THE SIGN GIFTS

1. Introduction.

Have you ever noticed how people want stuff that they cannot have?

Take biblical knowledge as an example.

People try to predict the date of Christ’s return, yet the Bible says that date is unknowable.

People try to guess the identity of the Antichrist, but the Bible says no one can know his identity until he makes himself known.

People say they know what the 7 thunders are in the Book of Revelation, but the Lord Jesus Christ told John to keep that information secret. To this day, only one human being born with a human father knows what those 7 thunders are.

People claim to have the gift of healing, yet they do not. People claim they have the gift of miracles, yet they do not. People say they have the gift of tongues but probably do not, and definitely the way they practice speaking in tongues is not biblical.

Hebrews 2:3–4 “how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him, God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders, with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to His own will?”

The sign gifts were given to a specific group of people for a specific period of time for the purpose of authenticating the gospel, for the purpose of confirming the messenger was from God, and to signify that the person had been baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ.

There were four such gifts:

The Gift of Miracles

The Gift of Healing

The Gift of Tongues

The Gift of Interpreting Tongues

We are going to look at why the gifts of healing and miracles are no longer available, and then I am going to show the biblical guidelines for speaking in tongues and let you decide for yourself whether or not it is biblical.

2. The gifts of healing and miracles.

Now, let me say this.

As long as God is God, healing and miracles will happen, but no one today has the gifts of miracles or healing; however, no one today, regardless of what Benny Hinn and some others claim, have the spiritual gifts of healing and miracles.

1 Corinthians 1:22 “For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom;”

I challenge you to read the Book of Acts. You are going to see when a miracle or when healing occurred, there were always unbelieving Jews present.

This is where an understanding of what God’s Word says is important. You and I are saved because we believe in what is written in God’s Holy Word. Neither you nor I need any kind of sign to believe upon Jesus Christ because we are the church. God’s program for the church is different from God’s program for Israel.

The Jews, as Scripture tells us, require a sign. That was true in Moses’s day. It was true in Jesus’s day, and it was true in Peter’s and Paul’s day.

In affirming the gospel, God gave the apostles the gifts of miracles and healing, but it was only for a short period of time and for a specific purpose, the purpose of establishing the church.

The Book of James tells the church how the church is to pray for the healing of a sick brother or sister.

James 4:14–15 “whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.””

James 5:16 “Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.”

In the church, and I am not going to read anything extra into it, healing is linked to confession of sin and fervent prayer, and nothing else. Is that what the passage in James says?

Anything extra added to that is useless religious practice. Why would we do anything outside of what God’s Word says regarding healing and miracles?

You and I live in the age of grace. How are we saved? We are saved by faith in God’s grace. How are healed? By God’s grace. I am going to say something else about miracles in just a second.

****Dear friend, Jesus Christ warned us about the latter-day deception of miracle-workers. I know Matthew was written to the Jews specifically, but even it is not written to us, it is written for us.

Matthew 24:24 “For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”

Jesus, in this verse, is specifically talking about the deception of the Antichrist and the False Prophet during the Great Tribulation, but I want you to think for just a minute about the millions upon millions of people who have been deceived by people like Oral Roberts, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, Brigham Young, and others.

Those people, if they die and go to hell because of Satan’s deception, will not be able to offer that deception as an excuse because Jesus Christ warned us about it in His Word. Dear friend, that is why we must get back to the Bible.

The apostolic gifts of healing and miracles were for a specific group of people for a specific period of time, and if you read the New Testament chronologically, you would see the practice of those gifts occurred less frequently the further the apostles were removed from Pentecost, and by the time John died, those gifts ceased until the church age is over.

As I said, godly miracle and godly healing will always take place as God is on His throne, and we should always thank God for those acts, but today, no human being has the gifts of miracles and healing.

Can I just say this about miracles in the lives of Christians today? And I say this as someone who was miraculously healed of something that my cardiologist told me just did not happen without surgery, and all of us know of miraculous things that happen to brothers and sisters of Christ.

What is miraculous to us, is nothing out of the ordinary to God.

Do you remember how Job was attacked by Satan? Well, Satan attacks you the same way, but God has a purpose for you, and God’s hand of protection is on you until His purpose in you is complete.

Ephesians 4:30 “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

Let me ask you this.

Have you ever been driving down road, and your mind be 9 million miles away focused on everything but driving? You carelessly drift across the middle of the road headed toward another car or a ditch, and suddenly, unannounced, you snap to attention with everything working out okay. What do you think happened?

A miracle happened. God preserved you until His purpose His complete in you; you were being sealed until your day of redemption.

Did you need someone with the gift of miracles to keep that accident from happening? NO!!!

Listen. I am going to die of something one of these days, but until that happens, I am sealed by the Holy Spirit which means I am under God's protection until God’s mission for me on this earth is finished.

We sell God so short in our lives. God is living in us if we are saved, and nothing is going to happen to us unless He allows it. Think about that the next time you are about to worry yourself slam into a heart attack because your BP is one point too high.

Can I say something else about miracles in this day?

If you see someone legitimately execute a miracle, do not assume it came from God.

2 Corinthians 11:12–15 CSB

But I will continue to do what I am doing, in order to deny an opportunity to those who want to be regarded as our equals in what they boast about. For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder! For Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no great surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will be according to their works.

Even in Paul’s day, there were people boasting about doing the same things Paul was doing. Paul called them out saying they were doing those things in the power of Satan.

Do you know who the next great miracle workers will be? The ANTICHRIST and the FALSE PROPHET. (2 Thess. 2:7-9, Rev. 13:11-14).

They will both be miracle workers attempting to deceive man through those miracles, and they will be successful. Why do you think people like Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, TD Jakes, and Joel Osteen have such a large following? Because they are deceiving people with their message. A message that is making them richer and leaving lost people less time to be saved.

Those people will always have a greater appeal than a church or preacher who proclaims God’s Word. Miracles are attractive. Healing is attractive. The Blood of Jesus is disgusting. The Bible is outdated, but it is the Bible that reveals to us everything we need to know, and it is the blood of Jesus that makes the greatest miracle possible, and that is the miracle of the new birth.

3. The Gifts of Speaking in Tongues and the Interpretation of Tongues.

Well, here I go again. I am about to make every charismatic in the world mad at me, but that’s okay. They can be forgiven.

Speaking in tongues and the interpretation of tongues were sign gifts for a specific group of people for a specific period of time.

As a matter of fact, the Bible tells us the EXACT purpose of speaking in tongues.

1 Corinthians 14:22 “Speaking in tongues, then, is intended as a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers, while prophecy is not for unbelievers but for believers.”

Take that verse and place it beside 1 Corinthians 1:22, and you will see the entire picture.

1 Corinthians 1:22 “For the Jews ask for signs and the Greeks seek wisdom,”

When you add this passage to the equation, the issue ought to be settled.

John 20:30–31 “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

Specifically, the sign of tongues was for the JEWS. (1 Cor. 14:21).

If you study all the passages in the New Testament where speaking in tongues occurs, you will see that unbelieving Jews were always present. Unsaved Jews or faithless Jews were always present.

Speaking in tongues was used to validate the gospel and the Messiahship of Christ to those Jews who were contemplating salvation or having doubts about the truth of the gospel that they had already received.

Did you know the Bible even tells us that the gift of tongues was temporary? (1 Cor. 13:8-9).

1 Corinthians 13:8–9 “Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part,”

I always say that the Bible must be the final say. If the Bible says that tongues will cease, guess what that means? And guess when it ceased? About 100 AD when John died.

Let’s suppose for just a minute that the gift of tongues is still available. Can we do that?

If the gift of tongues was still available, using that gift would have to follow biblical guidelines.

What are the biblical guidelines for speaking in tongues?

(1) The gift of tongues is never a completely unknown language.

I want you to take your Bibles, if you have them, especially the KJV. 1 want you to find 1st Cor. 14. 2.

1 Corinthians 14:2 “For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: for no man understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries.”

If you have a KJV Bible, you will have words like unknown that are italicized. Those words were added by the translators to for grammatical and clarity purposes.

Somehow, we have taken that to mean in the churches where they speak in tongues, that speaking in tongues is some kind of unknown gibberish that no one understands. In the first instance of speaking in tongues in the Bible, every language that was spoken was a known language. (Acts Chap. 2 verse 5-11).

What is practiced in most cases is not biblical whatsoever. Most of those speaking in tongues today say the language is understood by the Holy Spirit. There is only one problem with that. Paul said that tongues were a sign for unbelievers. AN unbeliever does not have the Holy Spirit, so how could they possibly understand what was being said?

(2) Speaking in tongues is only to be practiced where Jews are present. (1 Cor. Chap 14 verses 21-22).

If you read Acts Chap 2 verses 5-11, the Bible tells us that there Jews present that day on the Pentecost from all over the world. They understood what was being preached in their own language. It was known languages. None of the languages were unknown. There was no confusion because everyone understood what was being said.

(3) If speaking in tongues, there must not be no more than two or three instances of people speaking in tongues during one service. (1 Cor. Chap. 14 verse 27).

(4) If speaking in tongues, there must always be an interpreter present to interpret what is being said. (1 Cor. Chap 14 verse 28,33).

(5) Women are not allowed to speak in tongues. (1 Cor. Chap 14 v. 34).

Can I read that verse?

1 Corinthians 14:34 “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.”

Do you see how we have distorted God’s Word when it comes to women being silent in church? The command applies to women speaking in tongues and to women exercising scriptural authority in the church.

Those two things are clear violations of God’s Word, but nothing in God’s Word says that women cannot pray, sing, or serve, and as a matter of fact, if it were not for godly women, most churches would not survive because men won’t step up to the plate to take their at bat in exercising scriptural authority.

(6) If speaking in tongues, it must be done in an orderly fashion; though it can be spontaneous.

1 Corinthians 14:39–40 “Wherefore, brethren, covet to prophesy, and forbid not to speak with tongues. Let all things be done decently and in order.”

Now, I do not know how running around shouting in an unknown gibberish can be called decently and orderly.

It ought to be painfully clear that speaking in tongues as it is practiced today does not closely resemble biblical guidelines, and if it does not follow God’s guidelines, is it biblical? ___________

If tongues were available today, then the use of tongues must follow biblical guidelines. The Holy Spirit is never going to lead someone to act outside of God’s Word to worship God. Today, much of what we see as the practice of speaking in tongues is not biblical.

What is happening then? Well, you are not going to like my answer.

It is either a case of someone’s emotions getting the best of them, or it is demonic in nature as in some kind of demonic deception.

Let me ask you a serious question. If speaking in tongues was a gift to be used to validate the gospel in the early church to unbelieving Jews, what purpose could it possible serve in today’s church other than to confuse or deceive a lost person?

Here is a better question.

Will the gift of tongues ever reappear or be available again? YES! During the Great Tribulation, I believe the 144,000 Jewish witnesses sealed before the Great Tribulation begins in Revelation Chap. 7 will be given the gift of tongues to validate the gospel to unbelieving Jews and to lost Gentiles, and possibly the 2 witnesses of Revelation Chap 11 will have that gift too.

Let me say one more thing briefly about another gift that I have not mentioned, and that is the gift of a prophet or prophecy.

There are no new new prophecies to be given, so there is no need for a prophet, but I do believe some have the spiritual gift that allows them to understand and relate the prophecies contained in the Bible. Some of my favorite Bible expositors have a great knowledge of prophecy. I believe that is a spiritual gift given to them, but that does not mean that they ever received a new revelation from God.

If you ever come across someone who claims to have received a new revelation, put a BIG X on that person, but do not just X them out, I want you to share this passage with them. Write this down.

Hebrews 1:1–2 “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;”

When the Apostle John put down his pen, Biblical prophecy was complete.

John 20:30–31 “And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”

If someone says that they have been given a new prophecy as to the date of the Rapture or to the identity of the Antichrist, or anything else contrary to biblical prophecy, I want you to be able to defend the integrity of God’s Word with God’s Word.

Dear friend, whether or not we want to discuss this as Christians, biblical doctrine and biblical truth are important. Those two things are not dependent upon a denominations. There are certain things on God’s Word that we can have differences of opinion, but there are some doctrines in God’s Word in which there is no room for compromise, and I want you to be equipped to defend those doctrines and truths with God’s Holy Mandate, the Bible.