Sermon Tone Analysis

Text: I Corinthians 14:1-40

Theme: Of all the spiritual gifts, the church is to prefer prophecy.

Date: 02/27/2022 File name: 1_Corinthinas_25.wpd

ID Number:

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.