"But now, brethren, if I come to you speaking in tongues, what will I profit you unless I speak to you either by way of revelation or of knowledge or of prophecy or of teaching? 7 Yet even lifeless things, either flute or harp, in producing a sound, if they do not produce a distinction in the tones, how will it be known what is played on the flute or on the harp? 8 For if the bugle produces an indistinct sound, who will prepare himself for battle? 9 So also you, unless you utter by the tongue speech that is clear, how will it be known what is spoken? For you will be speaking into the air. 10 There are, perhaps, a great many kinds of languages in the world, and no kind is without meaning. 11 If then I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be to the one who speaks a barbarian, and the one who speaks will be a barbarian to me. 12 So also you, since you are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek to abound for the edification of the church. 13 Therefore let one who speaks in a tongue pray that he may interpret. 14 For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. 15 What is the outcome then? I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the mind also; I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also. 16 Otherwise if you bless in the spirit only, how will the one who fills the place of the ungifted say the “Amen” at your giving of thanks, since he does not know what you are saying? 17 For you are giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not edified. 18 I thank God, I speak in tongues more than you all; 19 however, in the church I desire to speak five words with my mind so that I may instruct others also, rather than ten thousand words in a tongue."
I Corinthians 14:6-19
Good Morning Beloved,
Welcome to worship, we're so glad that you're here today.
Thank you for joining us
Paul’s main message in the passage, which we are going to meditate on today, is recognition brings meaning when you are trying to communicate a message from God to people. If people do not recognize, meaning they do not understand the words that you are using, then your words will have no meaning to them. All of your speaking will be worthless. And Paul says that that was what was going on as people at the church of Corinth were exercising the gift of tongues in an improper way resulting in division rather than unity and growth.
In our continuing study on I Corinthians chapter 14, we last studied the first five verses and the gift of tongues. However, this is really part of a much larger study on I Corinthians 12-14, in which we are trying to discover what makes a healthy church. In the first 5 verses of this chapter, we saw that the gift of prophecy, the ability to communicate a message from God in understandable and direct terms, is more useful than the gift of tongues within the context of the church worship service.
Whenever you interpret this chapter, it is important that you remember that every directive that Paul gives in this chapter in regard to tongues relates only to what happens when the church meets together for worship. For that reason, we are not going to get into whether or not the gift of tongues is ever expressed as a personal private prayer, language between the individual and God.
Let's bow our heads in prayer.
Heavenly Father,
Father, we thank You for Your Word for us today. We thank You for each and every person gathered, both here and afar. Thank You for the love of the beautiful fellowship that we enjoy. Lord, we know that many are among us here today, who likely came with anticipation of hearing a much different message than this one. Lord, I pray that You will help understand that as we read and study through Your Word, that You have a higher purpose in teaching us everything You teach us.
Father, I just pray that You would minister to everyone hearing this message especially, in spite of perhaps not giving the message that was anticipated, I pray that this message is just what's needed for their hearts.
And we pray that as we depart from one another today, that it will be with a renewed heart in which to love and serve You. And that above all else, we will seek Your will, all for Your glory in Christs’ precious name we ask and pray these things
Amen
The gift of tongues is, as we discussed previously, the ability to speak a language that you did not learn, you have not been taught, whether that language is a language spoken among men or a language that only God recognizes.
As we move ahead in chapter 14, we'll be looking at verse 6-19 today, I have but two goals for us. The first is, that we will be as brief as possible, so that my words will not get in the way of what the Holy Spirit wants to say to us. And, the second, is that the words will be so clear and touch you in a way that you will not be able to escape what the Holy Spirit wants to say and do in your life today.
Open your Bibles with me, to I Corinthians chapter 14, verse 6-19. Listen carefully for what the Spirit is saying. Follow along with me as I read to you from our text, I Corinthians 14:6-19.
"But now, brethren, if I come to you speaking in tongues, what will I profit you unless I speak to you either by way of revelation or of knowledge or of prophecy or of teaching? Yet even lifeless things, either flute or harp, in producing a sound, if they do not produce a distinction in the tones, how will it be known what is played on the flute or on the harp? For if the bugle produces an indistinct sound, who will prepare himself for battle? So also you, unless you utter by the tongue speech that is clear, how will it be known what is spoken? For you will be speaking into the air. There are, perhaps, a great many kinds of languages in the world, and no kind is without meaning. If then I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be to the one who speaks a barbarian, and the one who speaks will be a barbarian to me. So also you, since you are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek to abound for the edification of the church. Therefore let one who speaks in a tongue pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. What is the outcome then? I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the mind also; I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also. Otherwise if you bless in the spirit only, how will the one who fills the place of the ungifted say the "Amen" at your giving of thanks, since he does not know what you are saying? For you are giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not edified. I thank God, I speak in tongues more than you all; however, in the church I desire to speak five words with my mind so that I may instruct others also, rather than ten thousand words in a tongue."
Without recognition, there can be no profit. Paul says in verse 6, "But now, brethren, if I come to you speaking in tongues, what will I profit you unless I speak to you either by way of revelation or of knowledge or of prophecy or of teaching?" I believe, there are two clear teachings in this verse that all of us should be able to agree on. The first is that tongues alone has absolutely no profit for the gathered church.
There are two possible ways that you could read this verse. "…if I come to …unless —in addition— I bring you…" With that reading, the real profit is in the teaching or the prophecy, not in the tongues. Or, "…if I come…unless—through it— I bring you…"
Even if that is the real gist of what Paul is saying, for teaching or prophecy or knowledge or revelation to come through tongues, there has to be an interpretation. That is what verse 5 teaches us. There has to be an interpreter for tongues, in order to have any profit for the church as a whole. Therefore, either of these interpretations could be the correct one. But both of them teach basically the same thing. If I or anyone else began speaking this message to you in a different language, because you are unable to recognize what is being said, there is no way for you to profit from these words.
I believe, the second clear teaching from this verse is that Paul’s greatest concern was for the good of the people that he spoke to. He didn’t really care how spiritual he looked or even sounded. He didn’t really care if they liked what he was saying them. He didn’t really care about receiving some kind of self-satisfaction out of the exercise of his spiritual gifts. He was concerned about people! Why? Because he loved them.
Paul believed that the words that he had to say really would profit them if they understood them and if they obeyed them. He believed that people could profit from his words because these words were from God not of his own. Today, I echo this same motivation as Paul. I come to you today not to try to appear super spiritual, not because I think that I am better than you or that I have it all together more than you do. I do not come to you because I think that you enjoy listening to me, or what I have to say.
I come to you because I love you and because, in faith, I believe that the Words of the Bible, when understood and obeyed will change your life. The Bible says, "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." So I proclaim these words today, in order that God might build faith in you.
Without recognition, there can be no response. Paul speaks about a couple of situations that bring a response. In verse 7, he speaks of music that brings a response. How many of you who are married had a special song that was "your song" when you were dating? When you hear that song today, does it still evoke that same strong emotional feeling within you today? Likely, it does! Listening to music provokes a response in you. It causes you to remember the days gone by. It brings to mind good memories; and perhaps, some of them are not. Music can give us hope when we're facing difficulty, that better days lie ahead.
However, music can only provoke a response so long as it is being played in such a way that we can recognize it.
Unless you recognize what the Holy Spirit is trying to say to you, you will not respond in the way that He desires. If that should occur, I might as well just be "speaking into the air" as Paul says in verse 9. The greatest fulfillment for anyone who speaks a message is for them to see a response in those who hear it. But tongues, when spoken without an interpreter in the worship service cannot produce any response in the hearers except confusion and misinterpretation.
The point of any communication is to get a response whether to change attitudes, to call people to action, to correct bad thinking, to see people changed. The point of me teaching the Word of God each and every Sunday is not a way for me to blow off steam or because I like hearing the sound of my own voice. I want to see a change occur in you, and a change in me. That is God’s desire too.
It may be tempting for any believer to think that they have pleased God by coming to church on Sunday and listen to the preacher go on and on. However, it is not listening that pleases God. It is responding in obedience to what you hear that pleases God.
Like me, you may have likely heard hundreds if not thousands of sermons over the course of your lifetime. But allow me to ask you this, have you ever allowed even one of those sermons to change you? Have you ever responded to even one message in the way that God wanted?
Beloved, if the answer is no, then it might as well have been that all those preachers were speaking a foreign language. The fact is though that all of them spoke in English, and there have been times that God’s Spirit spoke clearly to your heart calling you to respond. But if you refused, you closed the door. What will your answer be when your standing before Christ one day, and He asks you why you constantly closed your ears to what He was saying so that you would not have to respond to the action that He was calling you to do?
Without recognition, there can be no relationship. The purpose of language and communication is to bring people into relationship with each other and to cause them to grow in their enjoyment of that relationship. However, sometimes, the language that we use can be more of a divisive than unifying, especially if we do not understand the language that the other person is using. You don’t have to go to a foreign country to hear a different language. It occurs in marriages every day, am I right? One person says something, the other person arrives at a completely different conclusion than the one intended and BOOM! An arguments ensues. And the first person is left saying to themselves, "What on earth did I say wrong?"
Our dialect, voice inflection, and accents can sometimes get in the way of our communication too and can lead to misunderstanding about information that is being passed on.
In verses 10 through 12 of this passage, Paul says, "There are, perhaps, a great many kinds of languages in the world, and no kind is without meaning. If then I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be to the one who speaks a barbarian, and the one who speaks will be a barbarian to me. So also you, since you are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek to abound for the edification of the church."
What is Paul saying? Paul is talking about the role of language in building relationships between people. He says that there are all kinds of languages in the world and that all of those languages have meaning but only to the people that understand them.
Though that language is meaningful to someone, it may not be meaningful to someone else if they do not understand it. Language that is not understood by the hearer has no value for the hearer. Language that is not understood by the hearer has no value for the hearer.
And so, rather than building a bridge of friendship between two people, it actually places a barrier between them. Language is intended to break down barriers, not build them. Have you ever heard the expression, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt?"
Or as it says in Proverbs 17:28, "Even a fool, when he keeps silent, is considered wise;
When he closes his lips, he is considered prudent."
By speaking a language that someone does not understand, we actually push them further away than if we had just remained silent. As Paul says, I become a foreigner to them, and they become a foreigner to me. Once we recognize that we have a relationship with Jesus Christ, we have a huge foundation on which to build a solid relationship with each other. We can then find that we speak the same language because we have been born into the same family. The family of Christ.
Beloved, God’s great desire is for us to be in relationship. A relationship with Him and a relationship with one another, a relationship with other believers in the body of Christ.
Is any wonder why Jesus became human? So that He could communicate the truth of God to us in language that we could understand so that we could come to understand the safety of a relationship with Him.
The purpose of God communicating with us is to bring us from who we once were into a close, everlasting relationship with Him. God desires this so much that He came down to earth and was born as a baby so that we would be able to understand the language that He spoke and not be frightened of Him anymore.
Without recognition, there can be no agreement. This is what Paul is talking about in verses 16 and 17 when he says, "Otherwise if you bless in the spirit only, how will the one who fills the place of the ungifted say the “Amen” at your giving of thanks, since he does not know what you are saying? For you are giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not edified."
Without recognition, there can be no maturing. You don’t have to say a lot to evoke a powerful emotion in people’s hearts and a lot of meaning in their minds. Don't believe me?
Allow me to just try this exercise out on you, I'll speak a few phrases to you, and you see how much impact they have on you.
"Will you marry me?"
"It's a boy!"
"I'm sorry but we have to let you go.."
"You don't have much time."
"You have cancer.."
Though few words, each of those phrases quickly evoke a strong emotional response don't they?
From what Paul is saying here in verses 18-20, I get the idea that the people at Corinth were having a contest, whether real or implied, to see who talked the most in tongues. I guess they thought that the one who spoke the most in tongues was more spiritual.
In our day, I guess we could have that same contest. We could even broaden to find out who shared their faith the most, or who delivered liturgy the most, or who spoke the most sermons, whose sermons were the longest.
I know, that some of you think that some of my sermons are long. Come on, I hear things! However, the longest sermon on record was over 53 hours long! Breaking the previous record of 48 hours! I challenge you to sit through either of those!
So, I guess that means that the person spoke the longer sermon was the most spiritual of all, right?! Paul would say, "NO!" Much speaking doesn’t make you more spiritual, especially when you’re speaking something that no one can understand. He says, "If you’re going to have a contest about who speaks the most in tongues, I’ve got you all beat hands down!" Then, he goes on to say though that he would rather speak 5 words that everyone can understand than speak an inexhaustible number of words in a language from which they could not profit.
If Paul was present today, and I asked him to share a message that had meaning with us, but he only had 5 words or less to do it in, I imagine that he might say something like this:
"Jesus loves you."
"You're a sinner!"
"You can be forgiven!"
"Christ is coming back!"
In Closing....
I pray that you have understood what I have shared with you today If so, then you need to respond to it, by whatever God is calling you to do. I have no idea what that might be, nor do I need to know. Maybe you and someone in your family have not been communicating lately, and you need to ask for forgiveness. There are no more powerful words than "Will you forgive me?" except perhaps the corresponding answer of "Yes, I forgive you."
Is it possible that for whatever reason, you have not been speaking one another’s language, and you need to take it to prayer, asking God to help you understand one another, so that you can have a relationship together. He can restore it! Or maybe you need the relationship between you and your spouse is falling apart, and you need to learn to speak in a language that they can understand. You need God’s help for that too.
Maybe you’ve spoken a lot of words, but the response you wanted hasn’t happened because they haven’t understood the language that you’ve been using. Are you willing to learn a new language?
I understand that some of what I’ve been saying here today, may not be real clear to you, but God’s Spirit is clearly saying that something is not right in your life, and you feel like that if you don’t get it settled right now, you’re going to explode. As I have often said, it's not what we say but what they hear
I would encourage you to come ...talk to Him right now. In whatever language you speak, I can promise you this, God will understand the deepest cries of your heart...
And now may the Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen
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