According to the Scriptures

Damian Kyle: God looks at his whole body, he knows the gifts that we need, and let's be completely open to them and desiring them for our lives. If he has them for us and we want those gifts and we're open to them without demanding them of God, then he has his way of manifesting them in our lives.

Guest (Male): You've grown up in the church, you know full well that one of many questions Christians disagree over is whether or not the gift of tongues is still for today. Some would contend it ceased at the apostolic age, while others say it's still very much a gift that God gives his children today. So which is it? Pastor Damian Kyle will let scripture speak for itself today as we get back into our study of 1 Corinthians. We're in chapter 14 on According to the Scriptures.

Damian Kyle: In verses 6 through 19, Paul makes the general point that something has to be intelligible or understandable for it to be appreciated by others. And so he uses himself as an example. If he came into the church and he spoke in tongues, it would be unprofitable to them because they wouldn't know what he was saying as compared to him coming in and speaking prophecy, word of wisdom, word of knowledge, or in teaching.

In verses 7 through 9, he uses the example of someone playing a musical instrument. There are these things called notes that have to be respected in an attempt to play music. It was something I just couldn't get the hang of when I tried to learn the guitar and the guitar teacher kindly told my mother about my twin brother and me, "They have no future in music. Stop the guitar lessons."

If I ignore the fact that music has notes and those notes must be intelligible to the hearer in playing a concert for people, then people aren't going to understand what it is that I'm playing. He talks about it in the context of playing a trumpet or a bugle in a military context in verse 8. If you just blow into it, no one's going to understand in that military camp whether you're calling everyone to dinner, or calling them to war, or calling them to lights out, or whether you're calling them to mail call.

He says what's true of those settings—the military and a setting of a concert—is also true of a spiritual setting. Spiritual prophecy comes through God's communication through gifts that can be understood. The problem is not, as he tells us in verses 10 and 11, the language. It's good, but both parties must know the language for communication to occur.

So I can ask for directions in Paris, France, and don't ever ask for directions in English, by the way. The French are still trying to get over the fact that French is not the dominant language of the world. I say this without animus toward French people at all, but they're a little testy about their language and then people just trying to speak to them in English. Maybe everybody is, but in my experience, the French in Paris are on another level related to this.

If I were to ask them for the directions to some place other than where I am in Paris and then they begin to speak to me in French, I would thoroughly enjoy it. The language is so theatrical. It is such a beautiful language, other than this guttural German and this unadorned English that we speak and all of this. It's just this incredible thing that they're speaking with all of the inflections, but it'll be of no help to me, though the speaker may feel very good about having given me those directions because I don't understand the language.

In verses 12 through 19, the conclusion here is that concerning the superiority of the gift of prophecy over tongues in the church service, he tells us in verse 12, "Be as zealous for the edification of the church as you are for the exercise of spiritual gifts overall." That was their neglect. They were more excited to go to church and exercise their spiritual gifts than a concern that the church would be built up through their spiritual gift.

In verse 13, he says if understanding is necessary for edification and excelling, as he puts it, then one who speaks or desires to speak in tongues in a public assembly is to pray that he might interpret the tongue as well. Here we see control being exercised in the operation of the gift of tongues. If a person believes that God wants them to speak a gift of tongues into a public assembly service, they are not to do that unless they have the interpretation of that tongue.

That may raise a question in some of our minds and say, well, what if somebody has a gift of tongues that they believe they are to speak and they have the interpretation? Are they then free at a moment like this in our service to stand up and do that? No, they're not. We'll see more about that next week because then they would be interrupting God, who we trust is operating through my life in the gift of teaching. So it'd be something that you would wait so that these gifts are not being exercised over the top of one another and now nothing's being done decently and in order.

Then he says in verses 15 and 19, Paul declares that he will continue to pray and sing with the spirit, that is in tongues as I've said, and with his understanding in Greek, in Aramaic, in Hebrew for Paul, in his devotional life with the Lord. But in the church, he says, prophecy wins by a landslide. Then he gives us some of these beautiful insights in verses 15 through 18. Again, with the spirit, it's my spirit praying in fellowship with God's Holy Spirit. That's what the gift of tongues is.

He tells us again in 16 and 17, when it is exercised properly and interpreted, it will bless God and it will be praise, worship, and thanksgiving directed to God. In verse 18, Paul had the gift of tongues, used it more than anyone ever did in the church at Corinth, and again, he doesn't want to be seen as negative related to the gift. It was a blessing to him and he used it regularly and he was thankful for the gift.

Verses 18 and 19 make it very clear that the gift of tongues is given supremely for the devotional life of a believer. It will be the extraordinary thing for a person to exercise a gift of tongues in a public assembly as compared to the use of that same gift in their private devotional life.

Then he does something that can really stand you on your head as he closes this section. We'll close with this this evening in verses 20 through 25. He says, "Brethren, do not be children in understanding; however, in malice be babes, but in understanding be mature." He expects pushback on his instruction here, and he kind of tells them to grow up here a little bit and accept his instruction related to these things.

He said, "In the law it is written: 'With men of other tongues and other lips I will speak to this people; and yet for all that, they will not hear Me,' says the Lord." And therefore tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe but to unbelievers; but prophesying is not for unbelievers but for those who believe. So Paul clearly states that to give preeminence to prophecy over the gift of tongues in the public assembly, and if we do so, it's going to result in an edifying experience for unbelievers present as opposed to a terrifying one.

You notice in verse 20 he called again on the church at Corinth and us to be mature in this subject of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in a church service. Then in 21 and 22, he declares that tongues are a sign to unbelievers. When you come to this in the passage, it seems like he's spun out in his vehicle and going in the other direction, and he doesn't realize it because this appears to be completely contradictory to what it is that he's just said. Because he will also warn that if an unbeliever (verse 23) comes into a church service and everyone's speaking in tongues, they will conclude Christians to be mad.

So how in the world can the gift of tongues be a sign for unbelievers? He explains it by quoting from Isaiah chapter 28 verses 11 and 12. Isaiah, this is a record of his part of his prophecy against Israel concerning Assyria. Because the Jews were being very stiff-necked and deliberate and protracted in their rebellion against God, against his word, and against his ways, the Lord brought the Assyrians down upon the land in judgment.

The sound of a foreign language in their midst was a sign of God's judgment on the Jews. It was a judgment upon their corrupt leaders and their religious apostasy. The gift of tongues, for instance on the day of Pentecost as it was manifested there, was a sign of God's rejection and judgment upon Israel's corrupt religious leaders and their own overall spiritual apostasy, which was represented in an apostasy that those that Isaiah was prophesying to would have never dreamed of.

Their apostasy included the rejection of Jesus, their opposition to him, and the part that those under the religious system of the Jews in terms of the Sadducees and the Pharisees, the part that they played in his crucifixion. And so on the day of Pentecost, God communicated his judgment upon what Judaism had become under the Pharisees and the Sadducees by means of the gift of tongues, signifying that God had now abandoned not the Jewish people but the old wineskin of Judaism under the Sadducees and the Pharisees, that his plan would move forward now in a new temple brought into existence by Jesus's death, burial, and resurrection and unveiled to the world on the day of Pentecost, that is the church, the temple of the Holy Spirit.

And so the supernatural gift of tongues was a witness, it was a sign to Jews who were unbelieving toward Jesus of his judgment in this regard. But prophecy, he says, is not for unbelievers but for those who believe. In other words, the spiritual gift of prophecy is a further distinction between believers and unbelievers in that it can only be exercised through a believer, and so a further evidence that the spiritual, supernatural manifestation of God's Holy Spirit had moved from Judaism to this new organism known as the church.

And so there we make our way partway through and next week look to finish this entire section. We want to not only be hearers of the word but doers of the word. So related to the gift of tongues, related to prophecy, but related to the gift of tongues, and that's the abuse he's addressing. One of the things that this passage is intended to do is to break down in any of our lives as Christians any resistance to any gift that God would want to give to us. Any gift that God wants to give to us is a gift that he knows that we need, including the gift of tongues.

If you need the gift of tongues for what God has called you to do and to be in this world and the uniqueness of your calling, your environments, the demands of your Christian life, then you want to be more than open to that gift. You want to desire it because if God has it for you, then you and I need it.

And so the gift of tongues and that openness related to it. I think that the best way, there's lots of ways that you can relate to this particular gift, receive it, but one of the things that I'm very thankful for, there's a lot of correction of some hyper-Pentecostalism in these three chapters. But one of the things that I'm very thankful for related to Pentecostalism is that they have carried, however misrepresented in some to some degree, some of them, they have carried the torch of spiritual gifts, including the gift of tongues but all spiritual gifts, when that light might very well have been put out in terms of any kind of consideration of it or exposure to it or a longing for it in the body of Christ.

I will always feel a sense of debt to them for their emphasis, even when it goes into over-emphasis. Not that I would join them there, but I'm thankful for it. And so to just take, like any of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, if God has this gift for you, he wants you to have it more than you want to have it. So you will not need to be coached, you will not need to prime the pump or something like that.

The old joke was when I was a new Christian that sometimes they in fact, it wasn't a joke, sometimes in order to get a person to open up to the gift of tongues is that they would sometimes somebody would sit you down, not in Calvary circles, but sit you down and then they would give you a phrase to repeat over and over, and then as you repeat that phrase over and over again, then whatever comes after that, then speak that and that's your prayer language.

Is God gracious enough to step into a thing like that and say, "I may not like the device, but if this opens them up to this gift, I'm going to give them the gift"? Absolutely. So the body of Christ can be messy sometimes on this. And so there used to be that joke about saying "she left on a Honda" eight times and then whatever follows that, "she left on a Honda, she left on a Honda, she left on a Honda," and that was apparently what people recognized as something like what a gift of tongues sounds like, and then say whatever happens.

The coaching isn't needed. In my experience, and I do have the gift of tongues and I'm thankful for it, in my experience, it was very helpful for me to sit down and to have people to pray with people to receive this gift. I didn't know if I would have it, but I reached a point where my negative view related to some of these things had been washed away by the Lord. Now I wanted anything that he would have for me.

And so that exposure there, exposure in other prayer meetings where only Christians were present and people would pray as others were praying and you could hear people praying silently or quietly under their breath in their prayer language and it allowed me to be comfortable with that gift and hearing that gift and understanding how it operated and ultimately it didn't happen for me even though I prayed with people and they were praying in their prayer language for me at a church service.

And I went home and just in a fuller way in Napa, California, and I just laid down as a new Christian just coming home from church in the living room and I said, "Lord, if you have this for me, I want to have this gift if you do. And if not, I'm okay with that, but if you do." And then just in the quietness of that environment and just overwhelmed by his love and his goodness to me and how he changed my life and all, and I received my prayer language there and I've used it ever since in my Christian life.

When I hit things in my life that are so heartbreaking I cannot put it into words, but I've got to talk to God but I cannot put it into words, so there's groanings in the spirit that cannot be uttered and that is a valuable thing. But this is a valuable thing as well, or spiritual warfare that is so bad that I could never have believed that such spiritual warfare could exist and I need to talk to God but I don't know what to pray to him and then to have the Holy Spirit pray through my spirit to the Father what I need to pray to him in that moment is valuable.

As long as we do not take this to the place that the church at Corinth took it and then beat ourselves up if we are not given the gift of tongues by God. I mean, don't I need spiritual edification as much as somebody else? And now we begin to think all of these mind games and all of this kind of stuff. God knows what we need. So to be open to it, even more than that, to desire it, but then to leave that with the Lord and to seek him until he gives you his mind related to that or any gift of the Holy Spirit in your life.

And so we want to know these things, but we also want to experience everything that is of the supernatural and the spiritual in the Christian life, in our spiritual lives, because we desperately need everything that God has for us. We have no idea we know the world we're living in right now. I don't know when the Lord's coming back. Five minutes from now would be great for me, but we have no idea what is coming our way.

We have as Christians in the United States of America, we have no idea what Christians face in North Korea, what they face in Iran, what they face in Gaza, what they face in Syria, what they face all over the world in unbelievably difficult environments. And so God looks at his whole body, he knows the gifts that we need, and let's be completely open to them and desiring them for our lives. If he has them for us and we want those gifts and we're open to them without demanding them of God, then he has his way of manifesting them in our lives.

Guest (Male): Today on According to the Scriptures, Pastor Damian Kyle has encouraged us to be open to all that God has for us, including each and every gift of the spirit, all part of our study in 1 Corinthians. If you'd like to get the CD that contains today's message from 1 Corinthians, give us a call at 209-545-5530. That's 209-545-5530.

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