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The simple, unchanging facts of the gospel give it top priority, center it on the resurrection, and show how grace converts Christ's enemies.

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Jesus answers His disciples questions about His return to God, and prepares them for suffering. He concludes by telling his disciples to have courage, for Jesus has overcome the world.

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God makes his will for worship, prophecy, tongues, women, and his instructions very clear: everything should be orderly and edifying.

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Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on 1 Corinthians 14:29-40. The main subject of the sermon is how we are to partake in orderly worship because that is the only worship that edifies.

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I'd like to ask that you turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians Chapter 14. We're finishing up this morning, chapter 14, and a three-chapter journey through the doctrine of spiritual gifts, and as we do, we're looking at local church and local church's corporate worship. One of the most remarkable of all the many, many remarkable things that Jesus said in his ministry, I find it stunning what he said in John 5:16, where he said to his enemies who were incensed with him for healing on the Sabbath (and it seems that Jesus did so many of his healings on the Sabbath) and he said to them in John 5:16, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” So you should not imagine that God ever takes a day off on planet Earth. That God is active, energetically active. Back then, under the Old Covenant, on Sabbath day, he was vigorously active. And we know that he is active, theologically, we have learned that he is active in sustaining the physical universe at every moment by the word of his power. Were he to cease from that work, the universe itself would cease to exist.

But more than that, for us as Christians is we have moved over in our focus, and corporate worship is on the first day of the week, what we call the Lord's Day. We are well aware that God is always at his work on the Lord's day, he's at work the other six days, but I think we can well imagine that some of his greatest works are done when the local church assembles and gathers and the Word is preached and spiritual gifts are flowing, and the people gather together and they assemble and they do, what one friend of mine early in my Christian life and it stuck with me, called dress rehearsals for Heaven. And we gather together and we worship and it's a dress rehearsal for the real worship we're all going to experience when we're around the throne and we at last see Christ face-to-face. Now we know that because of this pandemic, that our ability to gather physically, to assemble together, has been greatly hindered. We know that this is not what any of us would want. But we should not imagine that the Father is not at his work to this very day, and Jesus also is working. He is, he is at work today all around the world, and we can give thanks to God for that, and God's purposes are not our purposes. We know he could move his little finger and heal every disease in the world if he wanted to, but specifically COVID 19 he could heal it, immediately, he has that kind of power. But he has his purposes, and his ways are not our ways. And we can praise him and know that he's at work, he's at work in First Baptist church, even this very day. And Christ too is working.

Now, from the very beginning of my Christian life, I was brought to faith in Christ through a para-church group at MIT. I was raised in the Catholic Church, and I never missed church growing up and I enjoyed going to church, but I wasn't born again, I didn't know the Lord. And I finally, just before my 20th birthday, came to faith in Christ. And Campus Crusade for Christ is not a church, they don't assemble on Sunday mornings, but the mentor, the disciple that worked with me knew the importance of local church involvement and immediately got me involved, and I think maybe the only mega church- an evangelical mega church in New England back then, Grace Chapel in Lexington. I still think, I don't know if it's still true, but back then they were drawing regularly members from six states, now I don't think there's any other local church in the United States that does that. States get a lot bigger across the Mississippi, so I don't think any state out there or any church in Arizona or California is drawing from six states every week. But I couldn't believe what it was like to just come in there and see just the difficulty parking and then people with walkie-talkies and they're bringing us into this huge building, that's not what I experienced growing up in the Catholic Church, and then I'm up in a balcony, a balcony, and I'm way in the back because that's the only seating there was, and we are singing “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” never heard that song in my life, but the sound of the people of God assembled, singing just literally moved me to tears. That was my first worship service as a born again- as a believer, and since that time, the Lord has poured grace into my heart week after week by a local church ministry. And as we come to the end of 1 Corinthians 14, we're coming to the end of three chapters in which the Apostle Paul is addressing the use of spiritual gifts in local church ministry. He's reaching the end of this section, and then we'll go on God willing to the next chapter in which he talks about the resurrection and he brings in a new topic. So we're talking about spiritual gifts, and specifically the focus here is corporate worship in the local church setting, when the local church gathers and assembles on the Lord's Day for worship, and he's talking about the use of those spiritual gifts in the context of that assembly, in the context of the local church assembling to worship. 

Now, God's overall purpose, both for the assembling together of the church on Sundays and for the giving of spiritual gifts, is the edification or the up building of the church. If you look at verse 12, in this chapter, 1 Corinthians 14:12, Paul says, “So it is with you. Since you are eager to have spiritual gifts, try to excel in gifts that build up or edify the church.” Edification means the building up of the church. So as we've seen many, many times before in Ephesians 2:21-22, there is this image of the church of Jesus Christ as a spiritual structure, a spiritual temple that's rising to become a spiritual edifice in which God dwells by his Spirit. That's the work of the worldwide church of Jesus Christ, and it is rising. It's a work in progress. It's not finished yet. And spiritual gifts are given for the up building of this edifice, this spiritual structure, the Church of Jesus Christ.

What are spiritual gifts? Spiritual gifts are special abilities that are divided up and ministered out to every individual Christian, spiritual gift package, that are given by the triune God (Father, Son and Spirit) to each individual Christian, special abilities for the purpose of finishing this building up of the body of Christ. And this happens when individual sinners are rescued from the dominion of darkness, rescued from Satan's dark kingdom, and are pulled out and they are made to stay with the edification image or the building image, what Peter calls living stones, 1 Peter 2. They are rescued by believing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, they are transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, and so we are all, as believers in Christ, what Peter calls us living stones. And so we have been quarried out in the midst of spiritual warfare, in the midst of Satan's opposition, demonic opposition, we've been quarried out and placed into the walls of this rising spiritual temple. And the quarrying we could say is done, we've been rescued, but then there's a polishing and finishing work that continues in sanctification. Spiritual gifts are given for all of that, for all of that.

Now, another image of the church is of a living body, and we are all members of it. We get this in Ephesians 4:15-16, it says, “Speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work.” So we all have, through spiritual gifts, a role to play in the building up of the body of Christ, or the rising of this spiritual structure. So, the church is developing to full maturity, it's not finished yet, the work is on schedule and on time and it's not gonna cost anymore. There's no cost over runs, we're not missing any deadlines. Isn't that marvelous? I mean, any of you that know anything about big building project- you know how rare that is? I'm telling you, it's right on schedule, it may not seem like it is, but God knows what he's doing and he's building this building and all of the ministries of the church are given to this final perfection of the body of Christ, or the Church of Christ, we are a work in progress.

So all the spiritual gifts exist for edification, the development of the church to full maturity, different images to final perfection. So each of us and we've said this before, we need to realize our salvation is not yet complete, and the work of the church of Jesus Christ is not yet complete. We ourselves are not totally perfectly conformed to Christ in every respect, as we will be in heaven when we are in resurrection bodies and we are finally conformed to Christ in all respects. This is the very thing that God predestined before the foundation of the world should happen. As he said in Romans 8:29-30, “Those God foreknew, he predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called, and those he called, he also justified, and those he justified, he also glorified.” So for me, in that scripture, glorification equals total conformity to the likeness of Christ, and that's going to happen for the elect from every tribe, language, people, and nation all over the world. That's what's going on. That's what spiritual gifts are for.

Now, as we're in chapter 14, Paul has zeroed in or is zeroing in on two spiritual gifts in particular: tongues and prophecy. And he's making the point here, the overall point of Chapter 14 is not so much about tongues and prophecy, but the absolute requirement for clarity in the ministry of the Word, a simple delivery system of the word of God, clarity in the Word and orderliness. These two attributes of local church worship are essential and he's arguing for both of them. Now he's zeroing in on tongues and prophecy, because it seems they were the two showiest most upfront gifts back then, they were of great- in great demand, everyone desired that upfront kind of leader-like gift, and they were seeing it also, it seems, through pagan eyes. Because they were zeroing in on these gifts, they tended to denigrate the other gifts, which Paul goes through and describes in 1 Corinthians 12, and in other passages. And so it's like, if you had those gifts, you were a second class citizen, what you really wanted was tongues and prophecy, he's gotta level that and say, “No, no, no, the gifts that you have are given by the will of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and they are essential.” Every one of the gift packages is essential to the church. Beyond that, he's got to say that these gifts, the specific gifts of tongues and prophecy, were not meant to be operated on or used in the pagan way that priests and priestesses used to operate in the temple where a kind of divine, so to speak, supernatural frenzy would come on these people. They would lose their minds and they would be almost like crazy people having been touched by the supernatural, by the gods or goddesses. That's how the pagan priests and priestesses used to do it; that is not what's happening with godly Christian worship.

And so he's going to say there's no mindless frenzy here, there's no disorder, there's no chaos, but there has to be clarity in the word and orderliness in the use of these gifts. That's what he's arguing for. He wants truth spoken clearly, the unfolding of the word of God is what builds up the church, and so he says in verse 19, in the church, “I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than 10,000 words in a tongue,” and he means a tongue not having been translated. So again, this shows how absolutely vital the mind is in our salvation. God uses reasonable words, reasonable concepts, to transform our minds and to transform our hearts, so out of transformed minds and hearts flow transformed lives in the body. The Word then taught and preached clearly is understood by the minds of the hearers, the heart believes and loves that truth, and the body follows, the transformed mind and heart. This is salvation, this is justification, this is sanctification. So there must be clarity, we've already covered that in the earlier messages on tongues, but here he's also underscoring orderliness, orderliness in the use of the gift of tongues. We've already covered that. He does not want chaos or disorder, confusion, so by way of review with tongues, he gave three clear commands: two or at most three should speak in tongues one at a time, secondly, the tongues must always be interpreted if they're gonna be part of corporate worship. And third, if there is no interpreter, the tongue should not be part of public worship. Those are the rules that he gave when we talked about that several weeks ago.

Now secondly, we're gonna see God's will for prophets, God's will for prophets. So let's talk about prophecy, and let me give you again some understanding of what this gift is, or what prophecy is. In the Old Testament prophecy was the direct communication of words from God to his people through a human being. So a key phrase would be, “Thus says the Lord,” we can always picture that colon and then quotation mark, and then off comes a set of words that have been put into the mind of the prophet for delivery to the people of God, that's prophecy, “Thus says the Lord.” So Moses said this, Deuteronomy 18:18, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you,” this is God speaking to Moses, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him.” that's prophecy, “I will put my words in his mouth.” Again, Jeremiah 1:9, same thing, “Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, ‘Now, I have put my words in your mouth.’” so that's the Old Testament prophecy.

Now, all of scripture is prophecy in written form. Prophecy in written form, Peter tells us that 2 Peter 1:20-21 says, “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of scripture ever came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” That's a perfect description of prophecy; it's human, men spoke, from God, the origin of the words were from God, and they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, therefore protected perfectly from error. That's what prophecy is. So Scripture is written prophecy. Now, Old Testament prophets were validated in their office, they were identified to the people of God by the ability to predict the future. Now understand, it's not true that all prophecy was a prediction of the future, that's not true, as a matter of fact, most of them weren't. However, the ability to predict the future is the crown jewel of prophecy, it's what sets the Judeo-Christian heritage apart from any other religion in the world, as I've said many times before: no Hindu prophecies, no Buddhist prophecies, any Islamic prophecies are only because the Injil of the New Testament is woven into Islam. There are no independent Islamic prophecies, certainly none that have come true along the time, as there have been in the Judeo-Christian tradition. But it is the ability to predict the future that identifies an individual as a prophet before the people of God. Deuteronomy 18:21-22, “You may say to yourselves, ‘How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?’ If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken, that prophet has spoken presumptuously, do not be afraid of him.” So the clear message there is: if you want to be identified as a prophet before the people of God you have to predict the future, and again, you need to know since your identification is waiting for the prediction to come true, you can't predict something that's gonna happen in two or three centuries, because your case is gonna be put in the file folder until that comes true, so you'll just- your whole life will not be identified as a prophet. So clearly there would be something that would have happened immediately, and then long-term prophecies could be centuries down the line as Isaiah predicted the birth of Jesus centuries after him. So, therefore, a prophecy is different than teaching and preaching, which has more of a logical reasoning process, exegesis, historical theology, different aspects, things that seem reasonable, you present it has a lower level of certainty than prophecy, which is just a delivery system of, “Thus says the Lord,” and the words come.

Now, it is hotly debated whether prophecy, the gift of prophecy is still functioning in the body of Christ today, many Evangelicals disagree about this, they go back and forth over this, or they redefine New Testament prophecy and make it essentially different than- or not essentially, but significantly different than what I've been describing so far, Old Testament prophecy. So charismatic churches like Pentecostal churches, Assembly of God Churches, Sovereign Grace, many others, believe that the gift of prophecy and the office of prophet is still open and being used today. Wayne Grudem, who wrote a great Systematic Theology, would be part of that movement, John Piper as well. Wayne Grudem has a novel view of New Testament prophecy saying it's more like speaking out of a sense of what the Holy Spirit has been saying in the mind of the prophet, not “Thus says the Lord.” And not necessarily perfect, but a more humble, “I feel the lord has shown me X,” but still calling it prophecy. I think, “I feel the lord has shown me X,” should be an important part of the Christian life. It's an important part of my life. I think if you lack wisdom and you go to God and you ask for wisdom and he gives it to you, you should not act like he didn't give you the wisdom, 'cause then you would be faithless James says, you have to believe God has the ability to communicate wisdom right into your life, but then you should say, “I felt the Lord leading me to do X,” because we don't always hear God right. But I understand that. Should it be called Prophecy? Debatable. If when we get to heaven, the Lord says, “By the way, Andy, that was prophecy,” I'll say, along with all the other repenting I'll be doing on judgment day, I'll repent from that as well.

In the meantime, though, I think it's actually reasonable, it's reasonable to ask for the validation of the office in the New Testament as it was validated in the Old Testament, namely the fulfillment of predictions. Now, some of the churches that believe the office of prophet and the gift of prophecy is still functioning, what they'll do on a Sunday morning is they'll have an open mic and they will invite people with a prophecy from the Lord to come, they will have a leader of the church, there at the microphone to filter the individuals that come forward, they'll listen to what's said and they will then permit it or not, so that goes on. Now, I've personally never seen this done, but I've heard about it from friends who believe in this, and they have it functioning in the healthiest of all churches, frankly, in my opinion, it just sounds like biblical exhortation, 90% of it. So people come up and individuals will come and just say, “The Lord is saying to First Baptist Church that we need to love one another, forgive whatever grievances we may have against one another, and we need to be faithful in evangelism.” Well, look all of those things are in the New Testament. I do this kind of biblical exhortation every time I preach. I'm not gonna call it prophecy, but I may be wrong in that, I don't know. All I'm saying is that is an important part of the church life; I'm just not calling it the prophecy. I believe there is no good reason to excuse modern day prophets from the requirement to predict the future in order to get the office or the gift, title a sign, the role I don't mind, biblical exhortation, do it friends, brothers and sisters, do it with one another. Teach and admonish one another with all wisdom. Let the word of God roll in the life of the church. Let's do it. But to call it prophecy or that person a prophet, I don't think that there's any reason that we should excuse that from predicting the future, especially since it happened in the New Testament. There was a man named Agabus, who in Acts 11:28-29, it says, “One of them named Agabus stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world (this happened during the reign of Claudius),” fulfillment, prediction fulfillment, you're a prophet. Agabus, I think had already done other such predictions, so they knew he was a prophet. So we should not think, “Oh, that wasn't happening anymore.” It is, it was, at least in the book of Acts, if the gift is still going on. Now what happened was the disciples each according to his ability, set aside food like in the days of Joseph, so wouldn't that be good? There's gonna be a market downturn, you want to get out of this or that commodity or whatever, you'd be like, “Oh wow, but I don't think the Lord's gonna do that.” Maybe, he will, I don't know, but imagine a famine or something like that, or even an illness, say you don't wanna go to that part of the world, etcetera. I could imagine something like that happening and then people are making practical provisions based on that prediction, etcetera.

Now, with the giving of the prophetic word back then in Corinth, there needed to be the weighing of the prophetic word. It had to be evaluated. This is very important. Okay? Paul commands that the prophet should weigh the prophecies that were being given out, look at verse 29, “Two or three prophets should speak and the others should weigh carefully what is said.” The Greek word for the careful weighing is “diakrino,” which means to evaluate or discern or judge or assess to make divisions or distinctions, this from that, that's what should happen with the prophecies. Keep in mind that at that time, the New Testament had not yet been completed. Think of this epistle to the Corinthians, it was just a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote. My feeling is he wrote lots of letters that didn't make it into the New Testament, so there is a growing body of New Testament theology, a growing body of New Testament epistles that eventually were identified by the church as the New Testament, but it's just a lot of development going on, and so the gift of prophecy was functioning clearly, and so the weighing of the prophecies would be after the words had been spoken, then according to this text, this chapter, the other prophets would weigh in on whether the words that had just been spoken were valid prophecy from the Lord or not, it's very important.

So first and foremost, they had to line up what had just been uttered with Old Testament theology about God, and then the developing New Testament theology about the incarnation, the Trinity, various things that we're developing, and the faith that was being built before them by the ministry of the apostles and prophets, so they had to weigh it theologically. You get this in Romans 12:6, about spiritual gifts, “According to the grace given us, we have different gifts. [Listen] If prophecy, then use it in proportion to the standard of faith.” that's one translation. If you have the gift of prophecy, make certain it lines up with the faith, so it's what's called the analogy of faith, that's just a transliteration of “analogia,” it needs to be proportional to the faith. Well, what does that mean, proportional to the faith? Well, the faith is orthodox Christianity. It's true, doctrinally accurate Christianity. It's not the sense you have that Jesus is Lord, it's not that by which you are justified. It's doctrine, the faith is doctrine, faith is something else, but the faith is doctrine. For example: Acts 6:7, “So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly and a large number of priests became [listen to this] obedient to the faith.” That means they're obedient to the words of the gospel. Or again, Galatians 1:23, Paul is giving his testimony there, “They only heard the report: ‘The man who formally persecuted us [listen] is now preaching the faith he once sought to destroy.’” He's preaching the gospel message. Or again, Jude 3, “Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.” Probably the most famous use of this word, the faith, is, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have,” what? “Kept the faith.” What that means is, I've continued to believe right doctrine, right to the end of my life. That's what I think, “I've kept the faith” means. So the prophets weigh in on what just got said and they're saying, “Is it doctrinally true or not, or is it heresy?” False teaching. Now, the reason they have to do this is because there's all kinds of counterfeits and false teachers out among the people, and they have to be careful as this thing is free flowing, we don't have a New Testament yet, so we get in 1 Thessalonians 5:20-22, it says, “Do not treat prophecies with contempt, test everything, hold on to the good. Avoid every form of evil.” So don't denigrate prophecies. We need them. But you gotta test everything. Or again, 1 John 4:1, “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” So there's gonna be a lot of false doctrine out there, a lot of false teaching. You can't believe every spirit. You gotta test the spirit. It's the same thing that Paul is telling the prophets to do here.

Now, I wanna say, though this is slightly beside the point, but it's related, the public ministry of the words should be submitted to this kind of evaluation every day, every week, every sermon. I hope it is. You're like, “Pastor, it is. Keep coming, and we'll tell you, we'll let you know if you step off the path,” but you remember how- we have this story in Acts 17:11 of the Bereans, it says, “Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” Friends, I invite you to do that. I want you to do that. I want you to take all of the sermons, the cross-references, everything. You're like, “Pastor there's so many cross-references, how can we...” But do it. It's online, just take the verses and look and see if what I say is true, I want you to do that, that should happen anyway, but this is something more serious than that, this is something that has been spoken for the first time in front of the Corinthian church, a prophecy has been given, now it needs to be stamped with approval or disapproval right away. This is the weighing of the prophecies.

Now, what is the purpose of prophecy? Well, Paul says, as always, it's edification, the building up of all who hear, look at verse 26, “What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn or a word of instruction or revelation, tongue or interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening [or the edification] of the church.” that's the purpose, the building up of the church. Then he adds these words in verse 31, instruction and encouragement. Look down at verse 31, “For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged.” so the purpose of prophecy back then was instruction, there'd be things you would learn, and then encouragement. The prophecies were a great source of comfort to a persecuted church, and so instruction and consolation or encouragement.

Now in the midst of all of this, we've got clarity already, we're speaking absolutely the vital nature of clarity, but he also wants orderliness, just like with tongues, he gives instruction about orderliness of how the prophets should use their gifts, as he does with tongues. Look at verse 29-32. “Two or three prophets should speak and the others should weigh carefully what is said, and if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop, for you can all prophesy in turn, so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged, the spirits of the prophets are subject to the control of the prophets.” so there is a limit to the number of prophets that speak, two or three, just like there was with tongues, there is a weighing of the words of prophecy as we've said, and then there are clear instructions about orderliness even during the time of prophecy. If a revelation comes to another prophet, while the first prophet is speaking, the first prophet should stop and give up the floor. Like you can imagine, like the proceedings in the Senate where a senator is speaking and another senator says, “Will the senator yield?” And he says, “I yield the rest of my time to the distinguished senator from North Carolina,” that kind of thing. There's decorum, there's orderliness, so there's not chaos on the floor of the Senate, same thing in the local church: no one interrupting the other, no one is shouting the other down, and, key insight: “The spirits of the prophets are subject to the control of the prophets.” don't blame the Holy Spirit for your disorderliness. Can't say, “I couldn't help myself. The Spirit came on me and there was nothing I could do.” not at all. The Holy Spirit does not make the prophets whirling dervishes that are out of their minds like the pagan priests and priestess, not at all. The Holy Spirit, the triune God, has created every aspect of our being, of our personality. He doesn't overwhelm the mind and the heart, like a demon does, think about the demoniac at the gatherings where he's out of his mind and naked and howling at the moon, it's almost like a rape of the personality. Holy Spirit heals and empowers actual capability that God gave, including the reason and the intellect and the will, the mind and the heart, always we should see salvation as therapeutic, a healing of what God originally intended. And so the Holy Spirit works with our reasons, like it says in Isaiah 1:18, “‘Come, now let us reason together,’ says the Lord.” Or I like what Paul says on trial. Remember how he's on trial in Acts 26, and the king interrupts him and says, “You're out of your mind! Your learning has driven you insane.” And Paul says, “I am not insane, most excellent Festus. What I am saying is true and reasonable.” That's the Christian faith. It's true and reasonable.

So Paul lays out a very clear pattern for orderliness in the exercise of the gift of prophecy, verse 33, “For God is not a God of disorder, but of peace.” He's gonna conclude this whole section in the same way, look at verse 40, “Everything should be done,” one translation says, “decently and in good order,” or “in a fitting and orderly way.” Decently in good order. Isn't that beautiful? There's a decency and an orderliness to Christian worship. We need to stand in awe brothers and sisters of the orderliness of God. We need to just stand in awe of how orderly his creation is. The six days of creation. How progressively, wisely, intelligently God works. There is evening and the morning, first day, evening and morning, the second day, third day, fourth day, there's a progression and a sequence that's so wise and beautiful. And we see that still if you know what to look for, like in the human genome, there's a sequence, an orderliness that if even one thing is misspelled, you can get cancer out of that, or birth defects or other things, there's just an incredible orderliness to God in the created order. We see it also in religion, how God established the animal sacrificial system in the Old Testament with an intense orderliness. The Levitical priesthood, different ones of the descendants of Levi, different sub-groups of the Levites had different jobs to do. And then think about even the accouterments, the things that were designed for the use in the tabernacle, like the breast piece over the heart of the high priest, Exodus 28:15-20, it says, “Fashion a breast piece for making decisions. The work of a skilled craftsman, make it like the ephod of gold and of blue, purple and scarlet yarn, and finely twisted linen. It is to be square, a span long and a span wide, folded double, then mount four rows of precious stones on it, in the first row, there shall be a ruby, a topaz and a barrel, in the second row, a turquoise, a sapphire and an emerald. In the third row, a jacinth, an agate and an amethyst, in the fourth row a crystallite, an onyx and a Jasper. Mount them in gold filigree settings.” Now, you know you're not supposed to run off and go make one of those this afternoon, that- all of that has been fulfilled, it's type and shadow, but the words are still there to show us just how orderly God is in worship, very orderly. Also the orderliness of the annual calendar of festivals, Deuteronomy 16:16-17, “Three times a year, all your men must appear before the Lord your God at the place he will choose, at Feast of Unleavened Bread, the feast of weeks, and the Feast of Tabernacles. No man should appear before the Lord empty handed, each of you must bring a gift in proportion to the way the Lord your God has blessed you.” a proportional gift three times a year, not wherever you want, but at the place I will choose, very orderly. We see it in the orderliness of the camp of Israel before they enter the Promised Land, whenever they would camp, the Tabernacle would be in the center, and three tribes would be to the north. Three tribes would be to the south. Three tribes to the East, three tribes to the West, and by the way, which tribes where, that's spelled out too, if you're in the tribe of Dan and you'd like to be in a different place, no, is the answer to you, there's an orderliness. And then when the camp sets out, they would go out, Numbers 2:17, “Then the tent of meeting and the camp of the Levites were set out in the middle of the camps, they will set out in the same order, in which they encamp each in its own place, under his standard.” Got it, very orderly. And we see also in the New Testament, an ordering in the gospel, even in the gospel ministry. Romans 1:16, “I'm not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.” So Paul says, to the Jews, “We had to speak the word of God to you first. We now turn to the Gentiles.” There's this ordering here. Jesus himself said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” There's this ordering, and God always had a saving intention to the ends of the earth, always, it's easy to prove from Scripture, but there's an ordering, even in the delivery of the Gospel. Verse 33, “For God is not a God of disorder, but of peace, as in all the congregation of the saints.” So there's this orderliness to New Testament worship as well.

Thirdly, God's will for women. Part of the ordering of the church that Paul addresses here has to do with the role of women in corporate worship. Look at Verses 33-35, “As in all the congregation of the saints, Women should remain silent in the churches, they are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home, for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.” I don't know why somebody asked me if I was gonna skip this part today, but I have no desire to skip any of God's word. I learned a long time ago, not to be ashamed of anything that God has said. Everything God says is true healthy food. So we want to eat the healthy food, try to understand it, and so he's talking about submissiveness. The women are not allowed to speak but must be in submission.

Now, biblically, submission has to do with recognizing God-ordained authority; that's- the word submission has to do with that. So there's God-ordained authority and then a yielding, a glad yielding to it, because you see it ultimately coming from God. That's what submissiveness is. So whether us to the governing authorities, or church to elders, children to their parents, etcetera, there's this ordering that God has set up. Now, the submissiveness of women to men is based on a timeless pattern, Paul already addressed this, and we went through it in the head covering passage as you well remember, 1 Corinthians 11 and verse 3, “I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.” There's this orderliness to it. It's based on creation, it's not culturally based, it's not ancient patriarchy and all that, now we've evolved out- it was based on the ordering of creation. Also it's connected with, in some way, the most essential central human relationship there is, which is the husband-wife relationship. And we have in Ephesians 5, "Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, his body of which he is the savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, also wives should submit to their husbands and everything.” Now, we're talking about local church here, so it's two different realms, but God is very clear about both, both within the marriage in the home, and also within the local church, this ordering.

Now, what is the nature of this silence? What is the silence we're talking about? Well, I don't have to tell you that there's a lot of controversy about that. What is the nature and the extent of the silence? Now, there is a basic quietness of heart that all women and indeed all men should have when hearing the word of God. A quietness and a yieldedness that comes to the word of God, as Paul says concerning women in 1 Timothy 2:11, "A woman should learn in quietness and full submission." There's a sweet submissive-ness to the word of God and to God in the Word, but does this mean that a woman should never say a word on Sunday morning, should never speak in church or as part of a Sunday morning worship service? Many have pointed back to the very passage I just mentioned, the head covering passage, 1 Corinthians 11, saying, "A woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head," etcetera, but they say all of that implies that women were praying and prophesying in the corporate worship service, and that may well be. Even that's debated. There's no part of this, that's not debated, friends. But there seem to be indications that women were using that gift, praying and prophesying, in corporate worship, etcetera.

Now, in 1 Timothy 2, I think we can at least set the boundaries here. Paul spoke very clearly about gender and authority in the local church in 1 Timothy 2, in verse 12-13 he says, "I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man, she must be silent, for Adam was formed first then Eve." So at least we know, in a timeless fashion, that there's a boundary line set in a healthy evangelical church concerning women that they should not teach men and that they should not have authority over men. That I think is clear. And, again, it's tied to creation; it's not tied to anything culturally in Ephesus or anything like that in 1 Timothy; that's not what's going on. "For Adam was formed first." There was an ordering in creation. And part of the reason for that was to establish Adam's leadership; over the whole world, really, all of us as descended from Adam, but even within the marriage. So Adam was formed first. So these two things I think are clearly forbidden in a healthy church: women teaching men and women having authority over men. Some people melt them together as though they're the same thing, but they're two different infinitives in the prohibition. To teach, I do not permit, neither to have authority. So they're two different things, they're separated from each other in the Greek sentence. So there are two different things forbidden, teaching men, women teaching men, and women having authority, it does not mean that women cannot teach other women or children. It doesn't mean that women cannot communicate insights that they've gained from the word in an informal way.

But teaching and… Now, there's been a lot of controversy of this recently. I just think 2020 is like the year of controversy within the evangelical church. And I won't say names, but if any of you follow events, you know that there have been women that have preached on Sunday mornings, and they do so within the structure of complementarianism, so they believe. Complementarianism: the belief in gender-based roles, different roles in the church being a beautiful thing. But they say that women can teach and preach even on a Sunday morning, as long as they're doing it under the auspices of the elders. So there's a lot of debate and discussion about this, but I think there's a clear timeless prohibition in reference to that function. So, whatever the speaking or not speaking, the silent in the church is, women should not teach or have authority over men in public worship. Beyond that there's a debate or discussion, but I think freedom.

So the command for the silent in the church is clearly should harmonize with 1 Timothy 2:12, but in this context, I don't even think that's what Paul is talking about. In this context, the silence, I think, has to do with the evaluation of the prophecies. Remember, I've talked about that at length. The prophecy happens, then the other prophets should weigh and evaluate, diakrino, they should judge the prophecy and decide whether it's orthodox, whether the church should submit to it and obey it, etcetera. That function, I think at least, Paul's saying should be men and not women. And if the women have some questions about it, they can ask their husbands at home, it's not time for debate or discussion, there needs to be this orderliness. I think at least that's the prohibition, namely, the evaluation of the prophecy in context. Now, Paul says they're not allowed to speak but must be in submission as the law says. What does that mean? I don't know. The law, I think refers to the Old Testament Scripture. So it could be the general pattern of male leadership as seen in the Old Testament. I don't think there's a specific command that Paul has in mind, although it may be.

Now, what does he mean by disgraceful? This is a very strong word, isn't it? A very strong word. But I think we should hear it as “breaking decorum.” A number of years ago, I've been involved in dozens and dozens of weddings, usually I'm involved as an officiant, I do the service, usually stand right down there, and then come up here and then we do the vows, and it's a beautiful part of my ministry. I love doing it. But one of the weddings, I was not the officiant, I was just known to the couple, and they asked if I would be willing to read Scripture at their wedding, and I said I'd be delighted. And so I went to the rehearsal, they had told me the Scripture ahead of time, I practiced it, got it ready, and then the couple and the wedding director told me where I was to sit, right over there, and then when I was to get up at the wedding and read the Scripture. So when my cue came during the wedding, guess what I did? I got up and read the Scripture. Guess what else I did? Nothing. I didn't say, "Y’all, I love this couple, this couple means so much to me, and by the way, I am the pastor of this... I'm usually... I usually do weddings, I'm not doing this one, but I just wanna share. There's just something I wanna say." Look, friends that would be... Can I use the word? Disgraceful. I can tell you at least the wedding coordinator would be shocked. I don't know if I'd get talked to at the reception afterwards, but that would be breaking decorum. There's a beautiful orderliness to the wedding. It's all been planned out. Don't break decorum, because it would be disgraceful to get up out of the role assigned to me and do something else. I think that's the way I understand that. I hope that helps. Now listen, there's nothing new under the sun. People had problems with women's roles back then, that's why Paul had to write these words, people have problems with women's roles now. When I did head coverings, I talked about the emergence of feminism in the 20th century and how it's affected the church. I don't wanna go back over that, except to say, I think the fundamental flaw is based or connected to the American meritocracy, which says you are what you do and what you can achieve. What you can put on a resume. That is a fundamental flaw. You are valuable because you're human, and you're valuable because you're redeemed by the blood of Christ, and you're valuable, below that, because you've been given spiritual gifts, men and women alike, given gifts. And you have a valuable important role to play. Men and women alike are indispensable to a healthy life of the church. So we need to fight all of that sense of being insulted or offended or whatever and say, “God loves men as men, and he loves women as women, and he delights in that orderliness that he's set up.” We should see it that way too.

Now, what is God's will for these instructions? Well, Paul challenges them to obey, verses 36-38, "Did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord's command. If he ignores this, he himself will be ignored." He is humbling the Corinthians here. “Did you originate the gospel? Did it not come to you? You need to get with the program that came to you, you're not in charge,” he's humbling them. And this word, this command, is not Paul's, ultimately, it's the Lord Jesus', the Lord usually is Jesus. So if you are actually spiritually minded, you need to acknowledge that what he's written in this chapter is coming from the Lord Jesus Christ, not from Paul. I remember, when we went through the gender and authority controversy early in my ministry here a long, long time ago, I remember hearing one person say very plainly. "I don't care what Paul said, I know what I believe." You also sometimes hear people pitting Paul against Jesus, like Jesus had this expansive, beautiful view of everything, Jesus is generally well thought of, but then along comes Paul, this misogynist, chauvinist, patriarchal guy and he... Don't do that. Paul is actually taking that off the table here. “If you're spiritually minded, you need to acknowledge that what I've written here comes from Jesus. I am the Lord's apostle communicating that.” “And if you ignore this,” he says, “you will be ignored.” That's an interesting statement, isn't it? Basically, you're gonna get bypassed. God's Spirit is going to work through others and he's gonna develop his church in a healthy way, other ways. You're going to be ignored, or even within the local church, people won't listen to you. “Therefore [final instructions], my brothers, be eager to prophesy and do not forbid speaking in tongues, but everything should be done decently and in good order.” 

 Alright, applications. Well, this morning I was coming in with Daphne and we were listening to a Spurgeon sermon. And Charles Spurgeon, one of the key things about him, the introductory section was saying, he would never get up and preach in front of God's people without clearly explaining the gospel. And I- we've been talking about spiritual gifts, they're important. We've been talking about tongues and prophecy, it's important. We've been talking about even local church corporate worship, that's important. But none of these things are as important as this. As the first importance, we're gonna talk about this next week, the gospel. The first importance for you is: are your sins forgiven through faith in Christ? Do you know for certain that you're going to go to Heaven when you die? You know you don't know when you're going to die, and the best thing I can do as a preacher, as was said of Richard Baxter, he preached as a dying man to dying men. So I speak as a dying human being to other human beings who are mortal, and you don't know how much longer you have. The question I'm asking is, do you know that when you die you're going to go to heaven and not hell? Do you know that your sins are forgiven through faith in Christ? You heard in Josh's testimony the simple gospel that God sent his Son to die on the cross for sinners like you and me, and if you repent and believe in Christ, all your sins will be forgiven. So trust in Christ.

Secondly, the purpose of our corporate worship is the edification of the body. So, Wes and I meet every week, we have time to pray, etcetera, and I just love this brother, and I love the team that gathers. We together, along with the elders, our primary purpose on Sunday morning is to edify the church, to build up the church to full maturity. It's everything we do, and it's a beautiful work. We should see our Sunday morning gatherings as having that central purpose. To that end, I wanna ask you, you have to assume there's some dysfunctionality in our church, like there is dysfunctionality in that Corinthian church. When it comes to spiritual gifts what's our dysfunctionality? I fear it may be the under-use of spiritual gifts. That people have gifts that they're not using. That they're willing to hire a ministry to run services on Sunday morning and not do much throughout the rest of the week. God has given each of you a stewardship of a gift, a spiritual gift package, ask the Lord to show you what you're doing with your gifts. Do you have a definable pattern of ministry to the body of Christ and to the lost world? We've used these words, discover, develop and deploy your gifts. Discover what they are. Develop them through the ministry of the word and then use them. Deploy them.

Embrace complementarianism. Let's not be confused, as our world seems to be about gender, let's not be weird, let's not be confused. Male matters, female matters. Human matters more, that's true. But it matters that God made you a man or a woman, a boy or a girl. These things matter. Let's have healthy parenting toward that, let's delight in gender. Let's not be an oppressive tyrannical church that flaunts authority structures. Let's delight as Jesus did in men and women as such. But let's embrace how God made us different and gave us different roles in the life of the church, and let's not push back against.

And finally, let's delight in the orderliness of God. When you get to heaven, you're gonna see so much order up there, beauty, but concentric circles all around the throne, and different ones honored higher than others, archangels and angels. And all of this order, and people sitting at Jesus' right and left, in places assigned to them by God, and none of us will be jealous about that or want to topple it or want a free-flowing kind of anarchy, that's not where we're going, we're going to a world of beautiful orderliness in heaven. Look forward to that. Close with me, if you would, in prayer.

Father, thank you for the study that we've had, three chapters on spiritual gifts: 1 Corinthians 12, 13 and 14. Thank you for what we've learned. And now, Lord, as we have closed this section and go on into the new section on the resurrection, help us to not forget the lessons we've learned, help us to be active with our spiritual gifts, using them for your glory. And we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

The post Battling Depression, Anxiety & Fear in the Power of the Gospel, Week 6 appeared first on Two Journeys.

Jesus prepares His disciples for His departure by warning them about coming persecutions and promising them about the coming of the Holy Spirit. He also laid out key aspects of the Spirit’s work: convicting the world of sin, righteousness, judgment, and revealing to the church the word of Christ.

The post John 16:1-15 Episode 33 – Warnings of Persecution, Pt.2 appeared first on Two Journeys.

Jesus prepares His disciples for His departure by warning them about coming persecutions and promising them about the coming of the Holy Spirit. He also laid out key aspects of the Spirit’s work: convicting the world of sin, righteousness, judgment, and revealing to the church the word of Christ.

The post John 16:1-15 Episode 33 – Warnings of Persecution, Pt.1 appeared first on Two Journeys.

Jesus prepares His disciples for a life of persecution at the hands of the world, and shows them the context of that persecution: their on-going, Spirit-led testimony to Christ in a world that hates both Christ and the Father.

The post John 15:18-27 Episode 32 – They Persecuted Me, They Will Persecute You appeared first on Two Journeys.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on 1 Corinthians 14:20-28. The main subject of the sermon is the purpose of the gift of tongues and the proper way to go about using it.

I ask you to turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 14, we're gonna be walking through the text you just heard Mike read, as we continue to study this incredible epistle the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian church. As I was thinking about just how to introduce this section on tongues and the proper use and purpose of tongues, I wanted to think big picture about what's going on in the world, what's going on in history, it's good for us to understand this, history has a purpose. It may be hard to believe, but we're right on schedule. Every single day believers could say, have said, "This is the day the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it." Unlike the dark, dreary message of the book of Ecclesiastes, where everything is vanity of vanities and dust in the wind, chasing after the wind. Lord, we know that because of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, our labors in the Lord are not in vain. The building of the church of Jesus Christ is on schedule, it’s continuing and every day has a purpose. As it says so plainly in Ephesians 1, that God works all things after the council of his will. I was talking to somebody who was struggling with some discouragement in life, and I said, "When we get to heaven, are we going to find out that God was on it?" You know what I mean by on it, you could say, "I'm on it. I'm on this." Are we gonna find out that he was actually on it? That he was more on it than we thought he was, the same as we thought or actually less than we ever thought he was. What do you think? God is so on it. We can't even calculate. And so I use this analogy of being on a commercial jet and you're flying and you're going through some turbulence and there's an electrical storm 30 miles off the left-hand side and all that, and you're sweating in your seat and tempted to un-buckle and pound on the cockpit door. Don't do that. And if that's true of the pilot who's flown through some turbulence before, seeing electrical storms up in the heavens before, knows what he's doing, how much more is that true of God, every day of history? So let us trust in him. Let's realize that God has a plan. And what is his plan? I'll tell you what his plan is, that he be glorified. “Cease striving and know that I am God, I will be exalted in the heavens, I'll be exalted on the Earth.” And how will he be glorified? The central way that God will glorify his name is by the building of the church of Jesus Christ every single day of redemptive history until all of the elect chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world are saved, glorified in resurrection bodies, the new heaven, new earth has come, the new Jerusalem has come, God will be radiantly glorified in that day. And nothing is going to stop that, isn't that encouraging?

And so, as we look at 1 Corinthians 14 we need to understand this in that context. God has broken into history, like the unbeliever that comes from the outside into that worship service, and at some point in his heart is cut open spiritually, and he falls down and says, "God is in this place, God is among you." Well that's the message of the incarnation; that's the message of Emmanuel, God is with us. As Romans 8 said, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” God has broken into history, he did it in Christ, and he's done it by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, by the advancing of the church of Jesus Christ, and as the Gospel advances in every generation, and nothing can stop it. As a display of the power of the third person in the Trinity, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you. And the gospel continues to advance and Satan cannot stop it.

 We need to see this advance in a variety of ways, certainly it's a body growing to full maturity, we get that image in Ephesians 4. It's an army taking hostile territory from a wicked evil king, king Satan, and we are taking ground, the kingdom of heaven is advancing and nothing can stop it. Jesus said in Matthew 16, “I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” He also used that analogy of a strong man, fully armed guarding his possessions and no one could take them, but someone more powerful, and he overpowers him, strips him of his armor and plunders. That's Jesus overtaking Satan's kingdom and stealing us from him. And that's what's going on. So we have this sense also, as I've said and said last week, of a building project, where there's this holy temple rising to become more and more ornate and glorious, a temple in which God lives or dwells by his Spirit that- so you have all these images. So it's hard to put them all together, but a building project on a battlefield, kind of like. You get that in Nehemiah. Remember? Where they have the sword and the trowel, they're building the wall and they got the sword in the other hand 'cause they're enemies fighting every day. So we have that same image here, and what is the most powerful weapon in the hands of Almighty God for the advancing kingdom of Jesus Christ? Is it not a healthy local church? All over the world, there are local churches assembled together around the Gospel around the word of God by the power of the Spirit for the purpose of building up the saints to maturity and spreading the gospel in that locale. All over the world, this is going, it's going on right now, all over the world. As the sun makes its circuit around the world, people are assembling and gathering in the name of Jesus Christ and are Unfolding God's word. And all over the world, this has happened, and that includes us. But the church has to be healthy, the Church has to be orderly, and that's the point that Paul is addressing here, is he gets to this dysfunctional, messed up church in Corinth, so many centuries ago and writes this incredible epistle. I was only asking for trouble when I decided to go verse by verse through 1 Corinthians, but we need the trouble, we need to walk through the issues because we face the same issues, there's no real difference, same struggles. 

 And so he's addressing- now here he's specifically addressing the use of the gift of tongues, and as we said last week, the purpose of spiritual gifts, what are spiritual gifts? Spiritual gifts are special abilities given, separately or individually, to members of the body of Christ. Each one gets a spiritual gift package. And the purpose of your spiritual gift package is the same as every other Christian spiritual gift packages for the edification or building up of the body of Christ, building up of the church of Jesus Christ. So we have this edification language, we looked at last week, look at verse 3, “The person who prophesies speaks to people for edification, encouragement, and consolation.” Again, look at verse 5, “I would like every one of you to speak in tongues, but I would rather have you prophesy, he who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets, so that the church may be edified.” Again, verse 12, “So it is with you, since you are eager to have spiritual gifts, try to excel in the gifts that build up [or edify] the church.” edify. And then verse 17, “You may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not edified.” and many other such verses. So the spiritual gifts are all given for that purpose, for the edification or building up to completion of the Church of Jesus Christ, edification.

Now, what was going on in Corinth, what was the problem in Corinth? Well, the problem in Corinth was selfishness, pride, man-centeredness, spiritual gifts were for many a platform for ego, and then others who didn't have those special upfront gifts like tongues and prophecy were part of a click, like a fan club. You could imagine, "I follow Paul, I follow Paul." As they're clustering around human leaders putting way too much emphasis on the human side and not enough on what Christ is doing to build up. So the results also with paganism, as I've mentioned before, there was a sense of a connection with the divine that happened. So remember, “Greatest Artemis of the Ephesians,” they believe in gods and goddesses, and priests and priestesses could connect with the divine and be taken over even like a body snatchers kind of thing, and they would become just incoherent, crazy babbler types and just go crazy spiritually and that was amazing. And that was the descending of supernatural into the natural in paganism. And so it was a mindless chaos that was happening for those. Then when the gospel came and speaking in tongues came in that gift got, sadly, hijacked for that kind of a purpose in the church of Corinth.

And so the Corinthian Church was chaotic and disorderly on Sunday morning. We've already seen this earlier with the Lord's Supper. Remember in 1 Corinthians 11, he says in verse 20-21, “And when you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper you eat, for as you eat each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry [look at this], another gets drunk.” They were getting drunk on Lord's Supper wine. That's bad. If you need to be told: that is a bad thing, that's not what they should have been doing. So, there was somewhat of a gluttony with Lord’s Supper bread, and there was drunkenness with Lord’s- they were disorderly, they were chaotic. So it was with their corporate worship, great disorder. And so Paul has to reign in tongues and command them to speak one at a time, he's gonna do the same thing with the gift of prophecy, God willing, as you'll see next time that I preach. Overall effect in verse 40, 1 Corinthians 14:40, “All things should be done decently and in good order.” There's just an orderliness to God, he is a very orderly being, very logical and orderly. God is a God of order. Not of chaos. Look at verse 33 again in the same chapter, 1 Corinthians 14:33, “For God is not a God of disorder, but of peace.” So there's two clear assertions at what Paul is getting after: orderliness, peacefulness, not chaos.

Now, last week, we made the point that for the edification, the building up of the body of Christ, what God has ordained is the clear ministry of the word of God. It is the battle for the mind. It's a battle for the heart through the mind. And so fundamentally, we rest on the perfection of the word of God. The word of God, 2 Timothy 3:15 says, “is able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” then the next verse says, now that you've been made wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus, now what? “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, training in righteousness.” That's edification language, “so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” that's sanctification language, service language. So I really believe 2 Timothy 3:15-17 just shows the centrality of the word of God for every aspect of salvation. It all comes down to the perfection of God's word.

So, our souls, our sinful souls, are justified by a simple, clear hearing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, “Faith comes by hearing the message, the message is heard through the word of Christ.” Romans 10:17. So that's how you are initially justified, forgiven of all your sins, made right in the sight of God, by hearing the message with faith. Well, as it turns out, you're also sanctified the same way: by a continual hearing of the word of God you make progress in sanctification. You are edified through the clear ministry of the word of God. And so what we talked about last week is that tongues, un-translated, was not edifying anyone. Prophecy was superior to tongues 'cause the people could understand what was being said, and the clear ministry of the word of God changes our minds and our hearts and our bodies follow. That's how salvation works, by the ministry of the word of God. So he's calling for them to grow up, he's calling for them to be mature, look at verse 20, “Brothers, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking, be adults.” he wants them to grow up as a congregation; they're acting like spoiled little children. I mean, I wonder what it would be like to go back and see your average worship service before they got 1 Corinthians? I picture a kindergarten class, I don't know how many people- I don’t know what the ratio is, well, let's say 30, let's put 30 in the class. The teacher says, unwisely, “Class, I'm gonna have to step out for a few minutes. So I want you all to sit in your seats, and I want you to get out your coloring books and color, and I'll be back in a while.” Look, what do you think is gonna happen? Teacher comes back, let's roll it out to absurdity, in half an hour, there's been no adult in the room in a half an hour. What do you think that looks like? "Well, are you saying, pastor, that that's what Sunday morning worship was like in Corinth?" Maybe not that bad, but it was just childishly chaotic. So grow up, understand what the spiritual gifts are for.

Now, he doesn't want them to grow up in evil, he doesn't want them to be super experienced in evil, sadly, they were. They were very experienced in sexual immorality and lawsuits against others, and factions and divisions. They were experienced in evil, but immature when it came to righteousness and holiness. He wants exactly the opposite, “I would rather you be naive and innocent when it comes to evil, but I would like you to be mature when it comes to righteousness.”

Alright, so secondly in my outline, the purpose of tongues is a sign for unbelievers, a sign for unbelievers. That's why God gave tongues, a sign. Look at verses 21-22, “In the law it is written: ‘Through men of strange tongues and through the lips of foreigners I will speak to these people, but even then they will not listen to me,’ says the Lord. Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers, but for unbelievers.” So, here he gives the purpose for tongues. Now, let me just stop and say, as I did last week, what do we mean by tongues? Tongues is just an archaic, somewhat archaic English, we still use it a little bit, but for languages, that's what it means, languages. And so it's not babble, that's not what we're discussing, but actually formal, organized, orderly languages that are spoken. And the gift of tongues is the ability to speak that language without going through a normal process of learning the language. So as Christie and I went to Japan, we had vocabulary flashcards, we had cassette tapes back then, that's how old we are, some of you will know what cassette tapes are. We had tutors, and we had conversation classes and textbooks and all that, we went through the process and we were okay, mediocre after a couple of years. That's not the gift of tongues. It's instantaneously, supernaturally, the ability to speak a language fluently, even if you don't understand what you're saying.

And on the day of Pentecost, what happened was all the church was assembled, they've been commanded by Jesus to wait until the gift was given from on high, pouring out of the Holy Spirit, so that there on the day of Pentecost, Acts chapter 2, they're all assembled in one place, they're praying, and suddenly a sound like a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each one of them and they all began to speak in other languages as the Spirit moved them or enabled them. Then a huge crowd that was there in general in Jerusalem for the feast, heard the sound and gathered around the place where they were, the apostles of the church goes flowing out into the streets and begins preaching the gospel, powerful. It's the start of the church age, powerful. And what happened was, Acts 2:7-11, the people, “Utterly amazed, they asked: "Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? How is it then that each of us hears them in his own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya, near Cyrene, visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism), Cretans and Arabs-” so there's just a wide array of national origins, “we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues.” So that's a little bit different, I think that they were speaking maybe Aramaic (their own native language, talking about the apostles), but everyone was hearing- it was like it's translated in the air or in their brains so they could all hear them in their native language, it's incredible. Now, as the church spread geographically, and the gospel came frequently, if not every time, but frequently, when a new pocket of Gentiles in particular would hear the gospel and believe, the Holy Spirit would be poured out in a similar way, and the believers, the new believers would begin speaking in tongues, and the people would know that the Gospel had come like at Cornelius house, and we'll talk about that more in detail in a few minutes, but also in Ephesus. So there are examples of that.

Now, here in Corinth, the church was mostly made up of Gentiles who had been rescued from paganism, Paul and his entourage came, they heard the gospel preached, they believed in Jesus, they crossed over from darkness to light, from death to life, they came in and they were assembled together into that local church. And the Holy Spirit gave them spiritual gifts, variable gifts, as we discussed in 1 Corinthians 12, and some of them had the gift of tongues, of languages, they had that ability as part of the spiritual gift package, but they were using them chaotically, they were using them poorly. And Paul wants to rein them in and help them to understand.

Now, what was God's purpose for giving them? Now we get to a very difficult, challenging quote from the apostle Paul. Alright, the quote from Isaiah. Paul lifts a quote from the prophet Isaiah, if you look at verse 21, “In the Law [Isaiah the prophet] In the Law it is written, ‘Through men of strange tongues and through lips of foreigners, I will speak to this people, but even then, they will not listen to me,’ says the Lord.” So Paul's use of this quote is not easy to understand but let's soldier on and do the best we can to understand what he's lifting out of Isaiah and how he's applying it here. So we have to go back then in Isaiah's context.

Isaiah was a prophet who lived about seven centuries before Jesus was born. He was a prophet to the Southern Kingdom of Judah. And about 15 years before Isaiah's prophecy, the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the 10 tribes that had gone immediately into idolatry and all that and were corrupt really from the start and all the way through, were taken off into exile by the Assyrians. So they were gone because of their idolatry and their wickedness. God sent Isaiah as a prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah to warn them that the same thing would happen to them if they didn't repent. And so he's speaking to them, Isaiah was, to his own people in the clear, simple message that God had given them. A clear warning that if they did not repent, judgment was going to come. However, the proud religious leaders of Isaiah's day mocked the word of God sent to them by the prophet Isaiah. They acted like he was speaking to babies, that they were far beyond the message that Isaiah was giving. So in Isaiah 28:9-10, they said, “Who is he trying to teach? To whom is he explaining his message to children, weaned from their milk, to those just taken from the breast? For it is: [and this is one translation] do and do, do and do, rule and rule, rule and rule, a little here, a little there.” In the Hebrew, it's really interesting. It sounds like this. Like sing song-y, baby talk. This is what Isaiah was doing: [foreign language] or we would say, yada, yada, yada, yada. That's all it is. They were mocking the clear, simple warning from God, that if they did not repent, judgment was coming. They had no fear of the Lord or his word at all. As Isaiah will later say in his prophecies, Isaiah 66:1-2, “This is what the Lord says, ‘Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being? This is the one I esteem, the one who is humble and contrite in spirit, and who trembles at my word.’” But they were mocking it. He had spoken a clear message of warning to the leaders of Judah, but they threw it off, God was saying, “I'm showing you a place of salvation,” Isaiah 28:12, “’This is the resting place, let the weary rest;’ and, ‘This is the place of repose-‘ but they would not listen.” So God said, “Alright, then I will judge you.” Isaiah 28:11, “Very well then,” if that's how you're going to be, “with foreign lips and strange tongues God will speak to this people.” What does that mean? Alright, you're mocking the clear Word because it's so baby babyish, all right. How about if I speak to you in a language you don't understand at all? What does that mean? It's a clear threat that the City of David, Jerusalem, would have this capital city of the Promised Land, gentile conquerors, who would come and speak their native language in the Jewish capital city. God will speak in that way. What does that mean? Judgment. Invasion and judgment, it's the very thing that God had threatened in the song of Moses before they ever entered the Promised Land. Back in Deuteronomy 28:49-50, this is what he said, he taught the Jews this song before they crossed the Jordan and enter the Promised Land, before the Battle of Jericho, said, “I'm gonna tell you what's gonna happen to your nation.” And so part of that song of Moses, it says, it's a prophecy, the Lord- this is Deuteronomy 28:49-50, “The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand, a fierce-looking nation, without respect for the old or pity for the young.” Well, in redemptive history, that would be the Babylonians, who came and spoke babble in the streets of Jerusalem and burned the temple to the ground and destroyed the walls of Jerusalem. Jeremiah warned about this exact same thing in Jeremiah 5:15-17, ‘‘O House of Israel,’ declares the Lord, ‘I am bringing a distant nation against you, an ancient and enduring nation, a people whose language you do not know, who's speech you do not understand, their quivers are like an open grave, all of them are mighty warriors. With the sword they will destroy the fortified cities in which you trust.’” “I'm gonna speak to you by an invasion from a foreign land.”

So, now we'll go over to Corinthians, Paul's getting all that and bringing that into the gift of tongues. What is he saying? Tongues are a sign, he says it's a sign of warning to unbelievers, that there is a supernatural being, a God in the heavens, and this Almighty God has the power to invade your world and bring it to an end. Now, to unbelieving Jews in particular, they should have known this history, that there was a judgment coming on the city of Jerusalem, and it had yet to come in Paul's day, the destruction of Jerusalem. Jesus predicted it, not one stone will be left on another. He says in Luke 19, as Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem, Luke 19:43-44, “The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side, they will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls, they will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you.” Well, that was in AD 70 when the Romans destroy Jerusalem.

Now, cessationists, people who believe that tongues and prophecy and other sign gifts have ended with the apostolic era, say that tongues were specifically assigned to the Jews, that because they rejected Jesus as the Messiah, that Jerusalem would be destroyed and fulfill under the prophecy that Jesus gave, and, going beyond that, once that destruction happened you didn't need tongues anymore, and that's part of the cessationists argument, and that may well be. But let me say this: tongues are not only a sign of impending judgment, they are that- Paul says they are a sign for unbelievers, “Repent while there's time. There is Almighty God, He is powerful, he can invade your world and bring it to an end,” it is a sign. But there are other aspects too, it's a good thing, it's a sign, in some cases, to believers. For example: do you remember when Peter went contrary to Jewish custom and crossed the threshold into Cornelius' house, you remember that? Orchestrated in Acts Chapter 10, and he goes there and he preaches to Cornelius and his family and friends and they are all there. Preaches the clear Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected, and all that. He's preaching the Gospel. Acts 10:44-47, “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Then Peter said, ‘Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.’” It was a huge moment. And later in the argument about circumcision, it was used, they said, “Look, the Holy Spirit came on them uncircumcised! They're justified believers, so how could we withhold water baptism from them? They've already received the Spirit baptism.” So it was as sign to the believing church that these gentiles were believers. They're Christians, they'd received the Holy Spirit. Tongues were also a sign of authority for apostles, marking out the apostles as different, supernatural people. Paul says, look at Verse 18, “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you.” And also he says in 2 Corinthians 12:12, “The things that mark an apostle: signs, wonders and miracles were done among you with great perseverance.” So the Apostles speaking in tongues showed that they had been filed with the Holy Spirit, and they were spiritual leaders.

Now, why does Paul say they are a sign for unbelievers? Paul says that tongues are a sign for unbelievers, not for believers, he says that prophecy is for believers, not for unbelievers, but frankly even that he's going to go against because later he's gonna say if prophesying is going on and an unbeliever comes in and hears he's going to be cut to the heart and whatever, so there's benefit for the unbeliever of prophecy too. What does he mean here? Well, I think it's got to do with the theme of judgment, the theme of judgment that I've been laying before you from the book of Isaiah: God is powerful, he controls human history, he can raise up the Babylonians and move them as he sees fit, then he can remove them, 70 years later, he can do whatever he wants. He can raise up the Romans, then he can conquer the Roman Empire with the gospel, he can do that, he can do anything. He is that powerful, and he will, someday, the Bible reveals, end all of human history by another invasion from heaven, Jesus Christ is the head, at the head of a heavenly army. That day is coming, we don't know when. So therefore, all of us should understand the threat and the warning that all of this is. Judgment is coming, judgment day is coming, by a supernatural being who can invade history, and the supernatural tongues, this ability to speak fluently a language that you've never learned is a sign that such a divine being exists. So be warned and flee to Christ. This is the resting place; this is the place where the weary can rest. The name of the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous run to it, and they are saved. They're kept saved. So run to Christ, will there's time, that's how it's a sign for unbelievers.

Now point three, the chaos of tongues versus the clarity of prophecy, verse 23-25, “So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you're out of your mind? But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and he will be judged by all, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare, so he will fall down and worship God exclaiming, ‘God is really among you!’” So Paul is giving kind of an extreme view of what could happen with this chaos. The first century church generally met in houses, so I don't know if there was this sense that everyone was all assembled together all at once, but imagine that they did, everyone's together, and everyone with the gift of tongues was all using the gift of tongues at the exact same time, and no one was translating, that thing is just going on, picture it in your mind. I've given you the word: chaos, utter chaos, that's what's going on. And then Paul says, imagine an unbeliever or a recent convert walking in and sees this going on, has no idea what's happening, and what is the conclusion of that outside observer coming in or that new convert? “You're out of your minds. This is crazy.”

Conversely, if prophecy is going on, you have a very different outcome. The unbeliever would hear the incisive word of God, like it says in Acts chapter 2, “When they heard this they were cut to the heart.” Cut to the heart. They're convicted of their sins, they know they need to flee to Christ, they understand what's happening, it's all clear 'cause they get it, they hear the words and they're cut to the heart. For as it says in Hebrews 4:12-13, “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to the dividing of soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight, everything's uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” that's happening for that person, they're convicted, they’re crushed, they are incited to flee to Christ for salvation, and they will fall down and say, “Surely God is in this place.” That's what prophecy can do.

Now, there's a wonderful example of this from church history, and that's the conversion of Charles Spurgeon, it's from a favorite testimony they've ever read in church histories. Spurgeon was a prodigy, a spiritual prodigy, but as yet unconverted as a teenager, a very brilliant person, but he knew he was in an unconverted state, teenager. And he went from worship service to worship service to worship service, trying to find someone who could tell him how to be saved. Well, one snowy day, he made his way to a primitive Methodist chapel, a very small assembly of people, God can do amazing things in small church services. And when he gets there, he finds out that the regular preacher couldn't make it. Praise God, I don't know who that guy is, but a good thing, 'cause instead he got a primitive Methodist lay preacher. And this guy was not very trained, but not highly trained, Spurgeon said some funny, rather disparaging things about this guy, but at any rate, this man did the best thing he could by choosing the right text, in the KJV, Isaiah 45:22, this was the text he preached on: “Look unto me and be ye saved all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is none else.” So this simple man ardently pressed the text home. Look unto me means look unto Christ by faith. See him by faith. “Look unto me,” he said, “I'm sweating great drops of blood. Look unto me, I'm hanging on the cross. Look unto me, I'm dead and buried. Look unto me, I rise again. Look unto me, I ascend to heaven. Look unto me, I'm sitting at the Father's right hand. Oh, poor sinner. Look unto me. Look unto me.” Then, interestingly, this primitive Methodist preacher zeros in on Spurgeon in particular. Fear not, all of you, I'm not gonna do that to any of you this morning, but he zeroed in on him. Spurgeon wrote these words,

Just fixing his eyes on me as if he knew all my heart, he said, “Young man, you look very miserable.” Well, I did [said Spurgeon], but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance before, however, it was a good blow struck right home. He continued, “And you will be miserable, always miserable. Miserable in life and miserable in death, if you do not obey my text.” Then lifting up his hands, he shouted, as only a primitive Methodist could do [Spurgeon wrote that, I didn't say it], “Young man look to Jesus Christ, look, look, look, you have nothing to do, but look.” I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said. I did not take much notice of it, I was so possessed with that one thought, I'd been waiting to do 50 things, but when I heard that word, “look,” what a charming word, it seemed to me, Oh, I could have looked until I looked my eyes away.

That is the look of faith: seeing Christ dead for you, seeing Christ risen for you. That justifies. And he was justified. Now, why do I cite all that? Well something like that can happen anytime. Outsider comes in, hears the gospel, as long as the gospel is clearly preached, there's a chance, something like that could happen every single time. Now, I believe that our church, if we are gonna be healthy, should be aware of that happening. We should be aware that that could happen and ready for it every week. Now, for many years, American evangelicalism has had a movement within it called the seeker-sensitive church model, seeker-sensitive, what this means, the basic theory is that Sunday morning should be geared to the unbeliever, especially unbeliever that's open and amenable to Christianity, and everything should be done to make that individual feel comfortable, feel welcome, so that everything in it is intelligible to him or her, everything is geared to the unbeliever to win that person to basic faith in Christ.

Well, the secret-sensitive model has had significant flaws with it, and there's been a lot said against it, I do believe that Sunday morning is primarily for believers, for the members of this church and for believers, so that you would be fed and strengthened and brought to full maturity through the ministry of the word of God. So I do not embrace the seeker-sensitive model, but I do think that the church should be seeker-sensible, aware that this could happen and ready for it. And one of my commitments is to be certain that the Gospel of Christ crucified and resurrected is proclaimed plainly and clearly at some point in every service. Pie chart doesn't need to take the whole time unless it is the text, but every single week, a person like that can hear the answer to the simple question, “What must I do to be saved? And that I need to be saved, I'm a sinner, I'm under judgment, I cannot stand on my own, I must have a savior.” and so that's what we seek to do.

Fourth point, the proper use of tongues: orderly procedure. So now we get to the rules and regulations, verse 26-28, “What should we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, a word of instruction, a revelation of tongue or an interpretation, all these must be done for the strengthening of the church. If anyone speaks in a tongue, two- or at most three- should speak one at a time, and someone must interpret. If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and to God.” So Paul gets very orderly, very practical here. Concept here is the people of God come, not as an audience, but as active participants. Now, this concept has played out differently in different faith traditions and denominations. Alright, for example, the Quakers and the brethren have no ordained pastors that prepare any messages, everyone just sits in a room and as the Spirit moves, then people say things and do things, everyone is part of the service. On the other end of the scale, other denominations or religions, even Roman Catholicism, have a very, very strict order of service, the laity has no control and very little participation in, and they wear different robes or clothing, the priests, Roman Catholic priests. There's even a barrier, a wall between the priests and the people. In between are standard evangelical Sunday morning worship services that have an order of service, and individuals generally just do the scripture readings and the singing and all that, and do not come actively expecting to participate. Probably for us at FBC Durham, you would think of this more in terms of the whole Sunday and home fellowships, where you were to go to someone's home and you would expect to come and make a contribution, that we would teach and admonish one another with all wisdom and that someone would say, “Hey, I listened to this song this week. This really encouraged me.” “Oh, let's hear it.” That kind of more informality can happen during home fellowships, etcetera. When I was in Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa. You're basically there all day. You're there all day for church; they have meals together. They're just together. And so you could well imagine everybody would come with this or that. Paul doesn't give a complete list here of things that could be part of the Sunday morning service. He talks about a revelation or different other things, but there are other aspects of things that are not mentioned, such as public reading of Scripture, he doesn't mention that. Preaching isn't mentioned, teaching isn't mentioned; corporate prayer isn't mentioned. The Lord's Supper or baptism are not mentioned. So this is not an exhaustive list. But the idea is everybody comes expecting to participate in some way.

However, the purpose of everything is orderly edification, Verse 26, “All of this must be done for the strengthening of the church.” Then he gives four rules for the use of tongues. Now, you may ask, “Why are you giving the four rules for the use of tongues? Are we going to use tongues?” Well, I can tell you this, we're not going to use tongues in a way that doesn't follow these four rules. And if you're wondering whether the FBC Durham elders are ready to move toward tongues or prophecy, listen to last week’s sermon. There are definitely filters that individuals have to go through before we ever thought that that would be part of our Sunday morning worship, but what are the four rules he gives here? Well, first, number one, only two or three persons should speak, so there could be 50, 60, 100 people with the gift of tongues. Only two or three are gonna use the gift on a Sunday morning. That's what he's saying, just two or three. Number two, they should speak in order, one after the other, not all at the same time, he's gonna say the same thing with prophecy, He's gonna say that the gift of the prophets is subject to the control of the prophets. You can't say, “There's nothing I could do. The Spirit overwhelmed me, and there was nothing I could do.” He said that's not true.

So it has to be one after the other. I was at an outreach in Salem, Massachusetts, and I went with a Pentecostal church to reach out to the witches there, and there are witches there, about 3,000 registered witches in Salem. So as part of this outreach, never been in a Pentecostal service before. And at some point we started praying for the outreach we were about to do. Wow, interesting experience. Everyone began praying in tongues all at once, I had never experienced that in my life. So I prayed and asked the Lord if it'd be okay for me to pray in English 'cause it's the only language that I know, and so I went ahead and had my prayer time, but it was just everyone at the same time. This says one after the other. Thirdly, what they say must be interpreted. If it is gonna be said in the context of a public service, there must be someone there to interpret. And then fourth, if there is no interpreter, they should not speak, they should keep silent in the church and speak to themselves and God. These are the four rules.

At any rate, the clear implication, the use of tongues is subject to the control of the people. He's gonna say that in the next passage, verses 31-32, “You can all prophesy in turn so that everyone might be instructed and encouraged, for the spirit of the prophets is subject to the control of the prophets.”

Alright, applications. The primary goal every single week should be the clear proclamation of the word of God for the edification of the church. And I think for me, as a top priority of that would be the clear proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ so lost people can find forgiveness of sins. And I'm not assuming that every one of you that's sitting here in this sanctuary here has most certainly been born again before you came here, but you've heard the gospel today, you've had the chance to hear what Spurgeon heard that converted him. You had the chance to look to Jesus dead on the cross for a sinner like you or like me. You've heard clearly the Christ was raised from the dead. All you need is there. Repent and believe while there's time, there is a supernatural being who threatens us with eternal condemnation if we will not repent and follow him. And now is the day of salvation. This is the top priority.

Secondly, let's use our spiritual gifts to edify the body. You have a spiritual gift package, are you using it? And I know things are different now with COVID 19, I understand that, but be creative, find ways to use your gifts and understand your gift package was given to edify, to build up the body of Christ. So edify. And concerning tongues itself, as we mentioned last week, there's so much debate and discussion about whether this gift continues to this day. I am, for myself, speaking for myself, among those who cautious, perhaps skeptical, wanting to see, I don't find cessationism in the New Testament. But I would say on behalf of the elders, if this gift and if prophecy were ever to be used on Sunday morning, it must follow certain patterns. And the patterns were clearly laid out in this text today, that's our desire. Overall, Sunday morning should be about the edification of the body of Christ through the clear, orderly, logical, Spirit-filled ministry of the word of God, that's our goal.

Close with me in prayer. Father, thank you for the time we've had in your Word, thank you for the things we can learn from it. There's so much richness here, so much power, so much insight. So Father, I pray that you would strengthen each one of us. Help us to realize, Lord, that you are mighty and a powerful being. That you are sitting on a heavenly throne. And that from heaven you will come to earth to judge the earth, and Jesus Christ is the judge of the living and the dead. Help us while there's time to flee to Christ and to trust in Him. Help us who have already fled to Christ, to be faithful to share the gospel in these times of doubt and sadness and death and trouble, which is in every generation, but this is our time. Help us to be clear with the gospel and be bold as you've commanded. In Jesus' name, amen.

1 Corinthians provides guidelines on the purpose of the gift of tongues and how to use it in an orderly way to uplift and edify the church.

The post The Gift of Tongues: Purpose and Proper Use (1 Corinthians Sermon 56) appeared first on Two Journeys.