Women in Church "The Cutting Room" Tim Mackie (The Bible Project) 2/20/2011

hey there welcome to what i'm calling the cutting room floor this is material that i studied and prepared but didn't have time to include in the sermon so it ended up on the cutting room floor so this is the message i was giving on first corinthians chapter 14. and in the second half of the chapter there's some parts of the chapter that are pretty hard to understand i touched on them briefly in the sermon itself and then just said that i would clear everything up and answer all of the most difficult questions uh here on this little video so uh basically i just want to take a little more time to lay out in detail uh how to kind of read and understand what have been some really difficult and kind of divisive uh verses in first corinthians chapter 14. so this relates to the second half of the chapter where paul's talking about order in the sunday gatherings of the corinthians and the verses that are in question and kind of pose challenges for understanding is verses 33 through 35 so let me just read them aloud and then then we'll kind of talk about them so paul says for god is not a god of disorder but of peace as in all the congregations of the saints women should remain silent in the churches they are not allowed to speak but must be in submission as the law says if they want to inquire about something they should ask their own husbands at home for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church there you go wow what is that supposed to mean so these verses have been at the center of a lot of debate and kind of controversy in uh over especially in recent decades so let's just kind of make a first observation if you just read the sentences by themselves and out of context like many people do it seems like paul is just giving a blanket prohibition in the sunday gatherings of jesus followers women should remain silent and never speak at all so that is one one view and that seems to be the face value of what these sentences are saying however if you read the verses in context and if you take into account some other things that paul says in this very letter just a few pages before and in his other letters that can't possibly be what these what these verses mean for example he says here it seems like women should remain silent and should not speak but just literally chapters earlier in chapter 4 sorry my phone's ringing in chapter 11 he says in verse 5 he talks about there are women in the sunday gatherings who not only pray out loud but prophesy and in the sunday gathering and in the message i kind of talked about what i think is a very likely view of what prophecy is it's very akin to sharing god's word with people and coincides with what with what we would call preaching so he says right here women are praying and speaking and even even preaching sharing from god's word in the sunday gathering so whatever he means in chapter 14 he cannot mean that women should never speak under any circumstances it must be something more specific so there's also the larger context of paul's writings and he we know from the end of romans from his letter to the philippians from the book of acts that there were lots of women leaders in the early churches paul mentions a woman in romans 16 who he includes among the group of apostles which were key leaders so we know there were women who were leaders who were teachers and in the early churches so whatever paul means in chapter 14 it is not a blanket prohibition it must be specific to the situation that he's talking about and the situation that he's talking about the broader context is in first corinthians 14 verses 26 all the way through the end of verse 40. and he's addressing a problem and the problem is that when the corinthians were gathering it would be like in a small group maybe you know 20 30 people in a home and the problem was that people were speaking over each other interrupting each other so let me just kind of work through the passage that precedes the verses we read and it sets the context i think for what's happening in the verses so he begins in verse 26 he says what shall we say brothers when you come together everyone has a hymn a word of instruction a revelation a tongue or interpretation all of these must be done for the strengthening of the church so this is a small group gathering and lots of people with come would come to the gathering for uh to share all these different kinds of things so he says uh if anyone wants to speak in a tongue he says two or at the most three should speak one at a time and there must be someone there to interpret if there is no interpreter that speaker should and this is the key word here segato in greek sega which is translated here as keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and god so here's another group of people paul says that should be silent in the church in the gathering and this is people who want to speak in tongues but there is no interpreter there's no way to render that into like normal language for other people to understand he says be silent keep quiet and don't speak he goes on verse 29 two or three prophets should speak and others should weigh carefully what is being said so again you can speak prophets can speak and share with the community other people should weigh and evaluate what's being talked about and listen what he says now verse 30 he says if a revelation comes to someone who's sitting down the first speaker should ciga the same same greek word the first speaker should stop be silent so now here's the second group of people paul says to be silent he says you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged the spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets he says so in other words you had some prophets that seemed who were interrupting each other like one person was talking and another guy was like no no i have something more important to say and just interrupt and he's saying no no if you're a prophet you have control over your ability to speak you can wait you can be silent and then wait your turn and so on and then this is the key principle he says in verse 33 he says god is not a god of disorder but of peace so the corinthian gatherings were full of disorder there's problems and he's addressing them one by one and then what follows with women speaking seems to be another problem so in other words there was a problem that there were some women at least who were interrupting like causing division or disorder in the gathering and that's what he's trying to put a stop to so he says as in the congregation of the saints women should it's the same key word here sigao which means stop speaking so there were some women who were disrupting and interjecting in some way and he's saying no they should stop he says they're not allowed to speak now in the context that word speak has been occurring all over it means to speak in a tongue or speak in prophecy or to speak in evaluating someone else's prophecy so it's not just speaking in general it's in the context of what he's saying here and then he gets really specific he says they must be in submission as the law says in the law here he's referring to the jewish torah now most readers if they kind of connect with some other passages in paul they talk about submission and they assume oh they must be submissive to men or submissive to their husbands but he doesn't say that here he says they perhaps a better translation would be they should be submissive to the principle of order paul wants order and i think when he says as the law says there are lots of scholars who think paul is alluding here back to verse 33 god is not a god of disorder but of order and they think many scholars think he's alluding here to genesis chapter 1 where god brings order out of chaos and so when christians gather there should be order and not chaos so paul's saying whatever these women are doing speaking interrupting and rejecting they should sega oh they should stop that just like tongue speakers or prophets should stop when it's appropriate they should submit to the principle of order in the assembly just like the torah uh sp uh teaches about verse 35 he says if they want to inquire about something they should ask their own husbands at home now this is really important and i think this gets to the heart of what paul's addressing in other words he's not just talking about women in general he's talking about some married women in the corinthian church and he says listen if you want to inquire and the greek word here actually is a little more intense it's more like interrogate you should talk with your own husbands at home he says it's disgraceful for a woman and we know now probably a better translation would be for a wife to speak in this way in church so here's let me just quote from you from one corinthian scholar who puts together a really good summary of what i think is happening here this is from n.t wright's commentary on first corinthians according to paul's instructions in verse 29 that the congregation should reflect on what a prophet said and evaluate it some of the women who who were married might have taken it upon themselves to evaluate what their own husbands had said and do so rather personally or sharply and i think this is probably what's going on this is this would be like jessica standing up in the middle of like the sunday gathering and i'm like telling people like hey you know we should like love each other and put our own needs aside and serve others and jessica just stands up in the middle of my message and it would just be like hold on like you weren't doing that yesterday tim you know interrupting and and it seems like something like this was going on paul believes it would be better to have them take up the matter at home rather than airing what could be a domestic disagreement in the context of public worship what is most clear is that this is a particular problem posed within the cultural setting at corinth of the time paul's overriding concern is for order peace and mutual edification when the church comes together so again paul it doesn't seem to me that it's a consistent reading to say paul's giving a blanket prohibition on uh women speaking here this is specific to the context and there was a group of women or wives who were speaking up disrupting in some way and paul says they need to stop just like other people who are speaking out of turn needed to stop so anyway i hope that's helpful and gives a little more insight into the passage that i wasn't able to do on sunday so thanks for visiting the cutting room floor you

Channel: Bible Nerds & Tim Mackie Fans

Views: 14,703

Rating: 4.9042735 out of 5

Keywords: Tim Mackie, Bible Project

Id: ZLVAOj2LvRo

Length: 11min 34sec (694 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 30 2020