Essentials Of The Faith / Sunday Morning Bible Study / Statement Of Faith

In Order Part 1

Intro: Have you ever gone food shopping at a large supermarket, perhaps for the first time, and felt overwhelmed. It is soooo much bigger than the one you are perhaps used to. You look at your food list and anxiously wonder, how you will find everything. Then, you see that the aisles are numbered and labeled with the categories of staples to be found in that particular aisle. You see one aisle labeled Canned Vegetables, Canned Meats, Soup, Gravy. As you go down the aisle you find that all the soups are located in one place and all the canned vegetables are all in another place, separate from the canned meats and gravies which have their own special place in the aisle. You think, this is not so bad. They have all this pretty orderly. I think I will be ok.

 The same is true for department stores...all the misses clothes, all the young men and toddler clothes are in different places, separated from the others.

 Ever drive past a cemetery and notice that all the grave markers and headstones are in order so that when you look down the row you see a straight line?

 We are a people who thrive and exist on order...some more so than others if you have ever dared to look into a teenagers bedroom...thats another story.

Exp: How did we become such an order based people? Because we were created in the image of God and God is a God of order.

 In Gen. 1 we read that ' In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters and it was so.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and it was so.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, and it was so.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over all the earth, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.'

 God is a God of order. He set His standard when He created the world out of nothing and set it in order.  God also demands order in all other areas of life as well...and He has set the authoritative standard for that order in His Word.

Trans: This morning we will examine order in the church  And we will find that God's Word has set the standard we are to follow.

1. Order in the Church
 Since the makeup or order of service in many churches is a hot topic today, I would like to confine my comments to what is necessary for a worship service to be proper and orderly.

   a. Worship

ILL:  Have people open their Bibles and read whatever they come to out loud and as if they wanted everyone else to hear it.
 Have others sing a favorite hymn or chorus so that they wanted everyone to hear it.
 Have them do it all together and loud.

 That is what worship was like in the Corinthian church. Granted, they came from a Gentile background and really didn't know what worship was or how to worship God in a proper and orderly way.  There was no professional clergy in the church to teach them how worship ought to be, so they did what they felt was right..and the result was not worship but confusion. The Corinthian church fell apart because of a lack of structure in the public worship of God. This is  the purpose for much of 1 Corinthians.

 The immediate context of our passage has to do with the use or misuse of believers contributions to the worship service, particularly the use of tongues and prophesy.  But since it seems that Scripture supports that tongues and prophesy are not the norm for the church today, does this mean that we can just skip over this passage because it doesn't pertain to us?

 No, because there are principals of worship here that we can use to enhance our understanding of how worship is to be done properly and orderly in the church. This is one of the very few passages that throws some much needed light on worship in the early church.

 According to the text, how would we evaluate whether a worship service is proper and orderly? Are there principals that if followed would ensure a worship service that is decent , orderly and honoring to God?

First: Diversity/Variety  vs. 26a
Read: vs. 26a

 The first thing we notice is that in the worship of God there is diversity/variety. Paul mentions 'one comes to sing a song/psalm, one to teach, one a revelation from God, one a tongue and another an interpretation of the tongue.'  There was a lot going on in the worship service. The problem was it was going on at the same time and people were vying for prominence in what they were contributing to the worship service.

 The assumption from the text is that many came with gifts to be used in the worship of God and that there was some sort of competition between the gifts. People were trying to make their gift , their contribution the focal point in worship. This caused great confusion.

  Notice that Paul never says that there contributions of singing, teaching, revelation, tongues or interpretation ought not be in the public worship of God. Instead, he says, Let all things (meaning all these things) be done.

 The first principal taken from this text is that proper, orderly worship does not avoid diversity but encourages it.

Second: Edification  vs. 26b
 How can all those things be done and not cause confusion? When they are done to edify the body of Christ.

Read: vs. 26b

 Pauls way to straighten out the problem of confusion in worship is for believers to understand the purpose of the use of their gifts in the worship of God. Their purpose, he says, is for edification, for the building up of the believers. 1 Corinthians 14 addresses the need for order in the public worship of God and Paul mentions 6 times in that chapter the idea of edification or building up the body of believers as a necessary principal in an orderly and proper service of worship. That is part of what worship is about, to honor and glorify God and to build up believers.

 That is what the worship center is also called a 'sanctuary'. The idea was that as the world tore the Christian down during the week, the believer could find rest and encouragement, could be built back up to face the world fortified by the public worship of God.

 The second principal we learn from this text is that what we do in worship should be edifying to the body of Christ.

Third: Flexibility/Balance  vs. 27-33
 But how can diversity and variety be edifying  in the same service of worship?

Read: vs. 27-33
 

 Paul teaches that the answer is not to stop the use of particular gifts, or the contributions by believers to the worship service but to regulate them, to order them so that all could participate and be edified. How did he regulate the service? He told them how many could do this or that. And if you notice there was a balance in the use of the gifts, 2-3 people speaking in tongues and 2-3 people  prophesying.

 To do this everyone needed to be flexible by limiting the use of their particular gift or contribution, so that no one or no gift could monopolize the time in worship.

 The third principal we discover from this text is that for worship to be proper and orderly, there must be flexibility and balance.

Fourth: Courtesy vs. 34-35
Read: vs. 34-35
 Here we go, he is going to say that women ought to be silent in the church. Well they should if they are doing what Paul describes here...everyone should. What is Paul commenting on?

 Chatty, disruptive, gabbing women, sorry,  during the worship service. Remember these Gentile women came not from the male oriented Jewish society and form of worship. They were pagans and in pagan religion women had a great voice especially in the city of Cornith. They were used to talking in their worship. Also, since they had little training in the worship of the one true God they had a lot of questions they wanted answered. So they were disrupting the service every time there was something they didn't understand.

 Paul was telling them and everyone, I believe, to keep quiet in church. Leave your chatty conversations at the door when you come in, if you have questions, save them for after the service.And I would add, I think w/o reading too much into the text, get to the worship service on time, don't leave the worship center once the service has begun, and don't allow your children to do so either because all these things are disruptive and cause confusion in the worship service.

 The fourth principal for public worship that is proper and orderly is that we show courtesy and respect to those in attendance.

Fifth: Humility vs. 36-38
Read: vs 36-38

 I think Paul realized that the source of much of the confusion and disruption in the public worship of God was due to selfishness and a false sense of super-spirituality.  Paul was saying that although you may think your contribution of a particular gift is important to the public worship of God, it is not the only gift  and may not even be one of the more important ones. Their behavior in worship was showing that their participation and the meeting of their need was of primary importance to them, not the gifts of others or  the desire to build them up.

 The fifth principal we learn about public worship is that we all need to display humility in relationship to others in the service and in the needs that are present.

Sixth: Properly and Orderly  vs. 39-40
Read: vs. 39-40

 Paul sums things up here on the topic of proper worship. He mentions two things.

 1. Priority: There are gifts that do have priority over others in the public worship of God. Paul mentions one here, Prophecy. Which was the forth telling of God's Word. This would be close to reading Scripture today. I believe that this means Scripture, God's Holy and authoritative Word, whether read, sung, prayed or expounded in the sermon, must take priority over all others expressions of worship in the service.

 2. Liberty: Although the Word of God is to have priority in worship, others must have the liberty to express their gifts and contributions and be edified in worship as well.

Conclusion: I believe it was Paul's assumption that when these principals are followed there would be a sense that the public worship of God would be proper and orderly.  I think he was telling us in this passage that our worship needs to reflect our diversity as God's people while maintaining order and being edifying to the body.

 That we need to bring balance and order to thought and feeling in worship. Because as we develop our relationship with God we need to use both our minds and our hearts, together, as one.  The expression of our faith has both content and passion and we must find a balance of both in our worship.

 So, what principals found in 1 Cor. 14 guide our public worship of God?

 Diversity, Edification, Flexibility/balance, courtesy, humility, priority and liberty.

 May all these principals be used to bring honor and glory to God as we gather to worship Him in spirit and in truth.