Where Have All the Spiritual Gifts Gone?

Prayer for Growth in Christ and Protection from Satan

All right let's pray. Lord Jesus Christ, help us to grow in the knowledge of your dear son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and to remain firm in our confession of his blessed word. Give us the love to be of one mind, to serve one another in humility in Christ.

Then we will not be afraid of that which is disagreeable, nor of the rage of the arsonist Satan, whose torch is almost extinguished. Dear Father, guard us so that his craftiness may not take the place of our pure faith.

Grant that our cross and sufferings may lead to a blessed and sure hope of the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ, for whom we wait daily. Amen. So before we officially get into our one day little mini lesson on the gifts of the Spirit, were there any questions that cropped up as a result of the sermon?

The gospel text is one of those ones where you can kind of turn it, it's like a diamond, it has many facets that you can kind of work with and themes that are being drawn upon from the Old Testament. Any thoughts, feelings, questions regarding that?

No? So I thoroughly confused everyone, that's how I'll interpret that. Very good. All right, we are going to be in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, 13, and 14. We're going to take a look at this foundational text as it relates to the gifts of the Spirit.

Charismatic Claims About Tongues and a Second Baptism

Have any of you ever had a friend who is in the Charismatic or the Pentecostal movements? Have any of you spent time in the Charismatic or Pentecostal movements? No, that's a little different. There may be Charismatics in the Baptist Church, but the Charismatic, the Baptists as a whole are not officially Charismatic.

So you can be a Baptist and not be a Charismatic, and you can be a Charismatic and still be a Baptist. It's kind of a Charismatic theology transcends many denominations. In fact, within Lutheranism, there are so-called Lutheran renewal churches that are into the so-called gifts of the Spirit.

And I say so-called because they have a very bad doctrine in theology regarding the gifts of the Spirit. But if you know anybody in the Charismatic movement, according to them, what is the absolute evidence that you have been baptized in the Holy Spirit?

According to them, what is necessary to be evident in your life that you're baptized in the Holy Spirit? Speaking in tongues, right. It's speaking in tongues. So here's the idea then, is that they teach that there is a second baptism, and it's the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

It doesn't involve water, and the evidence that you have been baptized in the Holy Spirit is that you speak in tongues. Now, I hate to say this, if you've ever spent time in the Charismatic churches, or you've watched TBN, or any Charismatic preacher, oftentimes if you hear them manifesting tongues, it sounds like complete gibberish.

And the reason why it sounds like complete gibberish is because it's complete gibberish. And it kind of goes, shakababa, hakabagia, you know, she drove a Hyundai, and I wish I bought a Honda, you know.

What? Hubabacan. It's just, it's, these are not words in any sense of the word. So what we're going to do is we're going to take a look at what Scripture reveals regarding the gifts of the Spirit, and we're going to note something here.

And that is that this particular list, and these particular manifestations of the only show up in one epistle. And this epistle happens to be the earliest one. Anyone know when 1 Corinthians was written?

Yes. Long ago. July. I like this answer. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Paul wrote 1 Corinthians. So 1 Corinthians is written between 50 and 52 AD. We're talking roughly 20 years after Christ's death, resurrection, and ascension.

That's the time frame. And during this time, the New Testament is not completed, especially if this is, many scholars will argue that this is one of the oldest books in the New Testament. I think Mark was written very, very early.

Matthew, probably very early. Luke has not been written at this point. And Luke will be writing Luke and the book of Acts later than this. And so the New Testament is not finished. Now you're going to note here at Kongsvinger Lutheran Church, Oslo, Minnesota, that we follow a lectionary.

And that in our lectionary, we are in the New Testament every single week. You get an Old Testament reading, you get an epistle text, you get a gospel text. But what happens if the Bible isn't done yet?

How are you hearing God's Word? Well, you're only hearing the Old Testament. As Christians, is the Old Testament sufficient as far as discipleship in Christ? It's not. It's not a complete work. It's pointing to Christ.

He's come already. But at this point, the New Testament is being written. So how then, as a Christian, are you going to be discipled in the full doctrines of Christ if you don't have a completed New Testament?

Well, you need the apostles. But the apostles, there's only 12 of these guys, right? And they write letters. Well, that's the New Testament. So what the apostles were able to do, and you can see this in the book of Acts, is that they would lay hands on people and impart to them a particular set of spiritual gifts, which then when you read in Scripture and piece it together with a little bit of data from something like the didache, that the people who operated in these gifts that are mentioned here in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14, and we'll note that chapter 13 anticipates the disappearance of these gifts, these particular ones, that these were the gifts then that God gave so that the church can be edified and built up in the intermediary period before the New Testament is finished.

And once the New Testament finished and it was done, the apostles ran their course and they died or were martyred, then what ends up happening is that we see in church history these particular gifts drop off, disappear.

Yeah, you can find it online, the didache, which means the 12, is a document that some scholars actually argue was written by Matthew. I don't know if that's true or not because we don't know who the author is, but in the didache it gives instructions to Christian churches regarding practice, baptism, and other things, and it actually talks about those who had these gifts and how to spot the false ones.

The false ones, you can always spot the false ones according to didache, they stay longer than three days and they ask for money, you can tell they're false. So the idea then is that the didache actually gives us a picture of what the church looks like while we're operating.

So then what happens then, in these churches without the New Testament, God has given gifts of the ability to speak prophetically, of words of knowledge and things like this, and everything is for the building up of the body of Christ, and then with the completion of the New Testament these things start to drop off.

And not only did they drop off, they totally disappeared out of the church, and then you have to put the word until, in air quotes, until the Azusa Street revival in the early part of the 20th century.

And their claim was with the Pentecostals that the Pentecostal movement was a restoration, God was restoring these gifts to the church. But already we have a problem, and that is that the Pentecostals overtly claim that the evidence that you have received the baptism of the Holy Spirit is that you speak in tongues, which then creates the expectation that tongues is a gift that everybody should have.

How are y 'all doing on that by the way? Yeah, now according to Peter on the day of Pentecost, where do we as Christians receive the Holy Spirit? Baptism. Baptism. So Peter says, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the Spirit and the promises for you and for your children.

Baptism is for our children. So is there such thing as a Christian who does not have the Holy Spirit if they're baptized? No. I mean, that's like saying, I believe in sharks with no teeth, you know, great white sharks with no teeth.

They will gum their prey to death. This just doesn't make any sense. Shark teeth and great white sharks go together. Baptism of the Holy Spirit goes together. This is one of the reasons why when we talked about Christ's baptism, I emphasized the fact that where did Jesus have the Holy Spirit descend upon him?

Water baptism. Plain and simple. So this is how scripture works. So as we work our way through this, we're going to note what scripture is saying and take a look at the thrust of Paul's arguments, because when you understand this text, this whole section, you'll see that the arguments that Charismatics make run against the grain of what these texts are actually saying.

Paul's Teaching in 1 Corinthians 12 on the Body of Christ

So if you know a little bit about how 1 Corinthians is organized, 1 Corinthians is one of these epistles, letters, that is, well, there's a lot of correctives in it. Corinth was a really messed up church.

They had some strange things going on. You had people getting drunk on the communion wine and forbidding the poor from actually having the Lord's Supper, which was bizarre. You had a guy who was sleeping with his father's wife and they were thinking that was a good thing.

That's really messed up. You had people who were hurting each other's consciences because they were eating food sacrificed to idols with no regard to how that might offend or create confusion with their Christian brothers and sisters.

And we can tell then from this section that there was a misuse of the valid gifts that God had given. And so we're going to take a look at the corrective then that Paul gives and watch the thrust of the argument.

And so this is the first part of our epistle text from today, 1 Corinthians 12. Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I don't want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led.

Therefore, I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says Jesus is accursed and no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit. Now, a little bit of a note here. This is most certainly true.

Nobody can confess that Christ is Lord. And by saying he's Lord, it's more than saying he's my master. Lord is a term referring to the deity of Christ, who he is, that he's the Son of God. Think of the person who first confessed Christ to be the Son of the Living God and to be Lord, it was Peter in his great confession.

And so on the one hand, as soon as Peter says, you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God, Jesus says to Peter, blessed are you, Peter, for flesh and blood hasn't revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

And on this rock, I'll build my church. And then in the next breath, Jesus says to Peter, get behind me, Satan. So you kind of get how this works. You know, you get the idea. Now, there are varieties of gifts and watch how this argument works.

There are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit. There are varieties of service, but the same Lord. There are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good.

So when God gives gifts, it is for the common good of the church, not the common good of the world out there. It's for the building up of the body of Christ that people have gifts from the Holy Spirit.

It is not for you to build up the common good within the greater community of Oslo and Alvarado. Those are skill sets that you have in vocation. Those are not gifts of the spirit. For to one is given through the spirit, the utterance of wisdom.

To another, the utterance of knowledge, according to the same spirit, to another faith by the same spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one spirit, to another working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues.

And we're going to have to do a little bit of work here in just a second, but let me read this out. To another, the interpretation of tongues. So you notice in the list that God can give you a miraculous ability to speak a language you don't know.

But if he gives you that gift, he may not give you the gift of understanding and interpreting what you just said. So if the Holy Spirit gave you the ability to proclaim the wonders of Christ in Swahili, you may be speaking perfect Swahili in telling people about Jesus, but your mind does not know what your lips are speaking unless you have the gift of interpretation.

And the gift of interpretation could be a spiritual gift or if you just naturally know Swahili. So somebody knowing Swahili would know this. Now how do I know this? Because one of the things that the Charismatics and the Pentecostals do is they try to make the claim that the reason why everybody can have the gift of tongues is because they say that there are different kinds of tongues.

There's the natural ability to speak a different language and then there's an ability to speak the language of heaven or the of the angels. And so they'll say that there's different types and so that's why everybody can have the gift of tongues.

But that's not what scripture says and I'm going to show you this in our cross-reference. In the book of Acts chapter... hang on a second here... I'm going to duplicate this tab. Acts chapter 2, which is the day of Pentecost where the gift of tongues first shows up.

Here's what it says. When the day of Pentecost arrived, chapter 2, 1, they were all together in one place. I love the other translations that say that they were in one accord, which means they were driving a Honda not a Toyota.

But anyway, don't look at me like that Becky. Okay, I'll just focus on the text back now. Okay, so suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind. It filled the entire house where they were sitting and divided tongues as a fire appeared on them and rested on each one of them.

And they were all filled with the spirit and began to speak in other. And here's our word. I'll show it to you on the screen. Glossos. That's the... it's actually parsed out. But glossos is the word and this is if you've ever heard of the word glossolea.

And it literally just means tongues. But have any of you ever written a letter or a term paper or some you've written some prose and you note that it's good form to use different words for the same things.

So you pull out that dinosaur book called a thesaurus, right? And you start looking for phenonyms and... right? And so you find different words that mean the same thing because the idea here is if you keep using the same word over and over and over and over and over again, that kind of creates redundancy.

Well, God the Holy Spirit uses the same technique where he uses different words to describe the same thing. So tongues. They began to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.

And at this sound the multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak and watch how this works in his own. And this is the word for language and it's dialectos.

Dialectos. And notice it's a synonym for tongues. So dialect, if you've ever heard the word dialect, that's a Greek word that we've pulled into English. And so they heard people speaking in other languages, other dialectos.

So tongues and human languages are synonymous. They're one in the same. That's what the gift is. In fact, we'll see then as we're working our way through this text that God prophesied in the book of Isaiah chapter 28 about the gift of tongues.

And it was a sign, a particular sign of judgment for those who wouldn't believe who were Jews. That's kind of a fascinating thing. So they were bewildered. They were hearing people speak in their own language.

They were amazed and astonished saying, are not these who are speaking Galileans? How is it that we're hearing each of us in his own native language, Parthenians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and parts of Libya.

You know, now we know all the different languages that were being spoken, where they were from. So if you have any doubt, tongues is a supernatural ability to speak a human language. You ain't ever been taught.

And like I said, you may not know what you're saying though. All right. So we've worked that out. And there's an interpretation verse 11. So all of these gifts are empowered by one in the same spirit who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

So God gives various gifts. He decides who gets what. And now comes like the big metaphor. For just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body, though many are one, so it is with Christ.

For in one spirit, we were all baptized into one body. Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, all were made to drink of the one spirit. For the body does not consist of one member, but of many. If the foot should say, because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body.

And if the ear should say, because I'm not an eye, I don't belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?

All right. And you kind of get the idea. I mean, those of us who have children, when they were tiny little babies, when they were first born, they come out and mom's being tended to, and they put the baby under the French fry lights.

And the first thing they do is they run an Apgar test on the baby, right? And so we're checking to see that there's 10 fingers and 10 toes to make sure the feet, the joints and the ankles are working properly.

They move their legs, their arms, and they clean the nose out with that bulb sucker thing. And it's just all kind of fascinating, right? And if a baby came out and the baby was all ears, it would be like an episode of the twilight zone, right?

The hospitals have to go like this and everyone's like, yeah. And you just see the terror and everyone said, this is, this is not a healthy child. It's only ears. It's listening to us, right? This is the stuff that horror movies are made of.

So that's, you'll note then the whole thrust of Paul's argument is varieties of gifts are necessary for us to be a body. And the gifts are given for the building up of the body. We should not expect that everybody has the same gift that doesn't make any sense.

So if the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is God arranged the members in the body, each one of them as he chose, if all were a single member, where would the body be?

So as it is, there are many parts yet one body, the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor the head to the feet. I have no need of you. On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.

On those parts of the body that we think less honorable, we bestow the greater honor and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which are more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.

If one member suffers, all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together. So I mean, think of it this way, there you are, it's the middle of the night, your child has been screaming or maybe hasn't gone to bed on time and you're walking around the house with your socks and without your house shoes on, and then you step on a Lego.

Right? Have you ever stepped on a Lego? I'm just saying, there's few pains greater than that. Childbirth may be above it, but not too far. Or you ever smash your toe, right on the little stand, the thing that keeps your mattress up, and you just feel like your big toe and the toe next to it just went two different directions.

Okay. I'm painting too vivid of a picture. Okay. Okay. What happens when that happens? Your whole body comes to the rescue in order to care for the wounded portion of you. That's kind of the idea. So we are a body.

That's the idea. And we all have different gifts. We'll make up different body parts. Now, no, you're in unity when somebody comes to rescue you. Yeah. Yeah. The unity is not you in the snow. It's the fire department and the paramedics coming to scoop you out with a, yeah, you got it.

Yeah. Throw you on the gurney and will you away. So you'll note then the whole thrust of this is for variety verse 27. If you had any doubt as to whether or not everybody should be speaking in tongues, this kills the whole concept.

Now you are the body of Christ individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping administrating and various kinds of tongues.

You'll note tongues is at the very, very bottom of the list. And then Paul asks a series of questions. And let me make this just a little bit bigger because I think it'll still help. And he begins to ask a series of questions and it begins with this first question, which I will highlight.

And it reads as thus may Pontus apostoloi. Now, right here, that word may is how it's pronounced. That's not translated. This is an untranslated particle, which demonstrates that when this question is asked, the question, because it has the untranslated particle must of necessity be answered in the negative.

So the question itself is Pontus apostoloi, but with the may then it's understood. The answer is no. So may Pontus apostoloi are all apostles. No. And we know that. We know that that's the case. May Pontus prophetai are all prophets.

No. May Pontus didaskoloi are all teachers. Nope. Nope. We know that for a fact. May Pontus dunamis do all are all workers of miracles, power workers. The answer? No. May Pontus charismata exusin ia maton do all possess gifts of healing.

Nope. May Pontus glossis do all speak in tongues. No. May Pontus glossis lalusin is actually the whole question. Do all speak in tongues? May is right there. It's not translated, but it demands that the answer is no.

So now we've got a problem. A foundational doctrine within the charismatic and Pentecostal movements is the singular evidence that you have received the baptism of the Holy Spirit is that you speak in tongues.

Do all speak in tongues? Nope. No. So they're not correct. They're teaching falsely. In fact, if you spent time in the charismatic movement, you will be pressured severely to speak in tongues. And they'll say things like God wants to give you this gift.

He wants to give this gift. You need to yield to his spirit. Just let go. You know, believe harder. And you're sitting there going, nothing's happening. And it's your fault because God wants to give you this gift.

Well, if he wants to give it to me, why is it so difficult for me to have it? Right. It's almost as if God is somehow powerless. And so there's pressure put on you. And some people cave into that pressure by, well, beginning to babble incoherently just to get the pressure off and they fake it.

In fact, I'd pretty much argue most of them are faking it. Yeah. Yep. Yep. It's like flipping a switch. You start doing this immediately. Your brain just goes, it's like C3PO shutting down and the empire strikes back.

Yeah. Yep. Gene, you had a question. Yeah. At the same time. We're going to talk about that, by the way. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Not only is it babbling, it's explicitly forbidden in chapter 14 of 1 Corinthians.

You're going to see that in a minute, but you're stealing my thunder, Gene. That's okay. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We babble incoherently as infants. Yeah. Yeah. And we might say it in a happy way and then we might be tired and grumpy, you know, and we don't even need to, they don't even know words.

We speak that language too, you know, because now we're just reacting emotively to whether what they're saying, it's like, oh, it's time for you to have a bath and go to bed. Yeah. Yeah. Right. All right.

So let's review. Are all apostles? No. Are all prophets? No. Are all teachers? No. Do also work miracles? No. Do all possess gifts of healing? No. Do all speak with tongues? No. Do all interpret? No. But earnestly desire and watch what he says, the higher gifts.

So he says, I'll show you still a more excellent way. Now, chapter 13, I hate to break this to y 'all. Everyone loves having this passage read at their weddings and stuff like that. I'm not saying you shouldn't.

I would just note that the context is actually in the operation of the gifts of the spirit, not the love between husband and wife. Although this informs a lot of how we're to treat our spouses. So Paul makes the argument then.

Love as the More Excellent Way

So if I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but I have not love, I'm a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers and I understand all mysteries and knowledge, and if I have, and if I have all faith so that I can remove mountains, but I have not love.

I'm nothing. If I give away all that I have and I deliver up my body to be burned, but I have not love, I gain nothing. And then here's the best part. Love is patient. It's kind. Doesn't envy or boast.

It's not arrogant or rude. It doesn't insist on its own way. It's not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. And now comes an interesting text. I want to get my cross-reference ready real quick here before I get to it.

All right. Let's see here. In fact, I got to find it real quick.

And it's in 1 Corinthians 14 20. Good. All right. I thought that's where it was, but I wanted to make sure so that I didn't have it not ready. Okay. We have to do a little work in the Greek here, and I'll help you out along the ways.

All right. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, and this is this prophetic knowledge that it's talking about. It's not talking about that the world will be overrun by people who are stupid.

That's not what it's talking about here. It's this gift here. It will pass away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. Now, what on earth is that referring to?

When the perfect comes. Now, first glance, you might sit there and go, well, the perfect is, well, Jesus. And so it's referring to the second coming, right? Wrong. New Testament. And I'll show you how we know this.

All right. So the word perfect here, I'm in verse 10. Here we go. The word is teleos in the Greek. And I'm going to show you in just one chapter later, this word teleos is translated differently than it is here in our ESV.

And I'm going to argue that the thrust of Paul's argument requires us to translate teleos the same way it's translated in 1420. Here's 1420. Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking, be what?

Mature. Notice, be mature teleos. It's the same word that's being used in 13. When the mature comes, you can say when the sufficient comes. I like in some sense that it's translated the perfect because if you recognize that the antecedent is referring to the finished New Testament, to the finished Bible, then it makes sense.

Because the anticipation then is, is not that when Jesus returns, these gifts will disappear because it is just a matter of just bonafide church history. These manifestations of the gifts of the Holy Spirit disappeared with the death of the apostles.

One of the last people who was operating in one of these gifts was the martyr Polycarp. You familiar with Polycarp? Polycarp was, what was the bishop? He was the bishop in Smyrna. And he was discipled by the apostle John in Ephesus.

So I want you to kind of think this out. John, for a while, he was the guy who was in charge of the churches in the city of Ephesus after Paul planted the churches there. John moved there with Mary, the mother of Christ.

And the apostle John had, as an apostle, the gift of laying, you know, the ability, the signs of the apostles to lay on hand so that people would receive these types of gifts. Polycarp received these, you know, a prophetic gift from the apostle John by the laying on of his hands.

And Polycarp goes on to live into his 80s and he's martyred as an octogenarian. He's in his 80s when he's martyred. And immediately before his martyrdom, he had a prophetic vision that he was going to be burned at the stake.

And that's exactly how that went down. And we would have expected that to be the case because he still had an operating gift that was given to him by the hands of the Spirit. But with Polycarp, from there, that moment forward, things just really taper off and disappear.

So much so that the whole church has understood for millennia that these gifts dropped off with the finish and the completion of the New Testament. Now this, then, let me give you a cross-reference that's going to help us out here.

The apostle Paul, in 2 Timothy chapter 3, and 2 Timothy is arguably one of the last letters that Paul writes. He writes it from prison. It's a pastoral epistle written to young pastor Timothy, who was a pastor in the city of Ephesus, who also was martyred for his faith later.

And as he's getting ready to die, what is he going to point pastor Timothy to? Signs, wonders, prophetic gifts, things like that? No. Watch what he points him to. He says, Now, as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you've been acquainted with the sacred writings, grammata, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

And then watch what he says. All scripture, again, this is graphe, you know, writing, is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work.

So 1 Corinthians is one of the first things to be written in the New Testament. 2 Timothy, one of the last. And you see that in the earlier document, you have the operation of these gifts for the purpose of building up and edifying the church without a New Testament.

And now as Paul is finishing his course and about ready to be beheaded at the command of Nero, he is pointing pastors to the word of God, which will equip you for everything that God would call you to do.

Every good work that you could possibly do as a Christian, the scriptures, the written word of God is going to prepare you for that. Peter does almost the exact same thing, by the way. In 2 Peter, we did not follow cleverly devised myths, Peter writes, and this is his last letter.

When we made known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty, talking about there at the Mount of Transfiguration, which we're going to get to in a couple weeks here in the Epiphany season, for when he, Christ, received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was born to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.

We ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention, as to a lamp shining in the dark place until the day dawns, and the morning star rises in your heart.

So you're going to note here, this lamp will keep burning until Christ returns, knowing first of all that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Both the great apostle Peter and the great apostle Paul, as they're getting ready to finish their course, and the New Testament is almost complete, say, scripture, look at the scriptures, read the scriptures, let them inform you, be in the scriptures, the writing, it's a lamp shining in a dark place until Christ returns.

You'll note that the expectation is then, with their death, their apostolic writing in the New Testament is going to equip you and make you a disciple on until Jesus returns. See, the apostles are still teaching you.

We're all students of Paul, we're all students of Peter, we're all students of John, we're all students of Matthew. How? Through their writings, the living and active word of God. And this then is the mature, this then is the sufficient, this then is the perfect that is being referred to in this text.

We know in part, we prophesy in part, prophecies are going to pass away, tongues are going to cease, when the mature, the telos, when it, the telios, arrives, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, and when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, and then I know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love.

Tongues as a Sign for Unbelievers in 1 Corinthians 14

Now chapter 14. All foundation work, you can see the anticipation for the dropping off of these particular manifestations of the Spirit. This is all going to disappear, and now for those who were operating in these gifts and misusing them, Paul is going to get, give correctives, and he's going to put tongues in its place.

And you're going to see this very explicitly, that tongues are a sign, and they're not a sign for believers. They are a sign for unbelievers, and you'll see that. So 1 Corinthians 14 now, pursue love, earnestly desire spiritual gifts, especially that you might prophesy.

For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men, but to God, for no one understands him. He utters mysteries in the Spirit. But on the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to the people for their up building and encouragement and consolation.