First Corinthians 14:26-33 Tongues and prophecy should be for edification

Well, good morning. Today we continue on in 1 Corinthians 14. We're actually getting close to the end, and Lonnie reminded me a couple weeks ago, Roger, how many more tongues and prophecy are we gonna hear? Hasn't Paul said enough? Well, apparently not. He's got this week and next week to tell us. And actually, it's interesting. You know, the whole dialogue that Paul goes through here is, is interesting, and this is a particularly interesting one because he's going to, you know, he spent this time, you know, Mike and I were talking before the service began about, you know, what is our view?

What's your view of the church at Corinth? Do you think it's like, is it like Holly Hills? Is it this size? Is it a mega church? Is it a home church? Well, it seems like, and read carefully through the New Testament, many of the churches were home churches. So don't think of a massive amount of people So he's gonna give instruction here to this group of believers in Corinth about how they're to use their spiritual gifts.

And so we're talking about probably not more than we have right here today, maybe less. So, and we know each other pretty well, so it wouldn't be unusual to know people that had certain gifts. You would know that already. Like we know the people that have the gift of teaching, and they're typically are teaching. And the gift of helps, they're helping and so on.

But Paul's focused on two gifts, which actually aren't valid today. And we'll talk more about that. So let's get into it here. I want to use a picture from last week, that I used from last week. So last week we talked about, you know, Paul talks about the gift of tongue, speaking in a foreign language, to edify people that didn't know the language, that the message we didn't give it in. So they were, God provided, we saw it in Acts where he provided the ability for men to speak in a language they didn't know.

And then we see a lot about prophecy. Remember, prophecy is telling forth, this is before the New Testament was complete, it's telling forth the message of God. And it's a verbal thing. So imagine this, you wouldn't have a Bible, you would have a brother, possibly a sister that knew that God had revealed his word to, or revealed something he wanted to say, and you would listen to that brother or sister. and we're gonna see there's gonna be restrictions on this.

Okay, so last week we're gonna see, here's the problem that I'm gonna present in this little picture here. So here we have, in the verses we covered last week, it says, the whole church assembles and all speak in tongues. And what's being pointed out here is it's not that everyone in the body speaks in tongues, only the ones that are gifted are speaking in tongues. So it might be a few people.

Okay, so what happens? Paul presents this, situation where an ungifted believer, a person is a believer but he doesn't have the gift of tongues, or an unbeliever comes into the... Okay, so what happens in this body of believers, the whole church assembles, and this ungifted believer and unbeliever enter. And so what happens?

So they hear people speaking in a language they don't know. So what do they think? Well, The result, they're confused. And actually what Paul says, which is a pretty dramatic statement, they will say, you're out of your mind. If they don't understand what's being said, they say, this sounds like gibberish. This sounds like, you can't communicate in that language. If I start speaking in some language you don't understand, then you're not gonna be edified. You're not gonna understand what's happening.

Then he presents a scenario two. We have a group of believers. and all prophesy. And again, this is telling forth God's message orally. In this case, not everyone is doing that. It's only the ones that have that gift. So again, you have the ungifted believer, inners, or unbeliever.

And so what happens here, this is quite a difference here, the result of the telling forth of God's mind, as we see today, is that men are convicted. They're convicted by the people that are speaking God's word, speaking God's mind. And they're judged, they're also judged by the ones that are speaking God's mind. And it says they fall on their face and they say, God is certainly among us.

Alright, so there's a contrast on this chart between a body of believers joined together and people enter and they hear something that's unintelligible. So they can't benefit by that. But if they do come into a body of believers and they hear God's word intelligibly, then they're convicted, they're judged, and they say, certainly God is among you.

All right, so let's look at this. I like to use McCauley's outline. So we've gotten down through last week. We got down through the purpose of tongues. We had the inferiority of tongues, the deficiency of tongues, and the reiteration of that. Then last week we had about the purpose of tongues.

This week, so what Paul's going to do, we saw that this body of believers, and he presented these two cases. He wants to to help them to have an intelligible message being presented in that body of believers So he's going to give some instructions here First of all, he says the the necessity for order and worship Worship should not be without order. There should be order in the worship. He also says it needs to be regulated and he's going to talk about the aim of the service. So the regulation is going to be in two parts that pertain to tongues and that pertain to prophecy.

So we're going to see as we go through we'll start off with kind of a general overview of the order of service. You know verse 26 the first part of that actually is like the you know we have our Bolton you have one and you probably have in the pews at the Bolton you open it up and you say well we have prelude we got announcements we got music and then we have the speaker and then we have a postlude or following songs following so we're gonna see this is a quote the order of service in this Corinthian Church So let me just reread the passage here again, just so we get our feet in the ground here again. So starting in verse 26. What is the outcome then, brethren, when you assemble, each one of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation? Let all things be done for edification.

If anyone speaks in a tongue, it should be by two or at most three. Each in turn, one must interpret. But if there is no interpreter, we must keep silent in the church. Let him speak to himself and to God. Let two or three prophets speak. Let the other pass judgment. But if a revelation is made to another who is seated, the first one must keep silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all may be exhorted. And the spirit of the prophets are subject to the prophets. For God is not a God of confusion, but of peace.

Okay, so let's start into verse 26 here. So it has this phrase, you know, you look at that phrase and it says, what is the outcome then, brethren? And I thought the Amplified did a pretty good job. It says, what then, brethren, is the right course? So Paul's saying, well, after I showed you some of the problems with improper use of tongues and not proper use of prophecy, speaking God's word, what's the right course of action?

So Paul's gonna present some order to the service. He says, when you, speaking of the members of the church, assemble, and the idea here is to come together, especially to gather the gathering of the local service. And it reminded me back, in just the verses we covered last week, when the whole church assembles together. So he's saying, when you assemble together, the whole church, So Paul now will set forth the order of the service. And the apostle now begins to regulate the use of tongues with interpretations and he urges the use of discernment with prophecy. So he realizes that both tongues and prophecy need to have some order and some regulation.

Okay, so here he starts with the order of service. Each one has a psalm, and each one or each of you As a psalm, and psalms typically are put to music. They sang the psalms, and it reminds me of this verse in Ephesians 5.19, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord. So it starts off with a psalm. You say, well, that's pretty similar to what we have now. Each one has a teaching. And teaching here is the idea to teach. In the active sense, it means the act of teaching or instructions. Timothy says, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season. So teaching is involved here in this service.

Then we have a revelation. And this is something that's probably unique to that time period because the New Testament wasn't complete. So someone might have a revelation, an expression of the mind of the Lord, a mind of God for instructions of the church. Each has a tongue speaking an unknown language. Each has an interpretation to explain or interpret. So we see here in this order of service, we see that he permits tongues, but he wants to regulate it. And one of the key parts is, it must be interpreted. Because as we found out, if no one interprets a tongue, what happens?

What's the conclusion? What conclusion do people draw? Well, you folks are a bit wacky. I don't understand what you're saying. What good is this going to do me sitting here listening to a bunch of gibberish? So there must be an interpretation. In fact, Paul's going to say, if you don't have an interpreter, sit down and be quiet. It's interesting. He has three occasions where he's going to say, basically, sit down and be quiet.

The last one's going to be a tough one, so I gave Mike that assignment to do the last one. That comes next week. I'm going to avoid that. even though I think it would be cool to teach it too. He's going to force me to teach it if I'm not careful here. Okay. All right. So let's go on. So the last part of the verse is, let all things be done for edification. You know, if you had like a banner you'd like to put over this this chapter 14, the banner would be edification.

We want to show you the things of the Lord. We want to edify you. If you come to Holly Hills and you don't come away with knowing something more about the Lord or seeing something new, then we've missed the mark. We want to edify people. If they come and say, well, Didn't learn anything and it's possible. You know everything and hopefully you do but hopefully you gain something when you come when you come to a Service you gain something, you know something more about the Lord.

You see some new truth from his word So Paul was very concerned about that that they all things be done for edification So and you recall he actually said this earlier in verse 12 he said seek to abound and for edification of the church. And that's zealously desiring spiritual gifts.

The whole thing is the edification of the church. All things, all ministries, none excluded, are done for edification. And you could summarize the definition of edification as to build up spiritually the body of Christ I think of the verse we have in the New Testament, growing grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus. You want to build people up, you want to edify them. Edification of the church is to be the main criterion for all its activities. If people aren't being edified, then it's not the right gathering that God desires.

Okay, so that's verse 26. So now we're going to start in verse, actually before that, we're going to start into verse, two verses will talk about tongues and the rest of the verses talk about prophecy. So here's kind of a little reiteration of some of these points. So what should edification look like in the church? So I'm kind of reiterating some of this. Verses 27 through 33a will give us instructions in that. Again, the proper use of spiritual gifts of tongues will be talked about.

And the proper use of prophecy, the verbally telling forth of the mind of God. Both of these gifts are no longer in existence today. Teaching of God's word has replaced prophecy. We don't need to have somebody prophesy God's word because we have his completed scriptures. And we all can share and understand individually God's word, which we hold in our hands.

But the underlying principle is all things are to be done for edification. Okay, so now starting into the tongues. If anyone speaks in a tongue, an unknown language, First, there is a regulation to secure order. Paul laid down three guidelines in this verse for the use of tongues in public worship. He said tongues should be by two or three at the most. So he's limiting it to two or three. Each in turn are taking his turn.

There must be an interpreter. Let one interpret and explain what is said, the Amplified So he says there must be an interpreter. And one of the things is you say, well, in his counting two or three, does he count, is a speaker of tongues, can he be an interpreter? And that we saw that earlier, that can be the case, not necessarily, but that can be the case where a person would interpret tongues and he wouldn't necessarily be speaking tongues. Okay, so verse 28. So now some more regulations on tongues.

But if there is no interpreter, or if he's not present, he, the one speaking in a tongue, must be silent in the church. So this is the first time we see it in this little section. Let him be maintaining his silence in the assembly, we says. The verb keep silent will occur in verse 30, coming up in 34. Let him speak to himself and to God. And we saw this earlier, this principle earlier in verse 4. The one who speaks in a tongue edifies himself.

And then in verse 2 it said, For the one who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men, but to God. So he says, I want you to keep quiet. If you want to speak a tongue, then that's just between you and the Lord, but you're not to be in the public meeting. I don't want you saying anything without an interpreter. We must have an interpreter in the meeting to have edification. Okay, so that covers tongues. So now we move on to the gift of prophecy. Again, he says, let two or three prophets speak. The prophets are speaking forth the mind of God and this was a spiritual gift.

Not everybody could do that as with tongues only a few a max of three Would have the floor in the church meeting and if we had like here if we only have 30 people or so That's and you probably know those people and you probably know if somebody different got up. You probably might scratch your head You say hmm And actually, He wants you to do that. He just doesn't want these people speaking the mind of God. This is before you had a Bible.

He wants you to check them out like we should be checking them out today. Okay. We'll see it one at a time again. The next part will tell us what the remaining prophets should do. Should the remaining prophets take a nap? Do they snooze for a while? Until it's always my turn now. No, they need to be busy, just like here. You wanna be listening, right? Make sure that Mike and I are saying the right thing. If we're not, you know, talk to us. Okay.

So here's what happens to the, let the others pass judgment. So the judgment here is discernment, hence to decide or judge. And we saw that earlier about brothers deciding among brothers. That was something that they should be doing. They shouldn't shirk that responsibility. They're obviously able to decide among brothers.

And an important word that's going to come up in the original language here is going to be the word allos, others. So the question is, who are these others? It says, let the others pass judgment. So who are these others? Is it anyone in the body of that church? Well, what's wonderful is in the Greek language, this allos tells us, gives us the answer to that question. It's another of the same kind. So it's another prophet. So he's saying, basically, the prophet is to be judged by other prophets.

And wouldn't that, is what you expect today? Wouldn't you expect teachers to talk to, you know, and we have it all the time. You know, in Sunday school classes, we're doing that, plus others who want to join in. We're judging each other. We're saying, well, what about this, and what about that? what was to be no different in that time period.

The congregation, this is an interesting point. Macaulay had this great statement. The congregation controls the gifts. The gifts do not control the congregation. And I don't know whether you've been exposed to some gathering of believers where we'll say, well, the Spirit's gonna come in here and it's just gonna do this and do that. It's gonna have its way and this is gonna be a big mess. And people will be jumping up in all kinds of craziness. Well, Paul's gonna say that's absolutely not what God has in mind.

The congregation is to control the gifts. We're to recognize the gifted people. And those are the ones that should be saying something. Then McCauley kind of shares, it is also true that the presence of prophecy was not sufficient proof for its truthfulness. and others are to pass judgments on its validity. So this is important.

Just because a particular brother stands up and says something, we're to check him out. We're to be Bereans, right? What did the Bereans do when, you know, in Acts there it says they check the scriptures to see if these things be so. And that day they didn't have scriptures.

So they had to, you know, and it would be good if it was another brother That had the gift of prophecy that could speak he could more properly judge that one that didn't have the gift Well today we all can be we all can be judges of people speaking God's Word. We all can judge them Okay Okay, verse 30.

But if something is revealed by the Spirit to another sitting by. This is a hard verse. It reads kind of funny. So I did it in the inner linear here. But if something is revealed by the Spirit to another sitting by. So who is another sitting by? So the scenario here is that it seems like you have a brother, you have a brother standing, and he's prophesying, he's speaking forth God's word. But there's another brother who has also a prophet, and he has something to say too. So the brother is speaking is to kind of give way to that person and allow him to speak. And again, this word another is key. It's Alos again, another of the same kind, another prophet.

The idea is that the first brother is not to be the only one sharing the mind of God. Well, you know, they had men in those days that had sin natures, right? Some men might like to go on forever, right? They couldn't get them to stop. Well, this is saying that a brother sitting by, you allow him to have time.

And actually, I noticed this verse, if any of you are familiar with the Brethren, that they take this verse to heart. They say, well, I think that we ought to have our meetings, at least one of our meetings, the Lord's Table, and we're gonna have brothers sharing, and they're gonna follow this regimen, if you will. One will stand up and give a message from the Lord, from Scripture, then he'll sit down, another brother will stand up, he'll give a message. So there's a... an interchange among brothers giving out God's word.

But this is Paul's instruction to the Corinthian church. And let the first be silent. So this is the second time he asked them to be silent. It's imperative, it's a command. Be silent, keep still. I think one commenter said, you know, keep your mouth shut. So silence allows God's mind to be heard in the church at Corinth.

It allowed, if you only have one person, there's always a danger that person, his pride might overtake him. He said, well, I'm the main guy here. I'll talk all the time, and the rest of you guys have to listen. Well, if we have multiple brothers, that's a good thing. They can judge each other, and hopefully God's word gets out properly. Okay.

So it says, for you can all prophesy one by one. So it sounds, that's kind of a strange phraseology. So it sounds like he's asking for permission, but I think a better interlinear has it, for you're all able to prophesy one by one. So what he's saying here, the subject here is you all, all who have the gift of prophecy. And recall, not all did. Back in early in chapter 12 there, or middle of chapter 12, we had all are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, all are not teachers, and so on. So only a few are prophets or teachers or so on.

So, are able to have the power or capacity to prophesy, to speak God's mind. And it's one by one, or the idea is one at a time. There's order. Respecting each other, one speaks, then sits down, the next speaks, and so on. It's an orderly service. Not out of control, not being overcome by a lot of craziness. Okay, so that, or with a purpose that, all may learn and all may be exhorted. And this is the whole idea of edification, right? We're all to learn, we're all to be exhorted. Learn here is to increase one's knowledge or to be increased in knowledge.

I love this verse in 2 Peter 3.18, the first part, but grow in grace and the knowledge of the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So we're to be growing in that. We're to be learning more and more about our, they were to be learning more in Corinth and we're to be learning more and more now about our Lord and Savior.

Exhort is the idea to encourage. So Macaulay kind of summarizes this little phrase here. The aim of the service is to encourage the intellect, all may learn, and to encourage the volition, all may be exhorted. Now this kind of wraps up this little section here.

And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets, for God is not a God of confusion, but of peace. So this phrase, if you notice there, and the interlinear has it properly, there's no these, there's no definite articles in the original there, so it's the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. It almost sounds like double talk. But I think if you're careful about this, so what's the subject? The spirit of the prophets is the subject. It's their human spirits.

Our subject, and this is this cool word, hupopotasso, it's a military term to line up under, like I say, yes sir, and I line up under my commander, under his rank, under his authority. but it's in the middle voice, so the idea here is subject, the spirit of the prophet, his spirit doesn't go off and do some wild stuff. He can control his spirit. So the spirits of the prophet are subject to the prophets. So the prophet's spirit are subject to himself.

So no one can say, I lost control exercising my gift. I just got swept away all of a sudden. That's not, Paul says that's not, that doesn't happen in a believer. It could happen, but he says that's not to happen. And then Merriman kind of points out that a prophet was not to be carried away by a supposed, I didn't put the word supposed, supernatural influence. And we see that today, too. People will say, well, something happened to me and I just got carried away.

So the bottom line is for God is not a God of disorder, but of harmony. Boy, if you had to kind of, this last little section here, he wants harmony and order in his body. He wants things to be done rightly and properly, people to be courteous to one another, recognizing their spiritual gifts and allowing each one to share what he has. So to kind of sum it up here, the final thought is from Macaulay. The order of service is to reflect the character of God. Isn't that what we want to do in this service, to reflect God's character? In that He is orderly. He should speak, if two should speak at once, at least one of them was not moved by God. Because disorder is contrary to His nature. And God's works are always an accurate reflection of His character.

Okay, let's just pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for our time in your Word, Father. We thank you for the marvelous blessing we have in our Savior. We thank you for this picture of Corinth that Paul has given us. We know it's an accurate picture, and it reflects your desire for your body to be a body of order that gather and to get your Word out. Help us to trust in what you've provided for us in your Word. In Christ's name, amen.