Saints Made Sinners: Prefer Prophecy

Spiritual gifts had become a huge distraction in the Church at Corinth. Their abuse and misuse were seriously disrupting their worship of the Lord. Their worship had become chaotic ... drunkenness at the Lord’s Supper ... cliques gathering in different corners of the auditorium ... because each of them had miraculously given gifts, they were competing for worship time to use them ... one preacher would interrupt another preacher mid-sermon because be believed he’d received a “new revelation” from God ... Those who could speak with tongues thought their gifts were so great that they were all speaking at the same time ... everyone is singing their own favorite hymn at the same time. Discord was their order of worship.

Chapters 11-14 of Paul’s letter to the church are a rebuke to the congregation, and a call for order. The spiritual gifts causing the most disorder were the gift of prophecy and the gift of tongues.

Last week we looked extensively at “the problem with tongues” among the Corinthian believers. I’ll make a few summary statements about it at the end of this message. This morning, I’d like to turn your attention to what the Apostle has to say about the spiritual gift of prophecy or preaching.

I. 1st, PURSUE THE GREATEST GIFT — Love

1. OK ... I’m going to begin exactly where I began last Sunday

a. Paul begins with a command — Pursue love ...

b. I’m beginning there (again) because we simply cannot over-emphasize the greatest gift that God has given us — His loving grace shed abroad in our hearts in the person of Jesus Christ

2. the Body of Christ — exemplified by local congregations of believers — is to pursue love — the first virtue of God’s spiritual fruit

“Pursue love ... “ (1 Corinthians 14:1, ESV)

a. the word pursue is an imperative verb — that is it’s a command for Christians to pursue Christ-like love as our highest priority

1) the word means to chase after with intensity ... believers are to chase after a Christ-like love in our lives with an intensity that we don’t chase after other things

2) imagine what our society might look like if all those who name the name of Jesus chased after Christ’s all-consuming love like we chase after so many worldly things

b. according to our Lord’s own words his people will be known, not by their stewardship, not by their sanctification, not by their worship style (as important as those things are), but by their fervent sacrificial love for the brethren

c. in 1 Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul warns of the peril of using spiritual gifts when they are not ministered in love

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1–3, ESV)

3. love must be the controlling motivation in our use of any spiritual gift including that of tongues and prophesying

a. love is about building up those in the church around us

b. to that end, we are to desire spiritual gifts — not for the notoriety of the gift — but because the gift is a means of helping others and fulfilling Christ’s command to love each other as Christ loved us

4. the Body of Christ — exemplified by local congregations of believers — is to earnestly desire spiritual gifts

“ Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts ...” (1 Corinthians 14:1, ESV)

a. every congregation needs believers who exercise the spiritual endowments God has graced them with though the Holy Spirit

1) we need believers with the gift of discernment — those believers who have a Holy Spirit ability to perceive the true character of people, or the ability to know when error is masquerading as truth

2) we need believers with the gift of teaching — those believers who sift through the Bible for truth as an archaeologist would carefully sift through artifacts from past civilizations in order to discover guiding principles that other believers can apply to their lives

3) we need believers with the gift of service — those who say “who can I be a ministering servant in meeting their needs or the needs of my church?”

b. but there is something even more important than the earnest desire for spiritual gifts

5. the pursuit of Christ-like love has precedence over our desire of spiritual gifts

... We Are to Pursue the Greatest Gift — Love

II. 2ND, PREFER THE BETTER GIFTS — Prophecy

“Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.” (1 Corinthians 14:1, ESV)

1. the spiritual gift of prophecy is listed among the gifts of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12:10 and Romans 12:6

a. the word translated prophesying or prophecy in both passages properly means to speak forth

1) prophecy is declaring the divine will ... interpreting the purposes of God

b. many people assume the gift of prophecy to be the ability to predict the future

ILLUS. One of the most spectacular of such prophecies is found in Isaiah 45:1 where the prophet Isaiah identified Cyrus the Great as the one who would deliver Israel from it’s captivity 150 years before Cyrus lived.

1) did Isaiah have some innate ability to see into the future?

2) no — if you read the passage, God is the One clearly speaking to the prophet and revealing the truth he wants Isaiah to write

3) while revealing something about the future may sometimes have been an aspect of the gift of prophecy, it was primarily a gift of proclamation

2. prophets — particularly the Old Testament Prophets — were not fortunetellers; they were not like the Prophetesses of Delphi in Greece who would, for a price, go into a trance and attempt to predict your future

a. the prophets proclaimed the truth that God gave them, and sometimes that truth had application for future generations

ILLUS. We tend to think of prophets like divine meteorologists providing a long-term forecast. We read predictions of doom and gloom or see images of abundant blessing. Which it will be depends on God’s people behaving in certain ways. That’s what prophets do: they tell us now about what things will be like then, some time in the future — especially if God’s people do not repent or obey God’s commands.

b. prophecy does not always seek to predict the future, but to change the present

c. the prediction of future judgment is meant to change current behavior, to motivate people to repent, to turn to God, and to live in a way that will persuade God to hold back judgment

ILLUS. Consider the Prophet Jonah. Why does Jonah resist going to Nineveh? Precisely because he knew that alerting the people of that foreign nation to the potential of God’s punishment would cause them to change their ways (Jon 4:1-4). Jonah wanted God to punish Nineveh; he knew his “prediction” of punishment could change their behavior and avoid that outcome; so he ran away.

d. prophecy, therefore, is more about “forth-telling” than it is “fore-telling”

ILLUS. The 16th century Protestant Reformer, John Calvin, called preaching, “The peculiar gift of explaining [God’s] revelation.”

3. a pastor/preacher who declares the Bible can be considered a “prophesier” in that he is speaking forth the council of God

ILLUS. Let me be prophetic for a moment — If you die without Christ as Savior and Lord of your life, you will be eternally condemned. On the other hand, if you will come to Christ, repent of your sin, and confess him as Lord, you will be eternally commended.

a. with the completion of the New Testament canon, prophesying changed from declaring new revelation as revealed by the Holy Spirit to declaring the completed Scriptures revealed by the Holy Spirit

1) God no longer is giving new revelation to his church

a) the Holy Spirit may give us new insight into already revealed truth, but he is not providing “new truth” to his people

b. how do we know this to be true?

1) 1st, in the person and words of our Lord Jesus Christ we have the final and complete revelation of God

“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, ... .” (Hebrews 1:1-2, ESV)

2) 2nd, Jude, our Lord’s half-brother, wrote in his epistle of “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints”

“Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. 4 for certain people have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” (Jude 3-4,ESV)

3. in other words, the faith to which we hold has been settled in the person and revelation of Jesus Christ, and it does not need the addition or refinement that comes from extra-biblical revelations by today’s “so-called” prophets — and the world is full of them; men and women who are convinced they has a new authoritative word from God

ILLUS. The Church needs to be for ever vigilant of those professing believers who would claim that God is revealing “new truth” to them. This has become the issue with Beth Moore. She is perhaps the most popular women’s Bible study leader in the United States. She is the founder of Living Proof Ministries, which she began in 1994 with the purpose of teaching women how to love God, and live in His Word. She is a best-selling author of books and Bible studies. She is also a highly sought after public speaker. She is a very dynamic, highly energetic, and personable speaker. And for years she was thoroughly orthodox.

About a decade ago, however, Beth Moore began to claim that she was receiving “direct revelation” from God. She claims that it is not “as authoritative” as what is in the Bible, and yet she teaches it anyway without always distinguishing between the teaching of the Scriptures, and what she believes God is saying to her. She is not the only one saying such things, but she is the most glaring example right now.

She does not seem to understand why many believers are concerned about this.

a. beloved, let me tell you something — if I ever step into this pulpit claiming that I have a “new truth,” that God has “personally spoken” to me, or I ever come with a “new revelation” claiming it is “as authoritative” or “almost as authoritative” as the Bible, you need to fire my butt (and never, ever recommend be to another church)

b. this is exactly why the apostle Paul pens his letter to the Christians of Galatia

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel — 7 . Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” (Galatians 1:6-8, ESV)

ILLUS. This is exactly why one of the spiritual gifts that God has given some believers throughout the history of the church is the gift of discernment. It is a Holy Spirit given gift that enables certain Christians to clearly recognize and distinguish between the influence of God, vs. the influence of Satan, the world, or the flesh in a given situation. The church needs those with this gift to warn believers in times of danger or keep them from being led astray by false teaching.

c. for the next few minutes, let me talk to you about three things …

Priority of preaching

Purpose of preaching

Practical guidelines in preaching

A. THE PRIORITY OF PREACHING

1. like it or not, the exposition of the Scriptures — what we call preaching — has had the central place of importance in the worship of the church since its inception

a. the Apostles Peter, Paul, and John all refer to the Scriptures as the word of life

1) in the proclamation of the Scriptures we discover the pathway to, of first importance — eternal life, and then — abundant life

ILLUS. A few years ago, a London newspaper, the British Weekly, printed a letter to the editor. It was about sermons and preaching. It read:

Dear Sir,

I have noticed that ministers seem to set a great deal of importance on their sermons and spend a great deal of time in preparing them. I have been attending services quite regularly for the past 30 years and during that time, if I estimate correctly, I have listened to no less than 3000 sermons, but to my consternation, I discover I cannot remember a single one of them. I wonder if a minister’s time might be more profitably spent on something else? Sincerely ...

That letter triggered a storm of controversy, and an avalanche of angry responses for weeks. Sermons were demonized and defended by laity and clergy alike. Eventually a single letter closed the debate. It read:

My dear Sir,

I have been married for 30 years. During that time I estimate that I have eaten 32,850 meals — mostly of my wife’s cooking. Suddenly, I have discovered that I cannot remember the menu of a single meal. And yet, I received nourishment from every one of them. I have the distinct impression that without them, I would have starved to death long ago.

b. I am under no illusion that what I say here on Sunday morning will barely be remembered by Thursday afternoon

1) I do think, however, that you have been regularly fed a spiritually nourishing diet that has matured you — most of you anyway — into growing, sanctified Christians

B. THE PURPOSE FOR PREACHING

1. within the first section of this chapter, the apostle gives a number of reasons why the gift of prophecy is superior to the gift of tongues, and he gives a number of rules for the use of prophecy in public worship

2. 1st, Prophecy Edifies the Whole Congregation

“On the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding ... “ (1 Corinthians 14:3, ESV)

a. the purpose of preaching is to edify by teaching, and encourage through exhortation, and to comfort through consolation

1. the word edify means to build up — it is a construction term and referred to erecting a house or structure

b. the New Testament contains a number of figures by which the church of Christ is described, each figure used describing at least one characteristic of the church of Christ (it’s a house ... sheep pen ... body ... temple ... vine ... bride)

1) when all the figures by which the church is described in the New Testament are put together, we have a beautiful picture of the glory, majesty, beauty, and greatness of this divine institution

c. in 1 Peter 2:5 the apostle refers to the church as a spiritual house

1) the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is not a house constructed with stone and mortar, but of living stones — and Christians are the living stones!

2) the church is a spiritual house of Jesus Christ and is made up of saved people

d. the nature of that edification is outlined in 2 Timothy 3:16-17

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16–17, ESV)

1) 1st, it’s the Scriptures that edify ... not commentary on current news events ... not amusing events in the life of the preacher ... not movie reviews or book reviews ... but the clear exposition of God’s revelation

2) 2nd, the clear exposition of God’s revelation will teach us about God’s character, reprove us in our sin and spiritual deficiencies, correct our shortcomings, and — when fleshed out in the obedience of our lives — enable us to live righteously

3. 2nd, Prophecy Strengthens the Weak

“On the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement ... .” (1 Corinthians 14:3, ESV)

a. we have all had those seasons in life when we were struggling with a temptation, or struggling in a relationship, or struggling with an important decision and through the preaching of God’s word, a verse jumped out at us that strengthened us spiritually or morally or convictionally

4. 3rd, Prophecy Comforts the Struggling

“On the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.” (1 Corinthians 14:3, ESV)

a. it is reminding the flock of God that they have a Great Shepherd who loves them and cares for them

1) if you will follow him, he will lead you in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake

b. it is a reminder that Jesus is our Great High Priest who, according to Hebrews 2:18, is able to help those who are being tempted because he was tempted in every way we have been

5. 4th, Prophecy Convicts and Converts the Lost

“But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, 25 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.” (1 Corinthians 14:24–25, ESV)

a. all the way back in 1 Corinthians 1:21 Paul told the Corinthians that it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe

C. PRACTICAL GUIDELINES FOR PREACHING

1. in 1 Corinthians 14:26-40 Paul lists some practical guidelines for preaching during a public gathering

a. 1st, it Is a Spiritual Gift That Should Have Priority in Worship

1) the entire chapter is about priority in the use of prophecy vs. tongues and prophecy is to have the priority

2) that doesn’t mean that we neglect, hymn singing or Scripture reading, or fellowship time, or prayer

3) those things may move us and bring us close to God, but it is by the exposition of the Scriptures that God has chosen to change and challenge lives

b. 2nd, Multiple Preachers May Preach, but Only One at a Time vs. 29-30

ILLUS. When I was in Ukraine a few years ago, it is the tradition among Baptist there to allow every minister present a chance to speak. The pastor the church would deliver the main message, but other pastors were also encouraged to speak. A two hour or longer worship service was normal.

c. 3rd, a Preacher’s Preaching Is to Be Evaluated by His Listeners

1) they are to weigh ... i.e. evaluate what he said for its truthfulness and conformity to the Word of God

2) when a preacher says, thus says the Lord, it behooves the congregation to make sure that what he says is truly of the Lord because the congregation has the responsibility of evaluating the truthfulness of the truth he claims to be preaching

3) you are to be like the Berean Christians of Acts 17:11 who examined the Scriptures every day to see whether Paul’s preaching was in harmony with God’s revelation

d. 4th, Preaching Is for the Benefit of a Congregation

1) in vs. 31, Paul says, for you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and be encouraged

2) the all here is the church gathered for worship

ILLUS. Herman Ridderbos, a Dutch New Testament theologian, writes: “Preachers are the spirit-impelled proclaimers of the word of God to the church, who unfold God’s plan of redemption, as well as illuminate and impress upon it [the church] the significance of the work of God in Christ ... “

e. 5th, a Preacher Is to Be Considerate of the Other Preachers Preaching

“and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets. 33 For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints,” (1 Corinthians 14:32–33, ESV)

ILLUS. I fully get what Paul is saying here. There have been those occasions when I found myself in an associational worship service, or another church worship service, when I had an almost overwhelming desire to stand and say, “I could preach that text so much better than your preaching it! Sit down and let me have that pulpit.” But you sit on your hands, and keep your mouth shut, because you need to be subject to the prophet who is speaking.

... Practice the better gifts — prophecy

III. 3rd, PUT UP WITH THE LESSER GIFTS — Tongues

1. let me conclude with just a few summary statements here (if you want last weeks sermon text just ask me or watch last weeks worship on our Facebook page

a. 1st, I am thoroughly convinced that the "tongues" spoken of in both Acts and 1 Corinthians 12–14 are "real" human languages

1) the Scriptural evidence is, I believe, overwhelming

b. 2nd, while the Apostle does not forbid the practice of tongues in public worship, taking the entirety of what Paul writes on the gift it seems fairly obvious that he is attempting to pour a bucket of cold water on the practice

1) I cannot speak authoritatively of every Pentecostal or Charismatic worship service taking place on any given Lord’s Day, but in my 50 years of ministry, I’ve never seen the gift of tongues used biblically

2) Charismatics will generally reject this analysis

3) I think they are wrong, but we can still fellowship with them

c. 3rd, tongues do not edify the congregation, but preaching does

d. 4th, tongues result only in confusion if there is no interpretation

Con. The Apostle sums up everything about worship with this conclusion, “But all things should be done decently and in order.” (1 Corinthians 14:40, ESV)

Related Media

Related Sermons