Surely God is Among You

The Corinthians’ Immaturity and the Need for Mature Thinking

Today's reading, Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature. In the law it is written, by people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners will I speak to this people.

And even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord. Thus tongues are assigned not for believers, but for unbelievers, while prophecy is assigned not for unbelievers, but for believers. If therefore the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds?

But if all prophesy and an unbeliever or an outsider enters, he is convicted by all. He is called to account by all. The secrets of his heart are disclosed. And so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you.

Pray with me. Lord, we thank you so much for this letter to the Corinthians. We thank you that you give us a practicum for orderly worship. And Lord, that the heart of all things is the resurrection of Christ, and that we not need to forget that in our words or our deeds, but to have faith truly that we are all saved, Lord, and that you give giftings to edify the body.

We praise you for tongues. We praise you for prophecy, for all spiritual gifts. Lord, help us not in our hearts say that mine isn't theirs, and therefore mine isn't worth it. But Lord, help us look at them all as contributions to the wonderful work you're doing with the Spirit.

Lord, I ask that you would hide Josh behind your cross today, that his message would be piercing, that it would be clear, and that it would be taught with conviction. We praise you in Jesus' name, amen.

Prophecy Is Greater Than Tongues

These are the fun ones. You read that text, and it seems like the Apostle is contradicting himself. It's hard to get the sense of it. It seems to really not make a whole lot of sense, and so what I'm going to try to do to untangle a knot that would have been clear to the church at Corinth is to begin with the end.

And the end of this is that the church is to be a place where if the unbeliever stumbles in, he will say to himself, surely God is in this place. That should be encouragement, and it should also be a pretty strong rebuke.

And so what we have here is we have two ends of a discourse where Paul tells the Corinthians that they are to not be children anymore, that they're to be innocent in regards to evil, but adults in regards to thinking.

And then he ends that by saying that the unbeliever who comes in and hears prophecy and has the secrets of his heart unmind and uncovered lays down on his face and worships God because what he realizes is God is here.

God is here. And the hard-hearted man never sees that God is here. The hard-hearted man is about his own schemes, his own designs, and he thinks that God is his plaything instead of the other way around.

It's a difficult passage because oftentimes we miss the main point of the discourse, and it is this, prophecy is better than tongues. Remember that when you read chapter 14. What is chapter 14 about? Paul is convincing the church at Corinth that prophecy is greater than tongues.

And he will do this over and over again and in many different ways. And then as we'll see next week, he ends with a prescription for how the church is supposed to operate in these gifts. But first we get this call, and Paul repeats it often through his letters, the call about not being ready for the meat, about being enslaved by elementary principles, about not graduating from the most basic foundational things and having to be taught that over and over again.

And surely at Corinth he's treated them this way when he said at the beginning of the letter that I can only speak to you about the cross. That would be demeaning. That is a rebuke. Because they would have said, Paul, we know about the cross.

And as we're going to find out in two weeks, we're going to find out, well, maybe they knew about the cross, but they've totally forgotten its power. They've totally forgotten the effects. And what they've done is they have elevated what is told by Paul over and over again to be one of the lesser spiritual gifts.

They have elevated it to the highest position. And all of the church at Corinth desires to speak in tongues. In fact, that's how you become the ultimate Christian in the church at Corinth, is that you have to speak in tongues.

Because if you do, obviously, obviously you have the spirit. Now I highlighted last week how this exact same error has entered the charismatic church. Where essentially what happens is, are you even Christian if you can't speak in tongues?

And it can be funny to us to see, that's the exact error. That's what's going on. That's what Paul is explicitly telling the church at Corinth not to do. And yet for us, for us, I think that the scope points at us this morning about this penetrating verse, verse 20, brothers, do not be children in your thinking.

Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature. And then Paul is going to highlight a point that also highlights our childish thinking. And that is this, that the key to understanding the text is understanding God's word.

The key to understanding what Paul is saying about prophecy in tongues is understanding what God has always said about prophecy in tongues. And how he has used it through the law. And the church at Corinth is being given a doctrinal beat down today.

Childish Thinking Versus Wisdom in Applying the Law

They're being told, look, and I'm going to remind you, I'm going to tell you the passage. This is where it happened. Remember this. Paul is on this thread, remember, I'm going to speak only of the cross in chapter 13 where he is reminding the church at Corinth that if you don't love each other, then all the rest of the stuff you're doing is completely worthless.

He says, when I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. So what we have to do to try to unlock what the apostle is getting at this morning is we have to think about what defines childish thought.

What do children think like? Now I have a lot of children and I'm around a lot of children of all ages. In my job as a public school teacher, I am around 16 to 18 year olds. Many of you guys would think these are the worst people on earth.

Many people believe that. For eight years before that, I taught 12 through 14 year olds. And from my perspective, they're the worst human beings on earth. And then some will say, no, Josh, you're wrong about that.

Obviously, two and three year olds are the worst human beings on earth. And I'm not going to argue, but no one will say that four through 11 year olds are because they're amazing. However, we are unlikely to be going through our taxes and difficult financial decisions in the family and inviting the eight year old to the table to give us tax advice.

Unlikely. We are unlikely to go to our seven year old, as precious as they are, and ask them for the ins and outs of the doctrine of Romans. Unlikely. And yet over and over in the church today, we elect elders who are charismatic, not in the spiritual gifting sense, but charismatic in the speaking sense, who are often empty vessels, who we ask them questions, and it is very apparent very quickly that they think like children.

And so if an elder or a handler of the word thinks like a child, he is going to, or she is going to preach like a child, and we're all going to be children together. So what do children think like? Well, first of all, very obviously, if you've been around a lot of kids, children, everything about children is about themselves.

Everything's about me. And if I don't get what I want, there's going to be trouble, right? Red face, temper tantrums, I'm going to scream, I will have no awareness of what's going on socially around me because if I feel a little bit of pain, a little bit of pain, like a mosquito bites me and scream bloody murder around 15 people.

This happens. Sometimes a fly lands on somebody, right, and they go insane. That's how children think. Any blip in the comfort level, any little bit of pain, any little bit of separation from the thing that I want to do, and there will be a tantrum.

That's how children think. There is no inhibition in children. I want it, and I'm going to yell it loudly, and I'm going to say it uncouthly, right? I'm going to say it in the bluntest possible terms, no, I want it.

I think of it this way. If you or I, no matter what your opinions are of the President of the United States, if you were to approach the President of the United States, you would probably dress in your finest clothes.

You would probably not berate him for the war in Iran. What you would probably do is shake his hand and say, it's so nice to meet you, Mr. President. That's what you do. But a four-year-old would say, why is your hair orange?

We know this. We know this is true. They will point out physical characteristics. They will say things that are crazy and are not accepted in society, and what parents do is get horrified by this kind of behavior.

Children are intimately concerned with what is fair. That's not fair. I want it. I need it. He got it. Why don't I get it? That's what children are concerned with. Children are simple and uncomplicated.

It's not hard to manipulate children. Offer them a little bit more than what somebody else has, and they will do whatever you want. They are easy to control. They are simple. They do not think in nuance.

They do not think deeply. It is all very simple to them because children, because of their immaturity, have no understanding of wisdom in applying the law. The only thing that children reason with with the law is what's going to happen to me if I do it, and did they get the same thing that I'm getting?

Remember the fairness, right? Children have a Rolodex memory. That's kind of a boomer talking point. They have a memory that goes on and on about what everybody else got for their infraction, right? If you err, if you give somebody a little bit lighter punishment, they're going to be mad.

Here's the other thing you have to understand about children. This is going to ring true. Children are extraordinarily interested in the execution of the law for other people, but not themselves, right?

So do adults think like children? Are we concerned and throwing temper tantrums about the things that make us uncomfortable? About the things that we don't get? Are we super concerned about what's going on with punishment for other people and not ourselves?

Because after all, we know that our intentions are good, and we meant for that to be good, and even if it didn't turn out well and it hurt somebody else, I didn't mean to, and so I should not get the law.

For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law. That is an internet meme that goes on. It's an important understanding of how children think. They are very selfish. They are very selfish. And then we get this other thing.

We are not to be childish. Don't be like that. Remember, that's what Paul is saying. Don't be simple in your understanding of the law. Be wise. James says that we are to ask for wisdom. Solomon says that wisdom is a precious jewel.

It is the most important thing that you can attain. If you want to live the Christian life and you want to be holy, the thing you need more than anything else is wisdom. The Bible is clear about that.

Why was Jesus the greatest that people were coming to him to ask questions? It's because he was the wisest. He knew the law better than anyone has ever known the law. He administered the law greater than anyone has ever administered the law.

Solomon was a shadow of Jesus' wisdom. We're going to look at that more fully in the coming months. But it's important to understand that children do not do that. They do not apply the law wisely. They are more concerned about themselves.

And when the church starts to act this way, things start falling apart. We've seen it. We have a front row seat to what happens when adults act like children spiritually. It's about my senses. It's about being entertained.

It's about being lured in. It's about shirking my responsibility to make disciples so that guy can make disciples. Think about how the Christian world falls apart when discipleship is based on the, let's be real, 45 to 50 minute sermon of one guy once a week.

Is the kingdom going to flourish under that? No, it cannot. That's not what this is for. This is for building you up and getting you prepared to take the means of grace to the table and to be able to go out, to be equipped to go make disciples as I'm going out making disciples.

I don't get out of that because I preach a sermon. I have to make disciples. I have to proclaim the gospel. I cannot be a child in my thinking. It can't be about me. It has to be about Christ and it has to be about my neighbor.

That is the law. But how do we become infants in evil? This is going to hurt. There are many forces arrayed against you in this world this morning. In this time that we live, there are forces arrayed against us being infants in evil.

Being infants in evil, first of all, when you think about what an infant does, what does an infant know? They know very little, right? They know very little. They're sitting around taking in the world because they can't act on the world at all.

All they can do is scream, right? They can't even move. They scream. They can't see. It's difficult being an infant, I would imagine. I can't remember and neither can you. But infants in evil, what does it mean to be an infant when it comes to evil?

It means to not know about it. It means to not inquire about it. Don't ask questions about the evil. You know how wrong we are in this. Don't we? The first time we hear something negative or salacious, what we want to do is get more details about it.

Why? Because we're depraved in the flesh. And that is putting death to the flesh is instead we should be infants. We don't want to know about the evil. We don't want to ask about it. We don't want to associate with it.

We do not want to speak of it and we do not want to handle it. This is a conviction of me. If you are familiar with the story Pride and Prejudice, right? A lot of you are, okay? There is a character in Pride and Prejudice whose name is Jane.

And for most of our life, I thought Jane was a complete idiot, all right? I did. Because Jane, she just does not understand people's evil intentions going on all the time. She tries to put the best face on every action of every person around her.

And as I read texts like this, what I start to understand is that in many ways, Jane shows wisdom, right? But Jane is not even, she doesn't know about these evil intentions because it wouldn't occur to her to be evil.

She doesn't handle it. She's so innocent in her handling of evil because she doesn't touch it. She doesn't ask about it. She doesn't want to know about it. And we, as those who crawl through evil, like crawling through a sewage pipe, we look at people like that and go, what a moron.

They're going to get taken all the time. We have to know about evil. It's not what Paul says. Paul says we're not even to ask about it. We don't know the evil schemes. And when you think of the full-fledged assault that is against you every day in this regard, when you go to public places and there is softcore pornography hanging on the wall, when you pull out the phone and you look at it and you are subjected to lies, gossip, lust, heresy, all of it.

When you turn on the news and you listen to just lie after lie after lie, when you go out in the world and it's all about getting ahead by putting someone else down, it is very difficult in this world.

And guess what, guys? The Corinthians are no different. It's very difficult in this world to abstain from evil. But see, it's all about affection. And this is where it has to convict us because the reason we want to know about evil is because we have a draw to it because we've not mortified the flesh.

The reason we want to know about it is because we like it. And it's good to take a good look in the mirror and think about your desires. If you desire to know about evil, it's because you are feeding the desires of the flesh.

And you have to put it to death. That's what Paul is telling the church at Corinth. He's telling them, you guys, you are in the evil. That's why we're talking about eating meat sacrificed to idols, remember?

That's why you're talking about suing each other. It's because you're living like the world is living. You're acting like they are because you want to get ahead. Stop doing that. See, the world, not only does it try to inundate us with evil, as it always has, because the enemy prowls around like a roaring lion.

He's not trying to muzzle up to us. He's trying to devour us, and he does that through stratagems. The world's war is to tarnish us and to soil our garment with evil, but it's also to make us children.

Every message to men is to be more like children in this world. Every message. The world pushes through marketing, I need it now. If I don't have it, they'll be better than me. Isn't that what every advertisement does?

That is childish thinking. That is pushing immaturity, impatience, ingratitude, selfishness. It's trying to divide everybody into two political teams, not so that we can have reasoned disagreement with each other, and this is not a third-way sermon.

That's not what I'm saying. But what the world tries to do is it tries to divide us into factions like the church at Corinth so that we can harbor zero disagreement whatsoever, because disagreement means death.

If we disagree, then we have nothing in common, and you're probably a Satanist. This is where we find ourselves in Christendom today. We have to stop thinking like children. A child finds someone who disagrees with them, and what they want to do is punch them in the face.

An adult listens to disagreement and thinks, is my argument better than that? How can I be sharpened? And adults treat each other like adults. We can get through disagreement. Are we snowflakes or are we not?

And as Christians, we don't get the latitude to be that way. It shows our immaturity. It shows our divisiveness. It shows our childishness when we behave that way. So on the flip side, how does the mature one think?

Well, the mature one studies God's law. The mature one prays for wisdom. Like James says, we pray for wisdom so that we can think wisely. The mature one thinks and sees fruit. When's the last time you looked and you thought, what is the fruit of my life?

Do I have the fruits of the Spirit? Am I more self-controlled than I used to be? Do I love the brothers more than I used to? Do I have joy in the Lord? Or am I just downcast every day? Do I have peace or am I an anxious wreck?

Am I patient with those who disagree? Am I patient with those who are behind me? Am I patient with those who defend on me? Am I kind? Am I good? Am I gentle? Am I faithful? And friends, as you grow in maturity, just as a tree is known by the fruit it bears, when you are pruned by Christ, the great vine dresser, and he has made you, you are his workmanship, made by him to walk in the deeds that he has laid out before you.

And when you walk in him, you will surely grow. And as you grow, you will start to develop huge amounts of fruit. And we sit here in the immature, mediocre Christian church, and we don't even think about our fruit.

We walk in the Christian life and we're like, I love God, and then we never even ask the question, am I growing in fruitfulness? Am I making disciples? Am I more patient than I used to be? Am I more self-controlled than I used to be?

Are my kids growing in fruit? What is the result of my work? See, it's a little known fact in the modern church is that Christians are supposed to produce works. And if you're producing nothing, Jesus says something about you.

Do you remember what he says? He says all of the branches that produce no fruit are going to be gathered, cut off of the vine, and burned. You know what that means? In simple terms, that means if you produce no fruit, you are not a Christian.

No matter what your mouth says. We are not saved by orthodox confessions. We are saved by the Holy Spirit unto good works. And that's what Paul is telling the church at Corinth. Grow up, church. Grow up.

It's not about your tongues. And I'm going to shame you doctrinally right now. So here we go. I've delayed for a long time the confusing part of this passage. That is deliberate. I've been doing this for a while.

Here we go. Verses 21 through 22. In the law it is written, by people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners, I will speak to this people. And even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord.

Thus tongues are a sign, not for believers, but for unbelievers. While prophecy is a sign, not for unbelievers, but for believers. Well in order to understand this, this is not the confusing part, it's the next part that's confusing.

Because he seems to exactly contradict that point. Tongues are for unbelievers. Prophecy is for believers. Okay. Here's what he's talking about in the law. I'm going to quote a section of it. If you want further study on this, and we're going to be there a few times today, you should look at Isaiah 28.

I'm going to read verses 9 through 13 to try to shed some light on this. Here it is. Isaiah 28 is a judgment on Ephraim. Ephraim is a tribe that is full of drunkards. They have corrupted justice, and there is only a remnant left who are the Lord's.

It is a corrupt group of people. And so, as is usually the case with prophets, what's going to happen is God delivers a prophecy to Ephraim, and the prophecy is, I am going to enslave you. You will be held captive.

And here's how he delivers it. Very important. Verse 9. To whom will he teach knowledge? And to whom will he explain the message? Those who are weaned from the milk, those taken from the breast. That's what he's saying.

Is it going to be babies that tell you the knowledge? See the connection with what's going on in Corinthians, right? It is a shame. It is a shame when the immature have to deliver the message, because there's no one wise who can understand it.

For it is precept upon precept. This is what Ephraim is learning. Precept upon precept. Precept upon precept. Line upon line. Line upon line. Here a little, there a little. For by people of strange lips and with a foreign tongue, the Lord will speak to this people, to whom he has said, this is rest.

Give rest to the weary, and this is repose. Yet they would not hear. And the word of the Lord will be to them, precept upon precept. Precept upon precept. Line upon line. Line upon line. Here a little, there a little, that they may go and fall backward and be broken and snared and taken.

Guys, this is the immature church. For the immature church, it's law upon law upon law upon law. Line upon line. Religious precept upon precept. Here a little, there a little. Do a little of this, don't do a little bit of this.

You guys have probably all seen that. You've probably grown up in it, because childish Christianity has a focus on legalism. It has a focus on self-righteousness. What you have to do, and what's going on in Ephraim, is the law that is being preached to Ephraim is in direct opposition to what God's message has always been.

You see it there, right? What the people are saying is, law upon law. Follow the law. Law, law, law, law, law. And what God has told them, what God has told them, is this is rest. Give rest to the weary, this is repose.

Think about the nation of Israel. God had given them rest, right? They entered into the promised land, and he gave them all that he had promised them. And the message is eternal. The only way to God is by grace.

It's the only way. And yet in our humanity, in our childishness, we will repeatedly think that it's law. We will repeatedly think that what we have to do is we have to follow a very strict religious code.

And that is the message of every false teacher out there when you boil it down. You have to do these things. And yet the message of God was always, I have done these things, and you will enter into my rest.

That's the message. But what's going on in Ephraim is they don't understand that message. And God is going to raise up people of a strange tongue, remember, a language, right? They're not going to be going, shabba-da-da-da-da, right?

That's not what's happening. There is going to be a foreign people who come in and speak their own tongue, and the people in Ephraim are going to hear that tongue. They're going to know these people don't speak that language.

They're going to hear it in their own language, and they're not going to understand it. Because spiritual truth is obtained spiritually. The truth of Scripture is not because you arrived at it academically.

The truth of Scripture is revealed to you through the Holy Spirit. That's why the words of the cross are nonsense to those who don't believe, but to those who believe it's life. It's the power of God.

So to the people of Ephraim, they were entrenched in their law, and as it goes with everyone who preaches law, law, law, they can't take it, can they? They are oppressing the weak, and they are drunkards.

And there is a condition here where drunkenness is always the counterfeit of Satan for spiritual activity and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And that's what's going on in Ephraim. They don't have the Holy Spirit.

They're drunk. And then when the people of a strange tongue come and deliver the message that I have given you peace, you know what they hear? Law, law, law, law. And then what they get is the condemnation of the law, which is captivity.

Because let me ask, are the people of Ephraim lawbreakers? Of course they are. Of course they are. So Paul uses this point, and he illustrates maturity in innocence. The drunk people of Ephraim, they cannot hear the voice of the Holy Spirit.

They cannot hear the message of grace, because they are childish in their thinking, and they think that they can follow the law hard enough to be right with God while they are drunk and don't understand anything.

That is the stupidity of immaturity. They have no one that can hear the message. They have a remnant. And so, how is tongues for the unbeliever? Paul is using the example in a negative sense. Tongues are for the unbeliever because they increase the condemnation of the unbeliever.

Look how it happened at Pentecost. We read it last week, right? The apostles are proclaiming the gospel, and at Pentecost, everyone's hearing it in their own language. And the people that you would expect the most to be elated about the gospel of Jesus Christ, the ones who were the students of the Torah, the ones who had read it and read it and poured over it, and they were the keepers of the religion, they did not understand what was being said.

And they pointed at all the people who were speaking and said, are they drunk? And Peter says, they are not drunk. So what did the gift of tongues do at Pentecost? It was a message of condemnation to the unbeliever.

But to the believer, and remember, this is where doctrines of grace help you. In God's economy, who is a believer and who is an unbeliever? We know this, right? The elect are believers. The unelect are unbelievers.

And the unelect will always be unbelievers. And so when the unelect hear this, it is condemnation to them every time. But when the elect hear, no matter what their stage of election is, they will hear and understand.

That's how you can be lost and come into the church and you hear a prophetic word and you fall on your face and worship God. Why? Because you were surely elect. Even when you weren't saved, you were saved.

Help me make sense of that. We can't in our temporal human mind. But the reality of the situation is God knows who he is called and who he is not. And he is not bound by the timing of that. He is the author of the timing of that.

And so when we look at this, the message delivered by strange tongues did what to Ephraim? What did it do? It increased their condemnation. God used it to pour even more wrath on them because he said, I'm going to deliver a miraculous message to you and you're still not going to hear it.

And that's what spiritual gifts do. The word of the Lord is precept upon precept to them. What a sad thing. Tongues are a negative sign. They are a negative sign to the unbeliever. But to those who are elect, look at what happened at Pentecost.

What happened to those who were elect? They heard the gospel in their language. Because what happened? Is God a God of confusion or is he a God of order? Is God bound to human means for his communication to be delivered?

No, he is not. And so what happened at Pentecost is that every person who was elect heard the message in their own language and they repented and believed. And their number increased greatly on that day.

Were they Christians when they came there? Unlikely. They hadn't heard the gospel. They were Christians when they left though because in God's economy, they were Christians when they went. Does that make sense?

They were always elect. Before anyone was ever created, they were elect. God knew the number of every single person at Pentecost who would both not hear and accuse of drunkenness and those who would hear and would repent.

And to all of them, God had them sorted from before he ever created anyone or anything. To God be the glory. You think you want to take credit for what's going on? Just think about that a little while.

Just think about what God is doing with the elect. It is not out of his control with deathbed confessions. God chose for his glory and his purposes for that to happen at that time. So tongues are a negative sign.

If you cannot understand them, you're going to get judged even more because you're not of God. But if you can understand them, then you will be blessed and you become a believer. And then what? Tongues are not for you anymore.

Because what the tongues do is they provide the message to the unbeliever. That's why they're a gift for the unbeliever. They provide the message and it needs to be clear. God is not going to set the eternal soul of someone in peril because they speak Farsi and you speak English.

God's message will be delivered. Should the missionary who doesn't know how to communicate pray for this gift? Yeah. Let's not be stupid, okay? Yes, we should pray for that gift in that situation. For the believer, what do tongues always bring?

Clarity. Clarity. In that day, Isaiah 28 5, in that day, the Lord of hosts will be a crown of glory and a diadem of beauty to the remnant of his people. Even in Ephraim, even as they were squaloring around in the gutter with their drunkenness and their foolishness, there was a remnant of God's people who were going to be his crown in eternity.

Have you thought about what it means for you to be a child of God? Have you thought about the blessings that you have inherited through his grace? That you are a crown of glory to the king. He loves you.

He loves you and he desires that his message would be clear to you. And, and he is called the elect and the unelect, the unelect to condemnation, the elect to glory. And as a child, what do we often think?

That's not fair. Do we not? The scripture's clear. God knows. God knows. He always has known. Let's look at the last two verses where it gets complicated. But if all prophesy and an unbeliever, or if all prophesy and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed.

And so falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you. Okay, so let's look at what's going on. Paul uses a contradiction or a contrast, right? With tongues, if a lost person comes into the church and every person in the church is speaking in tongues, the lost person's going to go, these guys are out of their mind.

And then Paul is going to later give us a clue that that's an absurdity that he's using. Because in Paul's order, there should be no more than two or three. But imagine the scenario. An unbeliever comes in, the gift of tongues is for the unbeliever, but inside the church we're all doing our own thing and every guy's blasting off speaking in tongues.

Can you imagine the situation? It's disorder, it's chaos. The unbeliever comes in and goes, I don't know what to do with that. These guys are crazy. This is nuts, right? Can you, look, if you look it up on YouTube, if you've never seen this sort of interaction, you should look at it, okay?

And what lost people do is they go in the comment section and they laugh at a lot of good brothers who have fallen into errant doctrine, right? The sin and the disorder at the church at Corinth is a grievous thing and it hurts people.

When we don't run the gathering of God's people as God has prescribed, it hurts people and it causes confusion. The very opposite of what the gift is supposed to do, supposed to bring clarity. And then he turns.