1 Corinthians 14:26-40 Controlling Our Tongues

Controlling Chaos in the Corinthian Gathering

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsick preaches from his sermon series titled, First Corinthians, Sinful Church, Powerful Gospel. Let's listen in.

Welcome to Recast Church. As Ben said, I'm Don Filsick. I'm the lead pastor here, and I wonder how many people are going to show up at 10 o 'clock.

This morning.

We'll see.

See if anybody rolls in an hour late and goes, oh, that's right, that was today. Unfortunately, Apple and Android help us with that a little bit more than in the past. So we're gathered here to be built up in our faith.

I hope that's why you're here. And just like you might leave a workout at the gym a bit sore and beat up from time to time, feel a bit tired and your muscles exhausted, I expect that sometimes our gathering will be just as challenging, but on a spiritual level, that is quite possible from the text this morning.

Our text is one of those that highlights our core value of truth, that we believe that God's Word is capital T, truth. Our church name is an acronym for our core values, replication, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth.

And the reason I mention truth, truth by truth, we mean that we take God's Word as revealed in the 66 books of the Bible to be the faithful declaration of God, what He desires for us to know. It talks of His character and His desire for humanity.

The way He desires for us to roll and the way He's designed us. I'm talking like this because our text is one that is often used by unbelievers as an evidence against God and against His Word. Paul threw out a couple of his texts, a couple of things that he writes in letters to the churches is often accused of being misogynistic.

The Bible has been accused of being outdated. And a church that believes the section of Scripture that we're going to go over this morning will increasingly be accused of endorsing the patriarchy. So as we dive into this, you will see exactly what I mean.

But in context, it's very easy to miss the purpose of why this was written in the first place to understand the context and to see the flow of Paul's argument. The overarching purpose of this text in this letter, this section of 1 Corinthians is about controlling chaos within the gathering of God's people.

In this sense, I truly believe that every component of these 15 verses is written with one primary goal in mind. It is to reorganize the church in Corinth towards decency and order. We're going to see that by the end of the text, that phrase decency and order, and you'll actually see it somewhat throughout.

The church, what you need to understand about Corinth is the church was trending toward chaos and their gatherings. Growing in faith together was out the window. Clear teaching was being inhibited. Shameful interjections were being entertained in the midst of the people.

In a phrase, the church gathering at Corinth was a free-for-all. And don't lose sight of what was stated earlier. To demonstrate the debasement of this church, how utterly crazy things were. They were getting together, they were having a meal, then they would have some teaching and different things, and then they would take communion together.

And some, it says in 1 Corinthians, earlier in this letter, some were even getting drunk.

At their potlucks.

Okay, how many of you are going like, that church is crazy? Like that church is getting wild. I mean, some were even getting drunk at their potlucks. So everything since the start of chapter 11 has been written to correct wayward behaviors within the church gatherings in Corinth.

And this passage wraps up those corrections with some final instructions for everyone to control their tongues in the gathering. So let's buckle up and open our Bibles to 1 Corinthians 14, verses 26 through 40.

Again, 1 Corinthians 14, 26 through 40, and this is God's holy word. I hope you remember that, and I hope you can reflect on that as we read this together and as we wrestle through it and try to understand what Paul is getting at here.

1 Corinthians 14, starting in verse 26. What then, brothers, when you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. 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 and speak to himself and 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 all be encouraged.

And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the 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's pray.

Father, I thank you that you are concerned for the way that we live and move and relate to one another and interact within the church, that you are indeed a God of peace and not a God of chaos, not a God of disorder, that you are driving everything toward peace.

Father, when we look at the relationships in the world around us, when we look at the dividedness of our country, the dividedness of our nation, between left and right and red and blue and male and female, ins and outs and haves and have-nots, not even to mention or hardly to mention even race, Father, I ask that you would be highlighting for us the way that you have a desire to draw all in together.

Different parts, different functions, different roles, but all for the betterment and the blessing of the body. Father, I pray that you would illuminate this text and give me your grace as we seek to understand it this morning, as we seek to understand who you are, how sovereign you are, how in control you are, how you have designed us, how you have ordered things.

And I thank you that we are not just in the dark, just trying to find our way, that you guide us and you direct us through your holy word, your revelation. Father, I pray that you would meet us in this place as we have an opportunity now to sing songs of praise to you, our voices mingled together in gladness and in joy.

Father, I pray that you would inhabit our worship with thoughts of gospel, of thoughts of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf that unites us. I thank you for the value that all of us have in Christ and the hope that we all have in Christ and the joy that can be ours through Christ.

And it's in his name that I pray, amen.

Now you can go ahead and be seated.

I encourage you to get as comfortable as possible and keep your Bibles open to 1 Corinthians chapter 14, verses 26 through 40. And I know we just had a break, but if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donut holes, or if you need to use the restrooms, those are out the barn doors down the hallway on the left-hand side.

Take advantage of that.

Silence Uninterpreted Tongues

And just kind of start off with, despite the fact that two verses out of these 15 are going to grab our attention when we read it more than others, I'm going to ask you to take this passage as it comes at us and see the flow of it so that you can see that the call in this passage to hold your tongue, silent is the word that appears multiple times and actually forms the outline of our text.

But that phrase or that word, hold your tongue, has a place and time for all of us within the church, even those with speaking gifts, at times it would be who of us to be quiet.

And listen.

And so verse 26 needs to be clarified first because it serves as somewhat of an introduction to this conclusion of what has been a larger section of this passage or this section of 1 Corinthians. He's been seeking, Paul has been writing and seeking to bring a chaotic gathering within Corinth into more order and more love and more building each other up, that being the focus, the building up of one another.

He has been warring against selfish arrogance, loudmouth clashing gongs who've been seeking the spotlight there in Corinth. And so verse 26 grants a general reminder that the parts and roles of a worship gathering in Corinth must all have the same goal.

All the components, all the things that happen in a worship gathering of a church has variety in it, but all the same goal, whether it's a song that we sing together, a prayer being offered, a message being delivered, an announcement being given.

Whatever is brought forward in a church gathering should be with the focus of building others.

Up.

I hope you have heard that consistently throughout this series as we've been going, especially past several sermons in this series, going over this section. All of it for the building of one another up.

If it is not for the edification of others, then it is meant to be practiced elsewhere or maybe not even practiced at all. So now our outline is as follows. Here's the outline. Silence uninterpreted tongues.

That's your first point. Silence uninterpreted tongues, verses 27 to 28. The second is silence an interrupted revelation, verses 29 through 33. The third is silence wives during challenges to theological accuracy, verses 34 through.

35.

And then the fourth is silence those who deny Paul's writings, verses 36 through 40. So the idea or the concept of holding our tongue is found in all four of those points. So we'll start with silencing uninterpreted tongues in verses 27 through 28.

Right away the word if should grab our attention in verse 27. If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or three at most, two or at most three, and each in turn and let someone else interpret. The word if ought to grab our attention.

There's absolutely zero expectation that it is a normative part of a church gathering that someone speaks in tongues. You see that right away, if, if it happens, which implies that it's quite likely or possible that it doesn't.

I mentioned last week that Paul sees a severely limited value to this practice in the gathering of God's people. And where we get to verse 29, the conditional if is absent from declarations of the prophetic revelation of God's Word.

It doesn't say if somebody prophesies when you gather together. The expectation is that that is going to happen. That's a set part. That's going to happen when you gather. But what's not, what's not guaranteed is that somebody is going to speak in tongues every time you get together.

And that's, that gives me hope because we haven't had that here. It's going to be said let two or three right away prophesy, not if. And this should matter to us a ton as a church where we have not experienced and do not expect tongue speaking within the gathering of God's people.

We follow this passage by not prohibiting it as we're going to see by the end it's going to say don't prohibit it. Don't prohibit speaking in tongues but we find comfort in the if of verse 27.

Amen.

Find comfort in that?

Like we are not an illegitimate church because nobody has spoken in tongues here. No, there's a big if there at the start. And what he's saying here is if it ever happens, there should be a plan. In the event that it happens, there should be a plan.

Every church ought to have a plan, an if. If this takes place then. And so we actually do have a plan here. It's kind of rusty and needs to be dusted off from time to time and this is just as good a time as any.

But if it ever happens here, we would stop the service. If somebody got up and spoke in tongues at some point in the message or in the service or during songs, we would stop the service and pray for an interpretation.

That's exactly what we would do depending on the results of giving what would likely prove to be an awkward few minutes of silence or quiet for an interpretation. If an interpretation is given, there would still be a step of discussion among the elders later to determine the nature of the tongues and interpretation, whether or not it's consistent with God's Word and all of that.

But in the absence of an interpretation, we would seek to follow the clear instructions of verse 28 here and encourage any tongue speakers to remain silent and only speak tongue silently to God. The instructions in verse 27 give a glimpse to what things must have been like in Corinth.

Many people speaking in unknown tongues, which would account for Paul's statement back in verse 23 that if everyone is speaking in tongues and an unbeliever comes into the church gathering, they will say the whole church is nuts, that you're all insane, right?

And that's what he said in verse 23. So Paul is clearly limiting the number of tongue speakers in a gathering to three at the most. And his mention, it's kind of intriguing and interesting. When he says two or at most three, I believe that betrays within Paul a bent that he would prefer less than more.

He'd prefer less than more. When a person says two or three, maybe, what they really mean is, I guess we could put up with three, but it would be nice if it stopped at two. You know what I mean? Like if you say two or I guess three, you know, that's kind of the way of stating it.

Taken with the if at the start of verse 27, a picture emerges in which he expects there to be between zero and three tongue speakers in any specific church gathering. Between zero and three, not 25, not 100, not everybody doing it at the same time as is often practiced in many charismatic churches today.

But further tongue speaking is commanded to be orderly. He says take turns. This implies something that might be kind of confusing to those of us who have never experienced this, haven't been at a church that follows God's word in chapter 14 about the practice.

It implies a high level of control over speaking in tongues for the one who has this gift. They can wait. They can wait their turn. They can even go so far as to skip it. Even if they feel it welling up within them, they can skip it if there is no interpreter.

They may feel they have this gift, but they can go without it. It's not a frenzied trance that comes over a person producing chaos in the gathering where they just begin to, I just couldn't control it.

The spirit came over me and I just had to do it. No, that's not what the text says. Then what you have is something different than what God is talking about here. That's kind of scary to think about, but what do you have that you can't control?

What do you have that is coming over you that is requiring you to do this thing? That's scary. But our first use of the word silence in this passage that gives us some structure is hold your tongue that comes in verse 28 and is reserved for tongue speakers where there is nobody to interpret.

So the second use of hold your tongue occurs in an interesting place. He instructs the church to silence an interrupted revelation. It's kind of a weird place to put the emphasis in verses 29 through 33.

Again, I think prophecy is a gift best described as the ability to reveal truth, capital T truth from God, that gives the knowledge of God and reveals mysteries. That comes from chapter 13, a definition there.

It's a generic word for revelatory, intelligible speech from God about God, about His will, about His ways. To clarify, because there seems to have been some confusion over the past couple of weeks on what I understand prophecy to be, I got a couple of emails this week not critiquing, just asking for clarity.

It's the revelation of God's specific words to His people. When you think prophecy, think God's words, God's words being revealed. And since they had no really thinking about their context and understanding, why is he talking about prophecy to the Corinthians, well, they didn't have the book of 1 Corinthians until it arrived, let alone they didn't have 2 Corinthians, and likely they had no access to the gospel of Matthew or the book of Romans, for example.

They didn't have those in their possession. So God would reveal His word to the early church in more miraculous manifestations than.

He does today.

So the word prophecy is broad enough to encapsulate any of the revelation of God that includes His word. So some preaching, and really preaching is meant to be prophetic in nature, some preaching is prophecy, and when it makes, it is prophetic when it makes God's word better known, and I hope to preach in a prophetic way where you understand God's word better and you hear from Him better because I've explained the text.

But not all prophecy is preaching. Some prophecy is more spontaneous like it would have been in this gift given to some in the church in Corinth. But prophecy always has at its heart knowing God better and understanding the mysteries of God better as a result.

It is not centered on us. It is not centered on our future plans. It is not centered on which job to take. It is not centered on who to marry. It is not centered on the individual, but rather centered on the corporate gathering of God's people hearing from God.

You get it?

It is always for the up-building of the congregation, not for the up-building of the individual.

Get it?

So that is, that's what I mean when I'm talking about prophecy. No, no, no, no. Prophecy is not equated with preaching, but preaching is meant to be prophetic. And still in the church today, I believe that the primary mode of prophecy, what is given to us now in a completed canon, is preaching.

So the primary way that we are meant to be prophetic is in the teaching, the teaching and the preaching and the discussion and the community surrounding God's revealed word, Genesis to Revelation. So in the era of church history when the New Testament was unavailable, the church depended much more on the Holy Spirit to grant specific revelatory prophecies to fill in the gaps of their understanding of what was lacking in the New Testament.

We now take for granted that we can turn to 1 Corinthians or Revelation or the Gospel of Mark, but the church in Corinth didn't have those prophetic words available to them, so God gave them real-time prophecies in their gatherings so that they might more fully know the Gospel and know God's will for them, all for the purpose of up-building and edification of the church.

So that's what's going on there in prophecy, but even as valuable as prophecy was to the early church and is to us in the gathering, God still puts limits on it. Paul seems to assume that prophecy will be a part of every gathering.

We know that the early church devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching according to the book of Acts, so we know that it was a component of the gathered church. But in verse 29, he says, let two or three prophets speak, again, I think hoping for the lower end of one to three prophets in each gathering.

But he adds here that the rest of the church should weigh or judge what is said in prophecy. There's an immediacy to this judging or weighing, as the ESV talks about it, that once again helps us to define what the prophecy was about.

The implication is that on the spot and on the fly, a group of guys, particularly within the church, would be able to determine whether or not what was said was actually from God or not to some degree.

The weight of the importance of prophecy in the gathering requires immediate analysis. Is this indeed truth from God? This emphasizes the verifiable nature of this gift on the spot. This is not something that is going to be checked over the coming 20 years as someone has stood up and prophesied that I declare over this child that they are going to grow up to be a powerful preacher.

How many of you know that's going to take a while to verify? You know what I'm saying? And this is implied, everything in the language here in the text implies, no, no, when a guy stands up and prophesies, it's going to be clear, and it's going to be increasingly clear as you begin to think about what was said, whether or not this comes from God, whether it's consistent with him, tested on the spot.

This is something tested on the spot because it is true knowledge of God and the revelation of the mysteries of God, and this is to be checked on the basis of available scripture, the apostles' teaching, possibly other criteria that's not spelled out in the text.

Like is it self-centered on the part of the prophet, or is it edifying everybody? Does it build them up? Is it consistent with things that build people up? There might have been some other criteria, but obviously what was already existing in Does it disagree with the Old Testament?

Throw it out. This guy's a bum. But this implies that even in the very orderly early church service, there could be an alleged prophecy that is weighed and found false. And I imagine this happened as Paul encouraged this weighing here, that there were times when charlatans and false teachers would get up and just spout words with an attempt to get a following.

And I imagine it would have been just as clearly awkward then as we imagine it could be now if there's disagreement at that level. This equates to our gathering as some level of feedback on the validity and accuracy maybe of my sermons.

Whether this was done vocally in the gathering or later at a later time is unclear, but the way that the prophet would get feedback is it appears it happened in real time. And the way that verse 29 connects with the text implies an inaccurate prophecy would be weighed and called out and corrected in the gathering of God's people.

And what I think is happening in verse 30 where we find our second verse that really commands to hold your tongue or silence is one person standing offering a revelation from God when another stands up as a sign that they also have received a revelation,.

A prophecy.

And when this happens, the first, the first, the first is to silence themselves, literally to hold their tongue while the second one speaks. You see, what I think is getting at here is that when the one person sits, when the one person is standing talking and somebody else interrupts, God may be verifying, correcting, rebuking, or otherwise weighing that first prophecy.

There is nothing that seems to prohibit the first from eventually finishing the prophetic word, but the primacy given here to the interrupter is a way to keep things in order in a church dependent, unlike us, dependent on prophetic utterances in order to understand the whole counsel of God.

You have it in your lap. Right now, this process can be as simple as you, like, cross-referencing while I'm preaching,.

Right?

You can access all of God's Word right now, and you can search it, right? You can look at a word that I say or a word in our text, and you can look it up and see what the rest of the Bible has to say about it like that.

Isn't technology amazing? Isn't it awesome what we're able to do today, even compared to when I was a child? I mean, the technology is just amazing what we're able to do. But the ability to check and to weigh and to look into these things are right there on your lap and available to you, and I encourage it.

I encourage you to consistently check up and see if the things that I'm saying are consistent with God's Word. We have the whole counsel of God now, and Paul is strong. By the way, I would ask by your kindness to never stand up and just shout me down, you.

Know?

Like, I mean, that might be awkward. I'm going to say it's probably going to be awkward for you, and maybe a time and a place.

For that.

And if it's something that severely needs to be corrected, then we can talk through.

That.

And I've offered corrections up here before. I mean, the next week, if it's something that I feel like I've gotten wrong, we may have a misunderstanding or something like that. But yeah, just kind of handle that in a kind way.

But Paul is strongly driving for orderliness where chaos has been the way in the Corinthian.

Gathering.

All who will prophesy within a gathering, he has already said, no more than three in a specific gathering, so all three can prophesy one at a time, so that all in the gathering might learn and be encouraged, hearing from God.

Again, we see a bit of the definition of prophecy here in the result. Paul doesn't say, do this in an orderly way so that one person can figure out their fortune. Or do it in an orderly way so that one person can figure out where to go to college.

Or so that one person can be encouraged to go to seminary because the prophet has declared that God has anointed them for ministry. No, the byproduct of prophecy rightly understood from Scripture is not like a fortune teller coming to town.

No, the result of prophecy practiced in the context of the early church, and really even for us, was for the education and encouragement of those who were gathered, that all would learn and that all would be encouraged.

What was spoken brought knowledge and revealed the mysteries of God's saving work. Learning and encouragement is the result of prophetic revelations. Just like learning and encouragement are some of the results of preaching the written prophecies in the here and now.

We have much less need for miraculous revelatory knowledge of God in an era where we have access to the very written words of God. In this sense, prophecy in our context is more frequently found in preaching and teaching, as I've already said.

That which occurs here in this gathering and in community groups where the prophetic words of God are studied and read or wherever. Prophecy can occur over a cup of coffee where you're studying and you're going through God's word and you're understanding it better.

Or God gives you something to just share with an individual in a moment of, wow, this verse just pops into your mind. Share that with them. That can also be prophetic in nature. So far in these first two instructions toward orderliness, it requires that some hold their tongues.

We find in verses 32 through 33 that self-control is a feature of the gifts. Tongues in prophecy can be applied in an orderly and are to be applied in an orderly fashion. God is a God of rightly ordered, peaceful organization.

The dissemination of truth in an organized, intelligible way. He is not a God of confusion. So let the tongue speaker with no interpreter just pray in that tongue to God in silence holding their tongue out loud.

And let the one who is gently interrupted by a second or third prophet hold their tongue to hear why God has seen fit to interrupt. The phrase, as in all of the churches, goes best with verse 33 and not with verse 34.

So some put it with verse 34, but I like the English Standard Version and there's a variety of reasons to study and understand why it goes with verse 33. But I think that God, through Paul, is saying the orderliness and peaceful nature of our Almighty God is the standard in all of the churches.

You see, what he's getting at here in verse 33 is that Paul doesn't see exceptions to the orderliness of a church because of the nature of the God that we serve. Why should we avoid chaos and wild rantings and just kind of like shouting and emotional fervor and just like blah and people running up and down the aisles and clucking like chickens and barking like dogs and the ministry of the Toronto Blessing and the laughter, holy laughter for hours.

Why is that not a thing? Well, why is it a thing, but why is that not a legitimate thing? Why limit the number of tongue speakers and the number of prophets? Because God is a God of orderly peace, not confusion.

Amen?

There is no room.

There is no room in this passage for a rogue church that says, well, we roll a bit different over here because God has called us to be kind of the crazy stepson. We're the chaotic one. We're the chaotic one.

So that's just kind of how God has placed us. God is consistently across all of the churches a God of order and a God of peace, not an.

Order of chaos.

Silence Wives During Challenges to Theological Accuracy

So now we come to the third theme of the text, Silence Women During Challenges to Theological Accuracy, verses 34 through 35. Really, really tough passage. And I think you guys feel the weight of that passage just even as I read it and we get to this point and it's like, okay, here we are.

I would encourage that we keep with the theme of the passage where Paul now speaks uncomfortable words about women in the gathering. The theme has been bringing order out of the chaotic meetings in Corinth and Paul is most surely addressing here something that needs correction in Corinth.

Something is happening there on the ground that leads him into this discussion. So many things have been written about these next two verses that there are no fewer than seven main interpretations and dozens of minor, more easily dismissed interpretations of this passage.

But there are two primary reasons for so much disagreement in the text, if you get forward to that next slide there. The first is that Paul appears to contradict himself and the second is that people don't like the content.

So you can kind of imagine why that is an issue. The first is that Paul clearly said that he permits married women to pray or to prophesy in the gathering as long as they respect their husbands by wearing the sign of a marital relationship when they do so, which in that context would happen to be a head covering.

And I'm not going to get back into all the head covering stuff. There's three primary passages that swirl around women in ministry. There is 1 Timothy 2 .12, there's 1 Corinthians 11 about head coverings and now this passage and after this morning I will have preached all three of them.

You can go back and listen to them and I would even refer you to the 1 Corinthians 11 passage about head coverings if you want to know more about head coverings. That's the place to go where that passage, I explained it and I'm not going to re-preach it here.

But Paul cannot both say that women can pray and prophesy in the gathering and that they must remain silent. Is Paul contradicting himself? Does he forget what he wrote just a couple of chapters ago? So people dance around the mulberry tree trying to fix this, trying to reconcile it and that's where you get all of this vast array of interpretations trying to apologize for Paul.

But there's a second reason for so much disagreement here and it's the content. People don't like the content, obviously. Women should hold their tongues, he says. Women should be in submission, he says.

Ask your husbands at home, he says. And do not be so shameful as to speak up in church, he says. Tough content. Some people find this to be hopelessly misogynistic. But I will tell you that the equal value God gives to both women and men in creation is certainly balanced by distinct roles that He gives to male and female in the church and in the family.

The world's way of viewing gender is slipping into the logical outcomes of distancing gender from the God who ordained it, who ordered it that way. And look how quickly we're sliding into a breakdown of culture in the battle of the sexes.

A battle, really, over gender. Let me say this about the distinct roles of masculinity and femininity. Sin is an equal opportunity destroyer. It will destroy with misogyny just as easily as with feminism.

It will destroy with toxic masculinity and it will destroy with radical feminism. Men who abuse Bible passages to declare their supremacy are no better off than women who deny the parts of God's Word that they don't like, both equally in trouble.

God's design of male and female hear me carefully, church God's design of male and female is beautiful. It is glorious. It is a glorious picture of Christ and His church. And when it goes well, oh, it is amazing.

But when acknowledgement of His design for male and female is rejected, as we're seeing in our culture, we untie the boat from the dock with no oars or motor. And the current of fallen human culture is always moving the boat away from God.

You see it where we live.

If you don't see it, you ought to open your eyes and look around. So rather than give you a half a dozen interpretations, let me tell you what I think Paul is doing.

Here.

What is he going on about? In context, he's concerned for the orderliness of the church. And this comes on the heels of him talking about weighing prophecies. That's the last type of speech being referenced here.