June 11, 2017 WELCOME! WE'RE GLAD YOU'RE HERE We are a group of believers who simply try to follow the Bible as a guide for all we do. Everything done in our worship service is something for which we have a Bible basis. You are welcome to participate as much or as little as you wish. We will sing hymns together and we will observe the Lord's Supper or Communion together. We will also have an opportunity to give to the work of God in this area. This collection is for the members here, and if you are visiting you should not feel and pressure to give. Our lesson time will be divided into two groups. The young children will go to our classroom area in the basement where they will be taught the Bible at a level they can understand. The adults will stay in the auditorium for a lesson at an adult level. We do try to serve the community, and if you have some needs that we can help you with, mention it to one of the members. Thank you for worshipping with us.

FAMILY NEWS

GIVE BLOOD: We are planning for our building to be used by the blood bank this fall. Tracey Brewer has been negotiating with the blood bank, and plans are for us to be one of two blood bank locations in Dowagiac. They want us to have a minimum of 15 people give blood. This is another way of us supporting the community and of getting people to know us and to come into our building. If you are a regular blood donor, please save September as a month for you to give blood. Many of us can do this, and we will also need staff to help. Plan to be a part of this as a donor or a worker.

EXPLANATION: The blacked out section of our cover is due to the fact that brother Bill Salmons is having some health issues and we want to relieve him of phone calls; and John Clayton will be out of town frequently this summer. We have about 1,800 of these bulletin covers pre-printed, so we are using them up first. Our phone system is being fixed and will allow people to leave messages when it is totally operative. We will be able to receive those messages daily, so callers' inquiries will be heard.

TODAY'S LESSON

JUDGING
John Clayton

THE BACK PAGE

DEFIANCE IN ANCIENT CORINTH

We have often stated in this bulletin and in classes that “taking the Bible literally means looking at who wrote it, to whom, why, and how the people of the time would have understood it.” There is probably no passage that demonstrates why that needs to be followed better than 1 Corinthians 11. In Gospel Minutes (June 2, 1017) Clem Thurman has an excellent article (see article “Women Wear Hats in Worship?” below) about women wearing hats in worship based upon this passage. If you read all of chapter 11, you will see that there were a number of problems that Paul is addressing as he writes the leadership of this congregation. The Corinthian congregation had turned the worship service into a party. Verses 20 – 22 tell us they were substituting potluck for the communion, and that they were refusing to let everyone eat. In addition some were getting drunk, and Paul says, “you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing.”

Paul begins this part of his letter to the church by reminding them of what the culture of Corinth considered good manners and social grace. When a man spoke publicly he always uncovered his head before he spoke. This symbolized the fact that he was open to God placing his blessing on what the man said. Women in that culture were to cover their head indicating that they were not in rebellion against what the men in her life said. The punishment imposed on a woman who did not cover her head was to have her head shaved.

Paul ends this discussion of Greek culture by telling the church, “If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice — nor do the churches of God” (verse 16). Verse 18 tells us that the worship service in Corinth had sunk into a battleground full of division and strife. Paul not only chastises them for this, but he brings them back to the purpose of the communion, and how worship is to be a uniting force and a time of self examination (verse 28).

When Christianity came to the world, it broke down all of the man-made cultural abuses of other human beings. One of the struggles that went on was that in Christianity everyone was equal. In Galatians 3:26 – 28 Paul writes, “You are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ.” What a radical concept! How hard it was for the Greeks in Corinth or the Jews in Jerusalem to accept!

Thanks be to God that Jesus came and broke down all of those things which divide us. How sad it is that we have people who want to bring back ancient cultures by quoting the Bible out of context and not taking God's Word literally.

— John Clayton

Our sign by the street!

Sign saying by www.sayingsforchurchsigns.com

Women Wear Hats in Worship?

“Dear brother Clem: In reading 1 Corinthians 11, it seems to me that women must wear a hat in church. Would you please comment on this in the paper? R.B., CA”

We receive many, many questions on the subjects in the first half of this chapter. I have answered most of these a number of times, so let us confine ourselves to the subject of the “hat” this time.

The portion of 1 Corinthians 11 that deals with the subject of the question is found in verses 4 – 13. The King James Version uses the words “uncovered” and “covered.” The American Standard has “unveiled” and “veiled.” The Greek word for “covered” is katakalupto. Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon gives the definition of this word: “To cover up, to veil or cover one's self.”

There is nothing in the passage that says, “hat.” There is no version of which I know that uses the word, “hat.” The meaning of the word is surely not “hat.” The meaning of the word (and the context is consistent with that meaning) demands a covering that hides the head from view, and that includes the face (which is a part of the head). The word used here conveyed to the readers of Greek of almost 2,000 years ago the idea of a covering, or veil, such as that which was worn by genteel ladies of the time. A veil, or head-covering, with only eye-holes so that the wearer would be able to see, but not be seen.

A hat, as we know hats in today's world, is no more the “covering” of 1 Corinthians 11 than a tortoise is a race horse! There are those who say that the modem day practice of “sprinkling” is the same as “baptism” which is taught in Acts 8:36 – 39 (where both Philip and the Ethiopian went down into the water and came up out of the water) and in Romans 6:3-4 (where Paul speaks of being buried with Jesus) as being a burial in water. But calling sprinkling baptism does not make it true. In the same way, one may claim that a “hat” is the “covering” of 1 Corinthians 11, but it is not. And calling it that does not make it true. The passage is not speaking of “hats” at all. It is speaking of the custom of the times, when ladies kept their faces veiled from public view.

— Clem Thurman