(remember, these are unedited/draft show notes, not a transcript — listening is always better…and if you listen AND follow along below, you’ll see how)
Focus Question:
In what does Paul ground his argument?
Intro:
Have you ever heard of a dude named C.T. Studd? That’s Studd with two ‘d’s mind you. Studd wrote a simple, few line poem that just happens to be biblical:
Only one life '
twill soon be past.
Only what's done
for Christ will last.
~ C.T. Studd
I haven’t said this here for awhile: One important aspect of what we do here is to honor Jesus by simply listening to Him. Sitting at His feet. Trusting Him given that some Bible stuff is more clearly understandable, and some not so much.
1 Corinthians 11, where we’ll be momentarily, is one of those that requires some trust. It invites us us to seek the eternally applicable principles even as some of the language uses localized cultural examples and illustrations.
And I’ll be honest. I spent hours studying this chapter and really wanted to dive into helping you understand it. Because as you’ll hear, this passage is one of those that makes people in our contemporary culture squirm, and those who don’t like it have been trying to explain it away for a long time.
So I’m going to give you the focus question and answer right up front. In what does Paul ground his argument? Right up front you’re going to hear him argue “Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of the woman, and God is the head of Christ (1 Co 11:3–4, CSB),” but he’s not arguing for an order of authority, he’s assuming it as he applies to to a couple problematic particularities in Corinthian worship services.
New Testament segment:
Passage: 1 Corinthians 11
Translation: CSB (Christian Standard Bible)
Verses: 34
Words: ~721
There you go. Head coverings were a cultural thing, and people getting drunk was a particular situation, but there’s an underlying principle of God’s ordering of things that undergirds Paul’s response. In short, we should ground what we do in God’s ordering of things, too.
As for our time in Isaiah, remember that we’re in a section which, broadly speaking, is God’s message of comfort to the Israelites while they’re in exile. We’ll hear the end of how He’s using Babylon for His own sake, and we’ll here a theme today that appears a lot in Isaiah — that
The only hope of the world is bound up in one man—the promised Davidic king (4:2; 7:14; 9:2–7; 11:1–10), the servant of the Lord (42:1–9; 49:1–13; 50:4–9; 52:13–53:12), the anointed preacher of the gospel (61:1–3), and the lone victor over all evil (63:1–6).(1)
Old Testament segment:
Passage: Isaiah 48-50:3
Translation: CSB (Christian Standard Bible)
Verses: 40
Words: ~1391
Wisdom segment:
Passage: Proverbs 14:23-26
Translation: CSB (Christian Standard Bible)
Verses: 4
Words: ~64
The bottom line:
If we take a step back from the Bible and remember that the whole thing is a unified story that points to Jesus, I think it’s a little easier to remember that it all operates according to God’s design. For reasons I can’t fully explain, He gave us free will along the way, and that had to include the possibility of us messing it all up (which we most certainly did). The good news, though, is The Good News. And for whatever parts we don’t understand or sound flat-out weird to us, we can be confident that God’s clear about one thing: all are broken, all are welcome, and all called to repentance in the process of acknowledging Jesus as Lord and Savior. He loves you and he wants you.
Love you!
Roger
ForTheHope is a daily audio Bible + apologetics podcast and blog. We’ve got a passion for just keepin’ it real, having conversations like normal people, and living out the love of Jesus better every single day.
Roger Courville, CSP is a globally-recognized expert in digitally-extended communication and connection, an award-winning speaker, award-winning author, and a passionately bad guitarist. Follow him on Twitter -- @RogerCourville and @JoinForTheHope – or his blog: www.forthehope.org.
Sources and resources:
(1) Crossway Bibles, The ESV Study Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2008), 1237.