What traditions is he talking about? He is talking about the teaching of the apostles that was handed down to them, that has been imparted to them.

Jude says that, "The faith which has been once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). He says, "I am grateful that you have kept the traditions that I delivered them to you."

Now, notice as he is moving into the area of worship and how to do worship, he begins in verse three with a basic teaching. This is so important, dear ones. You will have a rotten marriage if you don't understand and apply this always. And you will have rebellious kids, always. Even if you do apply it there is no guarantee you won't have some rebellion in your home. But I am just saying you have got to get this right.

1 Corinthians 11:3. He says: "But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God" (1 Corinthians 11:3).

Now, wait a minute here! How do we reconcile this with the teaching that says at the end of Galatians chapter three that in Jesus Christ there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Gentile, bond or free, but you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:26-29)? How do you line this up with a pretty blatant egalitarian statement that you are all one in Christ?

Here is the way it works. God, as he is in himself -- theologians refer to that as ontology. Ontology is that division of philosophy that deals with what a thing is in itself, its being.

God, as he is in himself, is absolutely equal. The Father is equal to the Son, absolutely. The Son is equal to the Father, absolutely. The Holy Spirit is equal to the Father and the Son, absolutely. There is no inequality in the Godhead. They are absolutely one, absolutely equal, all coeternal. The Father has not been around any longer than the Son has been around or that the Holy Spirit has been around. They are all omniscient. They know everything. They are all omnipresent. They are everywhere present. And they are all omnipotent, all powerful.

But in the work of bringing salvation to us, the fully-equal-to-the-Father, Son subordinated himself to the Father. He took on the role of a servant. He became the servant of the Father. There was no other way for salvation to come about.

So I want you to know, though Jesus is fully equal to the Father, in every sense, in terms of his being, yet in the role of securing redemption, he submits himself to the Father and takes on a subordinate role. And guess what? The Holy Spirit subordinates himself, submits himself to the Father and to the Son.

So now if you think about it for a moment, looking at verse three when he says the head of Christ is God, he is saying in effect that Jesus, who is absolutely equal to the Father, put himself in submission to the Father, and the Father is the head of Christ in this work of bringing many people to salvation.

Now in that work of redemption, if we want to be rightly related, if we want to have protection, we need to have an umbrella over us. If we want to be safe, we need to be in God's fortress of protection. God's fortress of protection lines up like this.

God the Father is the head. Underneath God the Father, is Christ. And if you are a man, and you want to be safe in this world, and you don't want to be a rebel, you don't want to be a "free range" guy out there just roaming around, kicking around and feeling groovy and getting into trouble, you need to submit yourself to Christ.

No man is a real man until he has submitted himself to Christ. No man is a real man until he has submitted himself to Christ.

So you want authority? The Father is over the Son in salvation in terms of being safe and in God's plan of deliverance for us. The Father is over the Son, and then the Son is over men. The man submits to Jesus Christ, and then if a woman wants to be protected, she will voluntarily submit herself to her husband.

Are men and women equal in Christ? Absolutely. There is total egalitarianism in Christ. Men and women are fully equal. Under the New Testament, men and women approach God with equal openness, equal access, but yet in the economy of things, in how God runs the world, a woman who doesn't want to be a "free range" woman, a rebel, self-consciously submits herself to her husband, who self-consciously submits himself to Christ, who self-consciously submits himself to the Father.

Do you see that?

Verse three: "But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God" (1 Corinthians 11:3).
What does this have to do with spiritual gifts? Absolutely everything. If you don't get yourself in that line up, you are going to catch something you don't want to catch when you pursue the supernatural. That is what he is saying. Don't be deceived, he says. If you don't want to be deceived, you have got to be rightly related to authority in your life.

Men under Christ, Christ under the Father, women under men.

Now, notice his practical application of this in verse four and this has everything to do with women in ministry.

Verse four. And you see how there is no contradiction here. Verse four: "Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonors his head" (Corinthians 11:4).

If I come into church wearing a hat and I -- you know, John Kennedy ended the hat business in America. Is anybody old enough to remember that?

When I was a kid, men wore hats everywhere. And then came John Kennedy's inauguration and he goes bare headed, and everybody, "Well, this is so cool because Jack and Jackie they just... they set the world of fashion in a certain direction."

And then after about a decade or, excuse me, about a generation of men going hatless, suddenly baseball caps came in. And I much prefer, you know, a nice Homburg to a baseball cap. And it is amazing, you see people who wear hats inside in public. Men never wore hats in public inside when I was growing up. If a man wore a hat inside, he was viewed as being uncouth and disrespectful.

And so certainly that is true in church, when men would pray: take off that baseball cap when you pray.

He says, "Every man praying or prophesying..."(Corinthians 11:4)

Praying, you are talking to God. Prophesying, you are talking on behalf of God. Am I prophesying now? Yes. Preaching is prophesying. Prophesying may be revealing the future, but prophesying always is setting forth God's Word. That is what we do when we come on Sunday mornings, and we study the Scriptures, and we try to present what Scripture says. We are prophesying.

So every man praying -- speaking to God -- prophesying -- speaking on behalf of God. He says, "...having his head covered, dishonors his head" (Corinthians 11:4).

What head is he dishonoring? Christ. Christ. If I wore a hat when I prayed, or when proclaimed the Word of God, I would be dishonoring Christ because my head is who? Christ. And who is Christ's head? God the Father.

Now notice what he says next. Verse five. "But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head" (1 Corinthians 11:5).

Well, whose head is the woman? The man.

In other words, when a woman preaches in church, prays in church, with an uncovered head, she is dishonoring her husband or her father, or if she is a virgin and not married and her father is dead, the elders of the church.

So in other words there is headship always for a woman. Why is there headship for a woman? Because that is protection, protection.

What happened with Eve is she got out from underneath her husband's protection, and she was seduced by Satan. So he says here: "But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head" (1 Corinthians 11:5).
Why are we on to this? Because this is the very introduction to the nature of the study of spiritual gifts: one hundred, eighteen verses on worship. They begin with the study of women. They end with the study of women. And there is a warning about spiritual deception as he takes up the topic, 84 verses on spiritual gifts. He says, "I don't want you to get tricked."

You will remember before you were saved, whenever you entered into the supernatural, you were always tricked. So, he says, be careful. There is danger out there.

So he says in verse five: "But every woman who prays..." (1 Corinthians 11:5)

May a woman pray in church? Absolutely. May a woman speak in church and share a word? May a woman ever stand up in church and say, "I got blessed this week. I was reading..." let's say, the 37th Psalm... "and I read this verse and it blessed me. It knocked my socks off with blessing"?

That is just great. (I guess that is kind of a guy thing, to get your socks knocked off with blessing, but, you know) "It just... it was an incredible blessing. I was so blessed by this, can I just share for a minute?" You know, I am blessed whenever I am interrupted by a man or a woman, and if they have got a word from the Lord like that.

"Oh, man, I was having my quiet time this week. I was really praying. I was pouring out my heart. As I was interceding and asking God for direction, I happened to open up my Bible in my daily reading, and I had read Psalm 36 the day before. I came to Psalm 37, and the Lord just showed this truth to me."

Is it legitimate? It is very legitimate for a woman to have a word in church. It is very legitimate for a woman to pray in church. How does that fit? That fits this way. It fits that Paul says not to do it in 1 Corinthians 14, we will see in a moment, he says not to do it in 1 Timothy two, but now he is telling us they may do it under certain circumstances.

So it is important we compare Scripture to Scripture because some things sound like they are absolute prohibitions, that if we compare Scripture with Scripture they are not prohibitions.

Remember again, Philip the evangelist, one of the first seven deacons, had four virgin daughters who were preachers, four virgin daughters who prophesied (Acts 21:8-9).

So look at verse five again: "But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head" (1 Corinthians 11:5).

She brings shame on her husband or her father or the elders of the church.

And then he says if a woman won't cover her hair in the sight of God, it is as if she had her head shaved. And the shaving of the head in Greco-Roman times may have been associated with prostitution, but biblically speaking, it was always a sign of great shame and humiliation (Leviticus 14:8-9; Deuteronomy 21:12; 2 Samuel 10:3-5; Job 1:20; Isaiah 7:20).

So he is saying that if a woman shaves her head, it is a great shame and he says if a woman doesn't cover that hair, he says, she may as well have it shaved.

And then he says in the second sentence of verse six: "For if a woman is not covered, let her also be shorn. But if it is shameful for a woman to be shorn or shaved..." (1 Corinthians 11:6). Again, no reference to Greco-Roman prostitution there, but, again, Old Testament, the sense of shame there.

"...let her be covered" (1 Corinthians 11:6). Let her cover that hair.

Verse seven. "For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God" (1 Corinthians 11:7).

Man was created in the form of Adam, directly by God. The woman was created indirectly by God taking a portion of the man and shaping a woman out of the man.

So he says that the man is the image and glory of God. The woman is the glory of man.

What is that saying? It is saying a lot, isn't it? Man, males are the direct image bearers of God. But women bear the image of God as they reflect the male in their life.

Males are in the direct image of God. Women's being in the image of God is a reflection of the male. That is what he is saying.

He says, "Since he, the male is the image and glory of God, the woman is the glory of man." And then he says:

"For man is not from woman, but woman from man. Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man" (1 Corinthians 11:8-9).

Now you say, "Well, I don't like that."

Of course, you don't, because you have been brainwashed by Progressivism that destroyed Europe and is destroying America, and pretty well is finished, and we are almost done -- not me -- our country -- because Progressivism overthrows the family. And it overthrows structure in the world. And it overthrows order in the world. And so what is he saying here? He says man was created. He says: "Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man" (1 Corinthians 11:9).

And then he says: "For this reason the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head... a symbol of authority on her head..." (1 Corinthians 11:10)

Bob Vincent