The long and short of it
Couple of stories
Tobogganing – “Let the lady go first”, “I’m a man”
3 experiences of going for a meal
1) UK couple during Rugby World Cup – Come in, grab a beer, sit down, shut up, the rugby is on – didn’t feel very honoured!
2) Brazilians – man shake hand, lady kiss on both cheeks (start with right)
3) Sri Lankan family – only two places set, food out, family watched us eat – showing great honour to guests
Today’s passage is a difficult one! Been working through 1 Corinthians and got to chapter 11
Paul is beginning to talk about what Sunday gatherings look like.
This section looks at how men and women relate to each other – lots of unclear cultural stuff.
Advantage of working through a book of the bible is that you end up at passages like this. God inspired the Bible, we believe it so we need to look at it, work our what it means and apply it correctly!
Going to read it – notice how many times head, honour and shame appear in various forms
So Paul is starting a section of 1 Corinthians that is about Sunday morning gatherings and doing them well. The main point of this section is that we can behave in ways that result in honour or shame on a Sunday morning and Paul wants us to honour one another.
Ancient Greece, like large parts of the world today was an honour/shame culture
Honour is the worth or value of persons both in their eyes and in the eyes of their village, neighborhood, or society.
Shame is the emotion of a lack of worth or value in your own eyes and people around – we feel shame when we can’t look someone in the eye and head is down rather lifted up.
Signs of honour are often external, physical actions – like taking your shoes off when you enter someone’s home in certain cultures. Setting food out for guests and waiting till they have gone before eating.
One of the things that is clear from this passage is that hair length and wearing or not wearing a veil is a cultural indicator or honour/shame in Corinth.
v4 a man praying with head covered is shameful, a woman praying incovered is also shameful, as bad as being shaved!
You can see there are some cultural expressions of an underlying principle.
There are two layers to this passage like a sandwich has bread and meat. The head coverings and hair length is the bread, the underlying principle of bringing honour and honouring one another in worship is the meat.
So let’s understand the principles within the text.
1) The Trinity – that’s the understanding or doctrine that Christians have that there is one God in three persons – Father, Son, Spirit. They are all equally God, but they are distinct in personhood. Passages like this one show that even though Father, Son and Spirit are equal, there is voluntary submission. So v3 let’s us know the head of Christ is God.
There is equality but voluntary submission.
So Paul says that in a marriage the husband is head over the wife. That immediately brings up horrible allusions of oppressed Muslim women treated like possessions, or 1950’s families where wifey lines up the kid for husband to come home, hands over the slippers and a pipe and makes sure dinner is served and the kids are put to bed. Those are horrible distortions, a result of the fall. The trinity shows us equality and headship, but headship is servant leadership – serving not being served and in the case of husbands loving their wives as much a Christ loved the church, laying down their lives for their wives.
2) Paul also alludes to Genesis 2 in v8,9- which tells the story of creation, and Adam – it was not good for him to be a lone. He was incomplete, needing help, so God created Eve to be a helper. Man and woman together are the image of God – they are equal as Gal 3:27 tells us but distinct both in sexual distinctions ad so many other wonderful ways.
3) Principle Paul is Joel 2:27-29 which is a prophecy of the new covenant coming and the age of the Spirit. v27 And my people shall never again be put to shame.
There is so much shame in sinful life – the battle of the sexes, sin making us feel dirty and unable to look others in the eye
The new covenant, the coming of Jesus meant shame was to be banished. Jesus, God, the most honoured of all, shamed himself by doing on the cross, taking our shame and sin so we could be restored to the place of honour and dignity that men and women were originally created to have.
Joel 2 continues to bring a vision of a people of the Spirit – men and women able to hear God for themselves, young and old able to prophecy, dream and have visions.
The new covenants takes shame filled, sinful men and women and cleans them up, restores them to the place of honour and endows them equally the ability to contribute in prayer and prophecy to corporate church life.
Paul grabs hold of all that
Men and women – the image of God – equal but different in looks and roles
Shame gone, so live in the good of the place of honour that we have
Men and women equally able and gifted to contribute to spirit filled worship life
He says come on go for it! Pray and Prophecy with equal importance and dignity, but do it in a way that honours one another
That’s the underlying principles in this text.
Long hair/short hair, Veil/No veil are cultural expressions of honour and shame!
The funny thing is that both the men and women would have worn what would now be considered dresses – the hair length and veils distinguished the sexes.
For a woman to have no veil and or short hair is to say she is immoral, adulteress or even a prostitute
For a man, no veil and short hair was masculine!
Clearly we have different expressions of masculinity and femininity now!
The toboggan guy had a woman’s hair and camp dress sense.
Hair was an expression of sexuality then in Corinth just as now – people still spent lots of time and attention it – apparently the average woman will spend £26k in her lifetime on her hair.
The Nazis shaved Jewish women’s heads to shame them knowingly.
When I was 19 a man outside Salford Rugby league club told me to get saved and get my hair cut – I think he was misapplying this passage – I did have bushy curly hair, but it was still manly!
Paul’s passion is that men and women get to participate in the new Spirit filled life in worship together, praying and prophecying. Celebrating our equal status as image carriers, new creations in Christ but also celebrating our distinctives – men dressing and having man haircuts and women dressing and having womanly hair cuts. Clearly that will look different in different cultures.
To sum up
We were all once in the shame of sin
Jesus came and died on the cross to take away our shame and restore us to the place of honour in relationship to the Father.
Both men and women have the Spirit and can pray and prophecy
Both men and women need to honour one another in the way they look so we can focus on Jesus not be wondering if that’s a man or a woman or be distracted by the sight of contours of bits we don’t have!
Not asking us to be old fashioned or fuddy duddy in our dress and hairstyles. But he is asking us to be masculine or feminine.
As we’ve seen he appeals to
Creation v8-9
The Old Testament v8-9
Nature v14 – by which he means culture
And lastly his apostolic authority in v16
Pendulum Swing or Two Sided Coin?
| Speaker: | Andy Moyle, |
| Series: | God's Multicoloured Wisdom |
| Date: | 11th Oct, 2026 |
| Download: | Pendulum Swing or Two Sided Coin? |
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| Sermon notes: | Pendulum Swing or Two Sided Coin?Pendulum Swing We have been looking at God’s multicoloured wisdom - where God shows off his amazing diverse multicoloured wisdom to the angels and demons through what he is doing through the church. Your life has meaning and purpose – you are part of a cosmic plan that God has! Started with creation – in all its diversity created by God who personifies diversity in unity – Father, Son and Spirit Then we looked at the Fall – where Adam and Eve disobeyed God and experienced shame, guilt and fear. God made a sacrifice to clothe them with the first leather outfits! Then we began to see God’s rescue plan for the whole of humanity start through God call one person – Abraham to be blessed so that through his offspring every family would get the chance to be blessed. God often chooses one to be bless many. He has chosen you too! Now we jump forward hundreds of years – the Old Testament people of God, Israel are being formed. They have escaped slavery in Egypt and they are about to receive the ten commandments – and the rest of the Law. But before that God tells them these amazing words. Exodus 19:5 Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.” Condition – Obey God fully and keep my covenant.They are about to get the law – not just 10 commandments. Jewish scholars counted 613 separate commands. They are there to show how holy God is and how much we need Jesus to save us. King Solomon tells us in Eccl 7:20 Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins. Paul will teach the purpose of the law was to bring us to Christ – Gal 3:24 So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith They had been saved by grace from slavery but still the Old Covenant was conditional on obedience first. Ex 19:5 again IF you obey me… then out all the nations you will be my treasured possession. Treasured PossessionIf your house was to catch fire and everyone was safe and you could grab one thing, what would it be? That’s your treasured possession. The Hebrew word is sagula which means shut up treasure – the kind of treasure that is highly prized and kept safe. That’s who the people of God are to the Lord. Then from that identity as God’s treasured possession, they are called to be a Kingdom of Priests Kingdom of PriestsA priest is someone who mediates people to the Lord. Their job as a blessed people was to show that blessing to all the families of the earth – to carry on Abraham’s call. Mal 2:7 says for the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, because he is the messenger of the Lord almighty and the people seek instruction from his mouth. Holy NationGod is Holy and commands his people to be holy. The command “Be holy, for I am holy” is all over the Bible! Lev 11:45 I am the Lord, who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy. Two sides of a coin – the edge says treasured possession. That is their identity. One side is be a kingdom of priests. Make a difference in the nations, influence them and bless them so that they follow god. The other side is Holy nation – be holy. Don’t compromise with sin. They were meant to hold it in tension – be in the world but not of it. But OT Israel and actually anyone without Jesus just cannot do it. It ends up being a pendulum swing of making a mess Instead of kingdom of priests – influencing the nations. End up with anything goes, doing the awful things the unbelievers were doing. Then they’d swing the other way again missing the point. Holy nation – despising the other nations and being completely nationalistic. Or separating themselves. Even today – you can see religion in general and “religious” people making a mess of the pendulum swing. In the world and doing what they do – anything goes, chaotic lifestyles, liberalism – making Christianity wishy washy but palatable. Swinging the other way – Christian ghetto, avoiding the world, holy huddle, leagalism. Paul warns against that in 1 Cor 5:10 “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.” That’s a great example of two sided coin – be in the world, but don’t be like the world. The call to live out being a treasured possession by being a Kingdom of priests and a holy nation is impossible in our own strength. The law was mean to point us to Jesus. Christianity has a new covenant, a new deal – a better deal. 1 Peter 2 lays out the ideas of what treasure possession, kingdom of priests and a holy nation look like with Jesus But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but not you have received mercy. If you have become a Christian, Peter declares like Jesus you are born again – a new creation and we have been give a precious identity – chosen people, royal priesthood, holy nation, God’s special possession. God has done it- he has made us the people of God and has given us with mercy. Our destiny is not the pendulum swing of messing it up – we can live as the double sided coin – treasured possession round the edge – kingdom of priests and holy nation as the two sides, We can do it. You may be thinking, no I can’t I swing from one extreme to the other! What’s the secret sauce? A few verses before Peter shows us As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house[a] to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Living StonesPeter is writing to people who were mostly Jewish background before fining Christ, so they would have had Old Testament understanding of what that means. Centuries before Jesus came Ezekiel was prophecying to a wayward pendulum swinging Israel and he says this “I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.” God showed Ezekiel that without Jesus people are stony – cold and hard and unable to follow and obey Jesus. The promise he prophecied is that God would remove peoples dead stony hearts and give them a new heart. In Ezek 36 he repeats it – “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” Peter picks up the imagery of that and shows that Christians are now living stones – we have the Spirit in us, making us so alive. Spiritual houseThen he talks about us being built together into a “spiritual house” to be a holy priesthood. A spiritual house is literally a house of the spirit. Together we are the house where the Spirit of God dwells. We need each other – you can’t go it alone in Christian faith – the devil will pick you off straight away. The secret sauce that makes the two-sided coin doable – is the power of the Spirit available to all of us and the church being the place where we are built together. New Covenant is incredible. The law of 613 commandments is impossible, nobody apart from Jesus has completely obeyed. So, Jesus came to bring us close to God Eph 2:14-15 “For he himself is our peace who has made the two groups on and has destroyed the barrier the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations” The Law was just a schoolmaster or guardian to shows us we need Christ. Now grace has fully come and we find that we can be more holy than the law demanded by enjoying God’s grace and walking in the power of the Spirit. The law said don’t commit adultery – grace says don’t even think adulterous thoughts. Titus 2:13 tells us “grace teaches us to say no to unrighteousness” It is walking in the Spirit that enables us to be holy and make a difference. Gal 5:16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. It is the Spirit that gives us power to be witnesses Act 1:8 It is the Spirit who grows the fruit of holiness in us Gal 5:22 It is our experience of being living stones – filled with the Spirit and built together as God’s church that means we finally get to enjoy living our new identity But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. If your life feels like a chaotic pendulum swing – God wants to turn you into a two-sided coin! Come to Jesus Be filled with the Spirit Be built together |
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