Lord’s Day 31st January 2010 – Morning

Lamberhurst Strict Baptist Chapel
Pastor – Mr Jabez Rutt

Reading:        1 Timothy 4 and 5

Text:               1 Corinthians 11 verse 1

Greatly feeling to need the Lord’s gracious help I would direct your attention to the 1st epistle to the Corinthians the 11th chapter and reading verse one for our text, ‘Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ’.

‘Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ’.  I take the fundamental meaning of this word of the apostle as he writes to the Corinthians is that they were to follow him as far as he followed Christ.  And that is true whenever we follow any good and gracious man, we only follow them as far as they follow Christ.  We only follow them as far as they follow the Word of God which is the truth of God revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures. In the context of this word of exhortation is a very practical truth that the apostle is enforcing upon the church at Corinth.  You will remember that Corinth was a great trading city and it was a heathen city, taken up with heathen practices, the apostle deals quite extensively here with idolatry and things offered unto idols, now why does he do that? Because the people that had been bought into the church had turned from idolatry, they were surrounded with their families and people that practiced idolatry, so there was that need and necessity of the apostle to exhort them that they were to separate from idolatry and idolatrous and worldly practices.  We have a tendency, and I speak now generally to each one of us, we have a tendency towards worldliness, and if we do not realise that, we are solemnly unaware of our weakness, we have a tendency towards worldliness and worldly conformity. So the exhortation throughout the word is that we should not be conformed to this world.  We should not be conformed to this world, to the fashion of the world, to the ways of the world, to the things of the world.  Indeed there is a word here in the 2nd epistle  ‘Come out from among them and be ye separate, touch not the unclean thing, and I will be a Father unto you and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord God Almighty’.  Come out, separate from the world and from worldly practices, you will find this in all the epistles. 

Now, the point is this, it is following Christ.   I remember on one occasion, many years ago now, preaching from this chapter, and hearing this chapter it instructs us of the rules for divine worship, that a woman should have her head covered, a man should have his head uncovered, that a Christian woman should have long hair, that a Christian man should have short hair.  It is very clearly laid out here.  And after I had preached, and I did not just deal with that issue, there were many other issues that I hope to look at today as well, somebody came up to me and said, ‘You would have been far better if you had preached Christ’.  Now of course there is a complete misnomer there, that is exactly what we are doing, when we preach the precepts of God’s holy Word, it is the precepts of Christ.  That is exactly what the apostle says here, ‘Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ’.  But the facts of the matters are that the points that I had raised they disagreed with me, concerning hair and dress etc, therefore they think that they are being very clever in saying, ‘You would have been far better to preach Christ, it would be much more profitable’.  But it is not a question of agreeing with me, personally, the question is do we agree with the truth of God that is set down in His holy Word.  We live in an increasingly secularised society which has rejected the word of God.  In this chapter it speaks of women having their heads covered for divine worship. I understand that up until the 2nd World War even in the Church of England women always had their head covered.  Why? Because it was Christian doctrine and it was accepted the correct Biblical way of carrying on.  But now there are hardly any churches that profess to be Christian that will insist on this particular precept that the apostle lays out.  The reason he lays it out to the Corinthians is because they were completely new to the ways of the only true God, to the Old and New Testament, so therefore he lays out clearly how it is that we are to behave ourselves in the House of God, when we come together for divine worship.  Also in this chapter he lays out how they were to keep the Lord’s Supper etc. 

Now I would like to emphasise this, that the point that is being made here and throughout the Word of God is that God has put a clear distinction between a man and a woman.  Now in this secular society in which we live, where same sex relationships etc are promoted we are told to put no distinction between a man and a woman and as the saying goes, there must be this equality between a man and a woman.  These laws on equality etc are absolutely opposite to God’s Holy Word.  What these laws are doing is flying in the face of the revealed will of God.  And what secular man is saying is, we do not want the Word of God, we do not want the truth of God, we want to live our lives how we want to live them.  And increasingly in the professing Christian church exactly that same spirit is coming in, we do not want the Word of God, we want to live according to the course of this world, we do not want to be different, we do not want to bring up our children to be different, we do not want our children to stand out, I want my girls to wear trousers because I do not want them to stand out and if I want them to have their hair cut off then they can have their hair cut off, because I do not want my children to be different and to be despised.  This spirit is absolute rebellion against God and against the teaching of God’s Holy Word. The true believer desires to be in subjectionto Christ, in subjection to His holy Word, in subjection to divine ordinances.  ‘Be ye followers of me even as I also am of Christ’.

If we look back for literally centuries in this country and in Western society the distinct dress of a man is trousers and the distinct dress of a woman is a skirt and a dress, and that is irrefutable in the history.  Now why is that so? Because we have based our traditions on the Word of God and the distinction that the Word of God has made between a man and a woman.  But now in this more secular society we are told not to make a distinction between what a man wears and what a woman wears.  But the Bibles makes a distinction and we as Christians must uphold that distinction.   ‘Be not conformed to this world’, come out from this world and from following this world and the practices of this world. Part of the witness of a Christian believer is to stand out and to be different, not to be different for difference sake but because this is what the Word of God teaches.  We are not so say, these things do not matter.  Do you really think that God would have put something in His Holy Word if it did not matter? Do you really think that it is a godly gracious thing for a person professing to be a believer and professing to believe the Word of God and then say, ‘well I will select that bit because I like it but I will reject that bit because I do not like it’.  That is not being in subjection to the Word, that is living according to your own will and your own desires.  ‘I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies’.  Your bodies, notice what it says, I have heard people even try to spiritualise away that word and to say well it is all spiritual truth – present your bodies, and the way that you dress makes a difference, the way that you have your hair makes a difference.  You might say, what difference does it make?  It shows whether you believe you are in subjection to the Word of God or not, or whether you choose the parts of the Word of God you want.  ‘Be ye followers of me even as I also am of Christ’.

Of course here in the context it speaks of headship; this is another point that is under severe attack from this secular society in which we live that “the man is the head of the woman even as Christ is the Head of the Church.” Here in the 3rd verse, ‘I would have you know (this is Scriptural doctrine friends), that the head of every man is Christ and the head of the woman is the man and the head of Christ is God’.  This is a divine order that is set before us in the Word of God.  Where does it come from? It comes right back in the book of Genesis, where God created man and woman, we have the record in God’s own Holy Word of the curse after the fall of man and we read in that solemn curse how that the Lord called unto Adam and said, ‘Where art thou?’, Adam said, ‘I heard thy voice in the garden, I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.’  God said, “Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?”  And the man said (notice this, friends, oh poor sinful man), “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me (he makes  excuses straight away), she gave me of the tree and I did eat.  “And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done?” And the woman said, “The serpent beguiled me and I did eat”.  Now this is a sacred promise concerning salvation, ‘And I will put enmity between thee and the woman (that is the serpent, Satan), and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.  Unto the woman he said (now listen carefully to this), I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children and thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee’.  It is part of the curse, my beloved friends, and whatever man does to alter that curse he never succeed, it is God’s curse, that the woman will be subject unto the man, because she was the first in transgression. 

In my readings in Timothy yesterday it seemed to stand out to me in the 2nd chapter of the 1st epistle we read; ‘I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting, in like manner also that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array, but (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.  Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.  But I suffer not a woman to teach (he obviously means here in the church), nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence’.  And then he gives the reason why.  ‘For Adam was first formed then Eve’ - there is the first reason, Adam was first created and the woman was taken out of man therefore she is called woman.  ‘For Adam was first formed then Eve’, so there is a divine order, ‘And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression’.  The Holy Spirit gives us a clear order and instructs us why, and this is the order that the Christian church must follow. 

We have all manner of things that are brought forth here in the epistle of Timothy, which we read together. One of the exhortations which has often been with me, ‘these things command and teach’.  I remember many years ago going to a chapel and preaching on a very similar subject and the pastor of the chapel telephone the following week, ‘Oh’, he said, ‘Jabez, I was so pleased you preached on those practical things, I cannot do that’.  Why cannot he do it? Because he has not got the courage to do it that is the only reason he could not do it.  We must be faithful to God’s Word.  Please do not think that I stand here and it comes easy to me to preach these practical things, it does not, but in faithfulness to God’s holy Word I am charged to do it before Almighty God, that we should live in these practical ways according to God’s holy ordinances, according to God’s holy Word.  ‘These things command and teach’, ‘meditate on these things.’ 

Then he gives us the order in the Christian church regarding family relationships and the order in the home. Rebuke and teach the elder women as mothers, the younger women as sisters, honour widows that are widows indeed.  Then he speaks of the doctrine of marriage and gives us very clear direction.  We have that clear direction that the man is the head of the woman even as Christ is the Head of the Church.  We have the clear direction again and again in the epistles that the deacons and the ministers must be the husband of one wife, polygamy is forbidden in Holy Scripture, to have more than one wife is forbidden; equally to have more than one husband is forbidden in Holy Scripture.  You might say to me and I can almost hear it coming back, ah, but under Moses they had divorce and they certainly had more than one wife in the Old Testament, look at David and look at Solomon. In the New Testament,  very clearly and very emphatically the doctrine of marriage as it was in the beginning is enforced by Jesus Christ and then subsequently by the apostles in the epistles.  Just listen to what Christ answered the Pharisees in Mark chapter 10, ‘They came to him and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting him.  He answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away.  And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept’.  Because of ‘the hardness of your heart’, Christ here is reinstating the doctrine of marriage as it was in the beginning, one man, one wife.  ‘But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.  For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh, so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.  What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.  And in the house his disciples asked him again the same matter.  And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, commiteth adultery against her’.  Nothing can be clearer friends.  ‘And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she commiteth adultery’.  The word of God is absolutely clear on this truth, and what Christ is doing here is reinstating what was in the original, what man had corrupted in the Old Testament and godly men had followed in, in the ways of sin and wickedness, it was wrong what they did, and Christ re-establishes the sanctity of marriage, hence we have in the epistles again on several occasions when wehave instructions concerning a minister or a deacon, there is an emphasis, ‘the husband of one wife’.  The New Testament church does not countenance polygamy at all, ‘the husband of one wife’, and ‘what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder’.  ‘Be ye followers of me even as I also am of Christ’.

Now increasingly in this secular society in which we live, and that is where these pressures are coming from, we are told that mothers must go out to work and they must put their children into nurseries etc, or get somebody else to look after their children.  We have read it together in the word of God, in the 5th chapter of 1 Timothy ‘I will therefore’, now this is the will of God set before us, it is important that we notice that, it is not my word, it is not Paul’s word, it’s God’s word, ‘I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children (the natural fruit of love, my beloved friends, is children), guide the house’.  The New Testament puts a great responsibility and honour on the wife, on the mother, to guide the house, to bring up the children.  Of course the husband is there, but it is her responsibility. When I was a boy hardly any mothers went to work.  We are told today, ah, but life is so hard to live and we are so poor. My parents were much much poorer than ever we are today, my mother would never have dreamed of going to work, she knew that her place was to look after the family and guide the house, a most important position, and she knew that from the word of God.  ‘I will therefore that younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully’.  This doctrine is not just in one place, in the 2nd chapter of Titus, ‘The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not giving to much wine, teachers of good things; that they teach the younger women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.  Young men likewise exhort to be sober minded’.  These are the clear and emphatic teachings of God’s Holy Word and we reject them to our peril. “Be ye followers of me even as I also am of Christ.” 

Look at the modern society in which we live, and what is commonly known as ‘latch-key children’, they go off to school on their own, they come back home on their own, they are left completely to their own devices, without any guidance.  The television is the centre of the home and that is what they mainly do is sit and watch television, and all the immoral wickedness and evil.  My beloved friends, to have a television in your home is to bring the world right into the middle of your home, and you can guarantee that that will be the centre of your home and all its immoral wickedness and evil that is put forth on the television, and all that moral poisoning that you sit your children in front of it to watch.  Is that bringing up your children ‘in the nurture and admonition of the Lord’? Of course it is not.  One of the most worldly things you can have in your home is a television, and you can guarantee it will destroy, utterly destroy, the Christian ethos of any home, you bring the world right into the home.  Now I have had it said to me many times when I have touched on this subject, ‘you have got a switch on it, you can switch it off’.  Can you? Now look, friends, do not think that I have got anything against a wonderful piece of technology.  But what I have got against it is what is on it.  You might say, yes but it has got a switch on it so you just switch on what you want to see and you switch off what you do not want to see.  Can you? I can not.  There is something on there that really pleases my flesh, and I do not mind saying it, that if I get in front of a television I cannot help but watch it, because there is something there that is so pleasing to my flesh, that is why, my flesh wants to watch it.  And when I have watched it - this has happened when sometimes we have been on holiday and we have had a holiday cottage and there has been a television there and it has been switched on, and I have got carried away with it.  When I have been sitting there watching the television, can I then read the word of God and pray over the word of God? No, I can not, so the word of God is put to one side. The reason why I do not want a television in my home is because I cannot control it, and nor can you, whatever you like to say, because there is something that pleases our flesh in that thing.  I feel there is something in that word, that ‘the devil is the prince of the power of the air’ and I wonder if that regards television that comes through the airwaves, because the devil has got control of it, and through it he will get control of you.  On the television there are things that will feed your flesh, and what happens when you feed your flesh? Your flesh will grow stronger.  What happens when you feed your body? It grows strong and healthy.  What happens when you feed your flesh?  It will grow strong and healthy.  What happens when you feed the spirit by reading the word of God and praying over the word of God and going to the house of God? It will feed and strengthen your spirit.  We are exhorted to be separate from those things that are in the world, ‘to come out from among them’.  ‘Be ye followers of me even as I also am of Christ’. 

‘Love not the world’, John in his first epistle says, ‘Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.  If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world.  And the world passeth away and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever’.  To live the Christian pathway is not an easy thing.  ‘He that will follow me, let him take up his cross, let him deny self,” it is a path of self denial, ‘let him deny self, take up his cross and follow me’.  It is to separate from these things, and that is part of the witness of a Christian believer.  So, when you do not have the television, and it has been said to me many times, ‘Whatever do you do? Why do not you have a television?’, and I have told them why I do not have a television, because of all the filth and the wickedness that is on the television that brings such things right into my home and is right opposite to the word of God and the truth of God, so I do not want it in my home, and that is the reason I do not want it, because it feeds my flesh.  It is not because I am any better than anybody else, but it is because I have got a wicked sinful nature that we need to deny self and to separate ourselves from those things.  ‘Be ye followers of me even as I also am of Christ’.

Now it continues here, ‘And every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head (that is, her husband), for that is even all the one as if she were shaven’.  Now, a punishment in Roman times was to shave the head and it was considered a great shame, and so it says ‘it is a shame for a woman to have her hair shorn or shaven’.  A Christian woman should have her hair long according to the word of God, and to have her head covered to show that she is in subjection to her husband and in subjection, it says here, ‘to the angels’.  In verse 10 it says, ‘for this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels’. I read one of the godly Puritans on this point and he seemed to throw a lot of light on it, I used to look at that and think what does that mean, it seemed a bit mystical that she should ‘have power on her head because of the angels’.  And he referred to the book of the Revelation and the letters to the seven churches in Asia are addressed to the angel of the church, which is the minister of the church.  And he said, that is what the apostle means, it is to show that she is in subjection to the minister, ‘for this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels’. Another reason is her hair is her glory therefore she should cover her glory in the house of God.  We are then instructed, ‘nevertheless, neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man in the Lord, for the woman is of the man even so the man is also by the woman, but all things are of God.  And doth not even nature itself teach you that if a man have long hair it is a shame unto him’.  My dear beloved friends, I lovingly set these things before you, and I exhort you to read the word of God and seek to practice the preceptive part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. “Be ye followers of me even as I also am of Christ.”

As we are speaking of marriage, and there are those of you young friends that no doubt would desire a partner in life’s journey, but just remember that word, ‘Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers’.  also, ‘How can two walk together except they be agreed?’  Just remember that when you are looking for a partner in life’s journey,  you must be of one mind in the Lord otherwise there is a source of conflict right at the start because one wants to do one thing and the other wants to do the other, you will be pulling in opposite directions and so therefore the exhortation is, ‘not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers’.  ‘Be ye followers of me even as I also am of Christ’.

 In the book of Deuteronomy chapter 22 verse 5, just listen to what it says here, you might say, ah but this is Old Testament Levitical law, friends, we are to follow the moral guidance even in the Old Testament, and this is moral guidance, ‘The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for all that do so are an abomination unto the Lord thy God’.  And if it was an abomination then, it is an abomination now.  What the word abomination means is, hateful.  If it was hateful then, it is hateful now. 

I would like just to touch a little, we have touched here on the divine order of the man and the woman.  Marriage was instituted of God to show forth the sacred mystical union between Christ and the Church, not the other way round, it was instituted to show it forth.  God did not create man and then the order of marriage and then decided to make it a likeness and use it as an illustration of the union between Christ and the Church, it was completely the other way round.  God appointed the ordinance of marriage to show forth the sacred union between Christ and the Church.  In Ephesians chapter 5, ‘submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.  Wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is of the Church, and he is the Saviour of the body.  Therefore as the Church is subject unto Christ so let wives be to their own husbands in every thing.  Husbands love your wives (notice how he interchanges), even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it’.  It is often argued that this doctrine of Holy Scripture, that the woman is subject to the man, that it is unbalanced, it is not; the husband is to love his wife, even as Christ loved the Church.  Can you love your wife as Christ loved the Church? That we can not.  Christ loved the Church with an un-erring unfailing and eternal love, ‘from everlasting to everlasting’.  And there is the standard of the husband to love his wife even as Christ loved the Church.   I have to say this, friends, ‘it is high, I cannot attain unto it’, but we will not pull the standard down, that is the standard of God’s own precious word.  ‘Husbands love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious Church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing that it should be holy and without blemish (listen to what he adds here), so ought men to love their wives as their own bodies.  He that loveth his wife loveth himself, for no man ever yet hateth his own flesh but nourished it and cherished it even as the Lord the Church’.  We have that exhortation, how relevant to marriage, ‘Be ye kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God also for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you’.  ‘Let not the sun go down on your wrath’.  As Christian believers we are to be examples, husbands in loving their wives, wives in loving their husbands, we are to be examples to the world in this.  ‘For we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones.  For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh.  (And then he goes back again and he says) This is a great mystery but I speak concerning Christ and the church.  Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself, and the wife see that she reverence her husband’.

Lastly, there is a portion of Scripture on this line of things in the 1st epistle of Peter chapter 3, and there he speaks again this same order, ‘Likewise ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of their wives; while they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.  Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God is of great price.  For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands; even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.  Likewise (now listen, there is a balance), ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.  Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous: not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that he should inherit a blessing’. 

Oh that the Lord would give us that ‘unfeigned love of the brethren’ and that we might be followers of Christ.  On Tuesday we hope to pass through the waters of baptism with our dear sister, that is following Christ.  Next Lord’s Day we hope to come to the Lord’s Table and to partake of the sacred Lord’s supper, that is following Christ.  ‘Be ye followers of me’.  When we come to the House of God and meet together around His Word, that is following Christ.  But every part of our lives, not only in public worship, in the way that we dress, in our conversation, in the way that we behave ourselves, in the things that we do and equally in the things that we do not do, we are witnessing that we are living in subjection, in love, to our beloved Redeemer, ‘who loved us and gave Himself for us’.

May the Lord add His blessing.