Latest / Woodlands Church Academy's Podcast / Summer'26 Bible School - 1 Corinthians- Session 3- Tim Dobson, Aaron James and Dan Viner

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Summer'26 Bible School - 1 Corinthians- Session 3- Tim Dobson, Aaron James and Dan Viner · Woodlands Church Academy's Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we've only got uh an hour and a bit, so uh obviously there's three whole chapters there.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: We're not gonna try and cover that all.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um but uh I thought we would think around the issue of if this was the problem that when they met together, it was chaos and things uh were not helpful.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: What in chapter I'm gonna do chapters 12 and 13, uh sorry, 11 and 13, 11 and 14, and I'm just gonna do 14 uh 12.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you might be trying.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um I hope I'm doing the right ones.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so what I thought I'd do is is um I I I'll tackle the the the two bits about the women.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: So the the bit that says kind of it's improper for a woman to pray to God without her head covered, uh, and then in chapter 14, uh women should remain silent in church, they're not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: I thought if if we just look, why was that causing trouble in their church services?
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because that seemed to be, there's things going on and they're causing more harm than good.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Here's some here's the deal.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: And something you might understand, okay, there's you come to communion, and it seems to be that someone brings their hamper from Harrods and is having food where a poor person hasn't got anything to eat, and they just sit watching the people eating their food taking action.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's that shouldn't happen.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: So some of it's kind of fairly understandable about how you manage it.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: And if you come into the Lord's Supper, then recognize uh that we're part of the body of Christ, we're recognizing the body of Christ, we're not trying to that um uh we're all part of his body.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: So some bit like communion, you think, oh yeah, I can understand why that seems to be slightly chaotic, uh, but why particularly these two things about about women with with a head covering and uh women being silent in church?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um so as we do that, uh I'm gonna give you two little hermeneutical principles.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yes, I bet you're glad you came this evening.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Hermeneutics means how do you what glasses do you use to understand this book?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so what principles do you?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: So when you come to read a book that was written kind of a few thousand years ago uh in uh in Hebrew or in Greek, uh not in English or French or whatever language you speak, um uh what are some of the principles to help understand that?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: So the first principle we're going to look at is what I call um the Christocentric hermeneutic.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: The christocentric hermeneutic is how does Jesus act or what does Jesus say about a particular topic?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because if this is the word of God, and we're trying to understand this word of God, how ultimately was the word of God made known to us?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the word became flesh.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: So Jesus came to dwell amongst us and he embodied the word.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: So if God thinks something about an issue or a topic, then Jesus would display it.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so we look at Jesus first, and then we say, how does the Old Testament make way for Jesus to be revealed?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so that when the word made flesh, how God speaks as a huge uh divinely in Jesus to people, how do we understand the context in which he was speaking with the Old Testament, and how do we understand the New Testament in the light of Jesus?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: So Paul says, You you know that I'm totally crazy following Jesus, kind of, and he says that in other places.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: I I decided to just to preach Christ and him crucified.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and people knew that he was a he was a Jesus obsessive, and so whatever he says, he just assumes that Jesus is the number one.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: He just assumes that the word made flesh, that he's that follow my example as I'm devoted my whole life to following Jesus, the word made flesh.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: In him, the fullness of deity, Paul writes in Colossians.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: In him the fullness of deity dwell in Jesus.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: So what Jesus thinks about a topic is what God thinks about a topic.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, uh, and we then approach this, and I actually approach Paul's teaching saying, well, he's following Jesus first.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: So if he's following Jesus first, what did Jesus say?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore, when he gives an example, two examples here, how does that follow on from Jesus' teaching?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Does that kind of make sense?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: So we understand this word through Jesus the word.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: So if God's going to say something or think something, Jesus is going to say it first.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Or at least if he doesn't say it outright, there's a little embryo of truth there.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: So in some ways, if we think that Paul is slightly misogynistic and has slightly got a downer on women, if he says, follow me as I follow Jesus, well, what was Jesus like when he treated when he related to women?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so in some ways you read through the old the New Testament and Jesus had women disciples.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Again, that was shocking and unusual.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Partly when you know the story of Mary and Martha, and Mary's there sat at Jesus' feet.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Martha comes into the room and she's shocked.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: She's not just shocked that she's having to do all the hard work of cooking and preparing, she's shocked that Jesus sat there and Mary is sat at his feet because that was a rabbi disciple pose.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it was only men that did that, it's only the men that sat at the rabbi's feet, and here was Mary who sat at a rabbi's feet.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus said, actually, she's chosen the right stuff.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: It won't be taken away from her.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, he was really pleased to give the dignity that women could be his followers.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in Luke 8, we see that uh again, Jesus wasn't embarrassed to have women fund his mission trip.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: That they they gave out of their own personal wealth, some of the women.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And again, Luke doesn't actually tell us where they got the money from, but they obviously were women who had finances, and Jesus again, he just thought, okay, I'll move your money, didn't think anything about it.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um Jesus only once revealed that he was the Christ uh to anybody, and it was to a woman, a Samaritan woman.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh and again it was that Samaritan woman who became an evangelist and led many men in the city uh to find Jesus for the first time.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Again, here was a woman who Jesus entrusted uh a revelation.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of I know that when the Messiah comes, dot dot dot, and he said, Well, he who's speaking to you, I am he, I am the Messiah.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he entrusts that information to uh a woman.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Jesus Christ, uh the word Christ isn't his surname, not like Tim Dobson, it's not Jesus Christ.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, Christ was a title, and that title meant anointed one.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um and Jesus was only anointed twice, physically anointed twice.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, both times it was by women.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Again, in the Old Testament, it was kind of the greater would anoint the lesser, so Samuel would anoint uh Saul or David.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh um uh but here Jesus welcomes that anointing.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: When when some of the Pharisees get a bit shirty, he says, actually, no, this is such a precious thing.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Wherever the gospel's told, this story will be told.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: I I value women that much.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the resurrected Jesus, actually, he could choose who he who was the first person he appeared to.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was within his choice.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't just that he happened to come out of the grave and oh Mary happened to be there, and the first person.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, Jesus chose to reveal himself to Mary first.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then Mary was the one who had to go and tell the apostles she was an apostle to be apostle.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: She was, and and and again, Jesus chose a woman who's again in the courts of the time, a female's testimony was never listened to, let alone have any value or any worth.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And yet Jesus was prepared to give the testimony of his resurrection to uh to a woman.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in in Jesus' illustrations, again, women were used there not just as kind of sexual kind of uh imagery or the like the ugly sisters or the wicked stepmother or the kind of the witch of the south or east or whatever it is.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh actually, there were women here who uses, and it's the woman who sweeps, and and this woman depicts God.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and again, some of his uh parables again were totally unusual at the time.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and Martha uh again declares to Jesus that you're the Son, uh you're Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Again, Peter, Jesus says to Peter, flesh and blood, this didn't reveal this to you, my father in heaven revealed it to you.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Again, did Martha work it out for herself?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Or actually, did she as a woman have the same revelation as Peter had that was from the Father?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but again, you look at the life of Jesus and you think, actually, Jesus was again compared to what was happening at the time, he was radically supportive and honouring and uh empowering of women.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: So if Paul in this chapter says, follow me as I follow the example of Christ, surely Paul would have been uh a feminist.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: He would have been totally on the side of women because Jesus was totally on the side of women.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Does that kind of make sense?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: So if that makes sense then, how do we look at these two passages?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe people would add kind of uh 1 Timothy chapter 2 on there as well.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: Women uh uh I want women to learn, they should be submissive, they shouldn't teach or have authority over men.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: But those three, these two plus that one are probably ones which we say, well, Paul, you obviously have a downer on women, but no, he says, follow me as I follow Christ.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: He would have known that Jesus' attitude towards women was radical.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: So somehow within this, he's making a radical statement that is positive about women.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: Does that kind of say now you might think, well, I I don't see that in him, I just see this as there's some restrictive practice here that he says for women and doesn't say for men.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: He just had well that that's what we're going to try and see.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the first thing.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: The second hermeneutical principle is what we call uh principle and practice, or the posh word is exegesis.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, exegesis means that within this word there is the divine living word of God.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: That divine, eternal, living word of God was spoken into a certain time with a certain culture and with certain cultural practices.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: So if we're going to understand what the true biblical principle is, we need to say what was a cultural practice and what was an eternal truth.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because we need to hold on to the eternal truth, but we can dispose of a cultural practice.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, cultural practice, foot washing.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: So when at the kind of at the Last Supper, Jesus washes his disciples' feet, he then gives a command for his anyone who follows him, anyone who follows me, you've got to wash one another's feet, like I've done that.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't know how many of you were here would say you follow Jesus wholeheartedly, but I'm not sure how many of you would have in the last week uh washed someone else's feet.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: But Jesus says, if you're going to follow me, you've got to do the same, you've got to wash one another's feet.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a cultural practice, foot washing, and there's the eternal principle, servanthood.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: And what he was saying is that if I in the twenty in the first century, that the most menial task, which was probably the job of a female slave, the lowest of the low, was to wash people's feet as they came in from a dusty day to eat at table, they would wash feet, they would serve, wash your feet.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus took on the position of a servant, a female servant, and did that job.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the issue isn't that if we take the Bible seriously, we should have footwashing every Sunday, like I mean, some churches do, but actually I think we can leave the principle, leave the practice footwashing behind, and we take the principle servanthood, and we bring, we leave footwashing back there, we bring servanthood, and we put it down into the 21st century.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: When you come downstairs and there's a sink full of burnt-on kind of dishes, pots, and pans, and that's not your mess, you choose to do it.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's servant-heartedness, that's servant leadership.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, and the the deal is not just we have some ceremony of footwashing, it's that we have the reality of servanthood.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: So there's principle and practice.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: So within these passages, actually, there's something that's to do with a cultural practice, and there's something to do with an eternal principle.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: And our task, should we choose to accept it, is how do we separate what was cultural from what is eternal?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we can leave behind what was cultural, but we hold on to for dear life what is eternal.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to look at those two practices as we look at these two passages.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Is that okay?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Any any little questions or reflections so far?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Or does that kind of make sense?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so um for these two passages then, when Paul talks about women, um what's the principle?
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: So the culture, uh you need to understand about the Hellenization of the Jews, that the Jews were being Greekified in the Old Testament.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, whenever there was a sacred gathering, men, women, children would all be there.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Something happens between kind of the end of the New Testament and the beginning of the New Testament because these things called synagogues appear.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: And synagogues, you don't get synagogues in the Old Testament, but as soon as you start reading the Gospels, you see these things called synagogues.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And what?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: There had been this kind of grievification of uh the Jewish culture so that now you had, if you had 12 men, you could form a synagogue and you'd there and you'd do your religious practice together.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: And within that there was segregation.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: There was never segregation in the Old Testament, but but within synagogue there was a segregation.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: You had to have 12 males.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you didn't have 12 males, a bit like Lydia, you could meet by the river, because you couldn't have a synagogue, because it was to do with 12, at least 12 males.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but within the services, quite often they were segregated.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the women weren't trusted with scripture.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of, if they could come and watch the men do stuff within the signal if they wanted to, but they would quite often be there, not quite knowing what's going on, because it was quite a male uh environment.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um in Corinth, as Dan said on the first uh um week, it was quite a mixed congregation, this this port city uh that had a mixture of uh some Jews who'd become Christians, but then uh a lot of Greeks that had traveled through that um uh didn't know anything about Jewish customs or Jewish rituals or uh Jewish culture.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um so there's mixed congregations where misunderstandings could happen, and maybe some of the things that made church more toxic than helpful was actually cultural misunderstandings.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: You look at somebody who's eating food offered to idols and and you take offense, and some of the cultural things caused the disunity.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um obviously you probably know that the status of women uh was uh super low.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh women with a possession of men, you might have a house, a camel, a toaster, a wife.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of it was it was it was that kind of just and you didn't trust what women said, they weren't reliable, they were kind of all their emotions were all over the place, hormonal and all kinds of stuff.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: So the state of women was really kind of low.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, particularly when Paul starts talking about marriage, as Catherine was talking about last week, actually, suddenly women are given dignity and value, and it's it's it's a place where it's not just the the male's right to dominate the the wife, but actually there's a mutuality there that Paul tries to elevate uh women within marriage.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: And here within this passage is talking a bit about that as well.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: So if we understand that something of the practice, then when we come to look at uh 1 Corinthians 11, uh we can kind of understand uh a bit more about what Paul's saying.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when we read that um when Nancy read out chapter 11, um did all of your translations have man and woman, or did any of your traveller translations have husband and wife?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: In in chapter 11.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: So where it talks about, where it goes through talking about kind of the man is the head of the woman uh and and uh it mentions man, man, man, man, woman, woman, man, woman.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh any of your translations say husband and wife rather than man and woman?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, which translation is that?
• 16:29
  unknown: The English Standard Version.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: The English Standard Version translated as husband and wife rather than man and woman.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think, ah, I wonder why that is, because that seems quite different.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: If we're talking about a husband and wife, it's very different to talking about every man and every woman.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, why can that be a translation that's trusted?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: And also yours is a translation that can be trusted.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of what's going on?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: There's a question to be asked.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the question is because of um of the Greek.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: So so in Greek there's a word anthropos, that is kind of mankind, humanity.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um the word for for man is an ear.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, the Greek word for husband is also an ear.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: Not super helpful.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, the word for woman is uh gune, or and the word for wife is exactly the same.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: So you might think, okay, this passage here could be translated man and woman.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: So every man and every woman, every woman is every man is the head of every woman, or is it talking about the marriage where the husband is the head of a wife?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: And and how within Greek do you tell which word to use, which words make sense?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: I quite often say that um at the end of my bath in our house, there's a random selection of shampoos.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why my wife needs so many, but there's loads there.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um and if you pick one up, you might say kind of uh lime and hohova, and and it says for tangle-free hair.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And you think, oh great, just that's just what I need.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Tangle-free hair.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and the word for, you know, then you pick up another one and it's kind of uh lemon and lime, and it's for greasy hair.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's just what I want.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: I just want greasy hair.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: This is this is for me, so I can get greasy hair.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it one is for tangle-free hair, one is for greasy hair.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, when we read it and the context, we know that that word for means different things, doesn't it?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: One is for that you can get tangle-free hair, one is for is you've already got greasy hair.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: But our minds, we don't kind of think, no one's gonna sell shampoo to give you greasy hair.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: So our minds know the context of shampoo that we we interpret the same word for in two different ways.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the context.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: So the way that the Greek works is actually you think, well, what context is Paul talking about here?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Is he talking about man and woman, or is he talking about husband and wife?
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: So you look for clues in the passage.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: What clues in the passage might give you a clue to the man, woman, husband, wife?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: And in some ways, as you read through, actually, how kind of uh how do you tell which word to use actually is to do with the context.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um and the context is Genesis.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: So if you look there in uh in chapter 11, it says for uh man didn't come from woman, woman came from man.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: That bit there.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so the context is Genesis, because actually, if you know Genesis, there's two um there's two creation stories.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: So it is about he sets the argument within creation, but there's a Genesis 1 story and there's a Genesis 2 story.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Genesis 1, the punchline is every man, every woman.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: And the punchline is go and subdue the earth and take dominion.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's actually for every man and every woman.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: There's a God, there's something built in you by God that to have significance in life, to see God's kingdom come, to see his control, his will happen on earth as it is in heaven.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's for every man and every woman.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Genesis 2 though, the punchline is for this reason, a man shall leave his family and join to his wife, and the two shall become one.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, the punchline in Genesis chapter 2 is marriage.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: So is the quote in chapter 11 there about man didn't originate from woman but woman from man, is that a Genesis 1 quote or a Genesis 2 quote?
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you know the story, it's a Genesis 2 quote.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: In Genesis 2, Adam's put to sleep and a rib is taken out, and Eve's formed from man.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: So the context of which Paul is talking about is the Genesis 2 story, which is the husband and wife, rather than the Genesis 1 story, every man, every woman.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, in effect, the one translation of husband and wife, I think it's a better translation personally than the every man, every woman.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now, can you see?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: It could be either, but if it was talking about husband and wife, actually suddenly then things kind of fall into place.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because if it's talking about husband and wife, if it's talking about chaos within church meetings being more unhelpful than helpful, if you start then talking about husband and wife, actually you then have a cultural issue that comes to bear.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because the cultural issue that comes to bear, if it is a husband and wife, because it's it's that man didn't come from a woman but came from man, neither was man created for woman, but woman was created for man, Genesis 2.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the context is definitely then husband and wife.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: If it is husband and wife, then um what is it talking about?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where, if you understand something about orthodox Jewish culture and marriage, uh you'll understand that for an Orthodox Jewish marriage, Actually, if you're married, you cover your head.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I'm wearing a wedding ring.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: It shows that I'm married.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: And when you look at it, you think, oh, Tim, he's married.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's obviously a Mrs.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Dobson somewhere.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it was the same for Jewish women.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: If you covered your head, it showed that you were married.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: If you uncovered your head, either you were single or you were promiscuous.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the deal, which is why in here Paul's saying about kind of if it is husband and wife, then a wife, rather than every woman, for every wife, when you stand up publicly in a church gathering here, if you're married, wear the sign of your marriage.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now for a Jew, you would know that's covering your head.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: But for a Greek person, you you wouldn't know it was covering your head because they didn't have the same cultural tradition.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: But how um kind of the issue at stake is, I think, to do with um head covering and marriage.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: But how do you uphold marriage within public ministry?
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: Which I think is the eternal principle.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you give a message that we really value marriage within this context?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, when you do anything publicly, have if you are married, show that you're married.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Cover your, if you're married and you're a woman, cover your head.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because probably some of the Jewish women were thinking, do you know what?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm free in Christ now.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um all the Greek women don't have to wear head coverings when they're married.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'm gonna throw off my head covering.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: And and because I'm free in Jesus.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: But actually their neighbors and the other people in the Jewish community will suddenly think, Mrs.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: So-and-so has become a Christian, and suddenly it looks as though it's free sex.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: It looks as though she's become promiscuous.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: And she looks as though she's become a Christian and she she doesn't value her marriage anymore because she thinks she's free in Christ, because she, as a Jewish woman, looks at the Greek women, they don't have to wear head covering.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so why should I?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And Paul's saying, actually, no, marriage is so important.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, it's so important, do you know what?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: Greek women, if you're married, just when you pray or you prophesy at the front, if you're married, do you mind kind of wearing the sign that you're married?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh wear a head covering, because that's how the Jews realize what marriage is.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's for your sake, actually, for the sake of the angels as well.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: You might think, well, what do the angels got to do with it?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, at the end, there's going to be a marriage feast of Jesus and his church.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the angels probably scratch their heads sometimes thinking, what on earth is Jesus up to?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, they look down at human beings, and when they see a marriage that that thrives, that flourishes, they think, ah, that's what Jesus is doing.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: He's doing something a bit like that, but better.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so, for the sake of the angels, let's honour marriage as well.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: I normally take about 45 minutes to do that.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: I've tried to dash through in about 20.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you uh can you kind of see where now obviously there's there's other stuff that's going on there, and again, there's other books by far more intelligent people than I have who make it maybe slightly more complicated.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think if you reduce it to husband and wife, then the head covering, which is to do with marriage, becomes a fairly obvious issue rather than was it to do with Aphrodite's and women prostitutes and uh sexual, this, that, and the others.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, ah, you're you're overcomplicating it because I think it's to do with marriage.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the principle is how do I, in my marriage, in public ministry, how do I make sure that I honour my marriage rather than not?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh, I mean, many of you probably haven't met my wife, actually, most of you probably haven't even seen her.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, she does exist.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I have I have colleagues who are great female leaders who I probably am much more visible with them than I am with my own wife.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just need to be cautious and careful.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: I need to make sure I uphold my marriage in ministry.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I set I set parameters and I set kind of limitations on what I do publicly because I don't I I value my marriage to Beverly and I I don't want that to be damaged.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I take this teaching, I leave behind head covering, and I bring forward the importance of upholding marriage within ministry, and I do things that are different here, so it's not head covering, I can leave head covering there, but I think about different things in the 21st century that I need to do to make sure that in public ministry I don't undermine my marriage vows or any of us do.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm going to give you a chance to uh ask some questions in a moment.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'll just do the second one.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: Is that okay?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: So just the second one.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, women should remain silent in church, so they're not allowed to speak, but they must be in submission, as the law says.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: First thing to say, two chapters earlier, Paul has said, uh, when you pray when women pray or prophesy in church, uh, they have to do it with their head covering.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: So unless they're going to do prophesying by charades, it's five words, it sounds like, two syllables, they're gonna talk.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: So it's obviously it can't mean that women have to be silent in church, can it?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because otherwise they can't prophesy and pray with their heads covered, upholding their marriage.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, in some ways, there must be something that's going on here.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: You can't take it in a vertical literally, you have to take it seriously.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: And if you take something seriously, you look at the text and say, okay, what is this trying to say?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: What is this trying to say in the context of chaotic Sunday services?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's got something to do with chaotic Sunday services.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's not to do with kind of a male domination within the church structures and subservient women just sitting there being silent all the time.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's about when you meet together, it's doing more harm than good.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: So, what harm was happening that Paul gave this instruction for women in a particular situation to be quiet, not always be quiet, otherwise they couldn't pray or prophesy.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: What was going on?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the word to be silent appears three times.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: So in the in this in chapter 14, when he's trying to correct abuses within church gatherings, three times he uses a Greek word that means keep silent.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now I use the Indo American Standard and it uses the same English phrase each time.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: So you can see it fairly obviously.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: It says uh keep silent, keep silent, keep silent.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, NIV doesn't do it justice.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it uses different words each time, but the Greek word is exactly the same.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: So the first group of people in these chaotic Sunda gatherings who needs to be quiet is um is this.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: If anyone speaks in a tongue, two or almost three should speak one at a time, and someone must interpret.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: If there's no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: The same word.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: Keep silent in the church and speak to himself and to God.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: So this is to do with the someone speaking in tongues and someone coming and not understanding.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: So if someone stands up and speaks in tongues, uh you in you expect there's going to be an interpretation.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: But the someone speaks in tongues, and either the person themselves or someone else will say, and here's the interpretation of that prayer or that prophecy.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if someone stands up and they give a tongue and nobody interprets, apart from there being a slightly awkward silence, and eventually they sit down or whatever, actually it brings the gift of speaking in tongues into disrepute, but also kind of it just brings uncertainty.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: So actually, he says, actually, if you're frequently standing up and giving a tongue, and each time there's no interpreter, actually keep quiet, be silent.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: You're not bringing anything to the church service, actually, you're just bringing confusion.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the first person that needs to keep silent.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: The second group of people that need to keep silent is that uh two or three people should should prophesy, should speak, um, others should wake carefully what's said.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: If a revelation comes to someone who's sitting down, the first speaker should stop, should be silent.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: Keep quiet.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: So what's happening here is that people are standing up and and the spirit's over here and is giving this person a prophecy.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: They stand up and they share a prophecy and and they sit down, and then the spirit's over here and gives that person a prophecy and they share it and they sit down.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: This person here has a prophecy, they stand up, they give a prophecy, and they just elaborate it slightly and start to explain it and whatever.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: And and by which time the spirit's speaking to somebody else and says, Well, actually, just give the prophecy.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: Don't go on.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: If kind of um you if the spirit's left you, kind of, and someone's doing someone else, don't just go on trying to explain it in your own human endeavor.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, it's not bringing anything to the shut up, keep quiet, be silent.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same uh time.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: And again, maybe within church services when you've had some free time of worship and somebody shares, someone shares something quite succinctly, and you feel very blessed, somebody shares something and explains it, and then tries to explain it again and explains again, and by the time you're thinking, yes, we understand, we've got it, kind of, and someone else who the spirit might be challenging and think, I haven't got time to share what I felt the spirit given for me.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: So here's a second group of people that need to be silent.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: So when we come to women should be silent, it's not all women should be silent, it's something that's causing a disruption.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what disruption is being caused?
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it could be that the Jews who are not used to being in a kind of a gathering, they're used to the synagogue where the men did everything and the women just sat and watched, and maybe if they started to chat and gossip to one another while the service, maybe they were just carrying on that and they were chattering while the service was happening.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: And he's saying, Well, actually, don't don't chatter.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: Don't don't don't kind of, it's not that you can't speak, but don't disrupt the meeting by chattering.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think more likely, because he goes on to say that um uh the solution is if they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husband at home.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it seems to be they don't know something.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: It seems to be something's happening in the service, and maybe somebody's speaking or somebody's sharing a word, and they and they say, What do you mean, blood of the lamb?
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean, high priest?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean, Malchizadek?
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: I've never heard of Esther and or Daniel.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and if the women are all the time interrupting, kind of thinking, ah, it's it's turning into anarchy.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you've got questions, women, actually, if you could keep quiet while the talk is talking, actually it's not that your questions aren't valuable, but why not ask you questions at home?
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because your husbands could probably help you.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: So again, it's it's maybe it's it again here it could be wife rather than woman, because it they definitely uh translate husband rather than man, uh, kind of in this bit here.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: So so maybe it's uh wives who are not used to public learning uh and uh they're chattering or they're butting in, asking questions, uh interrupting the flow.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: Again, it's it's a church service that's doing more harm than good.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh actually the third group of people who should be quiet are people who are butting in asking questions.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: Keep silent.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean for my money, that would be um what it's doing, because actually Paul says actually this is so that everything should be done in fitting in an orderly way.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um church services can be spirit-led without being anarchy.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um and sometimes kind of spirit-led can look a bit more like anarchy if you've not got some order.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: So the eternal principle is when we meet together, actually let's have some orderly gatherings so that actually God can really bless people.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: Let's not have our services that do more harm than good.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, we want them to do good.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, if they're gonna do good, actually there has to be some order.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, we're not trying to constrain and restrain people.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, some order or some guidelines is just really helpful.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it's around communion, it's really helpful about where you eat and how you eat, but around how the services go, where we're anticipating that everyone can bring it a word or a revelation or a song.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, in everyone doing that, we've got to have some kind of grand rules.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the ground rules are if you're speaking in tongues is not interpreted, keep quiet.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: If you're kind of carry on speaking when the spirits give you a profit to someone else, keep quiet.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a woman that's uh that's asking questions, ask your husband at home, keep quiet.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: Does that kind of make sense?
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: The thing is that he wants them to learn, which is is the thing that we haven't got time to go into to 1 Timothy chapter uh two.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: But the most profound thing of 1 Timothy chapter 2 is Paul's comment, I want women to learn.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what hits us is women are not allowed to teach and have authority.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: We're offended by that.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, first century people would be offended by the first comment.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: I want women to learn.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: I want women to be able to take scripture and understand it and for it to shape their lives, for them to, when they do know it, like Priscilla, of course they're going to teach.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, like Priscilla, she teaches Apollos, who's a man, she has authority over Apollos teaching him the way of God much better through so of course once women do learn, they can teach.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: But the moment, if you're going to learn, actually like it here.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, ask your question somewhere else.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: Don't interrupt, be submissive.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in some ways, the word submission is quite a negative word.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, the reality is tonight, for the last half an hour, you've submitted to me.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you have.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been awful, hasn't it?
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been really oppressive and it's manipulative.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, submission is just you sit and you listen and you receive.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: I want women to learn.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: And to do that, actually, you need to be quiet and be submissive because that's the stance on which you learn.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's not to do with male, it's brilliant, and wives have to wives have to be submissive.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, no, it's to do with with I want women to learn.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: If you'd like to know more on that, there is a longer Bible school, specifically on those three passages.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: That um, again, if you look on uh Bible school on the website and you just do a little search at the bottom, women in ministry, you can find a bit more clarity of that.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um I've gone on too long, but I hope this one that's helpful.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: Just turn to the person next to you and say which bit of that you found most helpful, most interesting, something you've not heard before.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um this clicker's cool.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_02: Ah, great.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_02: Is this now me?
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's that's you there, yeah.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_02: Nice one, thank you.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um hi.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_02: I know some people here, but not loads of you actually, so I will do a quick introduction.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm Aaron, part of the Young Adults Community, as Tim said.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um I love prayer and I love the spiritual gifts.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I won the lottery when you gave me 1 Corinthians 12.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, Paul's sort of famous list of the spiritual gifts, the charismata in action.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm part of things like Sunday prayer ministry, I'm part of wholeness, praying for people, I'm part of prophecy clinic on the team there.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I think the chance to talk about this stuff is just quite fun for me.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: So that's that's really cool.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um let's talk about context, let's talk about division.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, some of this you will have heard before, especially if you've been to previous sessions.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: I re-raise some context stuff because I think it's particularly poignant for what we're about to cover in 1 Corinthians 12.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: So, context.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Corinth is a fascinating place just geopolitically.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_02: It was kind of the crossroads of the known imperial world at the time.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, Rome, the Roman Empire was the major power.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but then on the other side you had Asia, which was the great opportunity and endeavour at the time, and then slap in the middle, you had Corinth, and all the boats that wanted to go from Rome, the London, the New York, I don't know, the Delhi of the time, they had to go through Corinth to go there.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: So it was this majorly populous, wealthy, religiously diverse, racially diverse place.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: It was rammed, people from all across the world were there.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um you had this huge temple to the sex and fertility god Aphrodite on the hill.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: So uh sex and um quite out their sexual practices were very much a part of Corinthian culture.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_02: Then you mix in sort of the worship of Roman emperors, Greek philosophy, the other Greek gods, uh the pagan religions of the world coming together when sort of seamen and women came into trade, um, and then Jews and Christians.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_02: It was this sort of crazy melting pot that's quite difficult to sort of contemplate in some ways now, I guess.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but also Tim talks about division, and I think division is quite important as well for 1 Corinthians 12.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, 1 Corinthians 1, 1 Corinthians 3.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, a lot of factionalism in the Corinthian church.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_02: So some people quite like this guy Apollos, who was a famously good speaker at the time.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: Some people sort of swore a bit more by Peter, who we all know.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: Some people were more like, ah no, no, Paul, he's he's a good guy.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_02: He's the one we should be sort of hearing and getting teaching from the most.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: And others were like, oh, hang on, look, Jesus is actually our saviour, maybe.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_02: So there was this strange factionalism that sort of bubbled up in Corinth for for no reason, really, and Paul wanted to challenge that quite a lot.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_02: 1 Corinthians 6, people were taking each other to court, they weren't taking each other aside and trying to, you know, peacefully, lovingly try and deal with things out of that sort of spiky setting.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: 1 Corinthians 11, you know, we've looked at it today about sort of these sort of debauched communion meals.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: It was meant to be a sacred thing, but actually some were going hungry, some were getting drunk, and there's lots of examples of division in this specific church in this hyper-diverse, very socioeconomically varied melting pot called Corinth.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: And that's kind of the context in which we sort of begin.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I won't read this out because we've read it before, but this is the sort of famous um list of the gifts of the spirit that Paul mentions.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, before we define a few of them, because I think it'd be good to define them.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to presume everyone knows about all of them.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I didn't know this before I started researching, but actually they had specifically written to Paul to ask about this.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_02: So they they wrote to ask about marriage and sex a bit.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: They wrote about food and food offered to idols a bit, but they also really wanted to know about the gifts of the spirit.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: They specifically write to Paul about that.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think it's in one of the um other chapters that we looked at today, it talks about sort of eagerness to learn about the manifestations of the spirit that's mentioned, and there's a few other things too.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I think before we go into sort of some definitions, um, eagerness, enthusiasm, inquisitiveness, these are really good things to have around the gifts of the spirit.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's good to ask, it's good to seek.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we all know the sort of classic parables around asking, seeking, knocking that Jesus says.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_02: Definitely apply that when it comes to the gifts of the Spirit.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_02: I think it rewarded the Church of Corinth, and I think it will reward us today.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, some definitions before we go back outwards again to principles.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um I would say that um for most of these, there isn't one absolute cast iron biblical definition.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um the definitions I'm about to give you have been learnt here a lot from wise people like Tim and others who've spoken.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: You know, my experience of seeing the gifts in action and occasionally being you know a user of them myself, um, reading a little bit, but you may have some slight sort of nuances and difference on definitions, a bit of a caveat.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean, what when I see wisdom here, what I think of is the ability to know what God would want in a situation and execute it as God would see it best.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: So there's there's something about the understanding and insight of God to know how best to navigate a situation that could be potentially quite challenging and tricky, um, and something that without some divine intervention in one's spirit actually could be really difficult to make any progress on.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_02: Knowledge is a really fun one.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Tim's kind of low-key famous for this one in Woody's.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, he often has sort of words of knowledge around sort of parts of the body that might be in discomfort that then end up getting healed.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_02: But really, when Paul talks about knowledge here, what he's saying is um it's knowing something about a person's life, situation, history that you could not possibly know if God had not told you.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: But it's important that it's it's always in a context of bringing the kingdom of God and often evangelism, really, and and and and sharing the good news.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_02: So one of the most famous examples of that would be Jesus and Nathaniel in the beginning of John.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, Jesus meets Nathaniel and says, Oh, I saw you under a fig tree earlier.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then Nathaniel's like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, how on earth do you know that?
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'll follow you forever.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then Jesus is like, Oh man, like that's that's the least you've seen from me.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_02: There's going to be bigger stuff than that.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: But um, that's a very famous example of sort of uh words of knowledge, and uh, you know, I believe they happen today.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, faith, I think faith is all about belief in the ability of God to deliver and provide, even when everything around you is saying that that's not humanly, physically possible.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um I struggle with faith, actually.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's a gift I really want from God more.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I know some people with incredible faith, and some of the provision and deliverance they see from God in situations of hopeless, apparent, ostensible hopelessness is really quite amazing.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Healing, I think this one's quite self-explanatory.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's also important to remember emotional healing, not just physical healing.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_02: When we talk about that, I think God's passionate about that too.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_02: Miracles, I think that's quite self-explanatory.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: Prophecy.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to be looking at this more.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: No, 40.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: Which one is the one about goes into detail about constellation?
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: Is that 14?
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's not 12.
• 44:25
  unknown: No, that's that's somewhere else.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, there's a a bit later on from 12, Paul goes into a bit more detail about prophecy, what it's for, constellation, edification, exorcist, encouraging, building up, basically, in short.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I would define prophecy as hearing and faithfully communicating God's message or voice to a person.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's often tied to the future, and prophecy often does, if we look at sort of biblical examples of prophecy, it is often about the future.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think it's only about the future.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: Some of the best prophecies I've received for myself and heard for others, it's much more present and it's not years and years to come or sort of your distant ancestors to come, but actually like this could be something that's like drawing something out of you now.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_02: God's wanting to draw a kingdom or create a kingdom thing in you now that may well also have some significance later too, but also wanting to strike now.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the best way of explaining this I ever heard really was in English grammar, you've got the future tense, I will, I am going to, and then you've sort of got the present um coming, going, being, these kinds of things.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_02: But then you've got this interesting tense in record, which is the perfect tense, which is I have been doing, or I have be, and it's it's the mix of the present and the uh future together, and it's only in certain context, and I think that's quite a good way of thinking about prophecy sometimes.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just the future, there's this beautiful mix of the present as well.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, distinguishing or discerning spirits.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: This is um an amazing one where I've had not loads of experience of it, but when I have, it's been really important.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know whether you've ever gone through a certain area or spoken to a certain person and had a strong, um, probably unexpected sense of either the angelic and the divine, the good capital G, or the demonic and and the and the dark and the bad capital B.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that would be how I would sort of talk about distinguishing between spirits.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um I've had a few encounters with the demonic.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_02: I've never knowingly met an angel.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_02: There have been a few times when I've prayed for people where I think there's been something funky and a bit demonic going on there, and I think that's when discernment's very important.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_02: To be interacting with someone or something where you don't know that's at play can be uh quite intense and quite dangerous.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think there's also something around the motives of people, and it might be not necessarily that there's an actively angelic or demonic spirit present, but just someone who really, really means good or really, really means harm.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: I think there is something in that too, as well.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, tongues.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_02: A few people wanted to know about tongues, didn't they?
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm no doyen on tongues.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm I'm someone who I do speak in tongues.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_02: I know other people here at Woody who speak in tongues.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, churches have very different views and opinions on speaking in tongues.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think what I would say is it's important to subbranch tongues because two appear in the New Testament.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_02: So, in some contexts, what we see are believers able to speak other worldly languages they've never learned.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, this does come up at Woody's occasionally when people come back from mission trips.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_02: That's where I seem to have heard it the most.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_02: So people come back from mission trips and they're sort of praying, and then God actually gives them the ability to convert in the native tongue of where they've been missioning.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_02: I heard that just a few months ago from a mission party who came back and were presenting at the front.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then the other one, and this is alluded to a little bit, is sort of tongues of angels.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_02: The Bible talks about tongues of men and tongues of angels, and there's there's something around the Holy Spirit indwelling in a believer that is able to um use the human anatomy and the human tongue to utter something that um does not appear to be an earthly language, but something heavenly and and divine.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um there's lots of different things that could be said there.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_02: Some very, very brief opinions from me.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's super useful if you're not quite sure what to pray, um, because you're always kind of praying roughly ballpark, uh, you know, where I think God's will is because it's it's the spirit-inspiring um speech.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think there have also been a handful of times where um speaking in tongues has been a bit like dredging the bottom of a lake, and it's it seemed to have this ability to um, in a good way, an ultimately fruitful way, draw up very um settled, entrenched things that just need a bit of shaking in a person in a sort of a prayer ministry context.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just speaking for my personal experience.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_02: People will have different experiences here, and then interpretation of tongues, this has been alluded to already.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_02: Some quick um principles that I think are important.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_02: It talks about the common good here, and I think that's a very, very important principle around the gifts of the spirit.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_02: The gifts of the spirit are not academic, they're a practical thing to be used for uh helping and blessing people, real life people.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I would also say it's not meant to be academic, it's something where God wants you to experience and have a play.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just meant to be knowledge.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_02: The other thing I would say is it talks about as he wills at the very end.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um there's a mystery around the gifts of the spirit that I don't think any of us will ever understand, and I think we're doing a disservice, partly to God maybe, but also I think to people who've had quite different and varied experiences of seeking the gifts to not acknowledge that.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um there is one spirit who apportions to people as he will.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_02: So another way of thinking there's lots of different appliances in a normal household, but they're all powered by electricity, that kind of thing.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, if you have an oil tank in the back garden, ignore that analogy.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but actually there's a will and a mystery there, and a mind of God that is not always obvious.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, he can give us gifts where we don't quite know at the time we we receive them why, and it becomes clear later.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_02: I think there are other times where we might have a bit of heartbreak because we're really searching for something and we don't get it straight away or get it at all, and we don't know why.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_02: And um there's a sovereignty around God's will that I think we need to respect there, even if it can be a bit tricky.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so if we go on now to the body, um, again, I won't read this because we've gone through it, I won't spend too long on this, but um where do I want to start?
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think the first place I want to start here is just the ability of everyone to contribute.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think a lot of you here might be quite biblically literate, you're already serving.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's not a super novel idea to you to you know think that actually you've got something to contribute to this church, to your community, to the wider kingdom of God.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, if there's anyone here in doubt about their ability to give and to serve and to offer something, really want to break that down tonight.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone here has something very, very important to offer.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_02: It might not look like what someone else is offering.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Paul couldn't really go into uh, you know, more effort, more pains to break down um the trap and the um destruction of comparison, really.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_02: We're not all hands, we're not all eyes, we're not all heads, we're not all feet, but we all have something very, very important.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then what I want to do as I close, actually, and we go into a bit of discussion, is number 13, verse 13 for in one spirit we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, or were made to drink of one spirit.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_02: The word one a few times here is very important.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um Paul loves to make this point, he actually makes it in three other places Romans, Galatians, and Colossians, not quite exactly the same wording, but very, very, very similar.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_02: This idea of actually an extremely disparate, different people actually having something underlying in common that completely transcends and overthrows all of that, really.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_02: You know, Jewel Greek, slave or free, other examples of this talk about male or female, another one says Scythian or barbarian, so someone of sort of great intelligence and culture versus someone with sort of no intelligence and culture.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think this is why I went to some pains around context in the beginning, how we have this, we've got wealthy merchants, Roman elites with recently freed slaves, people who are still slaves, people from all around the world, people who go to the you know Aphrodite temple to get with prostitutes, people who are Jews, people who are Greek philosophers battling it out verbally in the streets.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um but in all of that, actually, they're one.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_02: And it's such a revolutionary statement, it's very hard for us to understand.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the closest things we can kind of grab today would be segregated America saying this with white and black in the same room, or the Indian caste system, or apartheid South Africa.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_02: Those are the best I could grab quickly for you.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_02: But actually, he says, you know, we all celebrate and have joy together.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_02: This is later on in this same uh passage.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_02: We all celebrate and have joy together, we all suffer and hurt together, you know.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you may not have a headache, but you might have a broken hand, or vice versa.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_02: And actually, that's why in the church we should always model um, or why I think we do, particularly at Woody's model, you know, visiting our friends or in hospitals, someone in our home group's currently, you know, really unwell, and you know, many of us have gone to visit that guy.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_02: We take collections for people, often at Woody's, for people we might never meet, because there's this sort of one body that transcends who we immediately know.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we listen and pray for people, even if we've just got a job promotion or you know, someone in our family just got married, had a baby, the best news ever.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, if someone's going through a really difficult time, we take time, you know, in our home groups or at church to pray for them.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_02: And actually, um the day we said we were Christians is the day we had to give up joy and suffering in isolation.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's not okay to do those things alone anymore.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's not okay to leave things, leave other people in those things alone anymore.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_02: We have to do them all together where we whether we want to or not.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's all from me.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, some discussion questions now.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think we've got about 10 minutes, maybe more, maybe less, not sure.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um do split off and have a think about those, and hopefully they're helpful.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I'm sure this is there's lots of conversations that we can start now.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_03: We're never gonna finish them in this moment.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_03: But as we as we kind of close, as Tim said right at the start, we're gonna finish with a little bit of like a meditation, a slightly different way of reading something in the text that we've just we've just talked about, a slightly more reflective look.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna focus in on a little bit of 1 Corinthians 11 uh and maybe just take a moment to sort of yeah, reflect with me uh as we finish.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I'm just gonna start by asking you a question.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_03: Have you ever had a moment of realization where you looked at something familiar in a completely new way?
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_03: Like you were seeing it for the first time again.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_03: Like you'd never seen this before, you've seen it with fresh eyes, and then you just get overwhelmed by just how valuable it is, of the potency of the thing, a moment of awe.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's probably something that's familiar to most parents, to be honest.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_03: I've got a toddler and a baby, so my entire brain can't stretch beyond them for images, so that's where I went.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_03: But last night I was doing my three-year-old's bedtime, and it was it was hectic.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_03: Those of you, you know, some of the people who go to Woodlands East with me, you know my son Ruben.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_03: He is 10 out of 10 energy.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_03: He's a three-year-old boy.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_03: He's super fun, he's super exciting, but he is he's he's a lot sometimes, and he's he's great.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_03: He was jumping on the bed, he wanted to wrestle instead of getting his pajamas on.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_03: He was full of that, it's nearly bedtime energy.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_03: I'd better do loads and loads of star jumps.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know what I mean?
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_03: You may have been there, maybe that was you last night, I don't know.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um definitely wasn't me.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I got a little bit frustrated about it.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I was Rue, please just come here, put your pajamas on.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_03: Let's just, you know, it wasn't happening.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_03: So I dug in for a long stint, I got a load of books out, he had his little bedtime banana, he had a glass of milk with a with a twisty straw, he brushed his teeth twice because he has to have a go first, and then we kind of we locked in for bedtime routine.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_03: And then to my surprise, I looked down halfway through a book, the fish story, in case you're interested.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_03: And he was asleep.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_03: He'd conked out.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_03: He was just asleep on me.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_03: And suddenly, the urgency, the routine, the steps, and this and this and this, get him into bed, get him under the covers, sing him a song, turn the light on, white noise on, get out so he can sleep, all just vanished.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_03: And he was my little boy, he was just in my lap, his arms wrapped around me, fast asleep, he was snoozing, just snuggled in.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you know, I was just so precious, he was just there.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_03: Why had I been so keen to get through bedtime, to get out of the door, to to get down to I don't know, what was it, dinner, another episode or whatever, showing me and my wife are watching I don't know, what was going on.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I just cuddled back in.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_03: Just had a little snuggle for 10-15 minutes.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_03: It was lovely.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, and I was sat down and I love my son a lot, of course I do, but sure anyone who's parented, anyone who's been around little kids, anyone who's loved anyone else knows that sometimes the busyness, the doing, the activity, it gets in the way of the joy, it gets in the way of the awe that's inherent in loving and being loved.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_03: All we can see is the next task, the next thing to get us to the end of the programme, the end of bedtime, the end of the day, whatever it is.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_03: And we can miss the true value because we're distracted.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_03: We've just got to do the next thing.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_03: And we've got we're not in the right mindset to appreciate what we have.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_03: And we talked a little bit about communion in church, 1 Corinthians 11 today.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_03: I wonder if sometimes we're in danger of that happening to us.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_03: You know, when we come to communion, we're missing out.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_03: I'd hazard a guess that probably at some point most of us who are believers have come to the bread and the cup in a way that's a little bit less than reverent.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know what I mean?
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_03: We're just we're not quite in it, we're not quite in it.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_03: But look at what Paul says, if you've got a Bible in front of you.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_03: 11, 27 to 29.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I'm looking at.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_03: Paul says, so then, whoever eats the bread, drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_03: Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_03: For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ, eat and drink judgment of themselves.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_03: Now, this is the meditation, this is not the study bit, I'm not going to really unpack what we're talking about here, what those phrases mean, what the original Greek is, but I think we can be pretty clear that it's not good.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's not good to do this half-heartedly, to kind of, you know, to do it willy-nilly without thinking what's going on.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_03: We need to examine ourselves before coming to communion.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_03: The synth Paul's talking about in that chapter, probably not the ones we're used to seeing at Willis.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'm now at Woodlands East, I'm not at Woodlands Central for 18 months, but I think it's probably unlikely people are getting drunk in the aisles, fighting over who gets the biggest piece of bread.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that's that's probably not where we're at.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_03: But I do wonder if we are guilty of allowing this gift, communion is, to be dulled by familiarity.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_03: We might not be thinking about who's getting the biggest portion, but I wonder if we end up thinking more about when should I stand up to join the queue so I don't have to wait too long?
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_03: Or, oh man, getting the free bread is really grainy, isn't it?
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_03: Or, oh, I've got to walk over ten people's laps to get back to my seat without spilling the grape juice for me and the person that I've come with, and oh, that person's wearing white.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_03: Don't definitely want to spill on their bike.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know what I mean?
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's what's for Sunday lunch?
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_03: What's happening next?
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_03: Instead of the fact that we are participating in a legacy of mercy and love that goes back to the very night that Jesus had a meal with his friends on Passover 2,000 years ago.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_03: In our busyness, our distraction, we can miss the significance of what this meal represents.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_03: We are sinners, we're dead in those sins.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_03: But because of what communion signifies, because of Jesus, we are made alive again.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_03: I wonder if sometimes we need to just pause and examine ourselves, like Paul calls us to, to really just stop process the enormity of what is actually happening each time we do this.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_03: The church tradition I grew up in is very different to Woody's.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_03: You know, this evening we talked about women in leadership, we talked about spiritual gifts, probably the other end of the spectrum from a lot of what we talked about this evening.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I've I've left some of those beliefs behind personally.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_03: But actually, one thing they do do quite a lot is they love the liturgy.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_03: They love that kind of call and response corporate prayer and confession of faith.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_03: And that act of you know speaking together collectively, these are the things that we believe, these are the things that we hold to be true, that really helps focus the mind on the significance of what was being prayed.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so just as we finish, I'm gonna read out a little prayer that normally would be read as a liturgy just before we come to communion.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's called the prayer of humble access.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_03: If you know, if you from an Anglican or church being in the background, maybe you know it.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_03: But I'm just gonna read it now as a little meditation on the sacred act of communion, just as Paul talked about.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we want to come to communion, we're not gonna do it now.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_03: But when we come to communion next, to receive communion as a gift, not to just take it, to receive it as a gift.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe there's something in these words that you know you could have to take heart and reflect on.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_03: And actually, you know, maybe that's a little act you want to do next time we come to communion.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe just reflect on this little prayer.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_03: It goes like this We do not presume to come to this at your table, o merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your abundant and great mercies.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_03: We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table, but you are the same Lord whose character is always to have mercy.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_03: Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls be washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_03: Amen.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I wonder if this is something that we can reflect on, an attitude that we should adopt the next time we approach a comedian, so that we don't fall into that same trap of familiarity, just like the comedian did.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_03: I will quickly flick through, and we've got a memory verse as well that we'll be uh memory verse.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_03: What is a memory verse?
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have that one?
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's just a challenge.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_00: So on Corinthians 11, verse 1.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_03: There'll be a test next week.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_03: And maybe a prize, and may not.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_03: But um we are now at quarter past nine when we do try and finish normally.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um if you've got any other questions, uh please do grab Tim or Aaron or myself at the end.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_03: But um shall I just pray as we finish?
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and then we can we can head off.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_03: Father God, thank you so much for the opportunity to come together to read your words to us, to read about you through this book.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for Tim and for Aaron for sharing with us and for helping to interpret what you're saying.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for conversations that are still ongoing, for wrestling, for challenging with one another, with trying to wrangle meaning out of this that applies to us today, not just to the people it was written to.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you that your word is living and alive.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_03: I pray that you would bless us all and bless our conversations going forward.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_03: Ama.