The Rowdy Chapter | J.D. Greear | March 13, 2022

0:00 Well, welcome Summit Church at what is officially my least favorite Sunday in the entire calendar year, and that is Spring Forward Sunday. I was frankly quite surprised to see so many at the Capitol Hills campus, not only in the nine o'clock service, but also the mothers and fathers with their babies on stage. But then I remembered they'd probably been up since 5 a.m. every day for the last year anyway. And so we get to join them today by getting up earlier. You know, one of the other things that happens in March is our society designates March as Women's History Month. And we don't participate with everything that goes on in our societal calendar, but that does give us an opportunity to thank God for the many women who have shaped our ministry here. I'm thinking of women like Bonnie Shrum and Dana Leach and Alex Akinsola and Lori Francis and Cherise Goles and Amy Whitfield and Leslie Hildreth and Jeanette Aoni and many, many, many others here who serve in important and very high level leadership positions.

0:55 And so we want to say that we are grateful for you. We love you. In fact, Summit family, could you put your hands together and thank God for the many, many women leaders, both staff and volunteer who lead here. This also gives us a chance to look back and acknowledge some of the women who have shaped the global church through history. And one that I'd like to briefly mention today is named Annie Armstrong. Miss Armstrong lived in the 1800s and she became an extremely important catalyst for church planting in the frontier regions of the United States, particularly among immigrants, Native Americans, and then also a lot of church planting down in Cuba. She helped launch out the first black female missionaries, and she advocated for justice on behalf of Native Americans. Every year, we participate in an offering at Easter in her name that goes exclusively to church planting and mercy work in the United States.

1:50 Over the years, more than $2 billion, with a B, 2 billion has been given in her name to that offering. Now, we typically don't take up special money here on the weekend for it, but every year we designate a portion of our budget to go toward this offering. This year, the Summit Church is contributing $140,000 to that offering. We can do that. We can do that because of your generosity. Your giving here doesn't just keep our facilities going or our staff paid. It also supports this and so many other mission efforts from mercy work in downtown Durham to helping refugees and church planting in places like Ukraine. And so I wanna invite you right now to participate in worship. This is a part of our worship service to the giving of our tithes and our offerings. You know, we used to be able to pass the bucket, but in COVID, we kind of went away with that, at least for the time being. So there are three primary ways that you can give. As always, the easiest is just to text the word GIVE to 33933.

2:53 Just text the word GIVE to 33933, and that'll respond with a prompt that will allow you to give online. You could just short cut that. If you wanted to, go straight to summitchurch.com slash give. There you can give one time, or you'd set up a recurring gift like me and my family does. just builds it in as a part of who we are and how we live. The other thing is during one of our services at the end, if you're like old-fashioned and you have actual cash or a check, if you remember what that is, on the way out, there's a basket at every campus that you can just drop it in there, okay? That is a part of our worship, and so I invite you, if you are a part of the summit, if you are a guest with us, hey, listen, we don't want you to feel compelled by us to do this. We're just glad that you're here, okay? All right, if you got your Bibles this weekend, and I hope that you brought them, open them to, drum roll, 1 Corinthians 14. Here we go.

3:46 We are nearly at the end of this great letter of Paul to the Corinthians, but like every car trip I've ever taken with my four children, somehow the last few miles end up being the most adventurous, annoying, I don't know what you call it, all right? 1 Corinthians 14 is, as one of our women's Bible study teachers, Toya Dunbar says, it's the rowdy chapter in the New Testament. It is all about the gifts of tongues and prophecy. So let me start by giving you a little perspective on the theological landscape when it comes to this discussion, okay? There are generally four positions when it comes to these more spectacular gifts. And let me just say, all of them have valid biblical insights. There is stuff we can learn from each of these four approaches. Different ones of you, I know, come from different ones of these traditions. We're kind of a mixed bag in here.

4:39 First, there's what we call the cessationist position. That's a fancy word that just means ceased, cessationist. And this position holds that gifts like prophecy, tongues, and healing have ceased. Most spiritual gifts, this position believes, are still in operation, but tongues and prophecy and miracles, they were special sign gifts. They were relevant only to a particular era of church history, mainly when the apostles were writing the Bible and they've now ceased in our day. Now, full disclosure, I grew up on this one. And for the record, I do believe that many of these gifts were more relevant in certain eras of Christian history than others, but I cannot find anything in the Bible that would justify the blanket claim that they have ceased. In fact, Paul ends this chapter telling the Corinthians not to forbid the practice of these gifts. And I believe that we should honor that. At the end of 1 Corinthians 13, if you remember when we studied that last week, Paul indicates that these kinds of gifts will continue, at least in part, until we see Jesus face to face. And of course, that hadn't happened yet. It's the cessationist position. On the other end of the spectrum, we have the old school Pentecostal position, which believes that these gifts are in full operation and every Christian should experience them. And if you have not experienced them, well, you should question to see if there's something wrong with you spiritually. Position number three is a variation of that that we call the more nuanced charismatic position, which is that these gifts are in existence and they are part of the normal ministry experience of the church, though not every believer will experience all of them and maybe not even any of them. Then there is a fourth position that usually goes under the name open but cautious. This position believes that the gifts have not ceased, but that most of the ways the gifts are being used today in so-called spirit-filled churches is neither biblical nor helpful, that there's a lot of manipulation and psychological tricks that are involved in some of these places when it comes to these gifts. Now, again, I think this position raises a lot of valid concerns, and I used to put myself into this one, but I've grown

6:49 uncomfortable with simply having an attitude of openness toward these spiritual gifts, since Paul's going to tell us in 1 Corinthians 14 that we should be hungry for them. Now, look at how he opens chapter 14, pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. In other words, hunger for them, yearn for them, don't just be open for it to them. Yearn to have these experiences with the Holy Spirit. Three times in this chapter, Paul is going to tell the Corinthians to desire these spiritual gifts, especially prophecy. I want us to be the kind of church where people frequently say, after coming to one of our services or going to one of our small groups that they leave there saying, I didn't just hear a word explained today. I experienced the presence of God. Isn't that what you want? So that leads me to a fifth position, which I will call the summit church position. You're not going to find this one in most theology books, yet it goes by the name. You won't find it in most theology book yet. Here's the name, Charismatics with a seatbelt. It's basically a combo of positions three and four. On the one hand, we recognize the validity of spiritual gifts. We even hunger for them. But on the other, we have on a seatbelt, so to speak, you don't typically see us running around the church or swinging from the light chandeliers. And we recognize that a lot of things that go into the name spirit in certain circles aren't necessarily of the spirit. We want to be a spirit-filled church, okay? No caveats. But we don't have any vans with flames printed down the side. And I don't typically smack people on the head at the end of church. So they flop down and, you know, flop like a perch on the dock, you know, at the end of the service. I'm not saying there's no way the Holy Spirit would ever do that in any circumstance. I'm just really sensitive to us coercing something and then calling that the work of the Spirit. In fact, some of you have heard me tell the story. A few years ago, I was at a missions conference and there was a very, very, very famous charismatic leader there.

8:45 In fact, maybe the most famous in the world at the time. And so there was a special pastors, you know, kind of event. And so I went and then he gave a very inspiring talk about the spirit. And he was like, hey, if you want to experience more of the spirit of God, be filled by him, you want to move in his power, come forward, I'm going to pray for you. And I'm like, I'm all for more of the spirit. So I came forward and there was about 30 of us across the front of this stage. And he starts, I'm probably about number 18 or so in line out of this 30. I noticed him going down as he's praying for people. Every time he gets done praying, they kind of fall backwards. And I was like, I was just kind of watching this happen because it's like 100% of them, one for one. And I'm like, all right. Now I prayed, I said, Lord, I will do whatever you want me to do. You can knock me down, knock my shirt off and tattoo John 3, 16 on my chest. I will receive that. But I'm not letting that man push me down because I noticed every time he was doing it, it was like he was pushing and then they would fall.

9:40 And I'm like, I just, you know, you're not gonna put, spirit, yes, you know. So he gets to me and he puts his hand on my head and he starts to pray and he prays. and then I could feel the pressure starting to go in my head. And I was like, that's not the spirit, bro. That's you. So he starts praying louder and pushing harder and I'm now pushing back and we're like, you know, like this. And eventually he just kind of ends his prayer and then he moves on. Okay, so listen, we don't want anything that is like pretend spirit. But Summit, I want us to experience all that the spirit wants to do in the church. Not merely to be open to these things, but hungry for them and expected of them. At the same time, we're gonna avoid, by God's grace, as much as we can, fleshly imitation and pursue these things in the way the Bible tells us to pursue them. You in for this? You in for this? All right, out of curiosity, how many of you are from a Pentecostal or charismatic background? Put your hand in the air.

10:32 In fact, go ahead and put both hands in the air. I know you're more comfortable that way, okay? All right, I just wanna say, you make our church so much better. You know which Summit members have a Pentecostal background because they're the ones in the lobby before the service stretching, so they don't pull a hammy during worship because they're gonna do some running and some jumping. And we love it, we love it. So let's just work our way through this chapter, okay? Deep breath, find your inner place of theological calm. Again, verse one, pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men, but to God. Wait, they speak to who? Not to other people, not to themselves. they speak to God. For no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the spirit. Here's a working definition of tongues. It is a form, which tongues, by the way, just means languages, a form of prayer and praise that you express to God in a language you do not understand.

11:33 That's the simplest definition I can give you. A form of expression or praise to God expressed in a language you don't understand. Let me show you two examples of this from the book of Acts. The first one, probably the most famous one, Acts 2.1. When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven the sound of a mighty rushing wind. And it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. And they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now, real quick, This had to be an unbelievable experience. When it says a sound like a rushing wind, in Greek, that does not mean a gentle breeze, even a stiff breeze. It means hurricane force wind. Imagine what that would be like in the room that you're sitting in.

12:25 Suddenly there's a sound like a tornado, like it's a freight train that's coming. And then these tongues of fire appear on the heads of every church member. That was the image of the spirit coming into the church. This was a picture of the power that you and I still have inside of us. That's awesome. Verse five, now there were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound, the multitude came together and they were bewildered. Now watch this, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. That's key. These were other human languages. They may have been unknown to the speaker, but they were known to somebody. Somebody recognized it as praise to God in his native tongue. He said, hey, you're praising God in my native language and you've never even been to my hometown.

13:19 This is the first sign gift of tongues. Let's jump over to Acts 10 because you're gonna see it again. This time, Peter is preaching to Cornelius, who was a Roman lieutenant and his band of Roman soldiers, a bunch of Gentiles. In fact, this is one of the first times that Gentiles are hearing the gospel preached. While Peter was still saying these things, while he was still preaching the gospel, the Holy Spirit, without any coercion, without any calling, without any coming forward, the Holy Spirit fell on all those who heard the word. And the circumcised believers, in other words, the Jews, the Jews who had come with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles. in Acts 2, then Jews. Now it's being poured out on the Gentiles. Now watch this. For they, who's the they in that sentence? The Jews. The Jews were hearing them, the Gentiles, speaking in tongues, languages they didn't understand, and extolling God. The Gentiles were praising God in a language unknown to them, but they, the Jews, heard it and said, whoa, You're praising God in a language you don't know, but I understand you, this is really from God.

14:33 By the way, how did the Jews know what these Gentiles were saying? How did they know they were praising God? I think it means they were speaking in Hebrew, a language the Gentiles didn't understand, but the Jews did. It's like Acts 2 in reverse. They were praising God in a language unknown to them. Now, even if I'm off on that last little part and these Roman soldiers weren't speaking in Hebrew, The point is that tongues and acts were not an ecstatic emotional utterance of nonsensical noises. They were praised to God in an actual intelligible language. We're gonna see this in a minute, but tongues were a sign that God was bringing other nations into his family. You see, up until this time, God had really only been worshiped in the Hebrew tongue, but God had promised Abraham, Genesis 12, that he was gonna extend his salvation into every tribe and language group on earth. tongues were a sign that this was happening. Remember the Tower of Babel, everybody spoke one language, and then God kind of, you know, in judgment, created all the different languages and sent them everybody in different directions. Then he calls Genesis 12, next chapter, a man named Abraham, and he says, one day, one day I'm going to bring all these families back together, all these languages. We're going to come back together, praising salvation in different tribes and tongues, and I'm going to use you to do that. Tongues were just a sign that this promise was being fulfilled.

15:51 All right, let's keep moving through this text. Verse three, on the other hand, back in 1 Corinthians 14, on the other hand, in contrast to tongues, which are a mysterious form of praise to God, the one who prophesies, Paul says, speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation. All right, let's talk about prophecy for a minute. As we saw a couple of weeks ago, prophecy is speaking God's word into a situation. Speaking God's word into a situation. This takes three primary forms in the Bible. Okay, form number one is just preaching, what I do every week. It's not just me who does it, but anytime you're speaking the words of scripture to people, it's more than just reading the word or explaining it to you. I hope God is giving me spiritual power as I preach to you, spiritual insight into how to specially apply it to you. This book right here, this book is always God's word.

16:47 Of course, but in this moment, it becomes a dynamic living word where God is actively speaking to you. So preaching is your first kind of prophecy. It can include the second and third types of prophecy, preaching can, which are words of wisdom, which are insights into issues or application to your day-to-day lives. So when you, what these principles mean in our context, sometimes preaching and prophecy includes words of knowledge, which are when God reveals something to me about your lives that I wouldn't naturally know. A couple weeks ago, I used John 4 as an example where Jesus is with the woman at the well, and Jesus reveals to her by the Spirit that she's had five husbands, and the man she's living with now is not her husband. He had no way of knowing that. Spirit revealed it to him. That can happen to me while I'm preaching. Sometimes I know what's happening. I know God is putting something into me to say to you, I'm sure of it. But more often than not, it happens without me even knowing it. You ever had the experience of listening to somebody teach the word and make an application and you feel like, whoa, how did he know what was going on with me? Did he read my journals? Did my wife call him? How did he know what to say right there? That is all word of knowledge type of stuff. And again, it's not just me that's supposed to practice prophecy like this.

18:11 Paul envisions a congregation in which this happens in conversations at all levels, small groups, one-on-one conversations. In fact, jump down to verse 24. Paul says, if everybody prophesies in the church, all of us, not just the guy on stage, but if everybody prophesies and an unbeliever or outsider enters, what happens? Verse 25, the secrets of his heart are disclosed, right? You know, like the woman at the well, you've got five husbands and the man you're living with now is not your husband. And so when the secrets of that person's heart are disclosed, they fall on their face and they worship God. And they declare God is really at work among you. Through the words of knowledge, his secrets are revealed. And he knows God is in this place. I've told you that I've had this happen to me in this church, brothers and sisters who spoke God's counsel into the secret places of my heart. I've had friends that it's happened to. It's happened to my wife several times. Now, to be clear, okay, anything in this category, whether words of wisdom or words of knowledge or whatnot, these things never take on the weight of Scripture. They are not the Word of God the way that this book right here is the Word of God. Okay, are we clear on that? This and this alone is the permanent Word of God, and it alone is infallible. Our perceptions of what the Spirit is saying are tentative and very fallible. That's why Paul says that some have the gift of discernment or the interpretation of spirits. God gives to some the gift of discerning whether particular pieces of revelation or counsel are really from God. That's not true when it comes to Scripture.

19:47 Nobody in here has the gift to say that verse is wrong and this verse is right. Paul says something else in 1 Corinthians 14 that shows us that prophetic words are in a different category than Scripture. Jump down to verse 36. Paul says, even with all these words of wisdom and knowledge that Corinthians are experiencing, still, he says, the Word of God did not come from you. In other words, even with all this Spirit-prompted speech that you are experiencing, the Word of God or Scripture didn't come from them. Prophetic speech and Scripture are in two entirely different categories. The Bible is infallible and authoritative. Prophetic speech that we give to each other is fallible and has to be received with discernment. Even prophetic speech in the New Testament was fallible. One example, real quick, Acts 21.10 tells us there was a disciple in the early church named Agabus who told Paul through the spirit that Jews would deliver him into the hands of the Roman rulers.

20:48 Now, here's the deal. Agabus was mostly correct, though not entirely. The Jews tried to kill Paul, not deliver him to the Romans. The theologian Wayne Grudem says, this prediction was not far off, but it had inaccuracies in detail that would not be appropriate for written revelation. This fits the description of New Testament congregational prophecy, which is reporting in one's own words, something God has spontaneously brought to mind. So prophecy is letting the Spirit of God speak through us to one another. Paul wants everybody in the church to operate with this gift. And Summit, we need more of it. Christian world is sometimes split between those who take the Scripture seriously, that would be us, and those who listen to the Spirit. Some of us really dig into the Bible to discover what it means, and others are always trying to discern what the Spirit says.

21:42 We need both. Word first, yes, always, but Spirit too. We wanna be led by the Spirit and taught by the Word. So before we move on to tongues, let's pause for a minute and let me give you three biblical words that should characterize our use of prophetic words at the Summit Church. Let me just really play the role of pastor right now because I want you to think practically about how to use this. Think of this like a grid that you can use in giving or evaluating words of prophecy. The first word is expectation. Let's expect God to do this, right? He said he would. He promised that at the coming of the Spirit, your sons and daughters will prophesy. Paul told us to desire these things. Don't just be open to them, expect them. I'm not saying that the first thing that pops in your head whenever you pray for somebody is from the Holy Spirit. But you could start there.

22:35 You could test it and affirm it and assume, maybe I thought of that for a reason. Maybe that was from the Spirit of God. If you're walking with the Spirit, in small groups, when you go into prayer times, why don't you start by asking, hey, if you're a small group leader, has the Spirit of God put anything on anybody's heart to share? Paul told us to pursue these things, so let's start our gatherings by giving him a chance to speak through his sons and daughters like he promised. And you say, well, wait a minute, pastor, wait a minute. Doesn't Paul say that only certain people have the gift of prophecy? Yes, you're paying attention. Very good question. But it's like the gift of generosity or the gift of the evangelist. Every Christian practices these things. It's just that some are unusually gifted in them. It's not only those with the gift of generosity who give or only those with the gift of the evangelists who share Christ. In the same way, some have an unusual endowment of the gift of prophecy, but we all can experience it. Okay, so expectation. Second word, humility. If you're writing notes down, write this one in all caps.

23:38 never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever claim the authority of God when you speak. What you are saying is fallible and other people need to discern if it is from God. I never, ever say to somebody, this is what God says, unless I've got a chapter and verse to back it up. Instead, I will say something like, listen, I think God has put this on my heart for you. And I think he might be saying this, but you gotta weigh this out. The other problem with putting divine weight behind your words is it puts the other person in a terribly awkward position. You ever been there? If you claim that God has told you something for me and you're sure, the other person's either gotta submit to your words or call you a false prophet. I've had people say to me, Pastor, God said this and this to me about you. And I know they're wrong because they're operating on faulty information.

24:36 I could tell you some stories. Oh my goodness. We had a guy come up after a service. He was wearing a long black trench coat. I'd never seen it before. He asked for a word after the service and I was like, all right. So he took me to the side and said, the Lord has given me the plans for Summit's next campus. Then he pulled out a black briefcase and out of that, he took out these insanely elaborate drawings of y'all. It was a full on cathedral. It looked like Dracula's castle. And then he said, the Lord has told me this is what Summit's supposed to build next. And he's also told me that I'm supposed to be the one to tell this to the church and explain it to him. So when can I get some weekend stage time? How about next week? You see what I put up with for you people? Do you see that? Don't create that awkwardness for somebody else. I'm like, bro, listen, I'm not trying to quench the spirit here, but I'm just not sensing this is from the Holy Spirit. I'm a professional Christian.

25:29 I can handle that kind of awkwardness. Don't do that to each other. Paul sets up this whole system so that we speak with humility. Bottom line, even if you really feel strongly that what you're saying is from the Holy Spirit, speak it with humility and a little uncertainty. That's how God tells you to do it. It's why he gives others the gift of discernment. You're not giving the word of God. The apostles wrote things down and we studied them 2000 years later. You write what down you think God is saying in an email. We skim it, delete it and move on, okay? Now, one more word here before we move on to the next, the tongues. Affirmation, expectation, humility, affirmation. Let's affirm somebody when God uses them in our lives. They may not even have known that they were speaking prophetically. Two or three of the times that God spoke to me most clearly, I'm pretty sure that the person who spoke to me didn't know that they were speaking that way. They thought they was giving counsel or a word of encouragement, but time showed that what they were saying was from the Holy Spirit.

26:24 So let's affirm this in the, even as we pray together, we can affirm it. When somebody is praying and what they're saying is resonating with you, you need to say things like, yes, Lord. and I agree and I received that Lord, okay? You're like, but I feel like a Pentecostal. Good. You say, well, I feel weird doing that. I grew up Baptist or I grew up Catholic. So I just say those things in my heart and I know God can hear me. Yes, God can hear your heart, okay? But the other person can't. And God doesn't need any encouragement. He's got all the encouragement that he needs. It's the other person who needs that encouragement. So expectation, humility, affirmation. I can say a lot more on this, but let's just keep moving. Verse five. Now, I want all of you to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. Now, all Paul is saying here in context, all he's saying here is, I'd love for all of you to experience everything. I'm not saying you will.

27:16 I'm not saying you should. I'm just, yes, I'm for more intimacy with and more gifting by the Spirit. Of course, he's already told us that not everybody has every gift. He's saying, I wish you had them all. But if you are going to seek a gift, seek prophecy. because the one who prophesies, the one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless somebody interprets so that the church might be built up. Now, brothers, if I come to you speaking in tongues, how will I benefit you unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching? The sole purpose of the gifts was to build the church up. Does speaking in an unknown tongue build anybody up? It may make you feel warm and fuzzy, but it does nothing for anybody else. In verses seven through 11, Paul is gonna give you three great illustrations of this. Illustration number one is music.

28:11 If even lifeless instruments, such as the flute or the harp or the keyboard, if they do not give distinct notes, how will anybody even know what is played, okay? Now, it's been a long time. Random blasts don't make for good music, which is probably what you're about to hear, okay? I am not a musician, not a musician, but I remember my elementary school teacher explaining that sounds needed three things to be considered music. Rhythm, harmony, and melody. Only then was it what they called syncopated, so. Yeah? There's our faithful symbol player, okay?

29:05 That's music, that's noise. And Paul is saying, hey, this is what a church service is supposed to be, and you people speaking in tongues are doing that right there. It's just chaos. Illustration number two is battle. Battle cries. And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? Random noises in the battlefield don't help the army. I mean, you're in battle, and you hear a trumpet, you don't know if that means go forward or go backwards. It's chaos. In the same way, random tongues in the church don't help the church advance. If you don't know what God is saying, how do you know what he wants you to do? Verse nine, so with yourselves, he says, so with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how's anybody going to know what's being said? You'll be speaking into the air. Verse 10, analogy three, human languages. There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning. But if I do not know the meaning of the language, I'm going to be a foreigner to the speaker, and the speaker is a foreigner to me. You know, if I stand up here enduring a message, I say, tuhan kita uluar biasa, and saya sakarang saki gasquat. You do not know how to respond, right?

30:15 By the way, the first phrase was in Indonesian, our God is awesome. That deserves an amen. The second was, I have really bad gas paint. That deserves not an amen, but an oh my, right? Tongues don't benefit others if they don't understand what's being said. They don't know how to respond. Verse 12, so also with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the spirit, strive to excel in building up the church. Simple, seek gifts that build up the body. That's what love would do. It seeks gifts for service, not for show. It's seeking gifts to bless and not boast. Therefore, he says, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. Paul is saying, even for the one who's speaking in the tongue, it's better for them if they know what they're saying. Otherwise, it's just giving you a tingly feeling and not building up your mind. So as for me, Paul says, I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also at the same time.

31:13 In other words, I'm not just gonna pray in tongues. I'm gonna pray with my mind. I don't wanna just feel close to God. I wanna be reminded of the truths that make me close to God. Verse 18, Paul says, I thank God, but I speak in tongues more than all of you. All Paul is saying there is for the record, I got you all beat. When I'm not writing the Bible, I'm taking trips up to the third heaven, shaking cobras off my arm and bringing people back from the dead with my hanky. So I got all you Corinthians beat. Nevertheless, he says in church, I'd rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others than 10,000 words in a tongue. 10,000, by the way, is the highest number you can count to in Greek. At least they gave you a number for, so to invoke 10,000 was like saying infinity. Paul's saying, I'd rather speak five words that you understand than a gazillion words in a tongue you can't understand. Let me translate that for you.

32:05 Paul says, you're not gonna hear me speaking in tongues in church because it doesn't do anybody any good. It doesn't really even do me any good. I'd rather speak five simple words we both understand. Jesus in my place, amen. Then 10,000 words you don't understand that would just make you think that I'm super spiritual. Brothers, brothers and sisters, don't be children in your thinking. Be mature. Stop acting like kids, thinking that spiritual gifts makes you impressive, thinking that spiritual gifts makes you feel close to God. No, you think like mature gospel people who know that their identity is in Christ and their gifts are only for service, not for show. And what makes me close to Jesus is the blood of Christ, not a tingly feeling that I get in my chest every once in a while. Now, verses 21 and 22. This is really, really important. This is where so many people go off the rails. Paul is about to show you, watch this, the reason God gave tongues.

32:59 Understanding this one thing will show you why so many of those who claim to speak in tongues probably aren't. I'm not saying definitively aren't, but probably aren't in the New Testament sense. Verse 21. In the law, Isaiah 28 to be exact, it is written, by people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners, I will speak to this people. And even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord. So Paul, after he quotes that, says thus, because of what I just said, because of what Isaiah said, tongues are a sign. Sign means they're communicating something. Watch this, a sign not for believers, but for unbelievers. Who was assigned for? Unbelievers. They were not assigned for you or for other believers in church. They were assigned for unbelievers.

33:53 More importantly, what kind of unbelievers are they assigned for? Well, when Isaiah says this people, he means the Jews. Verse 21, by people of strange tongues, I will speak to this people, the Jews. Tongues were a sign to unbelieving Jews that the gospel was not just for them, it was for all the languages of the world. You see, the Jews had a really hard time with that. Even though God had told Abraham, that was his goal from the beginning. They thought that God should only be worshiped in the Hebrew tongue. Even the apostles had trouble with this. So when the gospel first starts going out to the Gentiles, God, according to Isaiah, and now Paul, gave a miraculous sign to unbelieving Jews that this work, getting the gospel to the Gentiles was actually from him. That was the purpose of the sign.

34:47 And technically they were a sign of judgment on Israel. They declared you Jews would not listen to the gospel. So God is taking the gospel to the Gentiles who will listen. So when somebody tells me that their private prayer time is filled with speaking in tongues, I always wanna ask how many unbelieving Jews are present in your private prayer time? How many are seeing the sign? That's the purpose of the sign. It's not for you to feel close to God. You get the gospel for that. It's for God to signify something to unbelieving Jews. I'd humbly ask the same thing in worship services where speaking in tongues is common. How many unbelieving Jews are attending these services? If the sign, according to Paul, is primarily for unbelieving Jews, what's the purpose of you doing it privately? Also to be completely transparent. I'm not sure I buy the whole praying in the tongue of an angel thing.

35:43 Every time Paul mentions that phrase, I pray in the tongue of an angel, it's hypothetical. If I were to speak in the tongue of angels. Remember the Corinthians are super proud about their spiritual gifts. So Paul is exaggerating to insane purport. He's like, y'all look, even if I prayed in the language of angels and didn't have love, I'd still be nothing. I say that because Paul never identifies angel tongue in his list of spiritual gifts. And there's no case anywhere in the Bible where somebody actually speaks angel. In fact, every instance in the Bible where angels do show up, they speak our language. Remember when the angel appears to Mary, the mother of Jesus, you know, angel shows up. The angel's not like hoogabaloo. Yeah, and then Mary translates it. The angel just says, Mary, you're gonna have a baby. And Mary understands him. So I don't think that's a real thing that we're supposed to practice. Now, having said that, I cannot say from scripture definitively that God never speaks through you that way.

36:39 So I will stop where the scripture stopped. And I will not clarify what God did not clarify. The Bible tells me, verse 39, not to forbid to speak in tongues. So I won't. What I can say definitively based on these verses is that the primary purpose of tongues is as a sign to unbelieving Jews and that you should not seek gifts for the purpose of making you feel close to God. If so, then you are theologically an infant because the gospel is the mature thing that should make you feel close to God. Instead, you should seek the gifts, Paul says, to build others up. So if you wanna seek a gift, he says, don't seek tongues to make you feel close to God, seek prophecy to build other people up. Furthermore, verse 23, if therefore the whole church comes together and all, very speaking in tongues, outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you people are out of your minds? You go into a place, they're all speaking in tongues, people are yelling out, and you get nervous.

37:33 You think, what's wrong with these people? Oh, we're just drunk on the Spirit. To be honest, I feel nervous being around drunk people in any capacity. I hold my kids close and I get nervous. Paul says, people should not have that feeling when they come into church. Verse 24, but if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or an outsider enters, and all of a sudden he's being convicted by all, and then they're speaking the truth to him, They're applying it to these secret places of his heart and he's held to account and all these secrets are disclosed. What does he do? How did you know? Nobody knows that about me. And he falls on his face and he worships God and declares, God, God, and God alone is in this place. That's the kind of place we wanna be, where God is alive and he is working in the church and people cannot deny the spirit given insight we have into their lives and the power with which we speak. And I will tell you in a skeptical place, like Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, this kind of experience has a power of persuasion that our apologetic arguments does not.

38:36 And that's why Paul is telling us about it. What then, brothers? What then, brothers, when you come together, everybody should have a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, an interpretation ready. Let all things be done for building up. If anybody speaks in a tongue, Let there be only two or three and each in turn and let somebody interpret. But if there's nobody to interpret, let each of them keep silent in the church and speak to himself and to God. Only thing I wanna note there is that in those verses, listen to this, spirit experiences are not something where you get taken over and can't control yourself. People say, oh, I couldn't help myself. The spirit just took over. That is not true. Paul says you can control yourself. Paul expects these spiritual manifestations to be under your control. Verse 33, for our God, he said, is not a God of confusion, he's a God of peace.

39:30 So then, verse 39, my brothers, earnestly desire to prophesy. Do not forbid speaking in tongues, but all things should be done decently and in order. There is a balance. You see it there in verses 39 and 40? Verse 39, freedom in the spirit. Verse 40, decency and in order. I think that we, some at church, have the whole decency and in order thing down pat. We got our orders of worship down to the minute. We got countdown clocks. Even Paul would be impressed, I think. I think we could use a little more freedom in the spirit. We don't wanna lose verse 40. We wanna gain verse 39. Now, some of you are like, wait a minute, pastor. You're not gonna pull this on me. You skipped some verses. You skipped some verses. Yes, I did. Verses 33 through 35.

40:16 Just when you thought this chapter could not possibly get any harder. As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches for they are not permitted to speak, but they should be in submission like the law says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. I think that's pretty self-explanatory, okay? So let's pray. No, no, I'm kidding. Just kidding. Happy Women's History Month, okay? No. Oh my goodness. What, how do we interpret this? Okay. Paul is clearly not saying that women should never speak in church. How do I know that? Well, for one thing, in chapter 11, Paul gives instructions for how women are to speak in church, how to pray and prophesy in church. Remember that? He said women were to pray or prophesy, and when they do, they should do it with their heads covered, which in their day just communicated that they weren't elders or they were not in authority.

41:13 Paul is not going to give that instruction and then turn around two chapters later and say they should not speak at all, right? The biblical rule of interpretation is that you interpret hard passages by easy ones. So clearly this can't mean that women don't speak in church because Paul has just given instructions for how they should speak. So what does it mean? Well, you can see from this chapter, there was a particular problem that Paul was addressing. There were different groups in Corinth who were interrupting each other in church and it was chaos. Some were crying out in tongues in the middle of church. Some were interrupting everybody else who was speaking with a word from God. Others were disputing, saying, no, no, no, that's not from God. And then giving their own word from God. The whole thing was like a big dumpster fire. So Paul tells three different groups in this chapter to be quiet. Verse 28, he's like, don't just yell out in the tongue if there's no interpreter. Verse 30, don't interrupt somebody who's given a prophecy with a better one that you think that you have. And now to the women at Corinth, he says, verse 33, don't be disputing prophecies given by others, evaluating whether they're from God, because that's something reserved for the office of elder. That's why in verse 35, Paul tells the women, if they have questions, to ask their husbands at home. The word for ask there in verse 35 is the word interrogate. It's more than just asking for clarification. It means dispute, critique. These women are not leaning over during the service saying, what chapter? What chapter are we in again? They're interrogating prophecy.

42:35 They're disputing it. They're trying to weigh in on whether a particular prophecy was really from God and had authority. Well, see, that's the function of an elder. And the apostles taught that a woman should not serve in that role. We saw that back in 1 Corinthians 11. Furthermore, in verse 34, the word that Paul uses for be silent, let the women be silent in the churches, does not mean primarily stop talking. The majority of the times it's used in the New Testament, it means hold your peace. That is, he's urging these women to have a submissive spirit and not presume the role of an elder. But what Paul says here, y'all, is remarkably consistent with what he says everywhere else. In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul said, speak woman, but not without a head covering. In other words, not without a show of submission. In 1 Timothy 2 and 3, he tells women to speak and to teach, but not as an elder. Here he says, speak woman, but not in a way that puts you in the position of interrogating or weighing prophecy, like you were an elder.

43:31 Y'all, that is really consistent if you ask me. So see, Summit, as we set women up here to use their spiritual gifts, we are going to, as best we can, by God's grace, we're gonna respect the order that God established in his church, since God's church is a reflection of his image. But for Paul, it is clear that women play a crucial part of Christ's body. Women have all the same spiritual gifts that men do. Their insight is invaluable, and the church needs to hear from them, and our body, the Summit Church, is much worse off without their leadership. So let's end where we started. We wanna have a church where people do more than sing along and worship, and listen to teaching and take notes. We want you to experience the presence of God. I don't know about you, but I want people coming in and having that 1 Corinthians 14, 24 experience where the secrets of their heart are revealed.

44:24 Isn't that what you want? Isn't that what you want? If so, we gotta change our mentality. You have to change your mentality about going to church in small group. This kind of thing's not gonna happen only through me or a worship leader or two speaking from this stage. All of you have to be engaged. What then, brothers, sisters, when you come together, everybody should come in. Everybody should come in with a hymn, a lesson and a revelation. Let all things be done for building up. You don't come in merely to sit and soak or sing along or take notes. Yes, do all of those things. When we come together for church or small group, let's each come in expectation that God's gonna use us to speak to others and sensitive to what the spirit might be putting in our hearts. Amen? Congratulations. You made it through another of the Bible's most difficult chapters, okay? Let's pray. Let's pray. Bow your heads if you would. Hey, look, with your head bowed, Paul tells us to desire the gift of prophecy that we might seek profitably in the lives of others.

45:23 Do you desire it? If so, then why not ask God for it right now? God, I don't even know what this is like, but would you put things in my heart that would build others up and encourage them, reveal the secrets of their heart? How about this? is God put something else in your life. Put some word in your heart right now. Right now, this is what you're thinking about, a word of encouragement or warning or direction that you need to speak to somebody else. Maybe it's a promise or a verse that whenever you're praying for them or thinking about them, this verse comes to you. Maybe right as soon as church is over, you ought to give them a call or go find them in the lobby. Just speak that to them.

46:04 Small group leaders, when you go into your prayer times, As a small group, why not start by asking, hey, has the Spirit of God put anything on anybody's heart to share? Let's give God a chance to speak through his body. In fact, small group leaders in our small group coaching guide this week, well, we're gonna give you a five minute video link you can watch and a coaching guide. It's super simple. I think it'll be helpful giving you some tools that will give you and your group confidence in living this out.

46:32 Father, what you put in my heart for this message is that we be a spirit-led church. And that's not just me and my preaching. It's not just our elders and the decisions that we make. It's every single member that is filled with the spirit and speaks with prophetic wisdom and power into the lives of both believers and unbelievers. We ask for help in this, guide us. You're the only one that can teach us this.