Corinthians - Stop Thinking Like Children — J. Glyn Owen

Shall we turn together to the first letter that Paul wrote to the Corinthians and to the passage that was read for us by Mr. Lowe. Our minds are going to be focused this evening for a while on verses 20 to 25 particularly.

You will remember that we've already been dwelling on the previous part that Mr. Lowe read but we come tonight to this little passage that begins with verse 20 and goes on to verse 25. May I explain to any who are visiting us and have not been here on recent Sunday evenings we were constrained in the first place to try to elucidate the tremendous truth that the Apostle Paul has concerning the gifts that he has given to his church in chapter 12 and Mr. Scharf and I began to preach a series on that.

The Unity of First Corinthians 12–14

When we came to the end of chapter 12 we found that it was really not honest with scripture to stop there without going on to chapter 13. And frankly when we came to the end of chapter 13 we realized it came home to us that we should go on to chapter 14 to make the thing complete.

Because chapters 12 to 14 are an entity really on their own. They're a section of this very remarkable and very apposite very appropriate up-to-date epistle. Now we have come to this chapter and we've seen quite a number of things already.

The main thing that we have stressed is this. The misunderstanding that when Paul wrote chapter 13 he was writing off virtually writing off the importance of the gifts of the Spirit completely. Now you may have heard that you may have read that.

I have heard it and I have read it. Those who believe that Paul wrote chapter 13 1 Corinthians 13 on love and really what he had in mind was this. Now look this is the important thing and the almost exclusively the important thing for people to be looking for.

You should cultivate love. Now if you look of course you will see that Paul says something which is very near to saying that but which is to be distinguished from that. What Paul does say is that this is the most excellent way the more excellent way.

It's the way of agape. And however many of the gifts of the Spirit you may have if you do not have agape then they come to nothing. In fact the more gifts you will have in a congregation the more trouble you will have in the absence of agape because everyone will want to exercise his gift and probably be oblivious to the needs and to the gifts of other people so that if you have these gifts in plenty without agape you're really in trouble as Corinth was at this time.

So the point of 1 Corinthians 13 was to say these things these endowments of the Spirit these charismatic gifts can only come to their own. Their multiplicity can only be expressed and the unity of the church maintained in so far as we give priority to agape to love.

But I want you to notice and this is the thing we've stressed already in starting with chapter 14 Paul comes back again to the gifts and he says now don't just forget all about the gifts seek earnestly certain things especially that you may prophesy.

And so he goes on to in this particular chapter to deal with the gifts of prophecy and of tongues particularly showing how the gift of prophecy supersedes the gift of tongue. Now the title for our meditation this evening then comes really out of the text.

I hope you don't think you didn't think that I was crazy enough to speak to a congregation and say stop thinking like children. That's a quote and I would like you to see it as a quote from from chapter 14 and verse 20.

Those are not my words. I would not have the audacity to speak to people in these terms but an apostle could he had authority so to do. And what he's telling the Corinthians at this stage is this look look men and women Christian men and women stop thinking like babies.

Now we shall come back to that in a moment but that that's really his thought is his main thrust stop thinking like babies like children. There are three main strands to this passage that I want to try and expound and do pray with me that the Lord will help us to see clearly what the apostle is getting at even though there are one or two rather difficult stages in this paragraph or difficult points to elucidate.

Maturity in Thinking and the Mind Made Unfruitful

The first thing I want you to notice is the appeal. Brothers he says here comes our title again stop thinking like children in regard to in regard to evil be infants but in your thinking be adults. The apostle has already stressed that in tongues speaking or to give it its classical designation glossolalia a lovely word isn't it glossolalia a person's mind is to quote Paul unfruitful.

Now this is not my saying this is the apostle Paul that's in chapter 14 and in verse 14. When a man is engaged in the gift of tongues his mind is unfruitful he does not really reap spiritual profit on the intellectual basis on the intellectual level neither does he communicate spiritual profit on the level of the mind.

This does not mean that there is no spiritual benefit through the use of glossolalia. But it does mean that the mind is unfruitful. Because nobody understands what he's saying unless another gift comes into play namely the gift of interpretation.

So what Paul has been stressing to this point is this in the use of glossolalia in the exercise of glossolalia a person's mind is unfruitful. And because of that he himself had elucidated the principle the principle runs something like this though I speak in tongues more than you all he says in public in church in the fellowship of the Lord's people I would rather speak five words that people can understand and therefore profit from them five thousand that people can't understand and even though they may be they may be enamored by the sound of my voice and be their imaginations be tickled by by the cadences and so forth that they don't understand anything it doesn't touch their minds it doesn't feed the soul.

So he says as far as I'm concerned this is the necessary principle for for acting the opening words of this passage takes Paul's thought appreciably further he now positively appeals to the Corinthians not to allow themselves to become children in their thinking but rather to learn to be mature and you see the implication is quite clear.

You go on exercising glossolalia ad lib whether it be in private or in public and you are virtually strangling the intellectual side of your life. The mind is in abeyance there may be your emotions may be may be really exercised and profitably exercised within certain limits insofar as the emotions can be wholly distinguished from from the mind.

But now says Paul I really I really plead with you don't allow this to happen to you don't become children in your understanding don't allow anything to dwarf your mind on the use of the mind in your Christian life it's so important your mind matters to quote the title of a book by John Stott which probably came from this from this passage.

Now the implication is clear and unavoidable. Their stress on unintelligible glossolalia speaking with tongues was such as to challenge the very possibility of their growing up to maturity. And this may sound very harsh to someone here tonight who has become involved perhaps with the gift of tongues.

And it may sound harsh. Well now what I want you to notice is that it's not I am saying this. It's the Apostle Paul and what he is saying make no mistake about it. You can become so obsessed with it so absorbed with it so taken up with it that you are you are becoming engaged and you are indulging on a level on a plane which switches off the understanding.

And whilst the understanding is switched off it's only a half of you. It's only a part of you that that's profiting at all. Leon Morris who was in this pulpit last summer. Dr. Leon Morris from Australia.

He says that the force of a particular tense the present imperative that is found here should be rendered. Stop being children in your understanding. The implication is that they are children at the moment.

They're acting like children because they're spending so much time involved in speaking in tongue. And you remember Paul does not say that this is not the gift of the Spirit. He's accepting that. But to become so obsessed with it is really making it difficult if not impossible to grow up toward Christian maturity.

One of the older and most reliable of commenters commentators Godet says it is indeed he says a characteristic of the child to prefer the amusing to the useful the brilliant to the solid. And this is what the Corinthians did by their marked taste for glossolalia.

Being Infantile Only in Evil

But in order further to stress the importance of the mind and understanding here Paul adds that the only sphere in which Christians can afford to be immature is that of evil. Now this is this is a very subtle statement but it's a very challenging one when you see it here Paul commands us not simply to be children but to be babies.

He uses quite a different word. The word is he uses it in its verbal form and the meaning is to be infantile to be childish to be a baby. He babies in evil. He says you see the tragedy with so many others is that in shady things we were quite clever.

How to avoid some of the income tax questions. Get around them. You know it's amazing how clever some people are. Or in doing this or in that we're quite clever. In evil we are clever. But Paul says now that's the sphere and the only sphere in which you can afford to be as childish as the little babe in his mother's arm.

And that's what the word means. The baby in the mother's arm who can't think for himself can't act for himself can't walk by himself can do nothing but is dependent. Now he says you can afford to be as childish as that in evil.

You see we've turned the whole world upside down and we become so sophisticated in evil our modern world if not many professing Christians whereas in understanding the things of God and in living the life of God we have become babes.

Isaiah 28 and the Significance of Unintelligible Speech

Well now that brings us to the next thing. And really this is where there's some difficulty in expounding the passage before us. It's an analogy. Look at verse 21. It reads like this in the new international version.

In the law it is written through men of strange tongues and through the lips of foreigners. I will speak to this people but even then they will not listen to me says the Lord. Now what on earth is that got to do with the passage.

It's at this stage I would like really to know what you people are saying and I think there ought to be some feedback in some of our public worship services. I wonder what you make of this. Well since I have been thrust into this position I guess I have to try and expound it.

Well now clearly the references to the law in a general sense not to the Decalogue not to the Ten Commandments because actually Paul quotes from Isaiah chapter 28. And sometimes in the New Testament we have the word law in this general sense used of the whole of the I mean in the New Testament the term law is used of the whole of the Old Testament in a general sense.

In a general way you have it in John chapter 34. And was it not last Lord's Day. No not last Lord's Day. Two weeks ago I think in another context we had the same thing the whole of the Bible the whole of the Old Testament to start off with is God's law.

It's God's way of life. It declares God's will for life and in that sense it is God's law. The Ten Commandments represent the quintessence of all the teaching of the Old Testament. The teachings of the prophets emerge out of the very quintessence we have in the Decalogue in the in the Ten Commandments.

So that in one sense the whole of the Old Testament and then in a larger sense the whole of the Bible is God's law by which he rules his people. Now the reference here then is to a passage in Isaiah chapter 28.

Now an understanding of this difficult passage is a challenge but I think it will help at any rate if we see it in its context and I want to try and be as helpful as I can so that we can get the thrust of it together.

Now it may shock one or two of you. Some of these passages of Scripture have a knack of doing that and so get ready for it you you'll see that it's got something to say that you may not expect. But here it is turning to this passage in Isaiah in chapter 28 we need to bear in mind that the Prophet has just been warning the Jews of the evil of their ways as he so often had to do.

They apparently mocked God and they mocked him of all things. For using what professor FF Bruce refers to as God using baby talk with his people the Hebrew makes it very clear. If you could listen in to the Hebrew here it's it's baby talk.

It's God speaking to the to the to the Jews in a babyish in a childish sort of a way and they as it were answer back to him and say look what do you think we are. Why do you talk to us like that. Now you have this brought out in verses 9 and 10.

And this is what they say. Who who. I'm reading from the NIV. Who is it he is trying to teach. To whom is he explaining his message to children weaned from them from their milk to those just taken from the breast.

For it is. And now here is the English translation of the of the very childish bit of Hebrew to which I referred do and do rule on rule a little here and a little there. Cow like how sow lasso that's the Hebrew.

And and it's really baby talk. And you see what the people of Israel are saying to God is this. Are you treating us like children. Who do you think we are. Why are you speaking to us like that. Well the Prophet retorts that since they would not listen to Jehovah's Lessons when he spoke to them as adults and since they couldn't understand things as men and women who were mature his had to do this their sins has brought them down in terms of moral and spiritual stature they're on the level of babyhood and he's got to talk to them like that.

But now in the argument there is something which takes us even further. Now look he says if you're going to quibble with me look says God if you're going to quibble with me about this I'll tell you what I will speak to you through a nation whose language you will never be able to understand.

And I will bring a nation into this land. And it will speak a language that you've never heard before. And you'll never be able to make heads nor tails out of it. But by means of that people and of that language I will teach you the lesson of your life.

Now what God is referring to of course is the bringing in of the Assyrian nation is the invasion of the Assyrian power into the land into the land of Israel. And what he's saying is this I will bring these people in and you won't know what they're saying.

But even though you don't understand their speech they'll teach you a lesson a lesson you would not take from my lips and said that I was speaking childish to you. So when you go on to verses 11 to 13 the new international version reads like this.

Very well then with foreign lips and strange tongues God will speak to this people to whom he said this is the resting place let the weary rest and this is the place of repose. But they would not listen.

So then the word of the Lord to them will become. And it's exactly as God said before do and do do and do rule on rule rule on rule a little here a little there so that they will go on fall backward be injured and snared and captured.

Now how can I put this in our own words. What God is saying is this I've tried to speak to you in a language that you could understand. And you said I was being too childish I was treating you like children.

Very well he says if you can't take my speech to you it is so urgent I've got to speak to you. I'll speak to you in a language that you can understand. I'll bring the Assyrians in and they will speak a foreign language and they will deal with you in a way that you have not been dealt with by any other nation.

And they will humble you and they will trample you underfoot. And they will take your sons and your daughters away and through them. I will say to you exactly the same thing as I've been trying to say in ordinary language namely do and do do and do rule on rule rule on rule a little here a little there I'll say exactly the same thing to you but you have to take it in this time because the Assyrians will force you into a cage and into a corner and they will take you away and you'll have no say in the matter he said worked on earth.

Has that got to do with our subject. Well now you will notice that really it comes down to this. What the Apostle Paul is saying is that this speaking in a strange tongue is not here a token of divine favor but of disfavor not a token of divine blessing but a token of the divine anger not a take token of God coming near to a people in love and with his arms and folding them but of God raising his right hand and coming down in chastisement upon them and allowing them to be lost and hurt and wounded.

You see when God speaks to men deliberately in a language they do not understand. It is not something to be happy and joyous about because it can be exceedingly serious in its implication whereas he addresses the objects of his love in language that they can understand.

Of course he does. You do that too there anybody you love you lovers in the congregation tonight let me ask you a question. Don't you make it plain. Your loved one knows what you're saying. You don't speak in a foreign language.

When you're in love you open your heart and you make it plain. And when God gathers his people together in love and in compassion he makes it plain. My sheep hear my voice says Jesus and they follow me.

They know what I'm saying. They know what I want to do. And they'll discover my will. They'll know the will and the word of my Heavenly Father. And it is always true. If any man will follow me he shall know the doctrine whether it be of God or not.

So then we have a principle here when God does not speak to men in a plain language a language they understand that is not a token of God's favor it is a token of divine disfavor and displeasure. Now there is some similarity between the principle of sending the Assyrian to speak a language which the Jews would not understand and the use of parables by our Lord in the New Testament.

Parables, Tongues, and Divine Judgment

The use of parables in the New Testament is generally misunderstood. It's amazing how many people will tell you that the use of parables was largely very much as a preacher would use an illustration to elucidate now sometimes it did elucidate truth to certain people.

You know what Jesus said. He used parables also in order to hide truth from others. Now don't you blame me for that. I'll give you a chapter and verse for it Matthew 13 10 to 15. If you'd like to read Mark 4 11 Luke 19 verses 42 following you have Jesus saying exactly that he says I speak in parables so that you my people you my my loved ones you whom I love you who are my followers you who are my disciples you who are prepared to obey what I tell you you may hear and understand.

And it illustrates the truth to you. It makes it simpler and clearer for you. But there are many who are listening to whom I do not want to cast the pearls of my father's truth. And I speak in parables to hide the truth from them because they have sold away the privilege of being preached to.

Now I say there is some similarity between that and what we have in our text tonight. Let me put it to you like this. If God were to give the gift of tongues to people to any community to any church as he did as the Corinthians claimed he had given it to them so that the services were largely taken up with speaking in tongue.

That would be God's judgment upon the society around because it would mean this if the society came in. And if unbelievers came in they wouldn't know what on earth was going on. I'll come back to that a little later.

And they would be confused and confounded. And they would not have the word of salvation. But they would say these people are off their heads and it would confirm them in their unbelief rather than win them over to faith.

And if God was responsible for that it would be God acting in judgment rather than in favor and in grace. Now let's come to the application which I think proves conclusively that that is how Paul would have us understand it.

Tongues and Prophecy as Signs

Now look at the passage the the application we have very clearly here look at verse 22. Tongues are a sign and prophecy is a sign. The one is a sign to unbelievers. The other is the sign to believers.

Tongues then says Paul are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers a sign of judgment. Prophecy however is a sign for believers not for unbelievers. And prophecies a sign of God wanting to say something clearly and therefore of his love and of his mercy.

Let's put it like this. The gift of tongues and the gift of prophecy are alike signs of something. Tongues are a signs of disfavor and of pending judgment. Prophecy that is God speaking clearly and with power.

If I may summarize prophecy in that way God speaking directly speaking clearly speaking with power. In such a way a man or a congregation knows God is speaking among us. This is not a man this is not just a person trained in the college and he's speaking before us and he's erudite and that kind of thing this is not human wisdom that is appearing before us.

God is among. Now when you have a word of prophecy like that that is a word to the believers which says God's among you and he loves you. And because he loves you he's speaking clearly to you. And he's convincing you and and he's drawing you and he's wooing you and he's coming so near he's making it impossible for you other than to know what he wants of you.

Now let me go further. Come on. Paul illustrates that principle again. Tongues and their effects on unbelievers. Look at verse 23. I've already looked ahead at this in part but let me underline it again.

So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in will they not say that you're out of your mind. Paul appears to envisage this kind of wholesale use of the gift of tongue that apparently went on in Corinth.

Everything was out of proportion. This had priority over everything else. Paul's language here envisages a situation in which tongue-speaking is clearly dominating the entire services in the Corinthian church.

And like himself the Corinthians made lavish use of tongues in public so that it would apparently not be unlikely for a pagan to come in from the outside and be none the wiser for what was going on he wouldn't understand a word of it.

It was all foreign to him. And he could go out and say those folk in there are quite mad they're beside themselves and they would be confirmed in their confusion and in their unbelief. And they would say this is madness.

Well that's what Paul is saying far from bringing faith to birth or confirming a slowly emerging faith. Hearing such confusing sounds only confounds men still further. It confirms them in unbelief. If therefore and then I'm repeating again and I'm doing so deliberately because I think it's so terribly important if therefore God were to impart the gift of tongues to any church to a community in general to members in general in any in any church and they were exercised in the way they were exercised here in Corinth and were given such priority it would only mean that he was judicially excluding the society around from hearing the gospel clearly and that all those who came in God wanted to confuse and confound and keep out of the kingdom.

It would not be a token of divine blessing and benediction. It would be a token of God's judgment upon the community around. And they come in and they're confirmed in their unbelief. And you know there are people who come to church not and not hear tongues but for other reasons are just confirmed in their unbelief.

That kind of thing happens. But it can happen through the overuse of one of the gifts of the Spirit. But now if that relates to tongues prophecy and its effects on unbelievers is brought out in verses 24 and 25.

Prophecy, Conviction, and the Presence of God

But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody's prophesying he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare so he will fall down and worship God.

Explaining or exclaiming God is really among you now you notice now this is a different gift. This is the gift of prophecy. And we've summarized the gift of prophecy in this way. It's God speaking with a directness and with a power and the clarity which is evidently of God.

So that you know it's not just the man in the pulpit. It's nothing human. It's cannot be explained in a purely and a merely human way. But God himself is among his people and the voice is the voice of authority.

What happens a congregation. Prophesying would be a sign of his favor to believers and to unbelievers alike though it's stress here especially to believers you see God is speaking to them in a language they can understand and he wants them to grow up to maturity.

And he wants to feed them and he wants to bless them and he wants to encourage them and he wants in all things to bring them up in maturity so that they're profited. Faith comes from what is heard. And what is heard comes from the preaching of Jesus from the prophesying of which the Apostle Paul here speaks.

Prophesying them involving the declaration of God's Word in the power of the Holy Spirit becomes the seed that produces the harvest of faith and its manifold fruits which God requires of his people. The impact of prophesying upon unbelievers is very helpfully described by Paul in these words.

What kind of an impact would it have if a crowd of unbelievers were to come into a place like Knox here tonight and hear this kind of genuine prophecy. What should we expect when God is really speaking.

Well now Paul goes on to describe. Look at verse 24. He will be convinced by all that he is a sinner. He will be convinced by all that he is a sinner. If a man comes into a congregation in which God is present and God is speaking.

And so a word of prophecy the Word of God is communicated in the power of the Spirit. This is the first thing a man is convinced that he's a sinner. The word for convinced there is precisely the same one as Jesus used in the in the Gospels in John when he told the disciples when he the Holy Spirit comes he will reprove the world of sin righteousness and judgment reprove or convince or convict.

And the point is this you see when when an unbeliever comes into a house of God and the Word of God is being prophesied or proclaimed in this sense then a man would be convinced reproved of his own sin.

Oh my friends we've gone to the other extreme. You see our policy today in the churches generally is let's entertain people when they come in and make them feel very much at home and very very comfortable.

You know you're happy. You shouldn't feel out of place here. You know what we read in the New Testament of the rest of the people they not join the community of believers. They dare not why they knew they didn't belong and so they couldn't join.

Apart from some extra hypocrites like Ananias and Sapphira they dare not join. A characteristic feature of the church in which God is still speaking through a prophet is this that when men come in they feel their sinners.

Do you feel yourself to be a sinner. Do you go from the services where you attend. If it's not in Knox here wherever it is. Do you go away quite happy unscathed unwounded as happy as when you came in and as happy to sin.

My friend God have mercy upon you and the congregation where you are. It just means that the prophetic word is not heard. The word humble is no longer in our evangelical vocabulary and it needs to be reintroduced.

We're so proud. I was reading just incidentally this week and I thought that this is just a typical illustration of the man of the world. George Bernard Shaw was once boasted that he he could make the best cup of coffee in in the UK.

Well right. Nothing very bad about boosting but you can make a decent cup of coffee. Britishers are not as famed for their cups of coffee is North Americans are. Perhaps they can show some North Americans how to brew a cup of tea.

Not so sure about that. But anyway this was George Bernard Shaw's great statement that he was second to none making a cup of coffee. And one country past person took him up on it and he wrote a letter to him and asked him for the for the explanation.

And how do you do it. Shaw responded by giving him the secret. And then he added. And I quote. I hope this is a genuine request he says and not just a trick to secure my autograph. The preacher could not let the implication of that mark go unanswered.

Country person though he was. He recognized the evil thing when he saw it and so he sent a reply and it read. Accept my sincere thanks for the directions for making coffee. I wrote in good faith to convince you of that however allow me to return what it is obvious you infinitely prize but which is of no value whatsoever to me your autograph.

So he cut Bernard Shaw's autograph out his lovely signature and he put it in the envelope and he sealed it and he sent it back. Yes we can laugh at it. But you know my friends there's something of Bernard Shaw in each one of us.

But when we've heard the voice of God we begin to know ourselves as sinners. We're humbled and he will be judged of all senses says Paul. But you say we don't want people to be judged when they come into the congregation.

We want them to be happy and we want them to come back again says Paul. They will be judged of all. They feel that everybody's judging them. They'll be uncomfortable. They will be passing under review.

This is the normal thing when there is a prophet of God speaking in God's name and in the power of the Spirit in any pulpit men are going under review and they feel that God's got his eye on them. And they're being made uncomfortable.

Don't let us become agents of the devil. In trying to perpetuate another tradition as the prophetic word brings to light of day the hidden things of the heart the man concerned will be humbled. Self-knowledge resulting from such a ministry of the Spirit will bring into the ground to the earth in dust and ashes in humility.

And it is in that attitude that blessedness is born. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness. If God is among his people in truth then the preaching of the word in the power of the Spirit ought still to have this kind of humbling and exalting and saving ministry.