Why Don't We Speak in Tongues?

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Matthew chapter 6 and hold your place at verse 7.
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We have been in our verse-by-verse study of the Sermon on the Mount, and what we have noted is that in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is concerned, very concerned, that false teaching be both acknowledged and corrected.
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In our last message, we looked at Christ's corrective teaching on prayer, and during that study, I made a short reference to speaking in tongues.
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I noted in that message that I was planning in a forthcoming sermon to go deeper into that subject.
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Well, today is the day.
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Today, we are going to ask a very simple question.
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Why don't we speak in tongues? With that being said, let's stand and read the Word of God, Matthew chapter 6 and verse 7.
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And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.
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Father, we thank you for your Word.
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I pray that as we look at this enormous subject, that you would first and foremost keep me from error.
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I pray that you would immerse us all in your truth, and that you would open up the hearts of your people to understand it.
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And Father, that through this study, that we would understand the answer to the question, why don't we speak in tongues? In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.
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In our previous message, I gave the definition which Jesus uses in our text today, but to ensure that everyone here hears it, I want to give it again, because I'm not just desiring to repeat myself, but I know that we always have visitors and guests, and also some of you may not remember.
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But when Jesus says, do not heap up empty phrases, sometimes if you have, depending on your Bible, you may have a King James Version, the King James says, do not pray in vain repetition.
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What we have is a prohibition from the mouth of Jesus Christ, against believers who are engaging in mindless, repetitive words.
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The Greek term is batolagio.
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Batolagio comes from the root word batis, which means to stutter, or to repeat words over and over, tediously.
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It's clearly a rebuke against those who would chant repetitiously, or repeat themselves repetitiously, mindlessly in prayer, without engaging their minds in what is being said.
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And as I noted from the previous sermon, much of what is referred to in the modern church context, fits very aptly under the title batolagio.
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It is mindless repetition.
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Now, for those of you who are not familiar with this issue, and I imagine there are some of you who are not, I want to give a short overview of the divide that exists within the modern church.
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Churches are normally today designated either as Pentecostal or not Pentecostal, or they would be designated as charismatic or not charismatic.
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Pentecost references the day that, what we call the birthday of the church, the day that the Holy Spirit fell as tongues of fire on the people who were in the upper room praying.
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And as a result of that experience, they all had a miraculous gift that was given to them that day, which we're going to talk about in a little while.
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That's the Pentecost experience.
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So that's where that name comes from.
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The word charismatic comes from the Greek word charis, which means gift.
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So when you hear someone talk about charismatic, they're talking about gifts, particularly gifts that manifest themselves in miraculous ways.
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Probably the most accurate definition, and the definition which I imagine some of you may have never heard, but I want to share with you today.
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If you're taking notes, you may want to write this down.
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There's a definition that I think is more helpful than Pentecostal or charismatic ever could be.
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And that is the definition of what we call cessationist or continuationist.
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A cessationist is a person who believes that there were gifts that were given to the early church to fortify, solidify, and identify the apostles' work.
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That these gifts were given to the early church for the purpose of affirming what the apostles were doing.
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That those gifts ceased with the apostles in the early church, and they were never intended to continue on through the church.
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So we call that cessationist or someone who believes the gifts have ceased.
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Everyone understands.
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The continuationist obviously is the opposite.
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They believe that these gifts existed during the time of the apostles and that these gifts continue on down until today.
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The continuationist, or rather the cessationist, the person who believes the gifts have ceased, makes a distinction between the gifts that we would refer to as the signed gifts or the miraculous gifts, and what we would call the ministerial gifts or gifts that are still functioning in the church today.
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These gifts of miracles or these signs we would say were things like gifts of miraculous healing.
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We know the apostle Paul had this miraculous gift of healing.
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And we know the other apostles and other men within the church had this gift of healing.
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Also we see the gift of speaking prophetic revelation, speaking about future events.
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John the Apostle spoke about the revelation of Jesus Christ.
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He spoke about that which was coming in the future, and that was a gift.
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And of course, we see the gift of tongues.
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And it's noteworthy that when you look at a church that is a charismatic church or a continuationist church, what you often see in those churches is that the one gift that seems to be the most prominent is the gift of tongues.
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And it's likely that the reason for this is very simple.
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The gift of tongues is the easiest to fabricate.
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I say that not to be in any way disparaging, but today I will make some hard statements about the truth.
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And it is very easy to simply utter sounds and claim that it is a miracle.
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Prophecy, which is specific, is very hard to do.
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It's very hard to fake that, which is why most people who say they're speaking prophecy often give very general prophecies.
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Oh, God's going to bless you, God's going to do this, or God's going to do that.
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But it's very general stuff.
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Very rarely do they say, tomorrow you're going to get a broken leg, watch out.
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You know, very rarely do you have that type of specific within the prophecy.
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Also, healing is very difficult to fake, which is why most people who are quote-unquote divine healers only heal disease which is immeasurable.
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Well, He made my pain go away, or He made the ringing in my ears go away, or whatever.
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Very rarely do you see compound fractures being healed during these healing ceremonies, because that would be a visible miracle that could be witnessed and seen and identified.
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In fact, I recently saw a post which I thought was funny.
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It says the same reason why faith healers don't operate in hospitals is the reason why psychics don't win the lottery.
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It's because they're frauds, for the most part.
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You know, if you think about it, if you go back to the time of Christ, and you just kind of in your mind imagine what was happening in the time of Christ, and you read the Scriptures, one of the things that sticks out to me, and has always stuck out to me, is really interesting, is no one denied that Christ was a miracle worker.
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No one denied that Christ could do miracles.
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Even the people who were His detractors, the people who hated Him, they said, you do these works by the power of the devil.
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They didn't say you don't do the works.
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They ascribed different motivations and different sources for His power, but no one denied His ability to do these things because Christ healed organic disease.
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Christ did real miracles that were verifiable miracles.
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A man four days dead came out of the grave at the command of Christ.
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That's a miracle.
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One that is identified even by His critics.
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But modern miracle workers are often recognized by the world as being frauds.
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In fact, most people see them as frauds.
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It seems to be the only people who really identify them as true faith healers are the people who, well, you know, have the faith.
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So as we go through the lesson today, we're going to make certain references to aspects of different gifts, but the primary one I want to talk about is the gift of tongues, because as I've already mentioned, this is the gift that is most practiced because it is most easily fabricated.
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And again, our question for the morning is why don't we practice the gift of tongues? And when I say we, I want to identify who I'm talking about here, because I think this is helpful.
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When I say we, I mean Sovereign Grace Family Church.
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We do not endorse the practice of these gifts being used within the body.
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And if someone came in and stood up and started making an ecstatic sound, we would tell them to be quiet and we would rebuke them in the name of Christ.
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You may say, wow, yeah, we would.
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I would.
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This message is intended to help us as a church understand why.
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Shouldn't we know why? If that's where we stand, shouldn't we know why we stand that way? There is a great charismatic divide in the church.
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We should know why we stand on one side and not the other.
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At least I have your attention, at least it looks like, because this is going to be a few minutes.
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So I pray that you'll keep your minds engaged as we answer the question, why don't we speak in tongues? Number one, there are three of these, three reasons why.
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But the first one, the genuine gift of tongues.
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And by that, I mean that which is described in Scripture.
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The genuine gift of tongues was a real, discernible language and not unstructured, repetitive sound.
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So let me say it again.
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It was a real, discernible language.
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It was not unstructured, repetitive sound.
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It's very important to note that the gift of tongues is not mentioned very much in the Bible.
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It's mentioned possibly by Christ in Mark 16, though there is some debate that that's what He's talking about.
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It's mentioned by Paul in 1 Corinthians only, not mentioned in any of the rest of the Pauline Corpus.
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And 1 Corinthians, by the way, is the first of Paul's writings.
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He mentions gifts again in Romans and Ephesians.
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He does not bring up tongues ever again.
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And those were later in his ministry, which tells us it's likely that it began to cease even within the ministry of the Apostle.
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But we'll get to that in a moment.
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The point is it's mentioned in possibly the ending of Mark.
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For certain, it's mentioned in 1 Corinthians and it's mentioned in the book of Acts.
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And it is in the book of Acts that we see the first and by extension, the definitional instance of the gift of the tongues.
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Brother Jim and I were talking about this yesterday on the phone and we talked about the rule of first mention.
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That's a hermeneutical principle.
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The rule of first mention is when something is mentioned first in Scripture, it provides somewhat of a definition for later interpretation.
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If it's mentioned early, then that gives a definition.
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Unless the definition is somehow changed, then that first mention gives sort of a starting point for us to understand what something is.
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So here we have the first mention of the gift of tongues in Acts chapter two.
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So I invite you to turn there with me.
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In Acts chapter two, the apostles are in the upper room.
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They are waiting on the sign from heaven to be given to them to begin the ministry of the gospel.
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The Holy Spirit descends upon them as divided tongues of fire and rests on them as they begin to speak in what the Scripture says is other tongues.
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Now, this word tongues in Acts chapter two comes from the Greek word glossa and it is where we get the word glossary.
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You know what a glossary is? It's a list of words that mean something.
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Glossa means language.
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If I said to you, I speak in the English tongue or the German tongue, you'd know that that tongue means language, right? Because that's the way we use that word.
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Well, that's the same way it's being used here.
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This was not nonsensical noise.
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This was a language which was being spoken.
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Look at Acts chapter two, verse five.
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It says, Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.
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That's an important point.
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These guys are from everywhere and they speak all kinds of different languages.
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And at this sound, the multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.
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And they were amazed and astonished, saying, Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language? And by the way, that word language there is the Greek word dialecto.
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And I imagine, you know, that means that comes that's where we get the word dialect.
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So they're speaking in a specific dialect.
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They were speaking a new dialect, one they'd never spoken before, a specific language that they never understood before, never been taught.
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This is a miracle.
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This is a true miracle.
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And it would be impossible to fabricate and impossible to deny.
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And what we see in the book of Acts throughout the book of Acts is different Pentecostal experiences that are repeated.
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Never once is there an indication that it is anything other than this same experience that the believers are having at Pentecost.
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Never once does it say it changed to something else.
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It went from being a real discernible language to being ecstatic sound or ecstatic utterances.
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It never says that.
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It never tells us that.
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And somebody says, well, what about 1 Corinthians 14? Well, let's go to 1 Corinthians 14.
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We're going to spend some time over there, too, because we see what Acts tells us it is.
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Acts tells us for certain that this is a real discernible language.
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But those who support what is called ecstatic speech, which, again, I've already said is unstructured, repetitive sound.
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Those who support it make their argument mainly from 1 Corinthians 14.
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So let's find our way there.
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In 1 Corinthians 14, verse 6, I want to start at verse 6 just because I want to show you the part that is normally pointed to where people will say this is where we see the unstructured, repetitive sound.
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Read, start at verse 6.
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It says, Now, brothers, this is Paul.
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He says, If I come to you speaking in tongues, how will I benefit you unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching? If even lifeless instruments such as the flute or the harp do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is played? And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? So with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air.
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Now, people right there, they say, See, Paul tells us it's unintelligible.
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It's just noise.
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It's just repetitive noise.
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And see, Paul tells us what it is right here.
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Beloved, first thing I want to let you know, and no one that I know of disputes this.
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Even the Pentecostals don't dispute what I'm about to say.
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First Corinthians is a rebuke.
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The whole book is a rebuke against a carnal church.
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You should go back to the beginning and read through it.
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It's a rebuke against a church that is carnal.
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And starting at chapter 12 and going through chapter 14, it is a rebuke against those who misuse the gifts.
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That is easily demonstrated throughout First Corinthians.
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It is a rebuke.
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And in First Corinthians 14, the focus is those who are misusing the gift of the tongues.
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And someone says, Well, Paul tells us here that it's unintelligible language.
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Well, let me tell you what Paul is saying.
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Paul is saying it's unintelligible language, but he's not saying that it's not a language.
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He's saying that it's unintelligible, because if I started speaking in, oh, I don't know, say, German right now.
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If I said in Archean, halagos, halagos, post on time.
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What did I just say? You don't know.
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Well, the girls do, because they come to the Greek class on Wednesday.
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It's in the beginning was the word and the word was with God.
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That's, you know, that's what I just said.
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But that was unintelligible to you, right? Because you don't know that.
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So a few of you do.
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Most of you don't.
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So if I start doing that to you, it would be unintelligible.
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It would be like a clanging cymbal.
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It would be like somebody playing a flute without making any distinct notes.
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And that's what Paul's point is here, because he, and this bears this out in verse 10.
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If you just keep reading in verse 10, he says, there are doubtless many languages in the world and none is without meaning.
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But if I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me.
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See, that's the point.
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He said there's many languages out there, he said, and if I don't know it, it's just noise to me.
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And my words would be noise to him.
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You see, what was happening is that this gift was active within the church.
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There are people who are speaking a language which is discernible to people who know it, but not discernible to people who don't know it.
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Like German, as I mentioned earlier, if I don't know German, I just happen to make that note here.
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German is discernible to Germans, but not to people who don't speak German.
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The genuine gift of tongues was the ability of a person to speak a language which he had never learned before.
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That is how the gift is described in Scripture.
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And those who want to say that it's something else must prove that it's something else from Scripture.
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The onus is on them.
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The onus is on the one who says that the gift went from being one thing to something else, that it changed from being a legitimate miracle that was testable, that was identifiable, to being a miracle which was easily, here's the key, easily fabricated.
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Why would, and again, I would never question God, but why would God, why would you think God would do that? That God would take a miracle, the ability to speak in a language that you didn't know, which is identifiable, verifiable, and obviously a miracle, and turn it into something that is mocked and fabricated by every religion under the sun.
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There are people in almost every religion who speak in ecstatic noises.
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They do it in Mormonism, they do it in Islam, they do it all through the Eastern religions.
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They have these static noises, ecstatic noises that come up because they're emotional outbursts.
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Why would you think that God would say that's a miracle, but it's so easily fabricated by so many who worship a false God? I think that's a huge question.
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And I think those who support the fact that tongues are supposed to be unstructured, repetitive sound must prove that from the text, and I don't think that they do.
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Somebody says, well, what about 1 Corinthians 14, 2? It says, for the one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men, but to God.
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And that it's a mystery.
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And they say, well, this is a magical language between me and God.
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No, again, the mystery, beloved, is the language which is spoken within a group that doesn't know the language.
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It's a mystery to all who are being spoken to who do not know it.
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But nothing is a mystery to God because God can discern all languages.
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This is why the gift of interpretation is necessary.
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In fact, the Apostle Paul tells us in verse 28, if there's no interpreter there, then don't even operate this gift within the church, which tells us something else.
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It tells us that the gift is under control.
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I've seen people who just outburst with this gift.
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And, oh, I was under the control of the Spirit.
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I had no control over myself.
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How can Paul tell us to manage the gift and not do it if there's not an interpreter, if we don't have any control over it? See, in verse 28, he tells us to have an interpreter.
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By the way, I want to continue fortifying my defense of the fact that tongues is a real language.
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Why would you have an interpreter of something that's not a real language? By the way, an interpreter is one who gives a translation of something in the Greek.
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How can you translate unstructured, repetitive noise? You can't because it's not a language.
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They have had scientists who have studied the sounds that are made, these guttural, repetitive, unstructured sounds, and they have said there is nothing discernible in these sounds at all to indicate any structure of language.
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They love it.
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It's called the gift of tongues.
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It's called the gift of languages, and yet it's not a language.
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There is no group today, not even among the Pentecostals, who claim to have the gift among them that someone can speak to people in different languages without having to learn that language.
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Now, there are people, missionaries, who have said that they have experienced a miracle at a time wherein they've been able to do this while on the mission field.
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And you know what? I wouldn't deny the possibility of such things.
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But there's no one in the church, any church, even in the Pentecostal church, that's sending their missionaries overseas without giving them some language training.
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No one's assuming that this gift is still operating as it did in the first century.
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They send them to school to learn the language so they can go overseas and do missions work.
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Why, if this gift is still operational, are you sending them to school? Send them to the mission field and trust God.
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Pastor, you're being harsh.
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Well, I'm not being harsh.
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I'm being honest.
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Can we not honestly evaluate ourselves? They call themselves the church.
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Can they not stand to scrutiny? Can we not define ourselves by what the Word of God teaches? I'm not denying the possibility that God can do the miraculous.
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What I am denying is that this practice of speaking in tongues is the normative practice for the church today.
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I do not believe it's normative.
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I do not believe the gift is operational in the normative sense, because I believe that the reason why this gift was given to the early church had a purpose, and I believe the purpose has been fulfilled.
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Why was the gift given? Isn't that an important question that shouldn't we all seek to answer? Why was the gift of tongues given to the church? The answer is that the tongues was given, the Apostle Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 14, as a sign to unbelievers.
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How is the gift of tongues a sign to unbelievers? Well, specifically, it is given as a sign to unbelieving Israel, because Israel had, up until the time of Christ, had the gospel within their nation, within their language, and the gift of tongues was given to demonstrate to Israel that now the gospel is going to every tribe, language, and people.
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That now this one thing which they had held on to is now going to explode out to everyone.
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That what was held within the language of Hebrew will now be exploded to every language under the sun.
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That was the purpose of the gift, and we've seen that purpose fulfilled.
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We've seen the gospel translated and sent out to languages all over the world.
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Now, before I move on to the next point, I realize I'm belaboring the first point quite a bit, and some of you may think too much, but I promise, hang with me, this is important, because I want to ask another question.
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What about praying in tongues? Because I've heard that too.
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I've heard some people say, well, you know, 1 Corinthians 14 mentions prayer in tongues, and I had a guy one time in this church, he said, is praying in tongues a secret language between me and God? In fact, he said it was a private, perfect conversation between him and God.
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It was perfect prayer.
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I said, first of all, this was my response, I said, first of all, if it's the perfect way to pray, why didn't Jesus mention it when He was teaching how to pray? His disciples said, teach us to pray.
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Jesus could have said, close your mind, close your eyes, close your ears, and let your mouth rip.
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And that's perfect prayer.
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He didn't say that.
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He said, pray like this.
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Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
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Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.
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He said, pray with your mind engaged in the things of God.
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That's what Jesus considered to be righteous prayer.
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And some say, well, that praying in tongues is a special gift from God.
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They even make reference to Romans 8.26, that says, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.
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And they say, see, that's the speaking in tongues.
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It's those groanings.
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But the groanings are not in words.
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It says it's too deep for words.
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It's an internal groaning.
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It's the Spirit groaning, not us.
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Where do you get us groaning from that passage? We're not the ones groaning.
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You see, you have to read something into the text to get where they are.
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You have to isogee the text.
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You have to read into it.
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1 Corinthians 14 tells us that proclamation and prayer were done in the tongues, but that proclamation and prayer were done in the midst of the people of the church for the purpose of edifying the church.
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Look at 1 Corinthians 14.12, look at verse 12.
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It says, so with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church.
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You see, a lot of people who believe in speaking in tongues, look at verse 4.
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Look at verse 4.
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It says, the one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church.
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And they say, see, when I speak in tongues, I'm building myself up.
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Guess what? That's not good.
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Because the gifts that were given to the church were not for you to build yourself up.
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It was for you to build up the church.
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That, verse 4, is a rebuke.
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It is not a positive thing.
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It is a pejorative statement.
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It's a bad thing that we would use our spiritual gifts for self-edification.
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That was never their purpose.
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The spiritual gifts are for building up the church, not the individual.
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So, the gift of tongues, whether it is done in prayer, or whether it's done in the proclamation of God before the people, was always a discernible language.
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You cannot prove otherwise from the text.
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You can conjecture, you can make the point that you think that it is, but you cannot prove otherwise from the text.
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And as such, most of what today is called speaking in tongues does not qualify for what the Bible describes as speaking in tongues.
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That's part one.
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Now, let's move on.
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The next part will go a little quicker.
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All that was to set the foundation.
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Now, let me stroll my way to the end here.
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So, the genuine gift of tongues, this is the first point.
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The genuine gift of tongues is a real discernible language, never unstructured, repetitive sound.
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We don't see that described in Scripture.
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Number two.
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The majority of those who practice modern speaking in tongues, and by that, by modern speaking in tongues, I'm talking about unstructured, repetitive sound.
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That's how we've defined it.
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The majority of those who practice modern speaking in tongues do so in clear violation of the Scripture's commands.
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We're still in 1 Corinthians 14, right? You still got your Bibles open? Okay.
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Let's look first, go back two chapters to chapter 12.
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I want you to notice something in verse 11.
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Because one of the first things that is taught, and I want to tell you something.
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I grew up, I was a dual church child.
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I was a dual church child.
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I think I just coined a phrase.
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Write a new book.
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The dual church child.
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I grew up primarily in this church, but I also was brought to Pentecostal church by my mother.
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So I had this, I had an experience of dual churches.
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And when I was in the Pentecostal church, I was told that if you are saved, you will speak with tongues.
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That it is a demonstration of your having received the Holy Ghost, and that you will speak with tongues.
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Now, I'm not saying all Pentecostal churches teach that, but I'm telling you by experience, I know at least one did.
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And I know that it is a general report among them that this is believed.
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Look at verse 11 of chapter 12.
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Speaking of the gifts.
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All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as He wills.
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It is the Spirit of God who chooses to give gifts as He wills.
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And furthermore, down in verse 30 of the same chapter, it says, Paul is asking the question, he says, do all possess gifts of healing? This is a rhetorical question.
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The answer is no.
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Do all possess the gifts of healing? No.
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Do all speak with tongues? What is the answer? The answer is no.
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So right away, those who would teach that the gift of tongues is for every believer, and that you must have it to be considered a saved person, that's false teaching.
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That's a lie.
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And yet you tell me that you have this miraculous Spirit of the gift, but you're lying about it? That's a huge deal.
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I think that's worthy of comment.
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Number two, go back to chapter 14 and verse 28.
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I mentioned this already, but I want to mention it again.
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Verse 28 of chapter 14.
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But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in the church and speak to himself and to God.
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Let each one keep silent in the church.
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Beloved, I have been to many churches where there is tongues being used over and over and over and over without any attempt at interpretation.
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Beloved, it says right here, don't do it.
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It says keep silent if there's no interpreter.
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Well, I couldn't keep silent.
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The Spirit just overwhelmed me.
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Will God contradict Himself? As He has commanded something here, will He give you something different? I think that's worth asking.
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Here's one that might hit you kind of hard.
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Verse 34, the women should keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should remain in submission as the law also says.
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Before you get all offended and before ladies get mad and start walking out, let me tell you, the context of the women speaking in church here is in two times.
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The gift of prophecy and the gift of tongues, neither of which, according to the Apostle Paul, were to be practiced by women in the church.
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Now you go with me this morning to various Pentecostal churches and you tell me you won't see women in the church speaking in tongues loudly.
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And yet Paul forbids them.
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Hey, it's in the text.
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I didn't write it.
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I'm just telling you what it says.
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Finally, there are many who interject this gift in the midst of the service without any invitation.
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They just interjected in the midst of the service.
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And I want to show you something.
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Look at verse 33.
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For God is not a God of confusion.
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Beloved, is there anything in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ that has brought more confusion than the utterance of repetitive, unstructured sound? And yet the Scripture here tells us that is not what God has authored.
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He does not author confusion.
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Also down in verse 40, I remember sharing this with a person I love very much.
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It says in verse 40, But all things should be done decently and in order.
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I remember one time saying to a person I love very much, I said, how can you say that this is being done decently and in order? It's being done so haphazardly.
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It's just here and there and everywhere.
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And everyone is just speaking out and speaking out and speaking out.
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And this person said, well, that's the way they keep order.
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Don't use a word if you're going to mistranslate what it means.
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That's not order.
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Beloved, God is a God of order.
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If your worship is orderless, your worship is godless.
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Now, I want to continue on.
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Please stay with me.
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What about those people who attest to meet the biblical parameters? There are some.
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They say, we do.
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We meet every biblical parameter.
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We don't have any women who do it.
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We have an interpreter every time somebody does it.
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They only do it two or three at a time.
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And they all go in order.
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They try their best to follow the biblical parameters.
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What about them? Well, here's my answer to that.
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If they're speaking an unstructured, repetitive sound, they're not following the biblical parameters because that ain't it.
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It still doesn't qualify.
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There was a young man who was the son of a preacher.
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He had been brought up in church.
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And he had been brought up also learning the ancient languages.
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So he decided to go to one of these Pentecostal churches because he wanted to see how it operated within the church and what would happen.
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He came in and sat among the people.
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One person would stand up and they would speak unstructured, repetitive sound.
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Someone else would stand up at another place and give an interpretation.
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One person would stand up.
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Another person would stand and give interpretation.
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Apparently trying to follow the at least somewhat biblical parameter.
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So this young man, not trying to be sarcastic, but wanting to test the spirits as the Scripture tells us to do, stands up and prays the Lord's Prayer in Latin.
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Because he knew how to do that.
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He stood up and prayed the Lord's Prayer in Latin.
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And he sat back down.
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And someone from across the room stood up and gave an interpretation.
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And it had nothing to do with anything that he had actually said.
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What does that prove? Well, not really anything except this.
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That at that moment, there was fraudulent behavior going on in the church under the guise of a miracle from God.
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We are commanded to test the spirits.
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1 John 4 says, Do not believe every spirit.
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Test them to see if they are from God.
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For many false prophets have gone out into the world.
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And beloved, when I look out and I see the likes of Benny Hinn, who I mind not saying that he is a false prophet, and there are those who are supporting him, and they are doing their repetitive, unstructured sounds, I say this is not from God.
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For neither he is from God, neither are those who are making this noise.
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And that's the other dangerous thing, is often what accompanies the speaking in tongues is terrible theology.
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And how can you claim to have one of the most prestigious gifts of the Spirit, if that's what it is, and yet have a theology which is so biblically errant? So finally, my third point, and we will conclude.
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The first is that the genuine gift of tongues is a real discernible language.
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It was not unstructured, repetitive sounds.
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Number two, the majority of those who practice modern tongues speaking do so in violation of the Scripture.
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Finally, number three, the gift of tongues has served its purpose.
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The gift of tongues has served its purpose.
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The purpose, as I've already said, was to demonstrate that the Gospel had gone from a single language to all languages and peoples.
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The gift enabled a huge expansion of the Gospel in a very short amount of time.
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Imagine what it would have been like to try to go and share the Gospel in different languages when you didn't know those languages.
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But yet, God expands the ability of the men who are speaking so that they can go out and do this.
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And the Gospel spread like wildfire in the midst of the first century.
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And it made it all throughout Asia Minor and even further than that.
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Very, very quickly.
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Why? Because of this miraculous gift.
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But yet, the Apostle tells us that this gift would cease.
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Look at chapter 13 and verse 8.
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Chapter 13 and verse 8 tells us, love never ends.
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As for prophecies, they will pass away.
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As for tongues, they will cease.
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As for knowledge, it will pass away.
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Now, the question is not will it cease, because it says here that it will.
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The question is when.
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By the way, the word cease here, the way that it is used for the tongues is different than the way it is used for prophecies or for knowledge.
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The way that it is used for tongues is in a different voice in the Greek.
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The verb cease there is used in such a way as to indicate that it will cease on its own.
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That it will, in our modern vernacular, it will peter out.
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It will stop having effectiveness to the point where it will just stop.
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That's an important way to understand this.
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And beloved, history bears this out.
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Chrysostom and Augustine, the greatest theologians of the Eastern Church and the Western Church, considered tongues by their day to be obsolete.
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Chrysostom stated categorically that tongues had ceased by his time.
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Writing in the fourth century, he described tongues as an obscure practice admitting that he was not even certain about the characteristics of the gift.
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He didn't even know how it was to operate.
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Because by the time of the fourth century, it was no longer active in the Church.
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Augustine wrote, speaking in tongues was speaking languages which had not been learned.
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Augustine agrees with me and I agree with him.
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It was speaking a language which had not been learned.
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He went on to say, why is it that no man speaks in the tongues of all nations? His answer, because the Church itself now speaks in the tongues of all nations.
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Before, the Church was in one nation where it spoke in the tongues of all.
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By speaking in the tongues of all, it signified that was to come to pass.
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Let me do that again.
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By speaking in the tongues of all, it signified what was to come to pass.
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That by growing among the nations, it would speak in the tongues of all.
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What did Augustine say in the fourth century? Same thing I just said.
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Or the fifth century rather.
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What did he say? He said the same thing I said.
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Tongues were for the purpose of the early Church expanding the Gospel out.
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And by the time of his ministry, one of the greatest theologians in the history of the Church said, they're done.
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I think that's hugely, hugely important.
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Now, what I want to finish with today, is I want to talk about the dangerous aspects of this theology.
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Because, here's the danger.
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And we can begin to relax a little bit.
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This is where you really need to tune in, because here's the danger.
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Because I know some of you are going to come to me after this service, and you're going to say, what about this, what about this, what about this? And before I get your emails, and before I answer your questions, let me preemptively give you an answer on a few things.
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The most dangerous aspect of Pentecostal theology, continuationist theology, charismatic, whatever you want to label it.
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The most dangerous aspect of that type of theology is that it replaces the experience of the individual with the Word of God.
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It places the experience of the individual above the Word of God.
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Because the experience of the individual becomes the litmus test for truth.
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And beloved, your experience is never the litmus test for truth.
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I heard a man a few years ago say this, and maybe you've heard this.
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He said, a man with an experience is at no mercy to a man with an argument.
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That sounds real good.
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But tell that to Eve.
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What am I talking about? Eve had an experience.
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She had a legitimate experience.
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She had a pretty incredible experience.
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She was talked to by a serpent, and guess what? The serpent told her to deny the Word of God.
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She obeyed, and look what happened.
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Don't tell me your experience is the litmus test for truth.
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Heretics have experiences.
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Atheists have experiences.
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Pagans have experiences.
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Experience is not the foundation of truth.
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The experience movement is the same one which tells us that we should support things like abortion and homosexuality.
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Because they say, yes, I experienced an abortion, and I don't feel any guilt.
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Or, I'm a homosexual, and I'm happy with my life.
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It doesn't make it right.
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Experience is not the litmus test for truth.
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This issue is so important.
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This issue is foundational.
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Because if we are going to say that we hold to the truth, we have to have a foundation for our truth.
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And if the foundation is your experience, then your foundation is on shaky ground.
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There are men who have good theology, who believe these things.
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Men like Wayne Grudem and John Piker.
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Men that I love.
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But I do think they are wrong on this.
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I would not call them heretics.
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But I will say this.
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The majority of the people that I have met who have departed from sound teaching on this issue, have departed from sound teaching on almost all issues.
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They have departed from sound teaching on things like the Trinity.
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Things like the deity of Christ.
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Things like justification by faith alone.
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Sola Scriptura.
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Sola Fide.
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Sola Gratia.
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All of these things which are foundational to truth.
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And yet, they have departed from them because of experience.
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I remember years ago, when I first became a minister, I went to a camp meeting.
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It was a camp meeting in a Pentecostal church.
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While I was there, my mother, whom I love, decided to introduce me to the man who was in charge of the camp meeting.
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And she decided to introduce me as her son, the minister who went to a Baptist seminary.
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Thanks mom.
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So she introduced me as her son, the minister who went to a Baptist seminary.
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And the man who was in charge of this camp meeting, he reached his hand out to shake my hand.
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And he looked me in the face and he said, I want you to know that we teach that the evidence of sanctification is the manifestation of the utterance of speaking in tongues.
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I mean, we just met.
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I didn't know this guy from Adam's house, Cat.
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But I knew where he stood on speaking in tongues.
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Because for him, for him, this issue was a dividing line.
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And he was drawing the line very firmly.
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And it was eye opening for me.
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It was eye opening because it demonstrated that for many people, this line runs deep.
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But I believe we're on the right side of that line.
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I believe we're on the correct side of Scripture.
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And I believe we're on the correct side of history.
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We stand with men like Chrysostom, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, Spurgeon, Warfield.
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All of whom attested to their conviction that the tongues had ceased and served their purpose.
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Somebody says, well what about the 500 million charismatics who believe in speaking in tongues? They can't all be wrong.
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Beloved, there are a billion Muslims.
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Don't tell me sheer numbers make someone right.
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Why do we not speak with tongues? Because the genuine gift of tongues as a language, which was meant to take the Gospel from the Hebrews to all languages, was given to the early church and it has served its purpose.
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Our goal as believers should not be to seek after a miraculous experience.
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Our goal should be to seek after obedience to Christ.
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And know that the Holy Spirit of God will gift us as He wills for the purpose of ministering in His church.
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Father, thank you for this opportunity that we've had to study your Word.
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And I thank you God that you've given us attentive hearts and minds to focus on this subject for as long as we have.
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I pray that you would encourage us, minister to us through this, use this as a time of growth for the church and a time of building up, not of individuals, but as the church as a whole, as we grow to understand better your Word.
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I pray also Lord that through this we have seen that our goal is not to seek after miraculous gifts, but our goal should be to seek after Christ.
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And it's in His name we pray.
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Amen.