the Pew Research data that was looking at major breadwinners in families at each generation from the silent generation to the baby boomers to the GenXers, finally to the millennial generation, found that the millennial generation, the 18 to 28 year old crowd, 61% of the households are provided for by the woman as the primary breadwinner and only 17% by the men. Do you understand what this means?

It's over. We don't get another generation. What happens when it's the end of men and the demise of guys? The liberals are still kind of excited about their experiment. They're not sure.

As far as I'm reading the socioeconomic indices and the experts on these indices, I don't think they know what's going to happen next. But they're willing to try this experiment out. All I know, friends, is that with 80 million baby boomers playing golf and the 30-somethings playing computer games in their mother's basements, we're probably not going to have a real solid socioeconomic system in the end. The destruction of manhood is destroying society and that's why I don't care. Secondly, God is our authority.

Not Karl Marx, not Betty Friedan, and I don't care what 10, 000 university professors and 50, 000 media representatives standing outside of my house are saying. And they are there to shame me and when I speak, they just scoff at me. They think I'm a Neanderthal. You know, as I was explaining, I was interviewed on the Girl Scout issue. I've been encouraging people not to participate in the Girl Scouts Because of their support of feminism, their support of lesbianism, their support of abortion, Planned Parenthood through the World Association of Girl Scouts and their million dollar donations they give every single year.

I said, I think Christians, I'm speaking for the 45% of Americans that still don't like abortion and there apparently are 45%, There's one guy in America standing up and saying, I'm sorry, I'm not playing. And I'm encouraging a few other people not to play. This is by far my number one most controversial point I have ever made on my show. And so they interview me and they say, And I said, well, the Girl Scouts are all about character. I said, not about biblical character.

I said, well, how does biblical character differ from their character? I said, well, we're not raising our daughters to be independent socialists. I didn't say it quite that way. I was nicer than that. But then I said, you know, meek and quiet spirit, a woman that fears God, she shall be praised.

He says, that sounds a little sexist. I could care less what he thinks. I'm reading from God. And who are you? You follow me there?

And who are you? Well, I'm the media. I stand with 50, 000 representatives, all the Girl Scouts in America, Barack Obama, and 50, 000 university professors that do women's studies programs in all of the known world. And who are you? Honestly, I could care less who you are.

God speaks, I listen. As I said, they're destroying the world. Do I really want to listen to them? We read the statistics every day. They're destroying the world.

And they're loving it. And they back it up and they say, this is what we're all about. We're about destroying the world, destroying the family. And I say, well, I'm not about that. And I'm going to listen to God.

Okay, that's my second point. God is our authority. Thirdly, we don't need the world in our worship of God. Do we really need Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem? Gloria Steinem said the liberated woman has sex before marriage and a job after.

Okay, so I want her in my church telling our women how to worship God. No, I'm sorry, no. No, I don't need that. I don't need the world in our worship. God's going to be worshipped in the beauty of holiness.

We'll fear before him all the earth and Gloria Steinem can stay out of it. The fourthly, the church and the family are so broken down. Friends, let me tell you this. The worship of God for the men of God is the fundamental issue for men, for Christian men today. This is the fundamental issue.

We want men. We know we need men. The world knows they need men. They're losing men. It's the end of men.

It's the end of the demise of guys. I step out into any group of men. I step out, meet the men in my church and I know that we have a major problem. I meet myself and I know that we have a breakdown of fatherhood, a breakdown of manhood. I see a breakdown of family everywhere.

I know that the number one most desperate crying need of the day is men, fathers, godly men, but more than anything else, God worshiping men. This is, this is the very, very, very most significant crying need of the day. We need men worshiping God. And then finally, God calls all of us to repentance. I preached a message three months ago on Christ and what he said about the the the tower that fell in Salome And I preached it 30 miles north of the fires that were burning down northern Colorado Springs.

Not sure why God sent two fires, not just one, two fires, one last year and another this year, and burned significant portions of Colorado Springs down. We thought he was going to go after Boulder. Nobody knows what Boulder is. Boulder is the communist socialist republic in the state of Colorado. And some of us egregious, horrible, God-hating, God-defying things are done in Boulder.

But God came down into Colorado Springs and brought a fire, the worst fire in Colorado's history in Colorado Springs last year. And then beat that one this year with another fire in the black forest on the north side of Colorado Springs, we said, God, this is Mecca. This is the Christian Mecca. This is focused on the family. This is American Evangelical to the peak of all that's wonderful and good about your church and the whole world.

I guess not. So I preached the message on repentance And I brought up these issues. And you know, I brought up abortion and feminism and homosexuality and the aberrant sexuality issues and I looked at all of the men and I said, men, this stuff affects You and me too. We have the internet. We have little nooks and crannies of sins in our lives and as I said in the earlier presentation, God is stripping back the facades and showing us who we really are.

God's not going to let his church be filled with insincere leaven at any level and his ministries come down and his ministry leaders are being affected by this. Brothers and sisters, there is a God in the heavens. There is a Jesus Christ who is head of the church. He will not have it. Do you understand me?

He will have a sincere church. And he has worked in my life for the last two years and it has not been comfortable, but God has been rooting out idolatry. He's been peeling my fingers open and taking out every idol, cleansing out the lust that's been in the nooks and crannies of my life as well, it's time to purge the church of Christ. It's time for repentance because friends, I'm seeing what's happening in the socioeconomic realm, the cultural realms, And I just, I wake up in cold sweats, typically praying for my own son and my own daughters, crying out for God's mercy because I can see destruction coming on the socio-economic and cultural systems of the world. I can see it.

It's right before my eyes, as plain as day these systems cannot continue so in the midst of all of this friends if men if there's any problems with sexuality in your life submit yourself to the piercing eye of God's Word and the Spirit of God open up your heart pull your heart back and have God examine it by way of his word confess that sin to others bring it out talk about that idolatry tell your wife about it tell her that you just you're sick of it and you just want to serve the true and living God and you're sick of any of these other idols and start crushing idols, bring the Daggons down and bring Jehovah back into his temple and worship the true and living God. It's a time for repentance. The church of Jesus Christ needs to repent. This is the message that I think we're receiving right now on this weekend. God is calling us to repentance And that means real substantial heart change on real substantial issues.

And let me direct my attention now to the ladies. Ladies, all of us have been affected by the rebellion of feminism. We have soaked in it for 150 years. We have. I tell you we have.

No, no, no. We have soaked in it for 6, 000 years since Eve fell in that garden. You know that we have. That all feminism is, has just been a social apologetic for it. You know, it's just been an institutional system that says it's okay.

Yes, You know, we know that women naturally do not want to submit. Now we finally have a reason for it and we have 50, 000 media people and almost 99.999% of college professors, they're all behind it. Now you know, you've got such support, You've got a support group that's huge. But sisters, we must repent or we will likewise perish. You must repent or your daughters will likewise perish, if not for yourself, for your children.

These things are corrupting, they are destroying our society around us, and they are destroying our churches, and they have destroyed our churches. And Christ is looking at us today and saying, unless you repent, you will likewise perish. You! You! You say, well, it's the world, it's all those feminists, all the abortionists and all those people.

No, no, no, no. Jesus is concerned with his people. He's concerned with you right now. Is there any area in your life in which you must repent in this area of feminism? And I encourage you to this life of humble repentance.

The fundamental problem with homosexuality and feminism is pride. That's the fundamental issue. So just remember that and they will tell you they're proud. They have gay pride marches, okay? It's no secret.

They tell you they're proud. You interview a hundred feminist professors. You ask them, are you proud? My guess is most of them say, yes, I'm proud. That's what I'm all about.

You nailed it. Thank you. That's my creed. It's all about pride. Now, not so much Christian feminists.

They're just better at hiding their pride. The difference between conservative sinners and liberal sinners is conservatives are still a little shamed of their hypocrisies. Liberals build monuments to their hypocrisies. They love their hypocrisies. We're hypocritical and we're proud of it.

Okay, let's take a look at 1 Timothy 2. This is the key passage. And as we approach these passages, I hope this morning that the Word of God will penetrate you. I pray that they will transform somebody here today. Again, The only hope that we would be delivered from the world and its destructive forces is that we obey the will of God, the will of the Father.

We will be the ones who abide forever. But if the will of God, if you read the word of God against the antithesis of the day and it makes no difference to you. It doesn't transform you. It doesn't renew you. It doesn't speak to you.

It doesn't open up some area of your life in which you say, wow, I never saw that before. There is serious need in my life for correction in this area or in that area. If the Word of God doesn't renew, if it doesn't bring any repentance, if it doesn't bring any corrective whatsoever to what the world is doing, then I'm wasting my time. Brothers and sisters, the Word of God has to speak. God has laid out distinct roles in the area of worship.

Now, the Word of God speaks to the differences of women and men. It doesn't necessarily say that women cannot be lawyers or cannot be engineers. When it speaks of women and military, we find two examples of women that sort of showed up and got involved in the violent conflict in some way. Yael and Deborah in the book of the judges. And the situation seemed to demand it.

We have reasons for that we believe. When it comes to the civil magistrate, The Word of God is again somewhat hesitant it appears that women should participate as civil rulers. That is according to Isaiah chapter 3 it seems to me it is preferable that women not serve as civil leaders and if they do It is a symbol of a curse upon a land. That's what it says. It doesn't say necessarily, there's a little debate right now in some of our circles on this, it doesn't come out and say it is a sin for a woman to be what Deborah was as a judge.

It doesn't say that anywhere. But it does say It's not preferable and it's an indication that there's a curse of God upon a land that is embracing this. A land that implodes its birth rates, that goes into debt to the tune of a hundred trillion dollars, puts women in office and raises its sons to be homosexuals is a cursed land despite everything that the propaganda machine is saying. So just be aware of that. We use the Word of God as our ethical base.

The Word of God establishes what is good and what is a blessed nation and what is a cursed nation. The most cursed nation in the world is a nation that is cursed and doesn't know it's being cursed. Okay, so the Bible doesn't have a great deal to say about what a woman should do in terms of the family economy. We have great examples of family economies. We think they ought to be working together.

We think the heart of the husband should safely trust in her. There should be a unified family force. And we find families doing all kinds of things. Family has seven different income sources in Oregon. It's an amazing family.

And one of their businesses is a dermatology clinic where the wife is a dermatologist, the husband operates the thing and all the kids clean up the operation and it's amazing family economy where the wife is a professional. She has a skill and she exhibits that skill for 25 hours in any given week. It's an interesting family economy. There's nothing in the Word of God that says a woman cannot do some kind of medical work as part of her family economy. So as it turns out, there isn't a great deal in scripture about what specifically a woman should do or cannot do in the family economy.

But there are entire chapters on how a woman should behave herself in worship or in the Church of God. And that's the point I want to make as we go into this. That's why these chapters are so important. First Timothy 2, First Corinthians 11, and First Corinthians 14, 34 and 35. Those three passages are passages that cannot be explained away.

And any time someone says, oh, that's a different cultural context, really, it didn't apply to any time after Betty Friedan wrote her liberated woman book. So any time someone says that, Please, I beg you that your hackles would go up. Please, I just beg of you that you would just go, okay now wait a minute. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. There's way too much synthesis in the church of Jesus Christ.

Let's listen to what God has to say. Let's not explain it away. Men and women have different roles in worship. And here's what happens. When they switch roles in worship or one person takes one role and the other doesn't take any role at all, which is ultimately what's happening right now, think about the circus juggler and the sword swallower in a circus swapping rolls for one day.

Not good. Not good. The juggler swallowing the swords winds up on the operating table And the juggler is into it for seven vases because he was a sword swallower trying to do the juggling. The point being that God has created certain people for certain roles. Now the fact that God has created certain people for certain roles doesn't mean that they are of less essential value.

And I'm sure you've heard that many times. There's an economic trinity in which there is a sense in which the Son reports to the Father in that economic relationship. We don't ever, as Trinitarian Christians, we don't ever decrease or in any way diminish the essential value, the honor and glory deserved by the Son versus the Father, do we? If we were to do that, we would be compromising orthodoxy on the most basic level and that's why being a Trinitarian Christian essential for a right perspective of marriage. Essential.

I don't know why any woman would ever want to be a Muslim or a Unitarian or anything else. Trinitarian Life is the life of perfect unity and yet a diversity of roles. It's beautiful, beautiful. And God has created men and women for different roles. Praise God, this is His intent.

Now you say, well why? Why does God do, Why does He say what He says? Why does He want men to do what He says men should do? Why does He want women to do what women should do? My answer is in the ultimate sense, I don't know.

If God was to require us or require you to push a bean up a mountain for five miles with your nose, would you do it? If God just said, I want you to do it, what if you didn't know why? Well, you'd still do it, wouldn't you? He's God, you're not. You serve Him.

There's a sense in which we don't really understand why God is requiring the things He's requiring in His Word. But the fact of the matter is He wants men and women to express piety differently and That's what we find in 1 Timothy. Let's read 1 Timothy 2 starting with verse 8. I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and founting. In like manner also the women adorn themselves in modest apparel with shamefacedness, sobriety, not with broided hair, gold pearls, a costly array, but which becometh women professing godliness with good works.

Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be silent. For Adam was first formed, then Eve, and Adam was not being deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety." Well, let's begin with men. Men you get one verse.

The women get about 60. No, not that many. But men receive this one verse. I believe this is directed to men for several reasons. One is it directed to men.

It says men. I would that men everywhere. This is Paul speaking to men, andres. The word is andres, it's not anthropos. It's directed to men.

If you're a male, Paul's speaking to you right now. It is most specifically a gender specific passage directed to a man. This is what God would have for his worship. Now I also would say that the book of Timothy, according to 1 Timothy chapter 3, is a book that, or chapter 4, is directed to help Timothy conduct himself in the Church of God. So I believe this refers to the Church of God, for men in the Church of God.

It applies to all men everywhere because we have men contrasted with women between verse 8 and 9 through 15. It is not directed to pastors, it is not directed to elders. It is directed to men, to anybody who's a man as I see it. He also says, I would that men everywhere, using the Greek term, Pontopas. Anywhere where Paul used Pontopas, certainly in the pastoral epistles, but everywhere else where he's used Pontopas, he refers to churches everywhere.

Wherever there are churches, wherever the churches are, wherever the churches are gathered together, Paul says, I would that men everywhere pray with the lifting up of holy hands without wrath and without doubting. This is directed to men. Now what does it say but that men need to be the ones who are out front, who are demonstrative in the worship. I don't believe this is saying that women should never lift their hands in the worship. I don't believe that at all.

I don't believe it says that women should not pray or prophesy, for example. Now there are exceptions to that when it comes to the public corporate worship of God. But when it comes to the congregation of the saints, when the men are gathered together, who should be doing the prayer, which is really a very substantive, important element of the worship of God. Who should be engaging in this? The answer is men.

Now I would also contrast Deuteronomy that speaks of the worship that was going on in the temple three weeks out of every given year God required people to come to the temple but who did he require to come? Very important. There were three weeks in which the people of Israel were commanded to come to the place that God had appointed and he says in Exodus and in Deuteronomy both places I will that men that the males appear before me three times in every year. That is, what he's saying is that there are moments in a family's life, there are days in a family's life in which people are sick or a mom is pregnant or what have you. God requires the man to be the one representing the family in the worship service.

This is the priority. I'm not saying that women should not be there. All I'm saying is if there's a choice as to who takes care of the children when the kids are sick, it seems to me that the priority in Scripture in Old and New Testament, I don't see a difference between Exodus, Deuteronomy and 1 Timothy 2.8 when it comes to the priority. God wants the males appearing before Him with the lifting up of holy hands without wrath and without doubting. The sacrifices we bring in the New Testament, as it turns out, are sacrifices of tithes and praise.

These are the sacrifices to bring on a Sunday morning. Moreover in the Old Testament, there's a fair amount of disagreement over whether or not children should take the Lord's Supper, for example. I find in the Old Testament that the priority, at the very least the priority of those who would eat of the meals were those males who would bring a gift three times out of every year. What the Bible speaks of is not always a direction as to age limit at the table or at the meals what the Bible speaks of is priority. That to me is the clearest thing you find in scripture.

You see a priority to the men that they be there with the lifting up of hands without wrath and without doubting. Now what does God want here? God wants, I believe, first and foremost, the heads of households to appear in the worship. I believe he wants them to be praying. I believe sometimes he wants them praying out loud.

And I think he wants them praying with the lifting up of holy hands. The heads of households are those who represent the households. Who is the head of the church? The pastor? No, Christ is the head of the church.

Who is the head of the family? Well that's obvious. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11 it's the male, it's the man. The man's the head of the household. Who does God want primarily up front with the lifting up of holy hands, meeting God for the rest of the people but the males.

Now many church services prioritize the elders in the face to face meeting with God and that's okay. That's okay but I think in the synagogue there were opportunities for non-elders to speak and to present prayers and to read from the word. We find that in the case of Christ as he participated in the synagogues. So the priority is that men are there and men are lifting their hands. Now, the lifting of the hands is something that we don't do very much these days, but I think it's appropriate that we do it.

Why? Because it's commanded. It is commanded. Now, where is this thing called folding hands and closing your eyes? Have you ever seen people pray?

And where in the Bible does it say, and I would bet men everywhere, pray with the folding of the hands and the closing of the eyes. Whereas that's in Proverbs somewhere, isn't it? Oh, that's right. It's the slothful man that says, a little more closing of the eyes, a little bit more of the folding of the hands. Oh, yes, it's in the Proverbs.

Why is it that we do the thing the Bible doesn't really want us to do, but we don't really want to do the thing the Bible not even just allows us to do, but says it's a pretty good idea? John Calvin says that it's natural for a man to want to reach his hands out to God. Now I would say it has to do with an aggression and a boldness in worship. The reason why, and this is the fundamental problem I think with worship today, is it is too timid. It is too timid, especially with the men.

The men ought to be the most aggressive in the worship, not the least aggressive. And this came home to me when I was leading the youth in different homeschooling organizations where we do teen pact, we go to the capital, we have praise and worship times. And it seemed to me that generally speaking it was the girls that were just a little bit more into the praise and worship. It may have been the way that the songs were written, I don't know, it may have been just the zeitgeist of the day, the fact that the young men weren't raised by fathers who were aggressive and into the worship of God. I don't know, but it seems to me that in general, the women were out front, the women were willing to raise their hands, the women were willing to do the prayers, the boys were more in the back rows, they had their hands in their pockets, they were checking out the girls, but there wasn't a lot of boys really engaging worship.

And friends, this is exactly what God doesn't want. And still to this day, when I walk into churches, and I'm invited to all sorts of churches to preach once or twice sometimes but if I see women raising hands I'm right next to them raising hands. I'm right there. I got a few more hands up here. Let's get some guys, you know.

I just want worship that God likes. You with me here? I want worship God likes. This is what he likes. But why won't we give it to him?

Why is it that the women are the pietous ones, or the ones that are more engaged or more aggressive or more upfront in the worship? Oftentimes it is because men are abdicating their responsibility in the worship of God. And as our young men are getting older, 15, 16, 17 years of age, we train them in these areas. We really do. We get them praying, especially in informal contexts.

On a Sunday afternoon we have our fellowship time together in our house and we'll have families over. We'll ask for prayer requests at the end. And then I'll ask my son to get up or one of the 15-year-old boys to get up and pray. Almost inevitably I'll say, you know, I need you to get up and pray. We have petitions here.

We have people of God who are suffering, struggling spiritually, physically. I mean this is a tough deal they're hitting some really challenging moments here on Monday Tuesday Wednesday and we need the help of Almighty God to make it now let me ask you son are you willing to walk into the courtroom of Almighty God look Him in the face through the Spirit and by the Son, raise your hands and aggressively, boldly appeal to the help of Almighty God. Do you believe He's real? Do you believe He's powerful? Do you believe that He'll accept your prayers by Jesus Christ?

That engage it in faith, man. Engage it in faith. This is, I think, what's being said in this passage. We are to do it without wrath, which means that it assumes an aggressive spirit that is not the wrong form of aggression. Most people look at that and say, wrath?

I mean, who in the world would be mad at God in the worship service? The assumption is that men used to be men and they were always aggressive. I mean, they were aggressive, they were bold, they engaged. The problem with men is they get too bold, too aggressive, they walk over the line, and there's a self-oriented wrath or anger that overwhelms them, and that's not to be. So that's what Paul is saying.

He says I want you to be bold, I want you to be aggressive, I want you out there, I want you to get in front of God in faith and ask for these things, but don't do it in wrath. Also holy hands, what does that mean? Well Psalm 24 and Verse 4 says, we shall approach His holy hill. Who shall approach His holy hill? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, who hath not lifted up his soul into vanity nor sworn deceitfully.

Which means before you lift up those hands, now I think about this. I get into worship and I lift up some hands, I'm asking myself, how am I doing? What have my hands done this last week? What kind of click, click, click have I done with my hands this last week? What have I done with my eyes?

Where am I? God doesn't want to bring in our hands and our eyes that are all contaminated with all kinds of guilt and shame that has not been confessed to God and brought out before Him sincerely. And He doesn't want those hands in worship until that's happened. It's one reason why we have a period of confession of sin on the front side of the worship service. I recommend it to all of you because we come to God, we come in His holy hill first confessing our sins to God and begging His forgiveness by the blood of Jesus Christ.

Okay, you wash your hands and then you go and you worship. Alright, now let's turn to women. We only have a few minutes left. Some of you guys are going, whew, used it all up on the guys. Really I guess what I would really encourage ladies to do is to meditate upon these verses.

What is it to be this? Meek and quiet spirit, modest and dress, learning in silence, saved in childbearing. What's that mean? Have you meditated on it? You know, and you're never going to get it all down the first read.

You with me gals? You're just, you're not gonna get it down the first read. You gotta meditate, you gotta chew on it. You got to put it down into the fourth stomach like a cow and pull it up and chew on it and then put it back down the third stomach and bring it up. That's the thing you have to do with God's word.

You have to chew on it. You have to think how does this apply and how do I prepare my daughters to be beautiful worshipers of God. This is the kind of worshiping... Why does God want modesty and dress? He loves it.

If a woman stands before the mirror and doesn't say, oh how can I impress the guys today, I'm talking about the young ladies, or how can I look good for everybody else?" How, you know, she's not thinking of that? She's thinking God wants the modesty and dress, the shame-facedness, whatever that was, it's an old King James Version word, trying to bring out something here. Something about humility, a meekness, a humility, a not calling attention to myself, a modesty in terms of how I approach him in the worship. This is what God wants. This is the beauty of the worship service.

When God looks down and sees the men out there hands up and the women kind of you know that meek and quiet feel, whatever it is, however it's expressed, modesty and dress, however it's expressed. God looks down at that congregation where in their heart they were living 1 Timothy 2. In their heart they said I want to give God the best thing he can possibly give us. It's just like a woman who wants to please her husband. You know, her husband doesn't like her in ponytail.

I mean, I don't know what it is. Doesn't like the ponytail. Doesn't like corduroy. I hate corduroy. I'm just sorry.

I just, all my life I never liked corduroy. I just don't. If my wife had a corduroy skirt, I'd just say, oh, honey, no, no, not that one. Please, not that one. Don't ask me why.

I just don't know why. Bad associations with something in my youth or something. Maybe My brother was gagging me with corduroy or something when I was a kid. But I just don't like corduroy. But you know, now God is our husband.

You know, Christ is the husband of the church. This is what he wants. He looks down at a church. He says, that's beautiful. That's beautiful.

That's the kind of worship that he looks forward to and he appreciates. And as you prepare your daughters to be the beautiful women of God, this is what drives you. Not Betty Friedan, Not whatever the universities and the media has presented as the optimum independent woman, you know. And by the way, here's one of the things you need to do. I've done it before.

Take all the adjectives presented on the Girl Scout site or, you know, all the girl sites of what the world says is how you're to prepare the woman. You know, independent, proud, you know, and all these things. They'll have all these words. Contrast that with biblical words. A lot of times they're just the opposite.

Like, wow, you know, Wrong adjectives. Better get your word out again and look at what the word says. For example, let's say that a homeschooling parent got a postcard in the mail from the local homeschooling organization organizing a mud wrestling team for the girls. A female mud wrestling team. Or a roller derby queen event for all the homeschool girls in the area.

Now, how many homeschooling families are saying, oh, this sounds kind of fun. You follow me there? It sounds kind of fun. Hey girls, roller derby queen. That sounds like you, Becky.

You're the roller derby queen of the home. I just see it. You're it. But see, if the dad was reading this and thinking meek and quiet spirits, let's see, would my daughter being queen of the mud wrestling team really capture that vision of biblical womanhood? Do you follow me?

My problem is that I think most American fathers and mothers don't even think about it. They don't even, I haven't even talked about teen sports. I haven't talked about anything here besides mud wrestling, but I'm just saying, and my daughters have been involved in some outdoor events in the last couple of years, and some of them just are not quite right for girls to be involved in. We're just honing it. We're saying, you're not going to do this.

I just don't think this is going to be helpful in putting together a making quiet spirit, a tranquility in spirit that God considers to be of great value. Now the world says this, How in the world does a woman in modesty and meekness and quietness make an impact for the kingdom of God? We say we have no idea, But that's what God wants. And that's what His Kingdom is all about. And that's how He accomplishes something very significant.

And He says this, if this isn't enough, He says, This woman is of great value to Me. Ladies, would you like to be of great value to God? I mean, I'm sure it's wonderful if you're of great value to your own husband. He's just so appreciative of how you dress and how you look and He just gives you compliments and says, beautiful, it's wonderful. You know, that's tremendous.

But God, imagine God saying, I love it, honey. Thank you. Thank you. You're dressed in meekness and quietness and a tranquility of spirits and modesty and dress today. Yeah, thank you, honey.

That's what I like. All right, I only have a few minutes left. Now we're going to move to head coverage. This is where it gets really fun. Before I get into this, I'm still chewing on this one.

My wife and I are chewing on this one. If the world has gone the wrong direction and God's word seems to be expressing something differently in the three passages relating to role differences between women and men, Would it be worthwhile to sit around and chew on something for a while and not just dismiss it out of hand? You all with me here? This is where I'm at. This is where I'm at.

I actually am not completely set on understanding everything about 1 Corinthians 11, but I'm going to share with you some of the things I've understood. One of the problems is the tension between 1 Corinthians 14, 34 and 35 and 1 Corinthians 11. 1 Corinthians 14, 34 and 35 says, Let your women be silent in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak, but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also says the law. If they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is a shame for women to speak in the churches.

Okay, so on the one hand, Paul does say in 1 Corinthians 14 that women are not to speak in the churches. But then what in the world is going on in 1 Corinthians 11 when he says, be ye followers of me even as I also am of Christ. Now I praise you brethren that you remember me in all things and keep the ordinances as I deliver them to you. But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ. The head of the woman is the man and the head of Christ is God.

Every man praying or prophesying having his head covered dishonors his head. But every woman that prays to prophesize with her head uncovered dishonors her head for that is even all one as if she were shorn or shaven. For if the woman be not covered let her also be shorn but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven let her be covered. For a man indeed ought not to cover his head for as much as he is the image of God and the glory of God but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman but the woman of the man.

Neither was the man created for the woman but the woman for the man. For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels. Nevertheless, Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman, but all things are of God. Judge in yourselves, is it comely that a woman praying to God uncovered, doth not even nature itself teach you that if a man have long hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair has given her for a covering." Now if that doesn't give you something to chew on, I don't know what will.

There are some commentators, I think it was Calvin, when he was sitting there looking at this verse that says it's for the angels, and he said, I have no idea what that means. I know it's Calvin or Matthew Henry. One of the major commentators said, I have no idea what it means. But this is heavy. That's the first thing you all should say.

This is heavy. This is intense. This is like big picture stuff as well as a rather narrow application in the area of head coverings. This gives us some real insight on the way that God looks at men and women. It's very interesting.

There's a lot here. There's a huge amount here and I have five minutes to cover it. Okay, a couple of quick things. Number one, I believe that there is a difference between 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Corinthians 11 and the difference is this. 1 Corinthians 14 speaks to the church because that's exactly what Paul says.

Paul says, I would that women not speak in the church. And the phrase in the church is very important in the book of Corinthians because sometimes you talk about in the church, sometimes you're not talking about in the church. In 1 Corinthians 14, He does say it. It's as plain as day. Women are not speaking in the church.

But then in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, he's just talking about women and men. He's about to talk about praying and prophesying. But he's not speaking of in the church. Some of you are going to say, yeah, but In verse 16 it does say that, but in verse 16 it shifts conversation. It's a shift.

This I think is critical. You may not all agree with me, but I believe that 16 is the fold in the page. It is the shift in the chapter. Why? Because in verse 16 he says, now, he doesn't say this, but this is what I believe he's saying, now I'm not talking about men and women and head coverings anymore.

He's saying I'm talking about contentions in the church. Verse 16, verse 18, I'm still talking about divisions in the church. Verse 19, I'm still talking about schisms in the church. On and on. And all the way to the end of the chapter, it's the divisions, schisms, and everything else that's cutting up the Lord's Supper and destroying the Lord's Supper for the people of God in Corinth.

So the point being, everything through 15 is dealing with men and women in worship. At 16, it's not talking about head coverings and that being the contention. No, the contentions, the schisms, and the divisions is everything he's referring to all the way to the end of the chapter and it specifically is looking at the food fight going on at the Lord's table. That's very important I think because what you're seeing here is This is not about a woman leading worship in the church. Some think it is.

But he doesn't say that. In 1st Corinthians 14, 34 and 35 he says she should not be speaking in the church. But there were prophetesses that were prophesying. There were women in informal situations that were speaking all the time to Jesus and to Elijah and Elisha and David all the way through the Bible. They're always talking.

They're speaking to – oh, I'm sorry. I shouldn't say it quite that way, but they're speaking in informal conversations And oftentimes, most often, it's wise. Wise counsel as David received from Abigail. One of the reasons I named Abigail Abigail because of the wisdom of Abigail. I just absolutely love the picture of Abigail in the Old Testament.

So women, of course, have a role in praying and prophesying. But as it turns out, not out loud in the church. What you find in this passage are three heads. God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of man, man is the head of the woman. There are also three glories.

Man is the glory of God, woman is the glory of man, and a woman's hair is the glory of the woman. And there is a reason why God wants a woman's hair covered because Her hair is the most glorious part of her. She, herself, her hair being the glory, is the glory of her husband. And there is a covering for her hair, which is her glory, and a covering for her while the male is the glory of God. In the worship service.

This is what Paul is saying. That's the decor of worship. That's the decor of worship. Now there are a lot of issues that come up in response to this. One is, is the coma or the long hair of the woman a sufficient covering for the woman in the worship?

It seems to me that's an extremely hard case to make. I used to make that case. But I repented of it after chewing on this for an additional 14 years. It took me 14 years before I finally realized I just can't run around saying koma is a sufficient covering. Why?

A couple of reasons, but one significant reason is that Paul says in verse 15 that koma is a B and he's been talking about an A. There are two Greek words. He could have used the same word, but he didn't. Why not? That's significant to me.

I chewed on that for two years. There are things to chew on this. There's no easy answer. Anybody that comes back and says, here's the easy answer. Let me tell you this.

This is also instructive to me. If you look at pictures of women in worship for 1967 years, count the number of women wearing head coverings and those that are not. For 1967 years till Betty Friedan. Just count them. Do the research yourself.

I haven't quite got a statistical analysis yet. I was trying to do it in time for this presentation, didn't quite get it done. But would it be at all interesting or informative? I'm doing this with my daughters right now. We're actually printing out pictures of women over 1967 years.

Because we think that there are women out there that could teach us some things. Does anybody think you could ever learn anything from 100 million other Christian women? Okay, good. Then Do a little research. Find out what others have said, what others have done, and look at the pictures.

The pictures are amazing. They're all over the place, all the way back to the early church. So find out what others have done. Very, very helpful. I realize that after the Reformation, the Scottish began to allow for some exemptions to this, and largely because they wanted to take, I think, a division from their Catholics friends.

I wanted to show some division there between what the Catholics were doing and what they were doing. But please, you know, study these things and figure out whether or not these things would apply. Now, how does this apply to us? Well number one, this passage is not about a woman leading worship in the church. It must be either prophesying outside of the church as Philip's daughters or prophetesses in informal circumstances or it's silent prayer within the church.

It has to be one or the other. You follow me? It's either her outside doing encouragements and teachings and things of that nature outside of the church or it's her quiet prayers that she's doing within the body of the church when the church is gathered. It has to be one or the other. Now if it applies to quiet prayers, then it is possible that a head covering would be appropriate within the corporate worship of the saints.

But if it's not, if it's only applicable to prophesying outside of the church or prayers outside of the church, then perhaps where it's out loud, then perhaps a head covering would be required in that circumstance. How do we do it in our church? It's a matter of liberty. We teach these issues. We draw it all out.

We explain all these different aspects of it. We challenge the congregation and lead it up to the heads of households and to the individual households to work it out for themselves. This is the way we do it ourselves. I got a letter one time from a lady in India. And just out of the blue, she wrote me a letter.

She said, I'm the only Christian in my village should I be teaching the men should I be standing up and praying and prophesying and teaching the men in the village and I wrote back to her yes ma'am go ahead and do it in formal circumstances I'd recommend a head covering so that's that's the approach I have taken to this passage. My recommendation again, please do not utterly ignore 15 verses of God's teaching concerning these matters. These things should give you something to chew on. My biggest fear in all of this, my biggest fear in all of this is that people take an external and make a really, really big deal out of externals. It's called stoiche cosma.

It's called the rudiments of the world by Paul. And this is what happens with Old Testament law. People oftentimes take the very, very most external aspects of Old Testament law, they'll make a really big deal out of it, their heart isn't really in it, and so you have some of those proud women in the world wearing head coverings. You follow me there? And so that's my biggest fear.

My biggest fear is, but that happens all the time on several things. There's only three or four things in the entire New Testament that are fairly externalistic. Baptism balls water. The Lord's Supper involves grape juice or wine and whatever, and bread, gluten-free or non-gluten-free, you know. And thankfully, and head coverings.

Those are the three things as I see it. Maybe one or two. Oh, raising hands. That's maybe one more thing. But thankfully, we've never had any arguments over these issues.

Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and that's all we argue about. The point the point being that it's usually in the externals that we wind up with our most significant disagreements. I think the reason for that is in general God's people, their heart just isn't quite right. Our heart needs to be right before we consider any of these things. And finally, just please allow a measure of liberty for your brothers and sisters in these areas.

Please allow a measure of liberty. But on the other hand, please do not entirely ignore these vital passages because I do believe this is the heart and soul of the reformation of the family and the church. This is really where it is. Thank you so much. We're out of time.

The Church and the family to the Word of God. And for more information about the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, where you can search our online network to find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website, ncfic.org. O-R-G.