Observations about Tongues

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And open your Bibles with me this morning and turn to the 14th chapter of 1st Corinthians.
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And I want to tell you we're going to read an extended portion of Scripture.
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So if you have trouble standing, feel free to go ahead and sit down.
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We're going to read 25 verses.
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And I do not even pretend to say that I'm going to get through all 25 verses today.
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But it does provide a context that I think is necessary.
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And as you know we've been going through 1st Corinthians verse by verse.
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So today we're going to look at chapter 14 verses 1 to 25.
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Pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.
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For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men, but to God.
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For no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit.
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On the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.
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The one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church.
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Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy.
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The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets so that the church may be built up.
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Now brothers, if I come to you speaking in tongues, how will I benefit you unless I speak some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching? If even lifeless instruments such as the flute or harp do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is played? If the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? So with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air.
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There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning.
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But if I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker, and the speaker a foreigner to me.
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So with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church.
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Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray for the power to interpret.
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For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful.
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What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also.
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I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also.
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Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say amen to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying? For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up.
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I thank God that I speak in tongues more than any of you.
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Nevertheless, in church, I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others than 10,000 words in a tongue.
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Brothers, do not be children in your thinking.
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Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.
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And the law that is written by the people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners, will I speak to this people and even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord.
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Thus tongues are assigned not for believers, but for unbelievers, while prophecy is assigned not for unbelievers, but for believers.
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If therefore the church comes together and all speak in tongues and the outsider or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds? But if all prophesy and all unbelievers and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you.
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Father, thank you for your word, so much to take in this morning, so much to say, so much to address.
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And yet, Lord, we know there's one major point in all this, and that is that the gifts are meant to build up the church.
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The focus of the spiritual gifts are not for individual status, personal edification, but for the edification of the body.
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So, Father, as we address the gift of tongues and what it means, and what it possibly meant to the first century church, and the things that we understand, the things we don't understand, Father, I pray more than anything today that you would keep me from error, that you would apply the truth of this text to our hearts, and Lord, that by your grace, you would be merciful to us as we study the word together, in Jesus' name, amen.
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It's not often that I begin with a form of an apology, but I'm going to begin today with somewhat of an apology, and simply say this, if you hoped today that you would come and find someone who knows everything about the text he is preaching, I apologize.
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I have studied this text for years, and I have read those who would agree and those who would disagree with the points I'm going to make today, and I will say this, this is a complicated passage.
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And I say that not to relieve myself of any of the responsibilities, but simply to allow you to understand that what we're talking about today is no easy subject.
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And so, the most important thing that I can tell you, and the thing that I am confident to tell you this morning, is the meaning of the text, verses 1-25, if it is to be understood in context, and if you remember the context, we've been studying 1 Corinthians, chapter 12 was about the spiritual gifts, and everyone has a gift, and we can't say that if you're an eye, not an ear, that you're more important, or everybody in the church has a gift, and everybody in the church has a place in the body, every person fills a need in the body.
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And then chapter 13 is that our gifts should not be more important than our love, because even if we have all the gifts and the power to move mountains with our faith, if we have not love, we're nothing.
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And so, love is the preeminent fruit of the Spirit, and is paramount in regard to any gift.
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It is more important than any gift.
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And so those are the things that must be understood from the outset, going into chapter 14, because at the very beginning of chapter 14, he says, pursue love, so he's still thinking about the pursuit of love in chapter 13, but then he goes on to say at the beginning of verse 14, or verse 1 of chapter 14, and earnestly desire spiritual gifts.
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So we're right back to the subject of spiritual gifts.
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The subject of love was sort of an aside, but he's talked about the gifts in chapter 12, and he's right back to the gifts in chapter 14, and now he's going to focus on two specific spiritual gifts.
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The gifts of prophecy, and the gifts of tongues.
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And this is a long chapter.
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Forty verses in this chapter.
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If you want to take notes, if you are interested in this, I want to tell you, it can be broken down into two parts.
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The first 25 verses that we read today, the greater gifts are the gifts that build up the church.
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That's the first 25 verses.
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The greater gifts are the gifts that build up the church.
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Then the last 15 verses, 26 to 40, the church is not built up by chaos.
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That's it.
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Now if I were just doing an overview of 1 Corinthians, that would be my sermon.
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The greater gifts are the ones that build up, and the church is not built up by chaos, because that's the focus of the chapter.
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That's the overview.
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But of course, I'm not going to just overview it.
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I've got to look at it.
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I've got to stop and explain some things.
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We've got to talk about this, because I don't know about you, but in my life, I have been in situations where there have been great confusion about the subject of speaking in tongues and prophecy.
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How many of you, and you don't have to raise your hand, but just in your mind answer, how many of you have been in churches where you felt like the tongues were a confusing thing, and that when you were there, you didn't understand what was happening or what was going on, and maybe it was even a little frightening to you.
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Maybe when you read down close to verse 24 and 25, where it talks about the outsider coming in and thinking everyone is mad, maybe you've had that experience before, and so you read this passage, and it hits kind of close to home.
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In fact, I would say this.
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Some of you may be uncomfortable talking about this subject, because you've been in a situation that was so close to home.
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Maybe it was a relative.
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Maybe it was a mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, uncle who brought you into a situation, and you were so frightened by it that you just sort of have left it alone and not wanted to deal with it.
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Hey, I understand.
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Well, this morning we're going to deal with the subject of speaking in tongues.
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My original sermon, I want to tell you, I wrote the sermon twice this week.
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I don't normally stop and rewrite everything, but I did this week.
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It was my original sermon.
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I was just going to walk verse by verse through the text like I normally do, but as I began to think about what I was going to say and I was going to do that, I said, you know what? Before we do that, I need to make some observations about speaking in tongues, because some of you come without any background, and some of you come with a bad background.
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Some of you come with a background.
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Some of you maybe have been in churches where you yourself were speaking in tongues or you thought you were, and so I felt like I needed to address this specifically.
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So today's sermon is seven points.
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Don't let it frighten you.
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We are going to finish, and we have finance meeting and elders meeting this afternoon, so I'm not going to eat anytime soon anyway.
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Yeah, we'll be here tomorrow.
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I got to do this, guys.
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I tried to whittle it.
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I got it down to seven.
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So here, and I put them, Miss Debbie does the screens for us, and she put these on the screen for me, so you can write them down from the screen if that helps you.
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But I have seven observations.
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Originally, it was called seven facts, and then I went back and I said, well, facts, maybe some of these are just observations, and we can debate whether or not they're facts, but I think they're factual, but they're certainly things that I observe about the gift of tongues that I want to share, and this is our introduction to 1 Corinthians 14 because this is the focus.
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Tongues and prophecy.
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Next week, we're going to talk about prophecy.
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Today, we're going to talk about tongues.
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Number one, a special gift of tongues is mentioned in only three books of the New Testament.
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How many books are in the New Testament? 27.
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There's 27 books in the New Testament.
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How many books have the gift of tongues mentioned? Three.
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Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that tongues are unimportant because baptism is not mentioned in every book of the New Testament either, and we would say baptism is pretty important.
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I think I went through and looked.
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I think it's nine or 10 of the books of the New Testament actually say the word baptism, so that word is not in every book of the New Testament.
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So I'm not saying that by virtue of the fact that it's only in three books that it's unimportant, but I am saying that the overemphasis that's often put on it, I think, is countermanded by the fact that it's only mentioned in three of the books of the New Testament.
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If it were such a huge and important and vital part of the early church, it seems to me as if we could at least think that it would be mentioned more often.
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In fact, I want to show you very quickly, or you can just write these down if you'd like, the three places it is, it really, the first one is in the Gospel of Mark, and again, I don't want to go off on a rabbit trail, but the end of Mark, if you study textual criticism, the ending of Mark has questions about whether or not it was actually what Mark wrote.
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It's called the longer ending of Mark, and if you've ever been in my course on textual criticism, you'll learn that the last few verses of Mark, there are questions about that particular passage.
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Are you saying the Bible's not inspired? No, I'm not.
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Listen to the tapes.
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Listen, tapes, we're in my 80s.
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Listen to the MP3s about textual criticism, because there are passages, I mean, there are passages in the Scriptures that we have today that there's questions about their authenticity.
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We can discuss that and what that means at another time.
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Please don't walk out of here saying that I think that the Bible's not inspired.
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I believe the Bible's inspired, and I believe it's inerrant, but we can talk about what that means later, but anyway, even if it is authentic, Mark 16, 17 says this, and these signs will accompany those who believe in my name that will cast out demons and they will speak with new tongues.
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That's the only time in the Gospels it's mentioned, the only times, if Jesus said those words, it's the only time that Jesus said it.
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They're gonna cast out demons, they're gonna speak with new tongues.
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Did they speak with new tongues in the book of Acts? Yes.
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Was it the very initial sign of the giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost? Yes.
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So we have no problem with this prophecy of Jesus.
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They're gonna cast out demons.
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They did that.
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They spoke with new tongues.
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They did that, and it even goes on in Mark to say they're going to have serpents bite them and they have no problem.
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That happened too with the Apostle Paul, right? So there's a whole litany of things that's mentioned in Mark 16, and new tongues is among them.
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So that's the first time it's mentioned.
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The second time the gift of tongues is mentioned is in the book of Acts.
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I've already mentioned chapter two.
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In the discourse with the upper room where they're there, the Holy Spirit falls as tongues as a fire.
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The men and women go out into the area where there are men from every language of the area.
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They've come in for this festival and they begin to proclaim God and the people hear them in their own language.
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They don't hear them...
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This is a key point.
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They don't hear them in ecstatic speech.
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They hear them in their own language.
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Now, we're gonna talk in a minute about whether or not it was a gift of speaking or a gift of hearing or a gift of interpretation.
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What? But we know this.
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When they spoke, it was understood.
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We see this happen again in Acts chapter 10.
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We see this again happen in Acts chapter 19.
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Then it doesn't happen anymore.
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Three times in the book of Acts.
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Two, ten, and nineteen.
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And by the way, that's when the gospel first came by the giving of the Holy Spirit.
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That's when the gospel went to the God-fearers who were the initial Gentiles that received the Holy Spirit and then to the Gentiles in Ephesus who received the Holy Spirit.
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It's an expansion of the gospel going out into all the world.
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That's why you see it given in Jerusalem and then the house of Cornelius and then in Ephesus.
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We don't see anything else about tongues in the book of Acts.
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Next, we see it in 1 Corinthians.
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Now, 1 Corinthians was written before Acts and before, well, probably before Mark.
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So 1 Corinthians would have been the first initial writing of the gifts of tongues.
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And you say, well, what's significant about this stuff? Why do you even mention that? It's only mentioned in three books.
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What's significance? Well, one, there is not much said about this gift which brings so much division in the church.
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And two, there's not much evidence to draw upon as to how this gift operated.
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So one, there's not much said about this gift that causes so much division.
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Oh, can we agree? You guys all look like you're really nervous, like I'm going to say something crazy.
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I promise.
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I may a little, but I promise I'm going to try to preach the truth.
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Relax.
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But can I ask you this? Has this gift brought division in the church? Are there entire churches that have split over this gift? Are there entire denominations that have divided over this gift? So I'm not at least truthfully saying that this is a divisive subject.
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Three books of the Bible, one verse in Mark, three chapters in Acts, two chapters in 1 Corinthians, six chapters in the whole Bible even mention it.
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And yet it's the point that has divided so much of the church.
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And because we only have six chapters that talk about it, really only five if you don't count Mark because that's just one verse.
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Because we only have five chapters that even address it, we don't have much to go on.
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That's why I said earlier I don't know everything about speaking in tongues because there's just not much there.
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And I got to tell you, if you take people's experience and turn that into exegesis, it can become a wild trip.
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Experience does not count as exegesis.
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People say, well, I had this happen to me.
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How do you know that it was of God? That's my first question.
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How do you know it was of God? They'll say, well, how do you know it wasn't? Ain't my job to prove it wasn't.
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The onus is on the person who said it was.
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Can't prove the negative.
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So that's number one.
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The special gift of tongues is only mentioned in three books of the Bible.
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Number two, there is debate over how the gift of tongues operated at Pentecost.
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I mentioned this a little before.
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There is debate over how the tongues worked at Pentecost.
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There's no debate that it was a miracle, but the debate is on how the miracle operated, right? If you want to go there, we can go look at it.
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Go to Acts chapter two.
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It's the first 13 verses, but specifically we'll look at verse five, right? This is after they've been filled.
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Actually look at verse four.
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It says, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues.
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By the way, stop right there just for a second.
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And I want you to understand something.
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The word tongues, glossa, glossalia, that word, however the ending is, glossa, where you get the word glossary, right? Glossa means languages.
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That's important as far as what the word means.
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So if you translate it as that, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave the mutterance, that sort of helps you understand what's happening here.
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There's a word xenoglossalia.
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That means unknown languages or foreign languages.
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That comes up sometimes too.
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But particularly glossoglossalia, that's the word.
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Verse five, now they were dwelling in Jerusalem.
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Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.
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The point of that is that they're different languages.
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Even though they're all Jews, they probably all spoke Hebrew or had some background in Hebrew.
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They probably weren't speaking Hebrew in their native lands.
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So these men all had backgrounds in other languages.
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And at this sound, the multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.
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And they were amazed and astonished, saying, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? So here's the deal.
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The people come out, they're filled with the Holy Spirit, they speak in languages that they don't know.
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The people hear them in languages that they do know.
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The question is, is the miracle in the speaking or is the miracle in the hearing? I am of the persuasion that the miracle is in the speaking.
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But we do learn in 1 Corinthians that there is a gift of interpretation.
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Not mentioned in Acts ever.
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In fact, the gift of interpretation is only mentioned in 1 Corinthians.
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But these men are not yet filled with the Holy Spirit that they're speaking to.
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And so I have a question as to whether or not they would have been given a gift of interpretation having not yet been filled with the Spirit.
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So that's a question, right? If it's a gift of hearing, that's an interpretational gift, and I don't think they would have been given that yet.
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So based on that logic, I would be more motivated to believe that it's a speaking gift versus a hearing gift.
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But could God be doing both? I'm not saying He couldn't be doing both.
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I'm saying based on my logical understanding of how the gifts operate, being filled with the Spirit, not being filled with the Spirit.
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But the point is, we don't know for sure.
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All we know is the people heard it and understood it, right? Now what's interesting, when it happens in Acts 10, it doesn't say anything about understanding it.
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It just says they began to speak in tongues or languages.
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When it happens in Acts 19, it doesn't say anybody understood it.
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It just says they spoke and it was a sign.
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The sign was the gift that God was giving the Holy Spirit to these people and they were able to proclaim in the language that they didn't know.
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But here's the point.
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Somebody knew it.
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It was a known language.
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It just wasn't known to them.
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We know that because of Acts 2.
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Because however the language was proclaimed, the people who heard it understood it.
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And so that leads again to the persuasion of my heart that Acts 2 is dealing with known languages, not languages that...
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And where this becomes important, and I'm jumping ahead of myself a little bit, but if you have a King James Bible, it uses the phrase unknown tongues.
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But you'll notice in the King James Bible, the word unknown is italicized.
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If ever you read in your King James Bible and you see a word that's italicized, meaning it's tilted, that means that word is added by the translators.
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It is not translated from the original Greek.
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It's not in the Greek.
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So that's one neat thing about the KJV.
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If you're reading the KJV and you find a word that's italicized, that means that is a word that is added by the translators to help you understand, but it is not part of the original language.
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So the word unknown tongues actually doesn't ever really is translated.
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Xenoglossia could be unknown, but that's a word more like foreign tongues, as I mentioned earlier.
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Please don't go to sleep today.
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I know you're taking a seminary today.
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We're opening a school, so don't be too...
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This is important.
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And as I said, I am open to correction on these things, but the thing that I see here, point number two, there is debate over how the gift of tongues operated.
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My feeling, my desire to understand it has led me to the conclusion that it's a gift of speaking, but I'm not to the point of that where I would say it's absolutely.
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I say that's how I understand it.
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Based on that, let's go to point number three.
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There seem to be some differences in how the gift operated at the church in Corinth.
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There seem to be some differences between what happened in Acts 2 and what was happening in Corinth.
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You say, well, what are the differences? I'll give you two right off the bat.
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Number one, in Corinth, they needed an interpreter.
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In Acts 2, they did not need an interpreter.
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That's a major difference right there, right? They say, unless you have an interpreter, don't speak in tongues.
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Well, in Acts 2, they spoke in tongues.
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They didn't need an interpreter.
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So there's one difference right away.
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Interpretation of tongues is mentioned in chapter 12, verse 30, chapter 14, verses 5, 13, 27, 28.
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Paul says, do not even speak with tongues unless there's an interpreter present.
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So it seems like there's something that has shifted in the exercise of the gift.
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At least something has happened to where now, instead of going out and using it to proclaim the gospel to people who have other languages, it's being used as a sign in the midst of the assembly, and there needs to be an interpreter to understand the sign.
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So that's one.
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And that's the second thing.
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Okay, so the first thing is, now you need an interpreter.
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Didn't need that before.
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Now you do.
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So that's one difference.
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But the second difference is this.
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It's operating in the church, not outside the church.
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I'm not saying it's...
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Let me back that up.
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I'm not saying it doesn't operate outside the church.
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What I'm saying is, in Acts 2, that was outside the church.
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In Acts 10, that's outside the church.
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In Acts 19, it was outside the church.
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But in 1 Corinthians 14, it's in the church.
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I'm not saying it's not still happening outside the church, but the focus of Acts 14 is what happens in the assembly.
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So it would make sense to me that there would be a different way of doing it amid God's people than out in the world, because out in the world, it has a purpose.
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And in fact, he tells us what the purpose is.
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It's a sign to unbelievers.
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But if you do it among believers, and unbelievers come in, what are they going to think? You're crazy.
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So don't do it in the midst of the church unless you have somebody interpreting so that people understand what's going on.
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So something has changed.
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Something has changed in the operation.
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So that's number three.
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I'm getting through them pretty quick.
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Number four.
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1 Corinthians does not define to us exactly how the gift of tongues operated within the church.
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It doesn't tell us for sure.
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It gives us clues, but it doesn't tell us exactly.
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There's no list that says, okay, first of all, a guy stood up, and then he began to speak, and it was in French.
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There was no French at that time.
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I don't think it was.
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It was in Latin, and he gave us a message in Latin, and then Brother Earl stood up.
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We didn't buy Earl in the first century.
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Earl stood up in the first century church, and he responded by giving an interpretation of Latin.
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Neither man knew the language.
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One was able to speak it.
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The other was able to interpret it, and that's what happened.
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We don't have that.
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All we have is Paul explaining the do's and don'ts, but not the how's and why's.
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So we sort of have to interpret, based on the do's and don'ts, the how's and why's.
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It's sort of like this.
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I was trying to think of an illustration for this.
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I said, you know what? Imagine a person who's never seen a debit card, okay? And I was writing a book about using a debit card.
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I probably wouldn't, in the book, explain what a debit card did or why it did what it did.
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I would just talk about the right way to use it, because you all know what a debit card is.
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But if somebody who didn't know what a debit card is picked it up and read it, they would have to interpret backwards what it did and how it did it based on the rules for how to use it.
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Does that make sense? Did I lose everybody? Did the debit card go too far? Did I stretch microduality? Simply what I'm saying is it's happening.
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Paul's not talking to people who have to be explained how it's happening because they're seeing it.
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So Paul doesn't have to step back and explain that part.
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They see it.
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They know it.
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He says, okay, now here's what you don't do.
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And here's what you should do based on the fact that you're already doing it.
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And because of that, this has led to a large expanse of questions about what he meant when he said certain rules about speaking in tongues.
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Modern charismatic Christians.
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And I, by the way, let me say this right now.
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I do not deny that there are charismatic Christians.
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Some people would say if they're in that, they're out of the kingdom.
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I don't think that's fair.
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But I do think that there is abuse in every area.
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There's abuse of reformed churches, y'all.
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There's abuses everywhere.
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And there's abuses in charismatic churches as well.
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And oftentimes, it's an abuse of the gifts.
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And I think that's Paul's point, by the way, is I think that the church in Corinth, this letter of 1 Corinthians, is written to a church that's abusing the gifts.
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And so that's part of the issue of this whole chapter is you've got a gift that's happening and it's being misused.
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And I would say today, even if what's happening in charismatic churches is the gift of tongues, and I would tend to think that it's not the genuine gift, but even if it were the genuine gift, it's being misused.
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So that's a problem.
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But let me say this about the charismatic.
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Charismatics believe in something called ecstatic speech.
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Now, they don't call it that.
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They just call it speaking in tongues.
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But when we say speaking in tongues, when I say speaking in tongues, in general, I'm talking about languages because that's what I said earlier, I believe it is.
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They say speaking in tongues, what they're talking about is repetitive syllabic sound.
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That's about the best definition I can give.
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Repetitive syllabic sound.
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It's not words.
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It's just repeated syllables.
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And I'm not going to try to...
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You've heard it.
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So I don't have to imitate it.
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And I don't want to seem like I'm making any light of what they're doing.
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I'm not trying to make fun.
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But it is.
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It's just repetitive syllabic noise.
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Sound.
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And they will say it's not languages as we know them.
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It's the tongues of angels.
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Remember 1 Corinthians 13? If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and they'll say the tongues that we're speaking are not tongues of men.
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That's languages.
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That's what I'm talking about.
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But it's angelic language.
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And angelic language is fragmented so that we wouldn't understand it.
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And they would say that's the gift of tongues.
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And again, they look at that word unknown in the King James.
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They know it's not in the Greek, but they'll say that's what is supposed to be understood.
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It's unknown tongues.
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Not known to anyone.
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Okay.
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But then there are those who would say it is human languages.
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And that when it says in verse 2, if you look at Acts, or go back to 1 Corinthians 14, and you look at verse 2, this is where they get that, by the way.
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1 Corinthians 14, verse 2.
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It says, let me get back to it real quick.
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It says, for the one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men, but to God.
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For no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit.
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That's where they get that.
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And they'll say, see, it's not human languages.
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It's a mysterious spiritual language.
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No one understands him.
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And they argue from that text.
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But I respond by saying this.
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If I stood up right now in this congregation and I spoke in Chinese, no one would understand me.
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It does not have to be ecstatic speech for it to be non-understandable to the congregation it's being spoken to.
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You understand what I'm saying? If I stood up and spoke in Swahili or if I stood up and spoke in one of the African dialects and I did it properly, you wouldn't know if I was doing it right or wrong.
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So I think that human speech can qualify as that which is not understood as long as it's in a group of people that don't understand it.
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And when he says he speaks to men, speaks to God, not to men, I take that as to saying simply God's the only one who's going to understand it.
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If I speak in a language you don't know, the only person who's going to hear me is God.
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One person I heard interpreting that is he said that when the tongues are spoken, it's spoken, it's always praised, so it's always directed towards God, not towards people.
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And I don't have an issue with that interpretation.
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I think that's okay.
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Because if you do go back to Acts 2, they were praising God in tongues.
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Acts 10, they were praising God in tongues.
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In Acts 19, it was always upward.
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And so he says that when it says they spoke to men, not to God, or God, not to men, that he's saying that when they speak those languages, they're proclaiming the praises of God.
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That tongues is not prophecy.
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Because prophecy is speaking to you.
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Right? So tongues would be a form of praise or prayer, but not prophecy.
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Okay.
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I think that's something to consider.
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But either way, when it says no one understands, it doesn't mean no one in the world.
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I think it means no one in the presence of the people would understand.
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We have to be careful forcing the no one as a universal no one.
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Now, I want to mention this.
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Writers in the early church.
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Now, when I say early church, we have to stretch early a little bit because I'm thinking of John Chrysostom and Augustine, and they both lived in the fourth century.
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So we're a few hundred years from the first church.
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But the writers, the men that we would respect, right? Chrysostom and Augustine, if you even know who those people are, those were writers in the early church, and they wrote about the gift of tongues.
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And I want to quote to you from them because this is their understanding of first Corinthians 14.
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Both of them are writing about this text that we're reading.
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And this is before the Pentecostal movement by about 1700 years.
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So or maybe 15, 1600 years.
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So the point is they're not influenced by Azusa or any of that stuff.
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All right.
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John Chrysostom said this.
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On first Corinthians 14, he says, Notice Chrysostom's definition of speaking in tongues, speaking in human languages.
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Not ecstatic speech, but real languages.
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Okay.
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Augustine, same thing.
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So again, Augustine's point is to say this.
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The tongues that were being spoke were the tongues that were spoken around the world.
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And it was coming out to demonstrate what? The gospel was now no longer bound in the Hebrews.
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It was no longer bound to one person in one nation, but it was now going out to all people everywhere.
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So the gift of languages is a sign to unbelievers.
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How? It shows the unbelievers that the gospel is now for you.
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It's for the people of different languages.
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It's not just for the Jews.
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It's for the whole world.
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Every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.
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And by the way, even that verse can be translated every tribe, language, people, and nation.
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All right, number five.
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You say, Pastor, how could you possibly know that? Because they wrote about it.
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Charles Parham is the godfather or grandfather of the modern Pentecostal movement.
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He began, I believe, up in Kansas City.
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And then through that, another man went out from Texas and then into Azusa, California.
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Azusa Street out in California.
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That's where Pentecostalism really exploded.
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But it started out in Kansas.
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And Charles Parham was the preacher who was leading this movement.
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I want to read to you some of what he himself said.
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This is not me quoting somebody else about him.
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This is him himself.
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He was quoted in the Topeka State Journal, January the 7th, 1901.
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Quote, The Lord will give us the power of speech to talk to the people of various nations without having to study them in schools.
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End quote.
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So what did he believe the gift of tongues was? Human languages.
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And he believed that he was going to get that gift and he would no longer have to go to language school.
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He could talk to everybody everywhere and he would have the gift.
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Alright, he said it again in the Kansas City Times, January 27th, 1901.
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Just a few weeks later.
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Quote, A part of our labor will be to teach the church the uselessness of spending years of time preparing missionaries for work in foreign lands when all they have to do is ask God for the power.
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End quote.
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We don't have to send missionaries to language school anymore.
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They're going to get this gift and they're going to go.
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That's it.
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Agnes Osman was one of Parham's followers, students, whatever you want to call them.
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She was the first person to speak in tongues in the new Pentecostal age.
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Agnes Osman spoke on January 1st, 1901 and she reportedly spoke in the Chinese language thereby launching the Pentecostal movement.
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She also was said to have written in Chinese and that's what started the Pentecostal movement.
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But there's one problem.
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When what she wrote was translated, it weren't Chinese.
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When what she said was listened to, it weren't Chinese.
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So they were faced with a dilemma.
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Do we understand that this isn't really what we thought it was? Or do we reinterpret our exegesis based on our experience? And I'm not trying to be ugly and I don't mean to be hurtful when I say this.
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But I really believe that part of the reason why it became ecstatic utterances rather than real languages is because that fit what was happening and they couldn't really do what they thought they could do.
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And so in falling back to what they could do, that became the standard.
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You know what's interesting about that? Number six.
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Ecstatic speech is a phenomenon that is not limited to Christians.
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Ecstatic speech, and by that I mean repetitive, syllabic noise or words is found in Buddhism, Shintoism, Voodooism, Islam, Mormonism.
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All of those groups have been found to have people who speak in ecstatic utterance.
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Now you take that for what it's worth.
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But I think that says a lot.
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But let me add this.
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John Rice is a writer and he wrote about this.
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He's talking about the early centuries.
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Ecstatic speech occupied a significant place in ancient Greek religion.
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The seeress of Delphi not far from Corinth spoke in ecstatic speech and according to Plutarch writing from 44 to 117 interpreters were kept in attendance to explain her incoherent utterances.
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Many scholars have stated that ecstatic speech were experienced in the mystery religions of Osiris, Mithra, Dionysius and the Orphic cults.
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So ecstatic speech has been around for a long time.
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We have to ask, is that what was happening in Corinth? I don't know, but I tend to think not.
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I tend to think it was real languages that could really be verified.
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And some argue, well, this is, you know, the devil's way of imitating God.
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Right? God has real languages so the devil gives them ecstatic languages.
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I don't know.
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I don't know if I'd go there, but I will say this.
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There are ecstatic utterances do not require a gift from God.
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I believe they are learned behavior.
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Here's why I think that.
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Because in charismatic churches, they are taught.
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You say, pastor, are you making that up? No, I'll give you.
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Nicky Gumbel, which is a great name.
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Nicky Gumbel is a charismatic leader.
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He has six instructions to teach you how to speak in tongues.
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And you can get his literature and have it sent to you and you learn to speak in tongues.
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Here are the six things if you want to know.
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Number one, ask God to forgive you for anything that could be a barrier to receiving the gift.
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Hey, I don't have a problem with that.
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If you need something to be forgiven for, ask.
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So don't have a problem with number one.
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Number two, turn from any area of your life that you know is wrong.
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Well, that kind of goes to number one, but just in case, we're going to add, if you're doing something wrong, stop it.
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Okay? So I'm with him on that.
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We're good.
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Number three, ask God to fill you with the spirit and to give you the gift of tongues.
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Go on seeking him until you find.
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Knock until the door opens.
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Seek with all your heart.
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So go to God, ask, and keep asking.
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Okay.
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Here's where it gets a little wonky.
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Number four, open your mouth and start to praise God in any language but English or any other language known to you.
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So just start praising God in any language that you don't know.
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That's the instruction.
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Just start praising God, but don't let it be in the language that you know.
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So if you know English, it can't be English.
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And if you know any, if you know Spanish, it can't be Spanish.
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It has to be something else.
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Number five, here's really, believe that what you received is from God and don't let anyone tell you that you've made it up.
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That's part of the instruction.
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Don't let anyone tell you that you made this up.
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Believe that it is from God.
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And then number six, persevere because language takes time to develop.
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Now I have one question.
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In Acts chapter two, language didn't have to take time to develop.
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In Acts 10, it didn't have to take time to develop.
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In Acts 19, it didn't have to take time to develop.
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There's no, if it needs time to develop, what's the difference between that and just learning the language? Again, I don't say this to be ugly and I know I'm taking more time than I normally do, but there is nothing miraculous about sputtering out sentence fragments and repeating syllables.
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Any of you could do it if you wanted to.
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Now let me say this.
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I want to add George Gardner.
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This is a Pentecostal minister.
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Let me repeat.
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I'm sorry, a former Pentecostal minister.
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And this is what he writes.
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And this is, he wrote this in the Corinthian Catastrophe, page 53.
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Listen to what he says.
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The desire for experience, coupled with instruction, motivation, and the approval of peer groups produce ecstatic speech.
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I have publicly said many times, give me a group of people who will do what I tell them to do, sing, relax, anticipate, and go through the right motions, and it will only be a matter of time before some will speak ecstatically.
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It is a psychological phenomenon and bears no resemblance to the tongues of the Bible.
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And this is a guy who did it for years.
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And here's the other thing to go with part number six.
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If somebody came in here and was speaking French and never studied French, first, I would say, let's send them to France.
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But I wouldn't deny that it was a miracle.
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And you couldn't deny that it was a miracle.
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And I pray that this miracle is still happening among the missionaries of our day.
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Wouldn't it be wonderful if Scott was able to go to the Tao tribe and just immediately speak to those people, and then they point him at the next tribe, and they go to the next tribe, and he can speak to those people the wonders of God.
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And I would love to see that.
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And I don't deny that God can do that.
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But I have an issue with saying that what's happening with the ecstatic speech is the same as what was happening in Corinth.
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Even though this is the last point, number seven, there are verses in 1 Corinthians 14 that those who believe in ecstatic speech use.
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And so here's my last point.
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The gift of tongues as a known human language can fit into how we read 1 Corinthians 14.
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But that's why I did today's lesson.
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Because you can interpret it as ecstatic speech.
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And if you do that, you're going to read ecstatic speech in everything.
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But I don't think that we have the need to do that.
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I think that we can read it as known languages.
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With that being said, here's the four verses that are usually used.
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And this is where I'm going to...
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I'll take you in a...
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Where are we at on...
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I'm not too far over.
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At least according to me.
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We'll have a quick song at the end.
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The gift of tongues is four verses that they mention.
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Verse 2 I've already talked about.
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They say no one understands Him.
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So that means that it's ecstatic speech.
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I don't think it proves it's ecstatic speech.
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Just because no one understands in the room doesn't mean no one would understand anywhere.
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So I think that verse 2.
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Verse 9.
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If you're looking at 1 Corinthians 14, verse 9.
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It says, If with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said for you're speaking into the air? Right there they use the word unintelligible.
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They say, It's unintelligible.
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It's, it's, it's, it's.
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That means it is ecstatic speech.
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And I say, Well, slow down.
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Because if you read the next verse.
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There are doubtless many different languages in the world and none of them is without meaning.
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But if I do not know the meaning of the language I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me.
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He gives his own interpretation of what it means to be unintelligible.
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If I speak in French and you don't, I'm going to be babbling to you.
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In fact, the word there for foreigner is the word barbarias.
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Which is where we get the word barbarian.
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And why did the Greeks call people barbarians? Because they didn't speak Greek.
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The word barbarian meant bar, bar, bar, bar, bar.
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It means that's what you sounded like when you speak because you sound like a fool.
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Because if you didn't speak Greek, you were a fool to the Greeks.
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Greeks saw non-Greek speakers as barbarians.
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And that's the word that Paul uses here.
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If you don't speak the language I speak, you're going to sound like bar, bar, bar, bar, bar.
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Even if it's a real language.
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Number C.
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Number C.
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Letter C.
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The third one.
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1 Corinthians 14, 14.
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If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful.
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Now next week, when I start going through this verse by verse, I'm going to talk a little bit more about praying in tongues.
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But I do want to say this.
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If somebody was speaking another language, a human language, and they prayed in that language, I don't think that that means that it has to be ecstatic speech.
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That's the point.
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If you try to argue that verse 14 proves it's ecstatic speech, I don't think it does.
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Whether you're praying or speaking, it doesn't matter.
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As we talked about earlier, since it's all spoken to God, it could be praise or prayer to God in another language doesn't mean that it's ecstatic speech.
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So again, I don't think it proves it.
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And then verse 23 is often used.
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It says, If therefore the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders and unbelievers enter, will they not say that we're out of our minds? And this is again an argument from the Charismatics.
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They'll say, See, it's ecstatic speech because when somebody comes in, they hear us doing our ecstatic speech and they think we're crazy.
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Well, let me tell you something.
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If somebody walked in today and we were all speaking Chinese, they'd think we were crazy too.
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It doesn't have to be ecstatic speech to prove that text.
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Because how, well, Pastor, how do you know that? Because in Acts 2, they were speaking languages that were real languages and what did the people say? You're drunk.
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So that's proof of the fact that it goes along with what Paul's saying.
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If people hear you speaking a language, they know it's ecstatic speech.
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If they know you don't speak or they know it's not normal, you're gonna sound like you're out of your mind.
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So based on that, five concluding statements.
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Number one, there are distinctions between what happened in Acts and what happened in Corinth and we can see those.
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The interpreter, the fact that it's done in the church, not outside the church, there are some differences.
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But I don't think that the difference is necessarily that it was ecstatic speech versus real language.
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I think that it can be real language in both.
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Now I will tell you, I could be wrong.
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You don't hear a pastor say that often.
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You don't.
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But if I were perfect, I would tell you.
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But since I'm not, I'll tell you too.
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But I don't think that it's ecstatic speech.
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I don't think it fits.
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I could be wrong, but I don't think it fits.
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Number two, the distinctions do not prove that it is.
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Just because there's a difference between what's happening in Acts and what's happening in 1 Corinthians don't prove that it's ecstatic speech, in my opinion.
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Number three, we know that speaking a known human language is a useful miracle.
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It's a useful miracle.
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Ecstatic speech is not useful, but speaking a real language is useful.
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Miracles of God are useful.
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Number four, we know that speaking ecstatic speech can be falsified.
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It can be falsified.
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And number five, based on these things, I would conclude personally, based on everything I've said today, that it's known human languages.
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I don't think that it's ecstatic speech.
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I'm willing to be corrected, and God will correct me one day.
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I'm preaching to you as the people of God the best way I understand to know the text.
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But let me finish with this.
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If the tongues was given as a sign to the early church, and it was human languages, which I believe that it was, here's the reason for the gift.
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It was given to inspire and encourage the church to understand that the gospel had gone out to the whole world.
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And so, what does that then turn into for us? It turns into us a push to remember that the gospel isn't just for you, and it isn't just for me, but it is a message that is intended for every tribe, tongue, and nation.
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So that becomes the impetus for us to send missionaries.
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It becomes the impetus for us to share the gospel.
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It becomes the impetus for us not to look at outsiders as outsiders, but to look at outsiders as people who need the gospel.
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We don't need to preach to people who look like us and sound like us and act like us all the time.
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But we need to seek to reach people who don't sound like us, who don't look like us, who don't live like us.
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Because the gospel is intended for every tribe, every language, and every nation.
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No matter who they are, Christ has called us to preach his gospel to them.
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That was a lot to say.
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Let me close with prayer.
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Father, if there was an opportunity for repentance in this message, my prayer would be that we would repent of our lack of a desire to see the nations know the gospel.
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Father, we get so caught up in our lives.
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We get so caught up in our own little unit of this world that we forget that there is a lost and dying world all around us.
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There's people at our work that sit next to us that know not Christ, and we've yet to talk to them.
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There's people in our friend circles that we know don't know Christ, and we've yet to talk to them.
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There's people in our families that know not Christ, and we're afraid to talk to them.
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Father, we don't need a special gift of tongues, but we do need a reminder that the gospel is for every person, and for those who believe it will be life unto life, and for those who reject it will be death unto death.
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But Lord, it is not our job to save them.
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It is our job to proclaim the gospel.
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God, give us a heart that wants to proclaim the gospel.
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In whatever language you give us, in whatever ways you open doors for us, in whatever method and mode you choose, may the gospel be our traveling song.
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May it be what goes with us everywhere we go.
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In Christ's name, amen.