Sermon Tone Analysis

Edification

I would like Macy and Addy to come up.

Macy and Addy I have the game jenga here.

Do you know how to play the game?

I want this to be a team effort.

I want to see how high you can build this tower in the time that I read today’s scripture.

Got it?

Go!

Stop!

Now leave that there and give them a hand.

They done a pretty good job right?

I need Liam and Kale to come up.

Let me start reading today’s scripture and your jobs is to tear this down while I read.

Got it?

Go!

(Start reading from the top)

Notice the difference?

How long did it take to build this up?

How long did it take to tear it down?

It is far easier to tear down then to build up.

It takes less time to tear down then to build up.

It takes less effort to tear down then to build up.

In the flesh, it can feel good to tear down rather than build up.

Here in 1 Corinthians 14 Paul throughout this chapter uses the word Edification.

Edification: making more able, a building up, strengthening.

When you come together

Reading through this you might miss this point.

This chapter assumes that you will meet as the church.

This idea that you can get your church by not meeting does not line up with scripture.

The Body of Christ.

The church is called throughout scripture to meet together.

Be careful that the idea of church comes from scripture and it is not something you create in your mind.

The church is coming together and meeting.

Each one

We have seen that God gives gifts to the body and here again this is again reinforced that everyone has a gift that is to build up the body of Christ.

I want to again encourage us to be deeply committed to ensuring that everyone is valued and brings gifts to the Body of Christ.

You must exercise that gift for the building up of the body.

It is essential that we don’t create one way systems that disempower those we serve to believe that they can’t contribute to the body of Christ.

Psalm, teaching, revelation, another language, or interpretation

Here are the things that are brought when we meet together.

He has taught on these throughout this letter.

All things must be done for edification

Edification: making more able, a building up, strengthening.

The Psalm, teaching, revelation, another language, or interpretation must be done for the building up, strengthening or making more able.

Reminder that building up takes more time, more effort, and more intentionality

It is much easier to tear down than to build up.

It feels right in the flesh to tear down.

I would encourage you this week to strive to build up more than tear down.

Try this week to strengthen more than weaken and to put effort into making more able.

Let me remind you who is he encouraging to edify?

The Body of the Christ (Church) Is that a building?

Land?

Vehicles?

No this is the church and the church is people.

You take all the stuff (land, buildings, property)away from the church and the church will still exist because the church is the people.

Order of the Church

There should be only two or at the most three speaking in another language each in turn and someone must interpret

There is clear order here when it comes to tongues.

There must be an interpreter and it says that each in turn.

Notice that this means full control.

This is not getting lost in the Spirit and the lack of control.

As they speak in other languages there is an order to this.

There should only be two or at most three and each in turn and an interpreter must be present.

If there is no interpreter

The person should keep silent in the church.

Notice again the order or the control of the Spirit.

You may have a tongue so to speak but if there is not an interpreter you are to remain silent.

This again shows us that it is not a letting go and no control over yourself when the Spirit comes on you but this very much shows a control.

When you meet two to three prophets should speak and others should evaluate.

There is order in the speaking and evaluating of what is being spoken.

The messages were evaluated to determine whether the speaker had truly communicated the Word of God through the Holy Spirit.

It was possible for a speaker, under the control of his own emotions, to imagine that God was speaking to him and through him.

It was even possible for Satan to counterfeit a prophetic message (see 2 Cor.

11:13–14).

The listeners would test the message, then, by Old Testament Scriptures, apostolic tradition, and the personal guidance of the Spirit (“discerning of spirits,” 1 Cor.

12:10).

Again we see order.

Something has been revealed to another person sitting there, the first prophet should be silent.

So much humility for the person speaking and then someone else gets something revealed and the first speaker must yield to the other speaker.

The meeting of the church causes us to realize that it is not about us.

It is about Jesus Christ.

Notice the self-control that is present.

If one person is speaking and the other begins to speak the first exercises self control to allow the other to speak.

A fruit of the Spirit is self-control and you see this fruit being exercised in the meeting of the church.

The prophets spirit are under the control of the prophets

Self-control is evidence that the Spirit is indeed at work in the meeting.

The Spirit brings order out of chaos

The spirit has brought order out of the chaos of my life. he has brought order out of chaos to our community.

Confusion comes from Satan

Notice the contrast here v16 to v17

Understand the passage in their town

You ever go to a new church and everyone knows what is going on but you?

Catholic wedding or catholic mass.

Even here there are some cultural understandings when to stand, what to do with your offering, prayer time.

To understand a passage of text in their context or town is the first to understanding of scripture.

N.T. Wright says about this passage of scripture

But I have always been attracted, ever since I heard it, to the explanation offered once more by Ken Bailey.

In the Middle East, he says, it was taken for granted that men and women would sit apart in church, as still happens today in some circles.

Equally important, the service would be held (in Lebanon, say, or Syria, or Egypt), in formal or classical Arabic, which the men would all know but which many of the women would not, since the women would only speak a local dialect or patois.

Again, we may disapprove of such an arrangement, but one of the things you learn in real pastoral work as opposed to ivory-tower academic theorizing is that you simply can’t take a community all the way from where it currently is to where you would ideally like it to be in a single flying leap.

Anyway, the result would be that during the sermon in particular, the women, not understanding what was going on, would begin to get bored and talk among themselves.

As Bailey describes the scene in such a church, the level of talking from the women’s side would steadily rise in volume, until the minister would have to say loudly, ‘Will the women please be quiet!’,