The Corinthian Correspondence, Part 25: 1 Corinthians 14: 1-25; "The Higher Gifts"

The Corinthian Correspondence, Part 25; 1 Corinthians 14:1-25 "The Higher Gifts" When I taught ethics a couple of decades ago at a school which shall not be named because the president compromised himself and I'm embarrassed to be associated with it at the moment, the subject of spiritual gifts came up. In this class of about 250, a student told us about his parents who were missionaries to China. They were home back in the states on vacation, taking a walk in a park and they met a very distraught Chinese couple. With both couples speaking in fluent Mandarin, the student's parents asked if they could pray for them. When they finished their fervent prayer, the Chinese couple asked them, "How did you know our dialect?" And the student's parents said, "We don't know your dialect." The story is told of a pastor from India. Rev. Kuhma was asked to preach the gospel to those who lives in a small village in the Assam province of eastern India. When he arrived, he discovered that the local residents spoke only in a language that he did not know. There was no interpreter. Rather than return home, he was led by the Holy Spirit to preach to them for two hours in his own language. At the close of his message, he asked them to turn to Christ for salvation. To his amazement, the entire village responded to his invitation to receive Jesus as their Lord. Later he learned that they had all heard him speak in their own language during those two hours. Rev. Kuhma said this has never happened in his ministry before or since. Compare these 2 stories with the testimony of a co-worker of mine many years ago and his experience at "Happy Church" in Denver Colorado, pastored by one Marilyn Hickey. At 88 years old, she and her daughter are in Christian work among Muslims and Hindus, and helping to get people out of sex slave trafficking. My co-worker told me that he attended Happy Church in the 1970's and they convinced him that he needed to be taught how to speak in tongues. And they did. And he did. Well, today we are going to talk about the higher gifts as Paul calls them, from 2 vantage points. One vantage point is what many of the Corinthians thought was the higher gift and what Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit said actually was the higher gift. Our passage for today is 1 Corinthians 14:1-25. In these verses Paul presents his case in many different ways: personal, practical and even hypothetical to show the superiority of the gift of prophecy, over what the Corinthians thought was the superior gift--speaking in tongues. As we know, speaking in tongues was, and is a thing. A bona fide manifestation of the Holy Spirit. But what exactly was, and is this manifestation? We are going to talk about the Day of Pentecost a little bit toward the end of the message. But if you remember, about a week and a half after the resurrected Lord Jesus ascended into heaven, 120 followers of Christ were in Jerusalem. And all of a sudden, when the Day of Pentecost came, God gave all 120 Christians the ability to speak in languages they had never learned before. Can you imagine, right now, speaking fluent Russian? How about Mandarin? And though it is sad, we can almost say, proper English could be considered speaking in tongues by some students in some parts of our country! So much for the Day of Pentecost at the moment. A few decades later, the Holy Spirit gifted some in the church in Corinth with tongues. According to some learned people what the Corinthians experienced may have been a little bit different than what happened in Jerusalem at the Temple on the Day of Pentecost. Some scholars think the Corinthians' gift of tongues was an unintelligible groaning, a very obvious display that something supernatural was going on in the life of the one doing this. Others say tongues was literally an angelic language, and still others say the exercise of tongues was an ecstatic and controlled utterance. Regardless of how one describes it, we know that tongues was truly supernatural, not merely emotional. There's something else I need to point out here before we jump into our passage. Though tongues was and is exercised by a person, remember the setting--this was the corporate worship setting, not a personal setting. In other words, we are going to talk about what Paul talked about in this chapter, the issue of tongues in the corporate, not private setting. There are many who see tongues today as a one's private prayer language. It's a pretty big debate that the enemy has used to divide Christians. That is another topic for another day. So, don't hold your breath waiting for us to deal with that issue in this message. Again, remember the over-arching problem Paul continued to correct the Corinthians on over and over again: disunity. One upsmanship. Spiritual pride and status seeking. And of course nowhere would this be more prevalent than one who speaks in tongues in corporate worship. I mean can you see it in your mind's eye? Everybody is fervently praying. Singing. Or the leader is reading this letter to everybody and trying to help everybody understand what Paul is saying. All of a sudden, there is an outburst. Strange, very loud sounds come out of this person's mouth, so loud it would no doubt wake up those who had fallen asleep, waiting for the rapture! Then things quiet down. A few minutes later, the same thing happens again, only this time it sounds completely different than what the previous speaker uttered. This is something totally out of this world. An angel's message from God? Who knows? The tongues speaker is certainly the center of attention. This believer shows that she has a mainline with God! And it would be very easy for the church body to treat this person with an awe and wonder, for after all, she spoke mysteries in this Spirit inspired utterance. What to do with this? How to handle it? By the way this may be a reason why Paul actually addressed -- and spilled ink over 3 chapters on the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in their midst through the various gifts, as he wrote in 12:1: Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I don't want you to be uninformed. So Paul spends the next few paragraphs--40 verses, giving the Corinthians his Holy Spirit inspired observations. Observations where Paul lays out his case for the superiority, not of what the Corinthians value so highly, their beloved tongues speaking experiences. No, it is something far more helpful. Paul says it in v.1: Prophecy. In vv.1-5 Paul gives some pluses and minuses of tongues and prophecy in corporate worship. Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit. On the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation. The one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church. Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up. In vv.1-5 we see Paul listing the pluses and minuses of tongues and prophecy in corporate worship. So, this morning, I want us to play a game. I have on the screen the statements Paul made about speaking in tongues and exercising the gift of prophecy in corporate worship. Tell me if the statements are pluses or minuses Tongues: speaks to God alone, no one understands him (v.2); utters mysteries in the spirit (v.2) builds himself up (v.4). - conclusion: all minuses. Prophesies: speaks to people for upbuilding, encouragement, consolation (v.3); builds up the church (v.3). - conclusion: both pluses. So hear Paul's conclusion of the pluses and minuses of tongues and prophecy in v.5: He wanted them all to speak in tongues-he was desirous of all the Corinthians having the experience--a spiritual touch if you will. Having a spiritual experience is not a bad thing, when it is based on truth-remember that eternal life means to know God in an intimate relationship with him-that is a certainly an experience but again, it's experience based on truth. With that said though, what are the spiritual gifts in the church for-why did the Holy Spirit manifest himself in spiritual gifts? He tells us in v.5--to build up the church. This is the major difference between speaking in tongues and prophesying in the corporate worship. Simply put, tongues are individual centered; prophecy is church centered. When the corporate worship becomes individual centered, God no longer is at the center. And to the degree God is not in the center is the degree that God does not accept our worship. It's a pretty big deal. The bottom line here is that God is to be worshiped and God's people are to be built up. And the good news that even with tongues, when they are accompanied with interpretations, build up the church. How is that? In this way: an exercise of tongues in corporate worship is the phenomenon, and interpretation of tongues acts like a prophecy: the interpretation builds up and encourages God's people. By way of reminder, prophecy does not always mean predicting the future. Though a person who has the gift of prophecy sometimes tells the future, the vast majority of the time, prophecy means to give God's message to God's people. For example, in the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah made about 40 predictions of the coming of the Messiah throughout his book. But how many chapters, how many words make up Isaiah? Sixty-six chapters. Almost 1300 verses. Like a spiritual physician, God speaks through the prophets to let his people know their condition, warns them of the consequences if they don't repent and reminds them of his love for them and his protection and deliverance and so much more. So a word of prophecy is so much more than a prediction of the future, important though that may be. And this is what Paul means here when he refers to this gift of prophecy: for the building up of God's people. To give them encouragement. To say, "keep going" in your testimony and faithfulness to the Lord. The prophet sometimes needs to step on toes, but so much more often encourages God's people to keep going. Based on the truth of God's word, keep going church! That's prophecy in action. And speaking of prophecy in action, let's look at vv.6-12 to see Paul logically lay out his case for the value of prophecy. But notice how he does it--simply put, Paul highlights a huge drawback of the unbalanced use of tongues in corporate worship Now, brothers, if I come to you speaking in tongues, how will I benefit you unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching? If even lifeless instruments, such as the flute or the harp, do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is played? And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? So with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air. There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning, but if I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me. So with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church. What's Paul saying here? In a word, tongues without an interpretation offers no benefit to the church. If one powerfully shows that the Holy Spirit's activity as he or she speaks God's mysteries, but those who hear can't understand the utterance, it's like speaking Swahili to the believers. And the most God's people can say is, "wow!" "The Spirit of God shows himself through you." We stand in awe from a distance. It's like watching a video. Passive. We can't fully enter into someone else's speaking in tongues experience if we don't understand what's being said. And by way of application, isn't that sort of like trying to worship via a video screen, having church remotely? It's the difference between just reading about heaven, and actually being there. What did Paul himself say in this regard in Philippians 1:21? "For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." If viewing someone's spiritual experience is sufficient, then we can just read about it and that would be good enough. But God did not wire us to be satisfied with, as Charles Spurgeon said, "second hand religion", where we just live off of someone else's walk with the Lord. We need our own walk with him! Going back to Isaiah, remember his vision? Isaiah 6:1-4: In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!" And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. Now, let's say that this was not Isaiah's personal experience, but he was only reading someone who had it. How would Isaiah respond to this man's experience? Isaiah could be taken in by it--and be moved. Depending on what he was feeling and doing that day, he could yawn, or he could be like, "I wish I could experience that." But let's continue in the vision in vv.5-8: And I said: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for." And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Then I said, "Here I am! Send me." Now, you tell me. If Isaiah only read about somebody else's experience with the Lord, how likely would Isaiah have responded the way he did? Do you think Isaiah would have said "Here am I! Send me"? Maybe. Perhaps not. The point is that corporate worship is to be experienced corporately. It is not all about one individual. We all need to receive benefit. That's why we need to understand what is going on. As the Lord tells us in Mark 12:30, we are to love him with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength. So, back to 1 Corinthians 14, where Paul asks, how can you who are speaking in tongues be of benefit to the church? Verse 12: Since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church. In other words, let others in on your experience! How to do that? In a word, interpretation! When someone speaks in tongues in corporate worship, the only way they are useful is when there is an interpretation. And that is exactly what he is getting ready to explain in vv.13-19. Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful. What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also. Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say "Amen" to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying? For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up. I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue. Paul's common sense understanding of the proper use of tongues is very clear, would you agree? Notice in vv.13-15: how Paul bluntly says that the exercise of tongues without an interpretation is practically useless even in his personal walk with the Lord. In essence he says, "I must have understanding when I pray. I must have understanding when I sing. If not, then a big part of my being is left out--I'm not loving the Lord with my mind." And he says basically the same thing in the corporate worship setting in vv.16-17. In essence, Paul says, "you can't expect brothers and sisters to agree with your spiritual offering of tongues if they can't understand what you saying, can you? You may--or may not--be giving thanks when you speak in tongues, but the other person does not know that. So, your display is really about you, while your brother or sister is sitting there, outside in the spiritual cold, while you have a wonderful worship experience." In vv.18-19 Paul sums up this section with a great statement of contrast: "Hey listen! I can catch a boat over to Corinth and show you how adept I am with the Lord as I speak in tongues. I do it more than any of you. But. I would much rather speak only a tiny amount of words that you can understand, to further instruct you in God's ways, than to demonstrate how fluent I am in a heavenly language." So, what do we have so far? How many different ways can Paul make his case? He has made a side by side comparison of tongues and prophecy, with tongues, when uninterpreted is found woefully lacking for any corporate benefit. Paul logically presented his case for prophecy and in a nutshell saying, "we gotta have some understanding in order to fully love the Lord--we can't just check our minds at the door in corporate worship." And even personally, Paul is saying, "I need understanding in what I'm doing in my worship of the Lord." And so does everybody else. Corporate worship is not a time to show off how spiritual a person is. How we need to bring our whole self to worship the Lord and to spiritually serve our brothers and sisters in Christ. Now, in vv.20-25, Paul gives mature instruction in how tongues and prophecy have the same source--the Holy Spirit. Both manifestations come from him. Though prophecy is better in the corporate setting, both gifts to the congregation are valuable. Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature. In the Law it is written, "By people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners will I speak to this people, and even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord." Thus tongues are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers, while prophecy is a sign not for unbelievers but for believers. If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds? But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you. What is this all about? In a nutshell, it's all about seeing the manifestations of the Holy Spirit in their proper place. In the case of tongues, which the Corinthians so highly prize to show off their super spirituality, Paul actually says, this manifestation is a sign of judgment on the unbeliever. How so? And here Paul puts out a final illustration as to the place of tongues--a hypothetical one. "If all of you are speaking in tongues and an unbeliever walks in and hears it, he will say, "y'all are just crazy!" In other words, hypothetically if every one of you are speaking in tongues, the Lord is moving through you in a powerful way. But the unbeliever experiences something he does not understand. It is foolishness to him. Remember how Paul said at the beginning of this letter that the preaching of the gospel to the unbeliever is foolishness. It is moronic. It is the same way here. And it stands to reason. Because tongues requires a spiritual explanation. Since an unbeliever does not have access to the Spirit of God, there is no way he can understand it. And as one commentator said, this situation reveals just how far apart the unbeliever is from the believers. The unbeliever is spiritually dead. The believers are spiritually alive. And the unbeliever scoffs at that which he cannot understand. Again, this is a hypothetical situation. Paul just told the Corinthians in 12:29-30 that there is no time the entire body of believers all experience the same manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Remember how he said in 12:17, "if all were an eye--all had the same manifestation of the Spirit--where would the sense of hearing be?" Though tongues are a sign for the non-believer, prophecy is actually a sign for the believer. How is that? Simply put, a believer is spiritually alive and can receive spiritual comfort. When we as believers share together God's prophetic utterances of truth and comfort and encouragement, we are all built up and are ready to go back out into the mission field when the service is over. Now Paul hypothetically applies the gift of prophecy to the unbeliever just like he did with the gift of tongues. In vv.24-25, Paul says that when all are prophesying, the unbeliever hears the truth about his spiritual condition. Because he can understand what is being said, the Holy Spirit convicts him of his sin, he realizes his need for salvation, and then falls on his face in repentance, worshiping the Lord and declaring to the congregation that God is among them. Again, it is a hypothetical situation, because, as with tongues, not everyone has the gift of prophecy. However, think with me about how tongues and prophecy worked together on the birthday of the church--the Day of Pentecost. When the 120 believers all spoke in tongues on that day--it was indeed a special day, what happened? The unbelieving Jews said, "y'all are drunk!" It took Peter, functioning as a prophet to give the proper interpretation of Holy Spirit's manifestation. As he kept nailing the unbelievers to the wall with the truth, the Holy Spirit cut them to the heart, and they said, "What shall we do?" And at the end of that day, about 3,000 souls were born into the kingdom. The point is, Paul actually turned the tables on those who viewed tongues as that which showed off their spirituality. Indeed, when someone speaks in tongues with no interpretation in the assembly, it gets people's attention, but that is about it. Non-believers scoff and turn away. Believers don't understand and are not helped. But it is the Holy Spirit's manifestation of prophecy which is of help, not only with the believer but with the non-believer as well. So, what do we make of this whirlwind tour of something that we have never experienced here--that of someone speaking in tongues in corporate worship? I have 2 points of application. First, let's remember and apply the manifestations the Holy Spirit has given us to build up one another. As we have said, the Holy Spirit empowers all of us to serve one another. To love one another. To pray for one another. To honor one another. And so many more one anothers of Scripture. A lot has been made over the years of God giving us one certain gift or a mixture of spiritual gifts. I think just about everybody has taken at least one spiritual gift inventory. And I used to buy into all of that stuff. But my theology has changed, yet again. Here's the bottom line for me. Christians have, by definition, made themselves available to the Holy Spirit's use in the church. That means, when you see a need in someone's life, regardless of whether or not you feel qualified to do something, make the attempt to meet the need. Obviously there is a difference between gifts and talents. For example, if you cannot carry a tune in a bucket, you might want to serve the Lord first by getting lessons. Or if you have a desire to serve the Lord by running the tech table but you have no knowledge of such things, then humble yourself and get trained first. But how many "one anothers" are there in Scripture which do not take special talent or skill? My challenge for us is to go through Scripture this week, looking for the "one anothers." Then invest some of yourself to do one of them. I mentioned that I have 2 application points. The first one is to apply the one anothers in the body of Christ here at Grace United, for we who have repented of our sin and embraced Christ as our Lord and Savior, we have received the gift of the Holy Spirit. The second application is BLUF. You might be thinking--"Oh no! Another acronym!" That's right! I have another acronym for us! Some of you might be familiar with it. Ever heard of it? BLUF is what Paul did in the passage. Paul began this chapter with his Bottom Line Up Front: BLUF. Let's look at the very first words of 1 Corinthians 14:1: Pursue love. Agape. Especially as Paul outlined in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. Before we simply read this description of love by way of review, remember when we went through 1 Corinthians 13 how I shared with you that all of these qualities of love are active verbs, not so much states of being. We are to do patient things toward others. We are to act kindly, etc. So with that in mind, let's simply review: Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. Paul's bottom line here is we are to pursue love. We are to show one another love by doing the one anothers of Scripture. We are to build others up, strengthen one another so that when we leave here, we are ready to have a renewed sense of courage -- to once again be the witnesses God has called us to be. Robert Bellah, a sociologist who teaches at the University of California at Berkeley, is very interested in the influence of religion on the community. In an interview in Psychology Today he said, "We should not underestimate the significance of even small groups of people who have a new unified vision of a different way of life for the culture. The quality of a culture may be changed when just 2 percent of its people have a new vision." The application is clear. There are many more than 2 percent Christians in our culture. Then why aren't we having more effect? Why aren't we having more influence? Pastor and author John Stott, remarked this way: "I pray that God will call you to permeate non-Christian society for Christ, to take your stand there uncompromisingly with the value system and moral standards of Jesus." May I add: That may mean the Lord might call us to suffer. But even if we do suffer, it will be worth it all when we hear the Lord Jesus tell us, "Well done, good and faithful servant."