Speaking In Tongues

Tomorrow we'll be observing Pentecost, an annual holy day, a very important holy day. In 31 A.D., we know from the book of Acts, God brought together a community of people. A community of people who had become on the fringe of Judaism. Most of them had been in Judaism. We know from some of the things that are said in Acts 2 that they had come from all over the world. Most of them were Jews by heritage. Some of them were Gentiles who had converted. They came from all over, and they were there. God poured out His Holy Spirit. It's the first time in the history of the Bible that God poured out His Spirit on a fairly large number of people. The book of Acts just tells us what happened because of that. This amazing story of how a group of people, most of the leaders, not important people, fishermen, tax collectors, Paul was the only scholar among them. How he uses them to keep this movement growing and growing and growing until, by the time of the death of John, Christianity has become a certain amount of a threat to the Roman Empire. It's a huge, amazing impact that they had, and it started there in 31 A.D. It is believed that the Ten Commandments were given to ancient Israel on Pentecost. When you put that together, when they left Egypt, they end up before the mountain, and it's on the day of Pentecost. There are certain similarities between that first Pentecost that we... It's not called Pentecost yet. That's not given until later. But that time when God did something on that day, because all the Holy Days are all revealing parts of God's plan of salvation throughout history. So that giving of the Ten Commandments then, and what happened to 31 A.D. are connected. Let's go to Acts 2.

Acts 2.

I'm setting this up. I'm actually going to go through a subject that we very, very seldom talk about. I told my wife, you know, I haven't heard a sermon on this subject in years. She said, well, neither have I, because my pastor never has given a sermon on it.

This is what I live with. You have no idea. And then I realized, well, I had, but it was 20 years ago. So it's time to cover it again. Verse 1, when the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing, mighty wind, and had filled the whole house where they were sitting. There is an audible experience that people hear the sound of a rushing wind. Then, verse 3, there appeared to them divided tongues of fire, as one said upon each of them. In other words, it looks like these lightning bolts, these fires coming down from heaven and landing on each of these people. A visible expression of something God is doing. And verse 4 says, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. So you have this visual and audible experiences of the people there. On the Mount on Sinai, when God gave the Ten Commandments and appeared before Israel and came to live with them – and we're going to talk about that tomorrow, how God came to live with them, what that means for us – they heard His voice. They saw fire on the mountain. And it was this collective experience. Now you have a community come together, and they have a collective experience that involves sound. The sound that sounds like a tornado going through. And they all start speaking in tongues. And they see fire that comes down upon each one of them. There are similarities between these two experiences, and there are great differences between these two experiences. What I want to talk about today is what is speaking in tongues. Basic doctrine. All of you can give the shorthand of this. You know what shorthand is? How many of you know what shorthand is? It's never more than about 25 percent. I don't even know if they do shorthand anymore. My mom used to do shorthand, and she would take notes in church in shorthand. And I remember looking at it and thinking, she's just scribbling. There's nothing here that makes sense. And what it is is that people used to be trained to take dictation, and they would write out what a person is saying. And no matter how fast they were talking, they could write it out because it was a whole language of itself. And which little scribbly things meant entire phrases. They would take that later, and they could write out a transcript that was almost word for word with what the person said. But it was in shorthand, so it might be a page long, and they ended up with three pages of transcribal. Anybody hear no shorthand? No. One. Okay. Two. Two people. And you knew it. Okay. Well, that means all three of you are rather old. But anyways...

I want to go through a little bit. I just don't want to do the shorthand. I think there's so many doctrines that we know that we know the shorthand. Have you ever had a discussion with a friend of yours who's a really good evangelical, and maybe you're eating someplace, and he says, Man, the pork here is really good. This pork barbecue. And you order beef. And he says, No, no, the pork's really good. And you say, I don't eat pork. Why not? Well, in Leviticus 23... not 23. That's the Holy Days. But in Leviticus, it says, don't eat pork. And so you give your shorthand. And then he responds with, well, Peter was told, eat all things. He gives his shorthand. Now, you're covering a huge amount of verses, each of you. And in one sentence, you've given your shorthand. And then you come back with the Scripture. And they come back with the Scripture. And pretty soon, he's eating his pork sandwich, and you're eating your beef sandwich, and you just say, Ah, it doesn't matter. Right? I mean, we'll just be friends. Because your shorthand isn't changing anybody. And you can't change anybody. He doesn't want to change anyways. But we need to know the depth of why we come to the conclusions we do. Because why are we different sometimes? Speaking in tongues. What does that really mean? And there's only two major passages that talks about it. And we're going to go through both of those and tear those passages apart and look at what is actually being said. In the Pentecostal movement today, and the Charismatic movement, and the last time I looked up, if you take the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, which are very similar, in fact, they call each other the same thing sometimes, but they are differences. In those movements today, there's over 300, almost 400 million people in the world that are Pentecostals and Charismatics. Most are in the United States. Others are in South America. And it is a huge movement. How many here have ever been involved, watched, I won't ask if you've been involved, but you've seen a speaking in tongues service? Okay, a few of you. Now, they can be very different from each other. Sometimes speaking in tongues can be just... it's a simple thing. They're standing, they're singing, maybe there's some moving, you know, swaying and going on, and then someone will just sort of talk in some gibberish that no one else knows what they're saying. Much of the time, it turns into a huge show of enormous proportions. Last week in Nashville, I suggested people go online and start to suggest some to go look at, and I thought, no, don't do that. But sometimes it's not a bad idea to do it. Go watch Benny Hinn or some of the others, and just type in charismatic or pedicostal meeting when you do. Some of them become huge amounts of people chanting, dancing. There's always music involved that keeps this feeling going. And then people begin to just scream and holler, talk in gibberish. It doesn't make any sense. Many times they begin to fall down. Sometimes they get down on all fours and act like animals, literally, barking, making sounds. Holy laughter was a movement a number of years ago. There's still that. Where in a pedicostal or charismatic movement, they start to laugh uncontrollably and they can't stop.

And sometimes there's just people falling down on top of each other. Sometimes there are megachurches with 5,000 people in there. This isn't a small movement. And they go back to this, Pentecost, and they say, this is the proof that the Holy Spirit has been given to you. It's because you're speaking in tongues.

And it's difficult to understand why you make an issue out of this until you've actually seen one. I've never attended one. I remember as a kid we used to drive by Pentecostal Church on Sunday evenings, and they always had the windows open, and the lights were on so you could see all the shadows of people jumping around. And I always said, man, I want to go see what that's like. That just seems nuts as a little kid. And you could hear all the sounds coming out. But this is important in our observance of Pentecost, why we don't do what almost 400 million Christians do.

So, we're going to talk about speaking in tongues. It's not one of those exciting messages, exciting subjects, but it's an important doctrine. And as I mentioned a while back, I am going to be going through doctrines on a regular basis, not every Sabbath. We still haven't covered all the prophecy sermons yet. It'll be the end of the year before we get those. But we're still going to go through what we teach about certain things and why.

Mark 16. Mark 16. You think, well, what happened here in Acts was just a unique thing. It really has no importance. But actually it does. Mark 16. This is what Jesus said when He ascended to heaven. And He ascended and He came back. And then He ascended and He wasn't coming back, not in bodily form. Mark 16, verse 15 says, And He said to them, Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Preaching the gospel is a command to the church. The church is commanded to preach the gospel.

We have no choice in that. And that doesn't mean people who do it in front of other people. You and I, we preach the gospel every day in how we act and treat other people and present ourselves. He says, And he who believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will follow those who believe. In thy name they shall cast out demons, and they will speak with new tongues. So one of the things that happened in the early church was there were all kinds of miracles that we have never seen since then. Now, they're still casting out of demons today. They're still healing today. I haven't seen anyone with this gift of tongues today, but we'll have to explain what it means.

So Christ told them, You will speak in tongues. This is going to happen. For the preaching of the gospel. For the preaching of the gospel. So let's go back now to Acts 2. And let's look at what happened here and compare it to what a normal speaking in tongue meaning is today.

Acts 2 and verse 5. So this is immediately after all these people are speaking in tongues. They're not talking like they did before this event. So something miraculous has happened. And there were dwelling Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And there were a lot there from every nation because it was a holy day. There were three times during the year that were pilgrim feast and people would come if they could. You might live in Greece. You might live up in Gaul, which is France today. You might live all over the empire. You might live in Syria. And you might get to go to Jerusalem one time in your life. And it would be during a pilgrim feast. It would either be unleavened bread, Pentecost, or feast determinants. But you had to go there at least once. It was the dream of all Jews. And if you had the money and the ability, you would try to go there as much as you could. And that would be very difficult when you figure the difficult of traveling of that time. Man, it was a hard feast of tabernacles. We had to drive four hours to get there. And an air-conditioned car going 70 miles an hour. Oh yeah, I only had to travel 500 miles from Egypt across the Sinai desert to be here on a donkey. So there's a little difference in their experience than ours.

But they came. So they're dwelling in Jerusalem. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together all over the temple compound there, because they're in a room, a house, that's in that temple compound. When the sound occurred, the multitude came together and were confused. Here's why. Because everyone was talking in gibberish, people were down on their knees talking like dogs, and some people were just falling down and foaming at the mouth. That's not what it says.

Because everyone heard them speak in his own language. In order to preach the gospel, these people were given this gift from God that suddenly they could speak other languages. They are all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, Look, are none of these who speak Galileans? You know, it'd be like today's, man, all these people are from like central Mississippi. All fishermen and construction workers. I'm not putting down anyone from central Mississippi. I'm just saying that's how they would look at this. They're not sophisticated people.

How is it that we hear each and our own language in which we were born? Then, deliberately, Luke gives all the different places that people would come from. Parthians and Medes and Elamites. Those dwelling in Mesopotamia, which is up Greece and Asia Minor. Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia. That doesn't mean China, but it does mean areas that were east and north of Jerusalem. Paregia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and parts of Libya. Adjoining Cyrene. Visitors from Rome, both Jews and Proselytes. So there's people there that aren't Jews, but those who had become, adheres to Judaism. Christians and Arabs. And we hear them speaking in our own tongues and wonderful works of God. What were they hearing? People speaking in their own tongues, telling them about God. That's what they're hearing.

So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, Whatever could this mean? Others mocking said they are full of new wine. They're drunk. We've got a bunch of drunkards here outside the temple in the temple complex. Peter standing up with them, with the 11, raised his voice and said to them, Let this be known to you and heed my words. They're not drunk. And then he goes on to explain, this is a fulfillment of prophecy. In the book of Joel, it says there will come a time, the time of the Messiah, when God's Spirit was going to be poured out on all people. And he actually quotes a number of verses here from the book of Joel. And he says, this is happening right now. This is God's Spirit. You're able to hear this truth from God in your language.

So some are hearing it in Hebrew. You know, most of the people were there.

They spoke Aramaic. But there are some that are hearing it in Latin. Some of them are hearing it in the Persian language. Some are hearing it in the language where they came from. And they're hearing them talk to them about God. So that's what happens here in this event. Now, here's what the Charismatic movement does.

Because I want to go through how they build their arguments. I'm going to do that, you know, in my series on prophecy. We have a prophetic message in the Bible study. And I'm going to show you how people come to their conclusions. Otherwise, we're just using our shorthand. Here's my paragraph against your paragraph.

And so we don't get into the deeper meaning of things. Here's my shorthand against your shorthand. We have to know this, not by shorthand, because we know the Scripture.

We know the Scripture. I think the greatest challenge to the Church of God today is a lack of in-depth knowledge of the Scripture.

That's the greatest challenge. Because won't Christianity perverse the Scripture in a way that even has conservative Baptist thinking the tribulation has started? That's how weird it is. In fact, we'll talk about that, why they believe that, and what they think is going to happen next, which isn't what's going to happen next. So we've got to look at that. We'll look at why they come to that conclusion in the Bible study. What they do is they take Matthew 3. So we're going to come back here to Acts, and we're going to go to Matthew 3. And then we're going to look at another passage that talks about speaking tongues.

Matthew 3. What we have is John the Baptist is having a baptism. People are coming from Jerusalem. There's lots and lots of people. A big multitude of people come, and he's doing baptisms. And the Pharisees and the Sadducees show up. Pharisees and Sadducees show up, and he tells them.

Verse 9. He turns to these religious leaders, and he says, Do not think to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our Father. For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. They believe that through physical birth, they were superior to other people because they were the physical children of Abraham. And basically salvation came through that. If you were born in Israel, you weren't a fast track to being for salvation. Because then you were given the law, and then the law, all the good things you did at the end of life had to be more than all the bad things. And that's how God gave you salvation. Because you were born for salvation. And he says, I know that's what you think. I mean, John the Baptist. He's a Jew. He says, I know this is what you think. And he says, just think of this. Now, he wouldn't say this because he didn't know what DNA was. He's basically saying, God could take some dirt here and a few rocks and create a Jew with Jewish DNA. A hundred percent Jew puts the breath of life in him, and he would be just like you. So don't think that is what saves you.

He says, therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance. Oh, I'm sorry, that was verse 8. Verse 10. And even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which is not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Okay, so this is a judgment, a scary judgment. He says, God will cut down those who have a false belief in salvation. And he's talking specifically to them, it's a scary thing because they were supposed to know better. He says, and you will be thrown into fire. Now, he doesn't specifically say each of you, but he's giving a general judgment here. That if there are people who know better and they totally reject God, they will end up with fire. Now, we know Jesus taught about Gehenna more than any other person in the New Testament. They all talk about Hades except James once. And the reason why is no one would have known what Gehenna was unless you lived in Judea. Because Gehenna was a place. And I think I'm going to give some sermons on heaven, hell, eternal judgments, immortal soul. We're going to go back and relay all that.

So, we know he speaks of Gehenna as a fire that is a judgment. So, he uses fire very specifically all through most of his teachings.

He says, verse 11, Now, this is John the Baptist saying this, but he's using it here the way Jesus uses it. Now, what? Pentecostal Charismatic Movement says, you must receive, if you really are baptized, you must receive the baptism of fire. So, you receive water baptism, which they teach water baptism. You must receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which we teach through the laying of a lot of hands. And you must receive the baptism of fire. And the baptism of fire was the tongues of fire that came down upon those people. And so, you don't see the tongues of fire today, but after baptism, you should immediately start speaking in tongues. Because that proves you actually have God's Spirit. In fact, some of them go so far to say, if you don't speak in tongues, you don't even have God's Spirit. You're not a Christian at all.

So, he says there's a baptism of fire. Now, what's the next verse say? Now, this is speaking of Jesus Christ, who's going to baptize with water, baptize with the Holy Spirit. His winnowing fan is in his hand. Now, what that means is, when they would harvest grain, they would sift it, they would take out all the grain, and all the little stubbles and leaves and junk that was in there would be swept up, and they would burn it. And they would have a fan, okay, to keep the fire going, to burn up, what was called the chaff. His fan, okay, this is Jesus Christ. His fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor, and gather his wheat into the barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. Now, it sounds to me like you don't want the baptism of fire, because baptism just means immersion. You're immersed in the water, you're immersed into God's Spirit, you don't want to be immersed into fire. But this is used as the absolute foundation of the Pentecostal movement. You must receive the baptism of fire, and that is the speaking in tongues. Now, we do know when we go back into the Gospels, that they were told, the followers of Jesus were told, You go to Jerusalem, and you wait for me. So after he died, and he left, he said, You go there and you wait. Of course, he presented himself as the wave-sheaf offering. He came back, taught his disciples, and then 50 days later, after the wave-sheaf offering, he is there, waiting for him. They have gathered together. They're already a community. They're on the fringe of Judaism, but they're still a Jewish community, and they come together in the temple, around the temple, at Pentecost. And this happens to them. And the gift of tongues is given. It's very interesting in there. You go back through the words tongues. They're in Acts, Chapter 2, and I won't go back and pick out each one of them, but some of them are glossa in Greek, which just means your tongue. And so it's often used to mean speaking. You speak with your tongue. It generally means your tongue, but it's used all the time to mean a language. Your tongue is your language. That's the language in which you speak. You use your tongue. There's another word there that if you translate it into English exactly, it means dialect. It's the dialect in which a person speaks. Which is interesting, because you can have the same language, and the dialects be so different they can't understand each other. So there were dialects given, so that each person heard in their own language. Now, the gift of tongues wasn't given to everybody in the New Testament. You'll find it scattered here and there, usually so that God can show, or always, because God can show, this is what I'm doing. And these people are given the gift of tongues, so that now they can spread the truth to everybody else. So they can speak to other people. When we get to Corinth in the 50s, and of course, every time we go to Corinth, they've really messed it up. That church messed up everything they were taught.

And they messed up speaking in tongues.

So let's go look at what is taught here. In a church, we're speaking in tongues in a limited way. It would be like, in some ways, like a very calm Pentecostal church. 1 Corinthians 14.

There's no holy laughter.

And most speaking in tongues is not a known language. It is just something the person makes up. Now, I have talked to people who have gone through that experience, come from that background, and some will say, I don't know, I just was taken over by this feeling, and I started jibber-jabbering. Other people have told me, oh, I just faked it. Because I was really like, boy, you're not very holy. You're not very spiritual. What's your problem? So I would just jabber a little bit, and oh, good. You've received the baptism of fire.

But if you've ever actually watched...

Oh, man. I won't even mention the names. There's those out there. If you watch those services, you will see what happens in the full extension of what a Pentecostal and Charismatic church can be.

So let's start in verse 1 of 1 Corinthians 14. Just do a little exegetical teaching here. Go through some of these verses and say, what does it actually mean? Because this is used to prove that you should speak in babbling tongues that no one else knows. Remember in 1 Corinthians 13, Paul said, if I speak in the tongues of angels, and I don't have agape, it's meaningless. So you know how that's interpreted? Some people speak in the tongues of angels, which means nobody can understand them but angels.

So if you're just jabbering and someone's saying, I don't know what you're saying, I'm speaking in the tongue of an angel. I speak in an angel language.

Of course, when you read 1 Corinthians 13, Paul is being, as he often can be, quite sarcastic. Paul could be a sarcastic guy. He just uses hyperbole to make a point. If I could speak, then only me and angels could have the conversation, but I didn't have the character of God, it's meaningless. That's what he's saying. So now he deals with this problem. He says, pursue agape. Now, 1 Corinthians 13 is all about agape. Remember, there's no chapter breaks in a letter. This is all added later. So he's ending up this thought about the love of God with pursue this kind of love and desires spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy. Now, this is where people misunderstand this, too. There is an office called a prophet in the Bible. These people were given very special help from God to understand his plan, his future. They are used to, by him, to be inspired to go to kings, to go to nations. They're inspired by him to write part of the Bible. They're prophets. But the word prophecy, especially here in Greek, doesn't mean always divinely telling you about the future, because you received a divine message. It simply means that you speak the words of God, you speak the counsel of God. That's the best way to put it. Not that God is speaking to you in this command. You speak the counsel of God. So, any time you're with somebody and you're going through the Bible and you're explaining the Bible correctly, you are prophesied.

Especially if you're talking about Revelation. Now, if you have the office of prophet, you're going to say, and let me tell you what is not in Revelation because God has revealed to me something that's not there. If someone tells you that, run away from them. If someone tells you they've been revealed something that's not in the Bible, run away from them. So, he's saying here, I would rather you talk about spiritual truth that comes from the Word of God than speak in tongues. But for he who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. For no one understands him. However, in the Spirit he speaks mysteries. He says, so when you're talking and no one understands what you're saying, he says, you're just talking to God.

Everybody else around you, well, thinks you're drunk. Isn't that what happened? In fact, you'll say that here. Isn't that what happened in Acts? These people are drunk. Someone says, no, they're not drunk. I hear them speak in Persian. And they're telling me about God. The other person says, no, that's just gibberish. So it has to have, it can't be just meaningless to the listener. And this is really important. Speaking in tongues must mean something to the speaker and mean something to the listener. If the speaker doesn't know what he's saying, he's in trouble. If nobody else knows what he's saying, well, Paul tells us how to deal with that.

He says, he who prophesies speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men. In other words, when you speak the truth from the Scripture, when you talk to other people, he's not just talking here about public speaking or giving a sermon. He's talking about when we talk, when we speak the truth of the Scripture, we help each other. Because remember, when we talk about speaking in tongues here in Corinth, it wasn't just the leaders getting up and speaking in tongues. Most of the people, or many of the people, were speaking in tongues. They were speaking all at the same time. It was sort of a weird, but it had a Pentecostal feel to it because everybody's talking at the same time. Babbling. What are they doing? Not making it up. They actually are speaking in languages. Oh look, I can speak in Latin. And they start talking in Latin. Well that's okay because I can now speak in Aramaic. And in Corinth, nobody speaks Aramaic because we all speak Greek. So that I can beat you, I can speak in Barbarian, which was ancient German. And nobody speaks in ancient German. In fact, we've never had a member come to this church who speaks in ancient German, but I can do it. I mean, you've got this... I'm being bizarre, but understand the bizarreness of what's going on. It is absolute confusion in this church.

And he says, he who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, and he who prophesies edifies the church. Just because you can speak in a tongue, okay, God gave you a gift. But it is meaningless to the church. Understand. Part of what he goes through here is speaking in tongues without proper purpose is meaningless to the church. What happens in Pentecostal meanings is not only meaningless to the church, it is... A few weeks ago I talked about doctrines of demons. It is a doctrine of demons. Because people become... can in those meetings come under demonic influence.

When a person is so far out of control that they're down on the floor, all acting like dogs and cats, that is not God's spirit. There is a spirit involved. So this is a doctrine of demons. That's why we need to talk about it. He says, I wish all of you spoke with tongues, but even more that you talk about the things of God.

And share with each other that, for he who prophesies is greater than he who speaks in tongues, unless indeed he interprets, and the church may receive edification. Okay, I'm going to say this in Latin, and then I'm going to go and speak it in Greek so the rest of you will know what I'm saying. He says, I guess you could do that. So the one person there who speaks Latin says, oh, I get it, but you just can't keep speaking if nobody knows. But now, brethren, if I come to you speaking with tongues, what shall I profit you unless I speak to you either by revelation or knowledge, by prophesying or by teaching? He says, what good is it if I come to you speaking in tongues? What good is it to you? Now, I'm thinking he could even write this in Hebrew. He knew Hebrew. What good was it if he would have written a Hebrew letter to the people in Corinth? It would have been meaningless to them. Right? So he says, look, so I can speak tongues. In fact, he says, even things without life. And this is very interesting. He says, let's look at an inanimate object, a flute or a harp when they make a sound, unless they make a distinction. In the sound, how it would be known what is piped or played.

Every once in a while, my grandkids like to get in my harmonicas. Oh, that is a sound. A bunch of little kids blowing on a harmonica. And he says, that's all it is. It's meaningless noise. This gift from God had become meaningless noise in the church. And the word here is glossa. Say a word used in Acts.

For if a trumpet makes an uncertain sound, who will prepare for battle? So likewise you, unless you utter by the tongue words easily to understand how it would be known what is spoken, for you will be speaking into the air. See the meaninglessness of this? And he's not talking about the gibberish of a charismatic meeting. He's talking about people who are actually speaking in tongues. He says, you know how meaningless this gift is if you're not using it right? It's absolutely meaningless. And that's a gift from God. Not the gift that's coming to those people that's not from God.

Because that's not from God.

He says, there are, it may be, so many kinds of languages in the world that none of them is without significance. Now understand his argument. There's lots of languages, and all of them may be important. But he's not talking about a meaningless language, meaningless words. So part of his argument is, there's lots of languages, and, you know, God may give you a gift of a language to help this person here. But that's what it's for. He's speaking of known languages. Therefore, if I do not know the meaning of the language, I shall be a foreigner to him who speaks, and he who speaks will be a foreigner to me. Now we get down to the problem. Speaking in tongues had become a way of aggrandizing yourself and your own spirituality. And he says, you know what's happened in the church? You're all foreigners to each other. It's funny because they all would have spoken Greek. But everybody's speaking other languages because God gave that to them. So nobody's talking. Nobody's understanding. Everybody's just blabbing away.

And he says to them, you've become foreigners to each other. The purpose of the church is to have a relationship with God and a relationship with each other as the children of God, and that was being destroyed in the church because of a gift God gave to them.

Even so you, since you are a zealous for spiritual gifts, let it be for the edification of the church. Let it be so that you know each other and love each other and teach each other and help each other. That's what this should be all about, that you may seek to excel.

Therefore, let him who speaks in a tongue pray that he may interpret. In other words, if you say something in another language, stop and now say it in Greek. So everybody can know, because Greek would have been the language. Say it in Greek now. Don't just speak in another language. Which made speaking in times meaningless. Well, let me show off. Here's the problem. It had become a spiritual badge, and so its purpose in helping people be led to God had been lost entirely.

If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful. He says, if I pray in a tongue, I don't understand. What good is it? What is the conclusion, then? I will pray with the spirit. I will also pray with the understanding. I will sing with the spirit, but I will also sing with the understanding. Now, what was happening there, too, is they were all singing different songs at the same time. You read... So people were speaking in different languages at the same time. They were all singing different songs at the same time, and different people were giving the sermon at the same time.

So that's why I say, this was when the church became fringe charismatic here, and he had to say, No, you stop this. This is not of God. Otherwise, if you are blessed with the spirit, how will he who occupies the place of the uninformed say, Amen? At your giving of thanks, since he does not understand what you say. So he says, So you get up and you pray and you thank God, and half the congregation, or most of them, don't even say Amen. They have no idea what you said. You can only say Amen, because, basically, I agree. So you can't say I agree, because you don't know what anybody is saying. He says, So nobody can say Amen at the end of a prayer.

How can this be used to say you can speak in tongues? I have no idea. But once you go down that road, speaking in tongues means so much to you. The gibberish, the screaming, the hollering, the dancing.

That feeling becomes the determinant of how you interpret the Scripture.

He says, If they can't say Amen, what good is it? For you indeed give thanks well, but the other is not edified. I thank my God I speak with tongues more than you all. And He did. God not only probably gave Him the gift of tongues, but He would have known at least three languages just because of where He grew up. He would have known Aramaic, He would have known Hebrew, and He would have known Greek. So He already knew three languages. So I don't know if God gave Him more help, or if He just... I just naturally speak more tongues than you do.

Yet in the Church, I would rather speak five words with my understanding that I may teach others also than ten thousand words in another language.

So Paul here clearly teaches that we are speaking in tongues has no meaning. Unless the person saying it knows what he's saying, and the person who's listening knows what he's saying. I find it interesting that they may have had people there pretending to speak in tongues. The reason I say that, he implies that some of them don't even know what they're saying. Just like I've had people tell me, oh no, I pretended to speak in tongues because I didn't. I had to to fit in. That actually may have been happening there. Well, what language are you speaking in? I don't know. So it's all that is probably the tongue of an angel.

What's very interesting in verse 22, I won't go through... this covers it, but I'll just mention a few other things. Therefore, tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe, but to the unbelievers. But prophesying is not for unbelievers, but for those who believe. Therefore, if the whole church comes together in one place, and all speak with tongues, and there comes into those who are uninformed or unbelievers, will they not say, these people are out of their minds? And if you watch a charismatic movement, or service, or Pentecostal, you will come to the conclusion they're out of their minds.

And he says, remember, the giving of tongues was so that you could help unbelievers, so that they could hear the words of God in their language. That's the purpose of it. It's not so we all get together and just cause chaos. But if all prophesying an unbeliever or an uninformed person comes in, he is convinced, and he is convicted.

If they hear it in their own language, they're convicted. If they just hear a bunch of people babbling, they think you're all crazy. Or, as in Jerusalem, they're all drunk. They have to be drunk to act like that. The rest of this chapter is him telling them that they have to learn to have order in services. And he would go on and even discuss that more in his letter. But you have to have order. You can't have this chaos they were having. You and I are going to commemorate the giving of tongues tomorrow.

We're going to go commemorate that as one of the great acts of God. Now, I have never met anyone that has been given the gift of tongues today. That someone actually started speaking another language that they didn't know so that they could teach somebody God's way. If he wants to do that, he can do that. Maybe it's something that will happen in the tribulation.

With our technology and everything today, our ability to learn language is so different than anybody could go learn the language, right? I had a man one time. He was from Portugal. He spoke Spanish. I went to speak. He was down in Texas. I went to do some baptism counseling with a woman who, her English was very, very weak. She was from Mexico. I said, would you come with me and translate?

Because he actually worked for the government there in San Antonio as a translator. He said, yeah. So he came and I talked. He translated. She talked. He translated. We did that for a while.

Then we both got out of our Bibles. Later we got in the car. I got my Bible. She's got her Bible out. He said, I think I just saw the miracle of tongues. I said, I don't know what you mean. He said, actually what happened was she knows just enough English and you know just enough Spanish that you don't realize that after about 20 minutes I was ignored because you had your Bibles out.

You say, Holy Spirit. You'd point out, she'd say, Spirito Santo. Yes, yes, yes, the Spirito Santo. And he said, you were actually talking in two languages at the same time looking at the Bible. That wasn't a miracle. That just had to be two people that had enough that we could share. But he laughed after that. We got in the car and he said, yeah, you didn't even need a translator. And so we did every once in a while because we had to look at him and say, what does that mean?

You know, and he would translate it for us. But after a while we were doing most of the translation yourself just from knowing a little bit, a few words. Today we can do that, right? We're not divided by language as much as we used to be. Although I think it would take God has to bring somebody into the church who speaks Chinese or give a gift of tongues to go to the Chinese.

How do we talk in that language? How do we even think in that language? It's so different than ours. So the gift of tongues seem to disappear early in the New Testament. It just isn't there. You don't see it mentioned at all after Corinth. You don't even see it mentioned.

It's just not an issue. It doesn't seem to be something that's being given. As the church is developed all over the place, everybody knows different languages and they're able to communicate. So tomorrow, we don't talk about speaking in tongues. We mention it. We read through it on the Holy Day. But think about that tomorrow. That great miracle God did in order to take the gospel to the world.

And He's given us all kinds of tools and abilities to do that that are amazing. That God's given to us. Just the technology. Not that God gave us the technology.

You and beings were able to do that on their own. But what's happened is we're able to use it. We're able to use that technology. So tomorrow, as we go through God's spirit, what it means to have God's spirit poured out in us.

We're going to talk about that in the morning. We're going to talk more about God's spirit in the afternoon. Both of the sermons sort of connected together. We're going to talk about who are we now. We're not going out and speaking in tongues. But what is it that God is doing now?

Because we still commemorate, we're still part of that group of people in which the Holy Spirit was poured out. Then we don't see it in tongues of fire. We receive it in baptism and laying out of hands. And we receive that same power, that same mind of God. So we'll talk about that tomorrow.

Well, thank you, Mr. Petty, for that message. If you all will rise and taper hymnals, we have one last opportunity to sing a hymn to God. If you'll turn over to page 97, we'll sing, Behold, the Day Will Come. So that's page 97.

And then after this, we'll have the closing prayer by Mr. Mark Smith.