Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

Well, I found out at the same time as all of you that I’d be preaching on this subject of tongues this morning.

Now I get to push everyone’s buttons and leave here with no friends.

It’s going to be great.

But our passage this morning isn’t really about tongues so much as it is about God’s worship.

The church in Corinth was abusing the spiritual gifts, especially the gift of tongues, and so in our passage this morning the Apostle Paul is trying to correct these abuses in light of who God is and how he is to be worshipped.

I wonder how many of you have attended a tongue-speaking church?

Perhaps some of you here have spoken in tongues in the past.

Prior to coming to faith 9 years ago, I had a friend who was taking me to her tongue-speaking church pretty regularly.

I knew very little about what the Bible said about these things.

But there would be these moments in the church service where everything would be going along fine, I’d be tracking with them, and then all of a sudden the pastor would say “Ok everybody lets speak in tongues!” Off they would go, they took off for the race, I was stuck at the starting line.

I was very uncomfortable and turned off from the experience.

God was kind to lead me to a different church where the gospel was clearly preached so that the only stumbling block for me was the offense of the cross.

I want to make a few comments at the start of our time together to give you an idea of where I’m going this morning.

The first thing I want to say is this.

When I did finally come to faith, the first theological topic I wrestled with and spent an incredible amount of time on, was this subject of tongue speaking.

And what I discovered was, while there is some room for discussion on the spiritual gifts, there are certain things that are not up for discussion.

And I think that much of what passes for tongue-speaking in churches today - like what I experienced before - with just everyone talking all at once and nobody having a clue of what is going on - that would disappear if the clear instructions of were put into practice.

So I’m actually not going to spend a lot of time on what I would consider to be the ecstatic and extreme manifestations of tongue-speaking that we see today.

I will address it briefly, but it won’t be the emphasis of this message.

The Scriptures speak for themselves, and I think that’s going to come out on its own as we sit under the Word this morning.

It would be really easy for me to stand up here and just take shots across the bow at people I disagree with.

But the only thing that would do is make us feel smug about ourselves, you know?

Like, “we already have the correct understanding of this, they don’t, I can’t believe they would do that.”

So I’m not going to go there.

Instead, I want us to use this passage in to address the subject of tongue speaking but to then really wrestle with the principles here, so that God’s Word pierces our hearts this morning.

Which takes me to my second preface comment.

This sermon is not really about tongue-speaking.

It’s about worship, who it is for, and how that ought to make a difference in our lives and church practice.

So I’m going to try and address some of the big questions you may have about tongue-speaking by taking us in the direction of the bigger issue of worship.

I think that is exactly what Paul is doing in our text, as I hope to show you in more detail in a moment.

Third, some of you are here and you know you disagree with our position on this subject, and you still attend and love our church.

Because of my call to ministry, Neva and I have never really been in a setting where we are members of a church where we disagree over issues of doctrine.

When we were Baptist, we went to a Baptist Church because I thought I would be a Baptist pastor!

When our theology changed, our church changed so I could be faithful to the conviction.

What I’m saying is, I don’t know how hard that is for you and your family.

But I honor you for putting your love for our church ahead of our disagreements.

Christ said people would know we belong to him by our love for one another, not by our agreement on every issue.

And you’re modeling that well.

So thank you.

My fourth and final preface comment is a spoiler alert.

I’m going to give you the main point of my sermon at the beginning which I think is going to help you know where I’m going if you feel like we’re a bit in the weeds this morning.

So here it is: The instructions on tongue speaking in the New Testament show us how important it is to God that he be worshipped in ways that we can understand so that he can be praised rightly.

Only then will believers be edified, and unbelievers come to faith.

Now, in order to save us some time, I’m not going to read our text now, but I’ll be referring to it as we go and you can follow along in your bulletin or on the screen behind me.

So three questions I want to answer this morning: 1) What is the gift of tongues? 2) Does this gift still exist?

3) Who is worship for?

What is the gift of tongues?

The uniform teaching of Scripture is that God loves his people and sets them free from their sins.

The great end of our salvation is worship, as we saw from our select readings in Exodus.

It is out of his love that he stresses how important it is for that he is worshipped in ways that we can understand.

He wants to be worshipped with our hearts, souls, and minds.

He wants his glory and his majesty to be comprehended so that it can be proclaimed in all the cosmos.

Everything we read about the gift of tongues in the New Testament speaks clearly to this.

The first occurrence of the gift of tongues was at Pentecost in .

The promised Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles which confirmed that something tremendous and new was taking place.

Because of their sin and pride, God had previously scattered the people of the world and their languages in at the tower of Babel.

But now we see that God is working through the Holy Spirit to bring understanding and communication among people of many different cultures.

God is bringing together what was formerly separated, and he uses speech to do it.

What happened at Pentecost was an incredible supernatural work.

People from all over the known world heard the apostles speaking in their own native language.

These were not languages the Apostles had known previously.

God opened their mouths and caused them to speak words of promise, of hope, and of salvation.

We see a similar pattern take place twice more in Acts.

Once in Chapter 10 when Gentiles, the outsiders, receive the Holy Spirit.

Again in , we find 12 disciples of John the Baptist who had not yet received the Holy Spirit.

As soon as they do, they begin speaking in tongues.

This was to show that Jesus’ baptism truly was greater than John’s, just as John said it would be in .

In all three occasions in Acts, the gift of tongues is an earthly, real, existing, intelligible language.

It was given for the purpose of making the gospel known to the nations and of confirming God’s promises.

These passages in Acts and are all speaking to the same gift, with the same manifestations and use in the church.

Our text this morning falls in this teaching that the Apostle Paul laid down concerning tongues and prophecy.

He makes a case in verses 1-5 that the gift of prophecy is superior to how tongues were being practiced at the Church in Corinth.

The people there had twisted the teaching on spiritual gifts by putting this enormous emphasis on the gift of tongues.

So you had worship services where everyone was speaking in tongues at once, but nobody was interpreting it or understood what was being said.

So Paul is saying, “C’mon guys.

What good does that do?

I’d prefer that you prophecy so that the church will be built.

Tongues are great, but they’re not as good as prophecy, unless someone is there to interpret.”

Verse 5 is where we get the principle that interpreted tongues are on the same level as prophecy.

Uninterpreted tongues - eh, not so great.

Prophecy - great.

Interpreted tongues - also great.

What we see weaved into verses 6-25 is the importance of using words that people can actually understand.

Look at these rhetorical questions Paul uses in verses 6-9 end with him asking, “If you speech is not intelligible, how will anyone understand what you’re saying?

It would be like speaking into the air.”

He goes on to emphasize this point throughout the passage: There are many languages, all with meaning, but if I do not know the meaning, we are foreigners to each other.

Verse 13: If you have the gift of tongues, pray to interpret.

He says later in verse 28 that if no one can interpret, keep quiet.

Verses 14-15 he stresses the importance of praying and singing in ways that our mind will benefit, which means in ways that we can understand.

And then, finally toward the end of the passage, if you speak and no one interprets, outsiders and non-Christians will be repelled from the church.

Everything we see in Acts and in our passage is either an example of a real, earthly language being given to someone who did not previously know it, or it is instructions on how to use this gift of a real, earthly language when it comes upon you.

This would all be pretty straight forward if it wasn’t for a unique turn of events in the beginning of the 20th Century.

A teaching was popularized that in addition to tongues that come in the form of real earthly languages, there is also a gift of tongues which comes in the form of ecstatic utterances and private prayer languages.

I want to take a moment to address this because if this is something new to you, I want you to be equipped to interact with this teaching and what the Bible says about it.

Maybe you’re here and you share this view.

In that case I would just ask that you consider a few things and test the Scriptures on this.

Now there have been moments in Church History where this kind of ecstatic, unintelligible utterances have arisen.

But it has always come from fringe groups and cults that were dismissed by the Church.

But for several reasons, which we don’t have time to get into this morning, this new teaching on tongues took off about a hundred years ago and has now spread itself into many areas of the Evangelical Church today.