Sunday Sermon: Decently and In Order (1 Corinthians 14:26-40)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a New Testament book.

On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday. Each Sunday, we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the letters to the

Corinthians. This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit. Here's Pastor Gabe.

First Corinthians 14, starting in verse 26. The apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth.

What then brothers, when you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation.

Revelation, let all things be done for building up. If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three and each in turn and let someone interpret.

But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church, speak to himself and speak to God.

Let two or three prophets speak and let the others weigh what is said. If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent.

For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and be encouraged.

And the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets. For God is not a

God of confusion, but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission as the law also says.

If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

Or was it from you that the word of God came? Or are you the only ones it has reached?

If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things

I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized.

So my brothers, earnestly desire to prophesy and do not forbid speaking in tongues, but all things should be done decently and in order.

Let us pray. Our Lord God, as we come to this text this morning, as we desire to be worshipers of the

King, let us worship you in the way that you have decreed you are to be worshiped.

Not the way that we feel you should be worshiped, not the way that we want to do it, putting too much of ourselves into this process.

But we understand what John the Baptist said when he said, he increases and I must decrease.

Less of us and more of you. That's what it is we want to make most of in our worship service, that we give praise to our

God and King who created us all and saved us by the blood of his son,

Jesus Christ, shed on the cross for our sins. You decreed and placed everything in order, and so you have also commanded that worship be done in order as well.

So as we consider these things that have been written down for our edification, let us be humble in submission to your commands, our great

God and savior, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray and all God's people said, amen.

Thank you. You may be seated. On September 23rd of 1999, the

Mars climate orbiter burned up in the Martian atmosphere.

Gone. As NASA was sitting at the control panel, they lost all reading of the orbiter.

They knew it had disappeared. That's all they had to go off of was just what their instrument panel told them.

It's not like you could go outside and look up at the sky and get out. Yep, orbiter's gone. It isn't there anymore.

They just had to go by what their instrument said. There wasn't anyone aboard the craft, obviously, so it was just what the computer communicated back to headquarters at NASA, and all of their readings were indicating to them the orbiter was gone.

What had happened? What happened to the orbiter? Well, they had some inclination before it disappeared that something was majorly at fault because there were 10 to 11 times more problems that they had to solve in the journey from Earth to Mars than they typically had to handle with any other spacecraft that they sent.

What happened to the orbiter? Well, as they were going through everything again and starting from scratch, building from the ground up, trying to figure out what it was that went wrong, they realized that one piece of software aboard the orbiter was telling the thrusters on the orbiter to fire according to pounds per square inch, so thrust according to pounds.

Another piece of software aboard the orbiter was telling it to thrust in newtons.

Newton is the force needed to accelerate one kilogram of mass at the rate of one meter per second squared.

So what's the difference between, yeah, everybody's nodding, oh yeah, a newton, okay, all right. So what would be the difference between factoring thrust per pound versus newtons of thrust?

Well, one pound of thrust equals 4 .45 newtons. So you're talking a difference of greater than four times the amount.

So one piece of software trying to figure it out in pounds, the other piece of software is interpreting what the one software is saying, but putting it in newtons.

And so what ended up happening was the orbiter burned up about 37 miles above the surface of Mars.

That was a hundred miles lower than it was supposed to be. And according to their computer simulations, anything lower than 50 miles and the fragile craft was going to break up in the atmosphere of Mars.

So you had one piece of software, it was written in one language and another piece of software, it was written in another language.

And those of you who know, have worked with computers, or maybe you've even done computer programming, you only get out of the computer what you've put into it.

You can't expect it to give you anything that you did not program into the computer for it to do. So when the computer is programmed to read pounds and it's given newtons, there's a problem.

The computer doesn't understand the language. It's doing only what it's been told to do.

There is a miscommunication. It cannot make sense of these numbers. And so the whole thing falls apart and fails.

How can anything be accomplished when you don't understand what is being said?

And that is the instruction that Paul gives to the Corinthians here, whose worship and order in service had been up to this point, quite chaotic.

The way that we're organized right now in our worship service. We have a certain structure to our service, and you expect that every week, unless Gabe goes to some conference and then comes back, and then he changes everything the next week.

Rearranges the seating and the order of service and all of that. You're used to that now. But you expect the service to go a certain way.

And now you are sitting at the point of the service at which I read from God's word and teach from God's word, and you hear what the

Spirit has communicated through God's prophets and apostles. Nobody's standing up and speaking over me.

Every once in a while, we will have a baby crying over me, but that's about it.

So this is a very organized and structured manner in which we worship, and you expect this of most churches.

Although there are some churches that you might go into this morning, and things are not this organized and not this structured, and things are a little bit more chaotic.

People are probably not even sitting in their chairs. They're running around the room, or they're flopping on the floor, or they're saying things over the preacher, and maybe even in a language that is not known to mankind.

And these kinds of things were even happening in the church in Corinth, because you had individuals in this church who thought that their spiritual gift was better than somebody else's spiritual gift, and I need my time to shine.

And so whatever thought would pop into their head, they would insist was something from God, and they would stand up and try to proclaim whatever that was over top of somebody else, and all of these things were just chaos in the order and the service of worship.

This morning, we had a little bit of a malfunction in a microphone or a plug -in, and you heard that pop that would come in every once in a while, as we were saying, well, that kind of disrupts things, right?

You feel you're all in the spirit and singing the song and feeling the lyrics, and then poof, you know, something, whoa, totally assaulted my senses there with the pop that came through the speakers.

So whenever something gets out of line, whenever something gets out of order, it's a massive distraction.

And Paul makes clear to the Corinthian people here that God is not a God of confusion, but of peace.

God has created all things in order. He has set all things in order.

He has clearly communicated to us His Word. And so in reflection of the

God that we worship, even our worship services are to follow a particular order.

They should be clear and understandable with words that you know, that help to lead your mind and your heart to a place where you can worship

God. And we all worship God together. We're all of like mind and like heart when we're speaking in the same language, the language of the

Spirit, hearing His Word proclaimed, and our souls are edified. So Paul breaks down here in this particular section, as we're getting closer and closer to the end of chapter 14,

Paul breaks this down in the manner in which teaching is supposed to be done in the church.

So who is doing the talking? That's the first section that we look at. Whose turn is it to speak, basically?

Then the next part even tells us the roles that have been designated as to who is supposed to be filling those roles in those positions in the church.

And then finally, the last section is how you as the worshiper should be receiving what is being done in the service of worship.

So let's look at this first section in verse 26, where Paul says, What then, brothers, when you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation?

So anyone comes in with a song that they had in their head that morning, right? This is what I want to be singing in church today.

And we take requests and suggestions from the congregation as to a hymn that we could be singing on a prospective

Sunday, preferably a week in advance, right? So nobody's going to stand up in the middle of our worship set and say,

Hey, I want to sing How Great Thou Art. I think today is the How Great Thou Art day. And then that person begins to sing

How Great Thou Art while we're all trying to sing Oh for a Thousand Tongues to sing, okay? And then that's what it ends up sounding like.

It sounds like a thousand tongues singing when everybody's just singing their own song. But there's a structure, there is an order to this worship.

And if you have a hymn, or a lesson, or a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation, there is a manner in which those things are going to be delivered in the service.

A tongue or an interpretation, and one of the things that Paul gets to here is that if someone is going to speak in a tongue, there must be an interpreter.

Because remember what we were considering last week, that if no one can interpret, you need to sit down and be quiet.

Speaking in tongues in a language that nobody can understand does nothing. It does not edify the church, which is the purpose of the spiritual gifts.

The purpose of the gifts is that the entire church would be edified. You speak in a language that the church does not know, and the church is not edified.

So what's being exercised is not a gifting of the spirit, because it's out of order.

It is not what God has designated for His church, and the way in which we are supposed to worship the

King. And so therefore, it cannot be spiritual, or it is an abuse of that gift.

So Paul, again, very plainly saying that all things must be done for building up.

We're seeing this come up over and over in chapters 12, 13, and 14, where Paul talks about the spiritual gifts, but makes sure that the church understands the whole reason that you have this gift is not to be able to say that you're anybody great or important.

It's not so you can say that your gift is better than somebody else's. It's not so you can move into the position that you want to have in the church where you worship.

The whole meaning and reason for the spiritual gifts is for the edification of the body.

And when Paul talks to the Ephesians and says, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, what that means is that when somebody else has been given a gift and a role to fill in the church, you don't come storm all over that person's territory and say,

I can do this job better than you can. Maybe you can, but it's not beneficial for the church for you to do that because you can't do everything.

You're a limited human being, stop trying to pretend that you're God. You have a particular role that you have been called to, something that you are supposed to do.

Fill that role, submit to the person who's been given their role and let them do that with joy, encouragement toward one another, that we may build the body up together in love.

In this chapter, chapter 14, we started with Paul saying, pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts.

At the end of chapter 12, going into chapter 13, Paul says, I will show you still a more excellent way.

He says something very similar there, verse 31, earnestly desire the higher gifts and I will show you a more excellent way.

And what was that excellent way? Love. And then he comes back to summarizing it again, chapter 14, verse 1, pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts.

When we get to the very end of chapter 14, what did we read? But all things should be done decently and in order.

So all of these things done in love with the purpose of building up the church, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ, looking out for one another, not looking at church as a way that you can make something of yourself, but that we all together as the body of Christ are worshiping

God. This is all to God's glory. How can you submit yourself or humble yourself for the benefit of someone else?

Paul to the Philippians, Philippians chapter 2, consider others' needs ahead of your own.

Each one should look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

In Romans chapter 15, Paul says, we who are mature have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves, but to please our brother or sister in Christ for his good, to build him or her up.

And when we read that, those who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak. That's not, hey,

I'm stronger than you, you're the weak one, so you need to listen to me. That's not what that means. But you recognize somebody who in their faith does not have the strength or the maturity that God has blessed you with in your sanctification or in your walk with him.

And so now how do you in your strength humble yourself to lift that other person up who is weak in their faith or in their maturity in the

Spirit? It's not to look at oneself as being greater than somebody else.

I'm stronger than you. I'm better than you. I've been doing this longer than you, but that God has blessed you, blessed you with salvation in Christ, first of all, which was not your work, it was

God's. And then the growth that you have in the Spirit, also not your work, it is

God's. And so because God has done this work in you and through you, how can you then help to benefit somebody else in the body of Christ so that you might help to elevate them to the level of maturity that God has brought you to?

This is what God has designed his church for, that we would be a functioning body.

Different parts, different people doing different things. If you stand up here where I'm at, you can look out and see there's even people of different colors in here.

It's very clearly different people, different sexes, different backgrounds, different cultures that you have come from.

And yet we all in the Spirit of God are one people. Different parts of a body working together as one to build the body up, as Paul says in Ephesians 4, so that it works together in love.

And so this is that very thing that Paul is bringing to the church in Corinth. He's a little bit more specific here than the more general instructions that you might get in Ephesians chapter 4, because this is pertaining to a problem that is going on in the

Corinthian church. But our underlying lesson here, as we're reading through this, because we talked about prophecy and we talked about speaking in tongues, and maybe you who come to this

Southern Baptist church are thinking, well, you don't have a problem with that. I've never even heard anybody stand up and speak in tongues here.

So why does that need to be some sort of lesson of conviction if that's not even our practice here at this church?

Because we see the problems that are going on in Corinth, and we see the underlying message of working together in love.

And we know that's definitely applicable in our congregation. That we're all working together in love.

That we're all building one another up for the benefit of the body of Christ. Paul gives an orderliness to the way this worship needs to be done in the church in Corinth.

If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two, or at the most three, and each in turn and let someone interpret.

But if there's no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God.

I'm going to break this down a little bit more as we come to even further understanding on the whole concept of speaking in tongues, which

I talked about before. So again, a tongue is an actual language. It's a language that is spoken by mankind.

This is during a time in which the gospel is spreading throughout the world, and there are many people speaking many different languages even within the

Roman Empire. The Empire did a great job of trying to institute a single written language, which was

Koine Greek. So there was a common language that all of these nations and peoples had.

Those who were outside the Roman Empire who did not know Koine Greek, they were called barbarians.

So we think of barbarian as being like the—I mean, it was kind of like the primitive guys in this particular age, right?

They're the Vikings, they wear the fur pelts, they've got metal helmets on with the horns coming out.

They are kind of like the Ooga Booga guys of their time, right? They're uncivilized, they're uncultured.

Those are the barbarians. Well, that wasn't necessarily the case. They might have been a very cultured and educated people, but they just weren't of the

Koine Greek language. So if they weren't of the Roman Empire, they were outside that empire, they were barbarian.

And so Paul even talks about with the Corinthians how he has been a missionary not just to—or with Corinthians, Colossians is where he mentions this.

He's been a missionary not just to Roman people or not just to the empire who speak the

Greek language, but I've also been a missionary to barbarians and to Scythians.

Whether a person is slave or free, if God has led him there to that people to speak the gospel, he will give him the language to speak to them in that they may understand the gospel message that is being proclaimed.

So as the gospel is going out and it is reaching out to a people of many tribes, tongues, and languages, there are going to be those languages that may not be as common to a person like the

Apostle Paul, who was himself a very educated man. And so the Holy Spirit would give him a tongue in which to speak.

And this would happen in the churches. So it wasn't just among the apostles, but during this time of apostolic ministry, you might go into a church and hear somebody preaching in a different language so that those who spoke different languages in that church congregation and in a cultural influential city like Corinth, this would have been the case, so that everybody would have been able to understand what was being spoken.

If someone has something to say in a tongue, let there be two or at most three and each in turn.

So in other words, somebody is getting up, they're proclaiming the gospel in that particular language and it's only one person.

So not a whole bunch of people standing up and speaking at one time, but one guy is standing up and proclaiming the word of the

Lord in the tongue that the Holy Spirit has given him to speak in or the message that he has given him to speak.

And then let someone interpret. So then let somebody get up and affirm that what this person has said is actually from God and is an actual language of man because this other person has been given a gift to interpret what the person speaking said.

The person speaking doesn't necessarily know what it is that they have said. Just because when we talk about a gift of speaking in tongues doesn't mean that the person is given the knowledge automatically to know that language, but just whatever it is that they say is in the language that God means for the gospel to be communicated.

Then somebody else stands up and interprets what that person said so that everybody else can be edified by that message also.

If there is no one to interpret, Paul's basically saying this, Spirit's not working.

This isn't from the Spirit of God. So it's being affirmed that it came from the

Spirit when an interpreter can get up and say what that person has said. And note that Paul says, let there be two or at most three.

In other words, over the course of an entire worship service like this, no more than two or three people would be standing up and proclaiming the word of God in a tongue or in another language.

I went and visited a church up in Vermont, and this was a church when I looked in their bulletin followed a particular structure in their eldership.

So it was a plurality eldership, but it was different than having like the way that we do the pastor who's a full -time position.

We have another pastor that's part -time, and then we have two lay elders. But it seemed to me at least the way that this church was structured that every elder was paid and every elder was kind of equal in that sense.

So there wasn't lay eldership. Every elder on staff was a paid elder. And during the service, all of the elders spoke.

And there was one guy who was designated as the one who was leading kind of the main sermon portion.

So he would probably speak for 30 to 40 minutes. But the other two elders even got up and delivered their own little sermonettes.

They were like 10 or 15 minutes long. So my mind, it went to 1 Corinthians 14 when

I was observing this structure in the service. I saw there's three teachers. And all three men have been given something by God to communicate to their congregation that came from the

Word of God. And all still very structured. Everything was still kind of centered around a key theme, but each elder was allowed to kind of give his sermon or his sermonette to lead the people of God.

So you had at two or at most three, each in turn, not speaking over the top of one another.

But again, orderliness, an orderly fashion, a structure, and let someone then interpret.

But if there is no one to interpret, let them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God.

Now let me clarify something there. Because in a charismatic or in a Pentecostal church, and maybe those of you have a

Pentecostal background and you've experienced this before, they'll interpret that passage, verse 28, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God as I can sit in my chair and I can mumble to myself this tongue, which is, as we clarified, is not actually a language.

It's just speaking gibberish. But this tongue that I think the Spirit has given me, I can sit here and I can just speak to myself and speak to God.

And so it's not uncommon to go in a charismatic church and you will see people who are sitting in their pews, maybe with their eyes closed and their hands folded, and that's what they're doing.

They're sitting there and they're just kind of mumbling to themselves. You can't understand what it is that they're saying, but they think that they're following the instruction given to 1

Corinthians 14, 28. If somebody were to ask me theologically if that's the proper practice of that,

I would say that that person missed the first part of the verse, let each of them keep silent.

If they're sitting there mumbling to themselves, are they being silent? No. You can hear it.

Everyone can hear it. And it doesn't matter whether it's loud enough for you to understand, because even if they were loud, you still wouldn't understand it.

But them sitting there and mumbling to themselves like that is not following that instruction. Speak to himself and to God means let it be in your mind.

Speak to the Lord. If you have been given something in some other language or there's no one to interpret, then just let it be between yourself and God.

And understand here that Paul is not encouraging praying or speaking in tongues. As we looked at last week, he's discouraging the practice, and by instituting this order and structure in the church in Corinth, it will dispel any of those attempts to try to speak nonsense and cause chaos and disorder in the church.

So he's not giving permission here to pray in tongues. He's telling the person to sit down and keep quiet.

There was a young man who attended our church a few years ago, and there was another teacher from a heretical

Pentecostal church here in town. Not all charismatic churches are heretical, so don't hear me say that.

But in this particular church, they denied the Trinity. So God was not one

God, three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They believed in what's called the

Unitarian -ness of God, or the oneness of God. And that is a heretical doctrine.

Why? Because it is a different God than the God of the Bible. That's why

Trinity is such an essential doctrine. So this fellow from this Pentecostal church, this teacher, was attempting to try to win my friend from this church over to his church.

So this friend of mine came to me and said, you know, he's been bringing up these arguments and things like that.

Could the three of us sit down together? Me and you and him will sit down and kind of talk some of these things out.

And I said, sure, let's do it. We got together over at McDonald's over on 6th Street. And I am coming into this conversation with the expectation that I'm evangelizing to this guy because I don't consider him saved.

He believes in a different God. So we're going to go through some things in the scriptures, but I know

I need to show this man Jesus Christ because he doesn't know him. So that was my main objective, was just to help him understand the truth and the soundness of the gospel.

I knew we were going to rabbit trail all over the place. I knew that because you know me.

And I do that. I rabbit trail all over the place. And furthermore, there were so many different topics of discussion that this was going to go into because he was

Pentecostal and I'm Southern Baptist. So at one point in the conversation, it got to talking about tongues.

I didn't bring it up and I didn't even want to go there because it wasn't the main point.

As I said last week, we can disagree on our understanding of what speaking in tongues is or the practice of it.

That doesn't mean you're a heretic or that it's time for us to kick you out of here now because you don't see this the same way that it's being taught from our pulpit here in this church.

It's not an essential doctrine, still important. That's not me giving you permission to think differently than what it is that I'm teaching, but that it's not an essential issue.

So in this particular instance, we're getting to one of the non -essentials. And like I said, it's just a distraction.

I'm wanting to get back to the gospel, but we got to talking about speaking in tongues. And my friend, the young man who was from this church, said to this teacher, he said, well, you know, in 1

Corinthians 14, it gives us the structure, the order in which this gift is supposed to be exercised.

One person needs to get up, two people, at most three, and each one speaking at their own time, not over the top of each other.

And then there needs to be somebody to interpret. And if there's no one to interpret, they need to sit down and not talk.

And this teacher said, yeah, that's exactly the way that we do it in our church. And my friend was kind of taken aback.

I was too. It was like, really? That is the way that you follow? Oh, yeah. It says it in 1

Corinthians 14, so that's the way that we follow it. And after we continued, I think we sat at the table and talked for about an hour and a half total.

When we got done and my friend and I went outside, I said to him, okay, that thing that he said about 1

Corinthians 14, that that's the way they do it in their church, he was lying. That's not the way they do it in their church.

He knows what the text actually says and commands in regards to the exercise of speaking in tongues, and they don't follow that, and he knows they don't follow that.

So to get away from you having to say, well, you're going against what Paul has explicitly commanded in 1

Corinthians 14, he just straight up said, oh, yeah, that's the way we follow it. That's exactly the way we do it. But I've been in that church.

It is a zoo. It is people talking all over the place, all over the top of one another, people rolling on the ground in holy laughter and jumping up and down and running circles in the aisles.

It's chaos. It's exactly the kind of thing Paul was attempting to do away with in the church in Corinth that everything would come back to an organization and a structure and follow a particular order.

If there's no one to interpret, let them keep silent in church. Speak to himself and to God.

Verse 29, let two or three prophets speak. So same as speaking in tongues, let there only be two or three prophets and let the others weigh what is said.

If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent.

So in other words, somebody is speaking and they're teaching and then somebody else has a word from the

Lord and they get up and start talking. Don't let the two start talking over one another. One of you shut up so that it doesn't sound like Fox News or CNN or MSNBC, okay?

Or even some of the sports head pundits today. It is one of the reasons why

I can't watch pregame or halftime shows anymore. There's just no order.

They're adding more people to those panels on the NFL, right?

Used to be there was like two guys there. You can still go back on YouTube and watch 80s football games where it's two guys sitting there at the desk and they're talking to one another about what's going to happen.

And then after the game's over, they talk with one another about what just happened. Now there's like eight dudes sitting there.

How did we get so many people? And they're all trying to find their own time on camera and plug their

Twitter feed. And there was one time there was like this behind the scenes look of what was going on with these guys before the camera even starts rolling and it shows all of them conferring with one another.

I won't mention the names, but you would recognize them if you watch football. But they're all like, okay, you're going to say this and you're going to give me credit for that story, okay?

And then I'm going to say that you came up with it. That's the way they were conferring with one another. How can we look the best to the world that we're going to be talking to here once the cameras start rolling?

It's chaos now. I can't even watch the news. Just everybody trying to talk over the top of one another.

It's not even news anymore, it's just constant opinion pieces. We're going to give you an item of news and then we're going to give you 20 different people's opinions.

And so just as we see this breakdown in organization and structure, it's so hard to follow when you're watching the news.

Don't let church become that way. Needs to be structured, needs to be ordered.

Let there be two or three prophets speaking and then let the others weigh what is said. Recognize that.

Let two or three prophets speak and let the others weigh what is said. In other words, there's a checks and balances here.

Is this person saying something that came from God or are they just talking off the top of their head?

They're just announcing whatever thought popped into their mind. But what it is that they're saying is not actually from the

Lord. And when we talked about prophecy two weeks ago, we went through Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 13,

Deuteronomy 18, where it is said there exactly how you can know that a word that is spoken by a prophet actually came from God and that person is therefore a prophet of God and not a false prophet.

And how do we test it? If the word that came from that person happens and the encouragement is to worship the

Lord, that person's a prophet of God and what they said came from God. But if what that person said doesn't happen, have no fear of him because what he said does not come from God.

Where did it come from then? It came from the flesh or the spirit of Satan rather than the spirit of God.

Now if that man gives you a prophecy and it does come true or some sort of vision or some sort of sign or wonder and it comes to pass, but that teacher tells you to follow after gods which are not your

God, gods that you do not know, gods that did not lead you out of slavery in Egypt, in our case that do not give you the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ, then what is it that Deuteronomy says is supposed to be done with that prophet?

Take him out to the parking lot and stone him. That's not what we do. But in a modern context, that might be how that would play out.

The wages of sin is still death. So even though today we don't live in that theocracy in which a false prophet teaching us to follow after false gods is going to be taken out to the parking lot and stoned, nonetheless, what will happen to them is the judgment of God if they don't repent of this false teaching and trying to lead people astray, to follow after false gods instead of worshiping the one true

God. These are the checks and balances that are given to us in the book of Deuteronomy, that all things may be tested.

And Paul said to the Thessalonians, test all things, hold fast to what is good and abhor what is evil.

People, if it did not come from God, it's evil. There's no middle ground.

There's no, well, you know what, we're fallible human beings and God is perfect and infinite and above us.

So we as finite humans, sometimes we have a tough time interpreting what it is that God said to us.

So what comes out of us might end up being faulty and it doesn't actually come true. We have no examples of that in the

Bible whatsoever, as we considered two weeks ago when we went through different examples. There is no example in the

Bible of somebody giving a prophecy and then going, oh, you know what, I got that wrong. When God speaks to his prophets, it's clear.

It's clear. It's unmistakable. It's not a voice that they got in their head and they're having a tough time distinguishing between God's voice and their own voice.

God, was that you? Was that just my own thoughts? How can I tell the difference?

When you see the examples of God speaking to prophets, it's clear. As we looked at Samuel in 1

Samuel chapter 3, he heard articulately the voice of God speaking to him.

Or somebody might be spoken to by a prophet of God who clearly spoke to them.

As a case of David, when Samuel talked to him or when Nathan came to him, God spoke to the prophet and then the prophet came and spoke to the king.

God speaks to his prophets clearly and articulately and there's no mistaking that it came from God.

And then what the prophet announces actually comes to pass. When you observe that it came to pass, then the word that came from the prophet was truly from God.

If it doesn't come to pass, then it's not from God. And understand me plainly in this. If a person claims to speak a word of the

Lord and they're wrong, and they do it again and they're wrong, and they do it again and that's also wrong, and they do it again and they still are not getting it right, and then they do it again, oh, and what they said actually happens.

It must be a word from the Lord. No it's not. They got lucky. When they are doing this over and over and over again and they can't get it right, you can be sure that they're just speaking from their flesh, they're not speaking from God.

Last month, month of October, on a website called

BuzzFeed, BuzzFeed .com, which is not a news website, it's a hodgepodge of a mess, they are desperately in need of order and structure like we're talking about here in 1

Corinthians 14. But nonetheless, sometimes they'll put news articles together and they'll actually do some decent journalism.

And there was a reporter for BuzzFeed who went to Bethel Church in Redding, California during their

Prophecy Week, which I think was held back in September. So she went to the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry to see what this church, worldwide and famous, music and teaching and all kinds of stuff coming from this particular church, she wanted to see what this church was all about.

And what she observed during Prophecy Week was not too unlike what you would see on a psychic program, or like the

Long Island Medium, or what is it, the pet psychic, isn't there a guy that's like a pet psychic on Animal Planet or something like that?

I hear your dog talking to me from the grave. So I don't know, whatever it is. But they'll do these things that you've become familiar with as being called a cold reading.

You understand what that means? So you have a group of people, a crowd right there, an audience that's in front of the medium or the necromancer, whatever you want to call him, the witch, warlock.

He goes up to this crowd and he says something to the effect of, you know, I'm sensing over here that somebody has a relative whose middle name starts with M.

Oh, oh yeah, that's my aunt Jean Matilda. Oh, okay, all right. So it must be you.

I'm having this vision about you. It's your aunt, and she used to have a house with a little stoop, a porch on the house, right?

Yes, yes, she had a porch. Oh, okay, all right. So, and she had this series of plants that were kind of tiered there on the porch.

Well, they weren't exactly tiered, they were hanging. Okay, but there were plants. They were hanging plants, and it was right there on the porch.

Have you ever seen that before? Okay, that's the exact way that they were doing prophecy in Bethel Church.

That's what she observed going on at the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. Somebody will stand up and they'll have some sort of vision or idea.

And they're like, okay, over here, somebody is having the, yeah, that's me. And then everybody will rejoice and celebrate.

Oh, see, God is speaking here. He's communicating because there's a message that is being received and it's about somebody in particular.

And this woman observed that. She even talked to somebody who used to attend the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry who left it because he realized it was a crock.

Now, unfortunately, he didn't leave it for sound teaching. He just fell out of belief. But he did not want his name identified in her piece because he still had friends there and he didn't want to offend his friends.

But he said to this woman, he said, all that you hear about coming from Bethel Church is the one time when they got a prophecy right.

You don't hear about the 99 times where it was totally bunk.

And that's not real prophecy. That's not a word from God.

And I tell you about that because it's very, very common in our world or in our culture today.

That people will claim that they have received a word from the Lord. It may or may not come to pass.

I remember somebody doing this with my sister once when she...

This was at a church service. It was a church that was geared mostly toward youth or this particular service was geared mostly toward youth.

There was an older woman, middle aged, came up to my sister and grabbed her wrist and said, this is not of God.

And my sister had scars on her wrist. There was a point in time when she used to harm herself.

And she was totally overcome by this. She was like, how did she know? How did she know that I had done that to myself?

This is amazing. So now she's latching onto this woman and her every word. And then the next prophecy that this woman gave about my sister, my sister was looking at her going, no, no, that isn't even accurate.

So then after that, she realized, okay, she got one right, but everything else that she said after that wasn't correct.

Therefore, this woman really got... She made a lucky guess, but all the rest of it wasn't true.

We have to be very, very careful about these things for God has told us exactly how he will speak and that we have fully confirmed for us the word of Christ.

God has spoken to us through his son, as it says in Hebrews 1 .1. And as Peter talks about in 2 Peter 1, you now have the word of God more fully confirmed.

And Peter said this at a time in which the word of God was more complete than even what we have here in 1

Corinthians. So Peter wrote that a little bit later on. In 2 Peter 3 .16,

he says that Paul's letters contain difficult things, which the unstable will distort to their own destruction.

So Peter was even equating the letters of Paul with scripture. What had been written to these churches was every bit as much the word of God as the

Old Testament, what was given to the prophets in the Old Testament. So when somebody would stand up and speak as the word of God was still being confirmed among the peoples, the

Holy Spirit may truly give them some sort of a prophecy, but all in keeping with everything that we've got now in the completed word of God.

Nothing that was being revealed in the church in Corinth was different than what we can read about in God's word.

So now when we prophesy, what is prophecy now in the church of God? It is standing up and proclaiming the word of God to the people of God, just as I do every

Sunday. This is prophesying, and something is being accomplished when that word is being spoken.

You're growing in sanctification. Prophecy is not me telling you, you know what, you're going to go out of this place today, you're going to go down to the restaurant, and somebody's going to buy your meal for you this afternoon.

That's not prophecy. That is not the way prophetic revelation is supposed to be done in God's church.

The revelation of God has been given to us by his son, through his word, through his apostles, the

New Testament, which we have, or the prophets in the Old Testament, showing how God has fulfilled what he has done through his prophets and will be faithful to fulfill what he has said through his prophets to the very end of the age.

And as we read these things, it's for our edification. It's for building us up. Your spirit is changing.

You are going from being less like Dave Bleasner, or being less like Ryan Springer, or being less like Kristen Graves, and you're being more and more like Christ, because the word of God is accomplishing something in your heart.

Which, David Bleasner, that's a good point. There is two of them, aren't there? Both. Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said.

If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and be encouraged, one by one.

And the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets. So there it is. Let all things be tested.

If it can be affirmed that what that person is saying is not coming from God, it isn't from God.

So the prophets are subject to the prophets. Now, I still must encourage you to be careful here, because you can have two people that agree to share a false message together.

One of the biggest examples of this that I think of is Mormonism. Joseph Smith and Oliver Crowdery, who together fooled people into thinking that the apostles of the

New Testament had appeared to them and given them this new baptism by which they could now baptize people in the

Mormon church. Now, what ended up happening is actually very funny, is that Oliver Crowdery eventually started saying that he was receiving visions that Joseph Smith wasn't receiving.

And he would receive visions that were contrary to what Smith was receiving. So then

Joseph Smith, one, upped him by then coming out and going, OK, so now here's what happened. God has given me a chief vision and has declared me his prophet.

So you can't come up with anything that is contrary to what God would reveal to me. And I wonder if Oliver Crowdery was going, man,

I wish I'd come up with that first. Why wouldn't I be the first one to come up with that? So there you had two guys speaking falsely, something that was not ever revealed to those guys.

And I don't think they even had false spirits appearing to them. Having read enough of the life of Joseph Smith, this man was a con man before he founded the

Mormon religion. He knew exactly what he was doing and he knew that he wasn't getting visions from anything. He was just fooling people into thinking that he was.

So I often wonder if him and Oliver's exchanges were like two kids playing in the woods and having their fantasy time together, cowboys and Indians or something.

They see enemies there that aren't actually there, playing Star Wars together and fighting the empire and it's just two

Jedi Knights and they're fighting imaginary stormtroopers, you know, something like that. There's not anybody actually there, but we're just pretending together.

I wonder if that's how Joseph and Oliver came up with Mormonism. Neither one of them actually wanted to say to the other,

I know you don't actually see what you're seeing, but we're going to do this together and we're going to found a false religion.

So even though you have two people testing one another to be sure that what's coming from them is from God, be careful that there aren't false teachers that are conspiring together to make you believe that something is coming from God when it is really not.

Verse 33, for God is not a God of confusion, but of peace. And so what has been given to us here by Paul in this first section, verses 26 through 33, is the manner in which order or worship is supposed to be conducted in order within the church.

The next section clarifies exactly who is supposed to be doing the teaching. And the answer to that is men.

God has specifically given it to men to fill the role of pastor, overseer, elder in the church.

Doesn't mean women aren't important. It doesn't mean that women can't teach at all, because as we see in Titus 2, they can teach other women and they can teach children, but they cannot be the one who is setting the tone for the teaching of the church.

They cannot hold the authority in the pulpit preaching the word of God for the rest of the congregation. That is a role specifically that God has given to men.

Again, God is a God of order. He created everything with order. The planets hang in their orbits because God has set them in that particular order.

Atoms have their own little orbitals because God has created them that way. Things don't fly apart because he's holding all of it together.

And so God is the one who can designate who is to fill what role.

He's even created the church to follow in order. He's created the family to have an order and a structure.

The man is the head of the household. He cares for the physical and spiritual needs of his bride and of his children.

The woman is supposed to submit to her husband and she sets her house in order.

The children are to submit to the parents in the Lord, for this is right.

God has given all of these things a purpose and an order. And by the way, everything that I've just explained to you is completely counter -cultural.

I just watched an interview this morning about a man who thinks that he is a Filipino woman. A white man thinks he's a

Filipino woman. And the exchange that was going on on the news about this, can he just think that way?

And the woman's response was, he can do whatever he wants as long as it isn't hurting anybody. And that's when the anchor came back, ah, but isn't it hurting somebody?

Like what happens to the person that does not want to recognize that this man is not actually a

Filipino woman? Doesn't he now get in trouble and he gets penalized or he gets beat up by the culture because he won't recognize this man for what it is that he wants to be?

Is it really not hurting anyone? It is also ungracious and unloving to the person who thinks they can be whatever it is that they want to be, to allow that person to go on with their delusion and not tell them the truth.

You are harming that person. The culture wants to define what the family is.

And in the culture's family, men are not the head of the household. Wives do not have to submit to their husbands.

Children don't even have to obey their parents. That's what the culture has dictated for the family.

But we don't follow in the chaos of the culture. We obey the word of God, who is creator of all.

And therefore, he is the definer of all. He defines it. We follow in submission to God.

As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission as the law also says.

Does that mean that when we say our amen at the end of service here and we are dismissed, ladies, hush, no talking.

We get done with it. Is that what that means? I'm going to lose half this church if that's what that means.

Actually, I'll probably lose more than that. Husbands are going to get dragged out by their ears if that's what

I'm saying. That's not what that means. It's specifically saying that the structure of the church is supposed to be that men are filling the role of elder and overseer.

It doesn't matter if a woman is given a revelation or some sort of prophecy. In this context, in the church in Corinth, she's to remain silent.

She can teach the other women. She can teach the children, but she cannot get up to the pulpit and be the preacher.

That is a role that God has designated for men. If there is anything that they desire to learn, verse 35, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

Not ladies come in here with duct tape on your mouths just so you can resist the temptation. It's just your role is not to be the pastor.

Now, let me clarify something. Can a woman do that role as well as a man can? She probably can.

In fact, I've heard some pretty awful men teachers, their wives could probably do better than. But is it her place to do that?

No. This is not at all a matter of a man can do it better than a woman.

It's following the order that God has set. Men are supposed to do it.

And just as that structure exists in the church, so it should also exist in the home. And for some women who have very strong personalities, it's difficult for you to submit to your husband.

My wife used to drive like this 90 -ton haul truck. She has in her heart a roaring engine of a great big dump truck.

And she has to submit to her husband. That's not easy for her to do. But she does it because she is a

Christian. And she is in submission to her God who saves her and has commanded.

This is the way that I've created things to be. And this is the order that you are to follow.

So it exists also within the church. Verses 36 to the end. I'm going to rush through this since we're past noon.

Or was it from you that the word of God came? Or are you the only ones that it has reached?

That is such a slap in the face. Did you come up with the word of God? Like I hear echoes of Job in there.

Stand up like a man. I'm going to ask you questions and you're going to answer me. Where were you when the foundation of the world was laid?

All right, that's what I hear in this. Was it from you that the word of God came?

The other thing that Paul is insinuating here is he was the one that came and preached the word of God to the

Corinthians so he can tell them simmer down and you have to submit to the authority of an apostle.

If anyone thinks that he is a prophet or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things

I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. So this goes back to the prophetic test that is given in Deuteronomy as well.

Is this person not willing to recognize the authority of an apostle? He's not from God. He's telling you to follow after false gods instead of following the order of the one true

God. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized.

And in 1 Timothy 1, we even read about men that Paul put out of the church because they would not recognize his apostolic authority.

John warns about that in 2 John. We hear that diatrophies is causing some problems among you guys.

You know what? When we show up, we're going to take care of that matter. So it's as though to say diatrophies either needs to put up or shut up.

So my brothers, earnestly desire to prophesy and do not forbid speaking in tongues.

We've already defined what tongues is, so I don't think that I have to define that any further. But all things should be done decently and in order.

And why? Why are these things supposed to be done decently in order? Because God said so.

You get a gold star. Good job. But these things are done decently and in order so that the gospel of Jesus Christ can be communicated and people can hear it and they can understand it.

That's why. And not just for those lost souls that might be among us that need to hear the gospel and turn from their sin and worship

God. But even for you, you need the gospel. You need the gospel today.

You need it tomorrow. You needed it yesterday. All of us need the gospel, the good news, which is what gospel means.

That God sent his son, Jesus, to die for sinners so that all who believe on his name will not fall under the wrath of God, but will have everlasting life.

Gospel in a nutshell for you right there. I speak it clearly and articulately. I don't mince my words.

I don't come up with cute little word pictures. There are different allegories and metaphors and things like that might help you understand aspects of the gospel, but the gospel is clear and it is specific.

Repent. Turn from your sin. Worship Christ and you will be forgiven and you will live.

And the order that God has set for his church is so. That word would be proclaimed.