Raise Your Hands If You’re Sure

1 Tim 2:8-15

People have different views about how worship should be. Most of them are based on how WE see worship, no always on how God sees worship. I heard a story about a Christian businessman who always made it a point to visit a church wherever he was on Sunday. One Sunday he ended up in a small country church that was very quiet by nature, but had a very dynamic preacher. The man really got caught up in the sermon and at one point that he really agreed on said “amen” very loudly. Well that got the attention of the deacons and they began to look around for whoever spoke out. Again the preacher said something that really hit home with the man and he shouted “hallelujah”. Two of the deacons figured out the general area and headed back to confer on what to do. Finally after a very powerful point by the preacher the man shouted, “praise the Lord.” Deacon Smith caught him in the act and walked down the aisle to where the man was sitting and tapped him on the shoulder. “I don’t know about where you came from mister, but around here we don’t praise the Lord”

Sometimes I wonder if that story happened in Rochester! This chapter gives us some important doctrines about worship and worship services to which we need to stay faithful.

PRAYER

I. Priority of Prayer

A. First of all

1. Think about prayer in our worship. What place of importance does it have compared to other aspects of worship?

2. Look at the layout of our building. The center, or focal point is the Lord’s Supper and the Pulpit. That is an indication of what we see as the most central parts of our worship.

3. How much time do we spend in prayer compared to singing, LS or preaching?

4. Paul indicates here that prayer needs to be a big deal in congregational worship.

B. I Urge

1. Paul starts off by saying “I urge, then, first of all”

2. The Greek word for urge is better translated “charge” a military command.

3. The phrase “first of all” indicates the importance of prayer.

4. What he is saying is that that he charges us to put prayer in a place of first importance in our public worship.

5. Listen to vs1-2 from the Message. “The first thing I want you to do is pray. Pray every way you know how, for everyone you know. Pray especially for rulers and their governments to rule well so we can be quietly about our business of living simply, in humble contemplation.”

6. If we have a fellowship meal, we have great attendance. If we announce we are going to have a prayer service on a Sunday evening, we typically lose half of our normal Sunday evening attendance.

7. That tells me we don’t see prayer as an important part of our public worship.

8. Yet Paul indicates that prayer needs to be a central part of our worship services.

C. Christians and Politics in Worship

1. Paul tells us we need to be praying for the politicians that they allow Christians to live peaceful and quiet lives.

2. At the time Paul wrote this, Nero was emperor of Rome. One of his pastimes was burning Christians to death in his back yard to light his parties.

3. Yet Paul tells Christians to pray for this man along with all men, saved and unsaved.

4. You may not respect the person holding the office of authority, but you must respect the office and pray that whoever holds it will make Godly decisions.

II. Men and Women in Worship

A. Men and Holy Hands

1. Many people get caught up with passage about raising hands when praying.

2. While that is certainly fine to do, that isn’t the main issue Paul is talking about.

3. It was common for both Jewish and Gentile worshippers to lift up hands in prayer. It was a common prayer posture.

4. The key here is the “holy hands”

a) It’s one thing to lift your hands in prayer.

b) But are they pleasing to God?

c) The word holy used here isn’t the one usually used for holy, but a Greek word that mean, devout or pleasing to God.

5. In public worship, our prayers are meant to be pure and pleasing to God.

6. Not rote prayers, not just going through the motions, but sincere honest, holy prayers given to the God of Gods.

7. Notice Paul also tacks on a couple of qualifiers. “without anger or disputing”

8. Church, if we are going to be praying together, we need to have our focus on God, and our minds cleared of anything that pulls us away from that focus.

9. It’s almost impossible to pray when you are angry and bitter

10. So whether you raise your hands or not, that’s up to you. Just make sure that when you pray your come before God with a pure and holy heart.

B. Women in worship

1. We could spend a lot of time on this passage, and I have done 2 or 3 lessons about women in worship in the past.

2. Today, we are just going to look at the basic premise of what Paul is teaching us about worship.

3. To understand this passage and 1 Cor 14, you have to know a little bit about the cultural background.

a) Up until Christianity came into being, women were little more than property. Even the Jews had done very little for women, though God had never planned for them to be treated that way.

b) In Christ women were given equality with men when it came to salvation and the love of God.

c) Some women began taking that new found freedom and started becoming disruptive in the worship services.

d) While women have spiritual equality, they also had some constriction put on them as well.

4. With that quick cultural and theological snapshot let’s look at what Paul is saying here.

5. READ vs 9

6. God wants women to come to worship dressed modestly using sound judgment.

7. Why single out women and not men?

a) Mainly because men are much more affected by the visual than women are.

b) Men get distracted by what we see.

c) I heard about a conversation between a couple of church moms about how their daughters dress. One said she would let her daughter wear a bikini even to a church swim party because guys would or wouldn’t lust regardless of what she wore. It was the guy’s problem, not her daughter’s.

d) Now tell me, does that sound like someone dressing a certain way because they are using sound judgment?

e) There have been times when our girls have worn things that are simply inappropriate. I might make you mad here, but if you dress in a way that is making most of the guys feel uncomfortable, you are distracting them from the main focus of worship. Just because you don’t see any big deal with how you dress doesn’t mean it’s okay.

8. It goes deeper than just the sexual issue, Paul is also dealing with vanity.

a) When I attended college, church was almost as much a fashion show as it was a worship service. If you didn’t dress well enough, you could tell by the looks other students gave you.

b) It’s not about the clothing but the motivation for wearing that clothing.

9. Paul gives a reason for his comments

10. He says basically, “look, when you come to worship God with others, dress in a way that helps everyone focus on God not you. If you claim your are here to worship God show it by how you dress and what you do and not about how good you look doing it.”

11. READ Vs 11-15

a) I’m glad I’m out of time; you’ll have to figure this out on your own!

b) Seriously, God is saying he intended men to be the spiritual leaders in the worship service not women.

c) He has his reasons and we may not fully understand them or even agree with them.

d) However, he said it, so I accept it.

C. Conclusion

1. We come together to worship God.

2. Communication with him is as important as anything else we do in worship.

3. That’s why we need to come focused on him with pure and holy hearts.

4. We shouldn’t let other things like clothing get in the way of why we are together or become disruptive in worship.

5. Remember, this time is about God, not us.