Keep sharing good news without ads.
Sunday school from December 15th, 2024
We're gonna get into our study, and let's pray first. Lord Jesus, as we open up your word, we ask through your Holy Spirit to help us to rightly understand what is revealed there, so that we may believe, confess, and do according to your holy word.
In Jesus' name we ask, amen. All right, we are in the middle of a very long bunny trail. This is a multi-week long bunny trail, and I'm thinking we'll get through the bunny trail today and get back to the book of Acts.
But what we wanted to do in this bunny trail was to set the groundwork from biblical texts that talk about the work of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit, so that we have a proper biblical grounded understanding of what the Holy Spirit is sent to do, so that we do not get deceived by those out there claiming to be operating in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, when in fact they are not.
Those of you in the women's and men's Bible study, I am working on a segment that I think we're gonna end up calling it the prophetic cat fight, because there's a big fight among quite a notable number of female prophets, and they're calling each other false and things like this.
It's devolved into that song, Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting. It's just absolutely glorious to watch, and so I'll be happy to report that in a video this week. All that being said, we've been looking at 1 Corinthians 13, and you'll note we keep going on little excursions.
He's talking about what true prophecy is, how to test prophecy, and all this kind of stuff. What should we expect from the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is gonna lead us into truth. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth.
He's gonna convict us of sin and unbelief, and he's also going to work in us, our regeneration, and also point us back to Christ. The Holy Spirit bears witness about Christ. So as we've been looking at 1 Corinthians 13, I think we've now kind of exhausted all of the different cross-reference texts regarding what to expect regarding certain gifts to cease.
And so the proper way to say it is, again, Lutherans are not hard cessationists. We do believe that there were certain gifts that were foundational at the beginning of the church which the Holy Spirit has stopped presently giving those gifts.
Now, if the Holy Spirit wants to, he can. And last week we kind of ended off with the question, well, what do we do then? We have the annoying responsibility to do paperwork. We are to test the spirits.
And by way of reminder, in 1 John 4, 1 John 4, 1, this is the command from God. Do not believe every spirit. And the do not believe every spirit, the me pastuata, that's an imperative. And when God speaks in the imperative mood in the Greek, that voice, you've got to pay attention.
This is an absolute command. God's saying, do not believe every spirit. Full stop. But test to see whether they are from God. Always and again, the Christian is responsible when somebody claims to be a prophet or delivering a message from God, you have to just basically hit the pause button and say, we need to run some tests and a full, complete theological and doctrinal audit on you to determine whether or not the message that you are delivering is from God or from another source.
Full stop. And what's the reason for this? For many false prophets have gone out into the world. How many?
Many.
Many, many, many, many. I can hear the voice of Winston Churchill. Many, many, many, many, many. Anyway, if you know the reference from Darkest Hour, you know that's one of my favorite movies. So the idea then is that we are to test the spirits.
And that's just the annoying bit. We've got to do it. And I can honestly say, like I said last week, in all of my years of doing Christian apologetics, I have yet to run into anybody claiming to be a prophet who has delivered a real message from God.
All right.
So we are in 1 Corinthians 13. Let's finish out the chapter, go back just a little bit. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away.
For we know in part, we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the mature, the teleos, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child.
And isn't it true that there's just a bunch of adult people who still think like children? Have you noticed the epidemic of childishness among people who are adults and who should know better? Just, we want to keep playing.
Okay.
Yeah, even amongst the elected, especially among the elected. I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part.
Then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love. And when you look at the writings of the earliest church fathers, this threefold pillar, faith, hope, and love, they kind of built a catechism around these three ideas.
Faith in Christ for the forgiveness of our sins. Hope in the resurrection and the world to come. Love towards God and love towards neighbor in good works. You kind of build a catechism off of that kind of thing.
So then we get to chapter 14.
Here we go. You ready?
Pursue what?
Love.
Pursue love. And earnestly desire the spiritual gifts. There's nothing wrong with desiring spiritual gifts. If you're not sure if you have one and you desire them, you can absolutely do that. Especially that you may prophesy.
Now in this particular case, we'll note that the prophetic words, God directly speaking to people, that seems to have taken a far, far, far back seat. I have yet to run into anybody claiming to be a prophet that truly is.
But those who prophesy in the church today, like we pointed out last week, are going to be the preachers and the teachers. And the fun bit is you can always follow along because it's an open book prophecy.
That's the idea. For one who speaks in a tongue, and here we go, speaks not to men but to God. And here we get into one of the interesting mysteries regarding the gift of tongues itself, is that many of the people who had the gift of tongues, the miraculous ability to speak a human language without having studied it, didn't know what they were saying.
It's interesting.
They didn't know what they were saying. So there you are, you're speaking in tongues. All of a sudden you just break into Japanese and you don't know what you're saying. For no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the spirit.
On the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding. Now we're starting to see a big contrast between, especially the gift of tongues initially given and the idea of prophecy.
Tongues are a gift given as a sign to unbelievers, and I'll explain why in a minute. But prophecies are built for upbuilding the body of Christ, for building it up.
Yes?
Can the tongue of a missionary speak that language without ever studying it? Can that part still work if God did?
So the question is, could God still use the gift of tongues? The answer is he could. Has he chosen to? I would note that there are these kind of like urban legends that revolve and go through different church bodies.
I've even heard them in confessional circles of somebody who miraculously on the spot was able to speak a language that they didn't know how to speak. And here's the thing. When you try to track down the source, it's like chasing a ghost.
You can't ever find the actual person who did it. So I remember, this is about 20-ish years ago, somebody had told me that there was a Missouri Synod pastor who was doing a sick call in a hospital. Which pastor?
Don't know. Which hospital? Don't know. What state? Don't know. This is how these stories go. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. But as the story goes, he went into a hospital to do a sick call with one of the members of his congregation, and the member in his congregation was in one of those hospital rooms where you have to share with somebody else.
And so the only thing dividing the congregant with the other patient was one of those wonderful curtains, and we all know how soundproof they are. And as the story goes, and again, it's a story because I couldn't tell you the name of the pastor.
As the story goes, the family next to the congregant was crying and was in obviously emotional agony, and so he had a conversation with them and ended up praying with the fellow who was in the hospital bed and things like this.
And his congregant stood slack-jawed because he was speaking perfect Spanish and he'd never spoken Spanish before. That's how the story goes. But then the question is, who was the pastor? Where did this happen?
What was the date? Who are the witnesses?
They're elusive.
And I would note, this is one of the major features of the Pentecostal and Charismatic Movement. Constantly storytelling. Constantly telling stories about miraculous events and everyone just believes it.
But here's the thing. I would note, every one of you has a 4K digital video recorder sitting in your pocket. And one of the things I find fascinating is that over and over and over again, all of these stories of these miraculous events taking place, nobody ever thought, I better take my cell phone out and record this.
They will record anything and throw it up on TikTok. And you would think that since the Charismatics want these miracles to be happening, that when they're occurring, they would record them so that Jesus would have even greater glory and it would vindicate them regarding their claims regarding the miraculous.
But never do they seem to do that. I've even seen people get up in front of large crowds at conferences and claim, yes, we just three weeks ago in our congregation, we raised somebody from the dead. What was his name?
How old was he? Things like this. And again, it's like chasing a ghost. You can never get the details. And I would remind you that when Todd Bentley, at the Lakeland Revival, remember Todd Bentley? He would heal somebody in the name of Bam.
We called him Bam Bam at the time. It was just nonsense. So he's doing these miraculous things, claiming that God told him to kick an old lady in the stomach with his biker boot because she had stomach cancer, and that would heal her.
Turns out she died two days later. He didn't mention that. When he got national attention from some of the major media outlets, they asked him for medical records to verify the claims to the miraculous, and at the time he gave the interview he said, oh, he would be happy to provide the medical records.
Guess what they never were able to get from him? The medical records. So one of the things you have to be aware of is that many miraculous claims play off of human gullibility. We in the church, unlike the way the world operates, we in the church oftentimes just assume that the person that we're speaking to is talking to us in good faith because as Christians we love each other.
We trust each other. But deceivers come in and they play on that because what are wolves? They are wolves in sheep's clothing. They're always wearing the sheep's clothing, and so there you've got a wolf going, I'm feeling bad, right?
And you think, well, he's a sheep. Look, he's got sheep's clothing on. I've never seen sheep with such sharp teeth, but who am I to judge? And so people don't want to be skeptical when people make claims like this when it's somebody else who's a Christian or somebody they go to church with.
But the reality is that when you start having claims like this, we need to require absolute certain proof. We cannot and should never voice and give credibility to miraculous claims that have not been vetted and haven't been proven.
And by the way, miracles don't prove anything. It's always the message that goes with it because Jesus himself warns us that in the days immediately before his return, that false prophets would be able to perform great signs and wonders.
There's a day coming when miracles will be performed by false prophets and false teachers, and the whole purpose behind that is to deceive the elect if that's even possible.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, that's a good question. So the question has to deal with what do we do with the Roman Catholic Church and their requirements for sainthood. First and foremost, here's how we have to attack this.
And the question is how does the Bible define a saint? So if I were to just look in the New Testament for the word saints, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints, since we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that you have for all the saints, to the saints, the faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae, how does the Scripture define this word?
Who is a saint according to the New Testament? Christians. If you are a baptized, penitent believer in Jesus Christ, you is one of these. And by the way, the Greek word for saint, hagios, means holy one.
A saint is one who has been made holy. And I can legitimately tell you as your pastor, none of you have pulled this off in and of yourself. I know all about y 'all. That being the case, me too. And I can say all of us have been made holy by what Christ has done for us.
He is the one who has made us holy, and the Holy Spirit makes us holy. So first and foremost, we have to point to the whole concept of the Roman Catholic Church's belief regarding who is and who isn't a saint already is wrong because the Scripture says that anybody who is a believer in Christ is a saint.
Now, in their system then, who is a saint? Now, here's how their system works. When you are born, you were born with original sin. They get that correct. They claim that when you're baptized, the only sins that are washed away are original sin and any sins that you've committed up to the moment of your baptism.
Yeah, so this is like the publisher's clearing house or something like that, right? So here's the issue is that now we've got a big problem because they're piecemealing out the forgiveness of sins. And in the Roman Catholic system, they still say this to this day, the most blessed person is the one who is baptized on their deathbed because they get all of their sins forgiven.
Now, what happens then to the remaining people? Because Rome practices infant baptism, rightly so. But then what happens to them? Well, in their system then, what happens is that you are told to attend the Mass in order to receive grace.
Grace is like a currency. Grace is like power or electricity. It's like the thing that you use to then mortify your sinful flesh. So you go to the Mass, you are given grace. The grace given to you, you use to mortify your sinful flesh so that you can get this much closer to sinless perfection.
The goal is sinless perfection. If you die before you reach sinless perfection, you do not go to heaven. You go to purgatory. And how is purgatory described? As the flames of hell. Basically, it's described in the same terms.
You go to purgatory where your sins are going to be burned off. And the question is, over what period of time? Well, depending on which Roman Catholic you talk to, it could take millions of years. The whole purpose of indulgences...
It was a fundraiser they used to come up with the funds to build St. Peter's Basilica. The whole purpose behind indulgences, the way Tetzel was selling them at the time of the Reformation, was he would say, there's your grandmother.
She's in anguish in the fires of purgatory. And here you have an opportunity to lessen her time in purgatory. How can you stand to hear her screaming in pain after all the things that she did for you?
She changed your diapers. She cared for you while her mother was sick, and she made sure that you didn't die when you fell into the river. Your grandmother loved you, and the least you could do is buy an indulgence for her so that you can lessen her torment in the fires of purgatory.
And what was Tetzel's big slogan when the coin in the coffer clings? The soul from purgatory springs. So then the idea is that who then is a saint? In the Roman Catholic system, a saint is somebody who in this lifetime used the grace given to them in the Mass, or Masses, many, many Masses, to then mortify their sinful flesh, that they were able to die in a state, a perfect sinless perfectionism, a state of grace that is excellent.
In fact, they did so many good works that it covered not only all of their sins, but there was even more that they could then give to other people. And how then do you verify that somebody dies in the state?
Answer, there has to be three verified miracles that take place when somebody prays to that dead person. And Rome follows these things kind of religiously. So who was the most recent to be sainted? Well, not maybe the most recent, but recently sainted was Pope John Paul II.
He is saint, Pope John Paul II. How do you know he went to heaven sinless? Well, three different people have prayed for him, and miracles occurred as a result of it, and Rome has verified those miracles so we can say that Pope John Paul II is a saint.
Was the verification process cold, hard, and cash?
One has to wonder. I'm sure there's lots of cash involved. But here's the thing. This reminds me of the same kind of con that I've heard gypsies used to engage in. So in our recent trip to Europe, we spent some time in Norway and in Sweden.
And when we were in Sweden, we learned a little bit of the story of how the Swedish really got rid of and didn't allow gypsies into their region, at least during a certain part of time. You couldn't even travel into Sweden unless you were going to stay in a particular place for several days and you had to get permission to go there and stuff like this.
But some of the gypsy cons went something like this. You'd go and you'd meet with a gypsy, and a gypsy would, of course, they were into palm reading and psychic reading and stuff like this. And they would say, oh, no, I'm looking at this thing, and oh, my goodness, there's a curse on you.
There's a curse on you. And oh, if you don't do anything about it, you're going to die within a week. And the person goes, no, not what I expected. But thankfully, I can break the curse. Oh, well, that's good.
How can you break the curse? It's really simple. You just need to give me $5 ,000.
Right?
And so what happens is that they create the fictitious diagnosis. And for a fee, they will cure you of this fictitious diagnosis. And the person leaves $5 ,000 less in their bank account with a big old rubber stamp across their forehead that reads, sucker.
Okay?
I would note that the whole way the purgatory system was set up sounds just like that. We're going to invent this place called purgatory. It's nowhere mentioned in any of the scriptures. It's not even mentioned in the Apocrypha.
I just want you to know, it's not. And we're going to, for a fee, spring people out of it. What does this do regarding Christ's death on the cross? It makes it absolutely nothing. What did Christ die for if he didn't die for all of our sins?
How do they explain all of these people in the time of the New Testament, apostles and just mere disciples, all being called saints? How do they understand that? Right. Okay? So, yeah, the claims of the miraculous plays a role in Roman Catholic theology, but I would note it's as spurious and questionable and murky as the claims of any Charismatic and Pentecostal.
So long in next spiritual gift, kind of like messed up, you had to start all over. Yeah. Right.
It's completely ambiguous, and I would note that, have you noticed that Rome really seems to be a big money-making machine? Legitimately, that is the case. Not only in regards to indulgences, but I'll give you another thing that they make a ton of money at.
So if you get married, and then you get divorced, and you realize, oh, I really made a mistake in marrying that person. Some people do that. They get married in the passion of the moment, and they forget their all reason and stuff like this.
They end up in a divorce. But then they want to be a faithful Roman Catholic, but they have this big, black, mortal sin against them, the sin of divorce. Right? And so Rome has come up with a clever way of getting rid of that.
It has nothing to do with the cross of Jesus Christ. For a fee, they will be happy to annul your previous marriage, and it never happened.
Isn't that wonderful? Aren't they so kind?
Right? You get the idea. Yeah. Well, if you've had your previous marriage annulled, and even if you divorced without biblical grounds, don't worry. You can have it annulled. That means you're clean as the wind driven snow.
You can just start all over again and never have to worry about that pernicious sin known as adultery. Yeah. Something like that. All right. Let's keep going here. So, by the way, let me check questions here.
Romschnitzel. Okay. I'm not sure what that was. So Cheryl says, so whenever someone speaks in tongues, there has to be someone there who can understand it. That's kind of the point. Okay? Right? So stop the service and ask who here can understand it.
Cheryl, you're actually kind of right in line with what the scriptures are teaching here. Deb says, I was praying once with some friends who unexpectedly both launched into biblity gibility, which completely distracted me and conveyed nothing to me.
I didn't pray with them anymore after that, neither provided any interpretation, and neither of them were speaking any language from anywhere in the world. I knew that much. I remember one time there was a gal who, she started to come out of the charismatic movement, and she had attended a few of our services online, and she wanted to meet with me because she was angry with me.
And so I met with her, and she says, you know, Pastor Roseboro, there's something I just can't agree with you on. And I said, okay, well, what is that? And she said, I have the gift of tongues. And I said, do you now?
She says, yes, and I've been told that it's Hebrew. And I said to her, ah, Atmevin Avrit? And she said, what? I said, Atmevin Avrit? You don't understand Hebrew? That's what I said to her. And she says, no, no, let me tell you what I know.
And then she just went off into hoobity-goobily stuff. And I said, that's not Hebrew. And she says, I know this is a real gift. And she left in a huff, and she never came back. Okay? Right?
Yeah, right.
Luis, by the way, has given an affirmation. The account about purgatory is 100 true. I lived this as a kid.
Uh-huh.
And I remember my grandmother explaining all of this to me when I was a kid, because my grandmother really wanted me.
To be a Roman Catholic.
Then she dragged me to the Latin Mass, and I had no clue what was going on whatsoever.
Yeah, what's the point of attending a church service where you don't understand the language? I mean, what's the point? But that's a whole other story. People paying Rome to extend somebody's purgatorial time.
Don't give them ideas, dude.
Keep in mind, the Pope will be opening five portals this month.
Five.
I don't know.
All right, let's come back to our text. So on the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation. The one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church.
Now, I want you all to speak in tongues. And he's kind of saying this tongue-in-cheek, but even more to prophesy. The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets so that the church may be built up.
And there's where it is, okay? So if someone's speaking in tongues, they've got a legitimate gift of being able to speak a language they haven't studied, to proclaim the wonders of God, but no one is there to understand them, they're not building anybody up except for themselves.
So now, brothers, if I come to you speaking in tongues, how will I benefit you unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching? What's the answer to that question? You won't. You won't be benefiting me or anybody else.
If even lifeless instruments such as the flute or the harp do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is played?
It's called jazz.
No, no, no, it's not called jazz. If you guys are familiar with the archives of the Fighting for the Faith podcast, I used to do these updates on the Emergent Church Movement. And what was the name of that orchestra?
The Portsmouth Symphonia.
The Portsmouth Symphonia was the name of the group. And if you're familiar with them, if you're not familiar with it, look it up on YouTube. They're hilarious. But this was an orchestra composed of people who didn't know how to play instruments well.
And so I would start my updates on the Emergent Church Movement with the Portsmouth Symphonia playing...
Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun!
The thing is, I'm doing it so much better than they did because when they did it, it was like...
You know, it was, like, really bad, okay? And I would always say over it, these are the sounds of the Emergent Postmodern Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Doug Padgett. They hated it because this was...
I used it as an analogy of postmodern thinking, right? It's just nonsense. But that's kind of the point here that Paul's making. Lifeless instruments such as the flute, the harp, that if they do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is played?
Have you ever heard a 5th grade orchestra?
It's this terror to human ears.
And it's required that right before the holidays, they do a holiday concert. And 5th graders playing in a symphony is horrible! If you listen to it, you get at least 50 years off of purgatory. I'm just saying.
Microwaving a cat.
So if lifeless instruments such as the flute or the harp do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is played? And 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? Does this sound like an argument for or against the modern practices of Pentecostals?
Against.
For you will be speaking into the air, Paul says. Now, doubtless, there are doubtless many different languages in the world, but none is without meaning, except for modern-day tongues, by the way. And none of them is without meaning.
But if I do not know the meaning of the language, I'll be a foreigner to the speaker and a speaker a foreigner to me. So with yourselves, since you're eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church.
You want gifts? Good! Ask God to give you ones that will build the church up. Does this sound like an argument for or against tongues? Against. Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret.
How many Pentecostals do that? How many Pentecostals are told to even do that? We're now going to pray in the Spirit. Coulda bought a Hyundai, shoulda bought a Kia. They're all just going on and on and on and on.
I remember years ago, you can find this in the late archives of Fighting for the Faith. Ken Copeland had received a personal message from Pope Francis after he became pope. And he received the message during one of his church services at his church.
And he then said, because the pope has asked for prayer, we need to pray for this man, so let us pray in the Spirit. And everybody broke out, including Ken Copeland, broke out in the tongues. And so I pointed out that what he was doing was not biblical, because the Bible requires that if you're going to speak in tongues, you need an interpreter at a church service.
And so I offered up my best interpretation of what it is that he would say. Oh, we had a crack team. And he was saying things like, you can say 15 on Geico. You know, it's a fun video. I'm just saying.
It's the only video that we have that's gone over a million views.
Yes.
Yeah, because he preached to them in Greek. Yeah, so in Acts, they say that we hear them proclaiming the wonders of God in our own language. So whatever it is that they were saying, it gets boiled down to and only described.
We don't actually have the message of individual people who are speaking in tongues. And Peter, when he spoke, he probably spoke Greek, because that's the lingua franca of the empire at the time. Or he could have been speaking Aramaic.
That's also a possibility. But the point is that everybody knew there was a miracle taking place because they were hearing the wonders of God proclaimed in their own languages. But they didn't need to hear that.
That's right. They didn't need it, but they had it.
You're right.
It is a sign, and it's a fulfillment of a prophecy from Isaiah. We're going to get to that. So good point. I like that.
So Paul says that one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, my mind is unfruitful.
It's stuck in neutral.
All right?
So what am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also. I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also. Now Paul legitimately had the gift of being able to speak in tongues.
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? Again, does this sound like an argument for or against the modern manifestation of tongues?
It's against. For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the person is not being built up. I thank God I speak in tongues more than all of you. Nevertheless, in church, I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others than 10 ,000 words in a tongue.
For or against tongues. It's against. In the church, the gifts that need to be used are the ones that build the church up. Well, what's tongues then for? Brothers, do not be children in your thinking.
Be infants in evil, but in your thinking, be mature. My paraphrase, grow up.
Yeah, absolutely. I like that. That's a good distinction.
Thank you.
In the law, it is written, and here's where Paul now is going to quote from Isaiah 28, verses 11 and 12. Let's take a look at it in its context. Isaiah 28. Note here, the subject, this is not part of the inspired text, but this helps us understand what's going on.
God is speaking words of judgment on Ephraim and Jerusalem. Ephraim would be in the northern kingdom. Jerusalem is the southern kingdom. So God is speaking judgment against the whole lot of them.
And so in here, God is speaking words of judgment, and he goes on to say, for by people of strange lips and with a foreign tongue, the Lord will speak to this people, to whom he has said, this is rest, give rest to the weary, and this is repose.
Yet they would not hear. So what God prophesied through Isaiah, that there would be a time when God would basically say, you hard-hearted, stiff-necked people, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to send a bunch of people who are going to speak to you in strange languages, and even then you're not going to believe.
Now how would that be assigned to a Jew?
Answer.
They know where languages came from. God made the languages at the Tower of Babel in order to make it so that humans had to disperse upon the face of the earth. So when people come to them and speak to them in diverse languages, that's a sign.
So this is a sign of God's judgment. So this is a fulfillment of a prophecy. So when we come back to 1 Corinthians, do not be children in your thinking, be infants in evil. In the law, in the Old Testament, it is written, by people of strange tongues and by lips of foreigners I will speak to this people, and even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord.
Thus, tongues are a sign. And here it is. Who are they assigned for? Not for believers, but for unbelievers. What kind of unbelievers? Unbelieving Jews. It's a fulfillment of a prophecy given in Isaiah.
So as it was rightly pointed out, God didn't have to do this. He did this to fulfill a prophecy because when Peter preached, everybody knew exactly what he was saying because they all at least knew the lingua franca of the time as well as their other languages.
So in the time of Jesus, people were minimally bilingual, oftentimes trilingual and quadrilingual. Again, there's that story. There's a joke. What do you call somebody who knows three languages? They're trilingual.
What do you call somebody who knows two languages? Well, they're bilingual. What do you call somebody who knows one language?
American.
When we travel to Europe, all the people in Europe, they know at least two languages. Their native language and English. And we get along just fine, but we don't have to learn German. I don't have to learn Swedish or Norwegian when we travel.
I've never had to learn Dutch. But everybody there all knows English. But the thing is is because everybody there is bilingual. I think we might want to learn something from people. I'm just saying. So thus tongues are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers.
Prophecy is a sign not for unbelievers but for believers. If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you're out of your minds?
Yeah. Right?
And isn't that what the world is saying regarding all these weird, crazy Pentecostal charismatics? A bunch of people are out of their mind.
But if all prophesy and unbeliever or outsider enters, he's convicted by all. Notice, convicted of his sins. That's a work of the Holy Spirit. He's 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.
Tongues doesn't cause people to say God is really among you. Tongues cause people to sit there and go, you guys are out of your mind. Notice these are arguments against tongues. So what then, brothers?
When you come together, are you ready? So here you've got all this disorder going on in the church at Corinth. What's Paul going to put in place?
Order.
God is not a God of disorder. He's a God of order. So we're going to put in a liturgy. We're going to put in some rules, some ground rules to how church is going to go. It's not going to be a free-for-all.
Which, by the way, what comes here next stands in direct opposition to the early Pentecostal movement. If you listen to the rhetoric coming out of the Azusa Street Revival, William Seymour being the guy leading that, and then Frank Bartleman and others who were in attendance at there, their claim was that the reason why the Holy Spirit left the church and left the church for 1 ,800 years, according to them, is because the Holy Spirit was offended.
And what was the Holy Spirit offended by?
I am not making this up. Read Frank Bartleman's book, The Eyewitness Account of Azusa Street. He's got a whole section in there where he talks about how this completely offended the Holy Spirit. And according to Bartleman, the reason why the Azusa Street Revival eventually fizzled out is because pastors got involved, and they required that they follow a strict order of service.
And this offended the Holy Spirit and brought the revival to a screeching halt. In their way of thinking, the Holy Spirit wants free reign to do whatever He wants to do, and don't you dare put any structure in place that would then keep the Holy Spirit doing from whatever He wants to do.
Watch what Paul does here. So 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 anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be only two, or at the 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 the church and speak to himself in God.
Strict order. Those of you with a legitimate gift of tongues, you come to church, and you want to practice this gift? First and foremost, who's here that can interpret it? Nobody. You are to remain silent.
You have nothing to offer the church.
Nothing.
If you can't up-build the church, and you have to up-build the church by speaking in the language of the people, then you are to remain silent. Consider the implications of what this has then regarding the Roman Catholic belief that somehow the Latin Mass is the superior and the more spiritual of the Masses.
As a kid, I have very distinct memories going to the Latin Mass. I didn't understand a thing that was going on, because I don't speak Latin. Ix-nay on the Aten-lay, okay? And so what did I do? When people stood up, I stood up.
When they sat down, I sat down. When they kneeled, I kneeled. And if I didn't do it quick enough, my grandmother would box my ears. And if you don't know what that is, you are blessed. It is painful, but it doesn't leave a mark.
That's the important bit, okay? And I sat there in these services where I didn't understand a word that was going on. And my little boy mind, all I would do is let my mind wander from one station of the cross to the next station of the cross to the next station of the cross, and just kind of look at the different artwork and try to figure out what the story that's being told there or stare off into the stained glass or whatever until I knew that it was time to stand up again and then they were going to process out.
It was all going to be over because I just wanted to get back to what I wanted to do, and that was to play wiffle ball or to swim or something, right? I was not edified or built up at all in the Latin Mass, not one bit.
And when Rome legitimately martyred men who translated the Bible into the vernacular of their countrymen, what does that tell you? That they don't understand this text at all. How do you build up the church without people understanding the words that are being spoken?
Right? Right.
If they understood, it takes away from their power and their ability to manipulate and create their own doctrines. So then he goes on. Let two or three prophets speak. Let the others weigh what is said.
Now, real quick. If you're familiar with the argument of Michael Brown, which I may not have to invoke much further in the future because Michael Brown is up to his eyeballs in a scandal right now, and there's going to be an independent investigation regarding potentially inappropriate relationship.
There's allegations at this point. And at the moment, he's been benched by his board. Michael Brown claims that New Testament prophecy doesn't have to be accurate because when a prophet speaks, there's others who are going to weigh it.
And so he says it's up to the church, then, to weigh the prophecy to say, well, this part might be true, this part may not be true, and so we're going to go with this part, and we're going to ask you to try harder next time to hear God's voice more accurately, but we're going to go with this and not that and things like this.
To weigh the prophecy is to obey what Christ, what the Apostle John commands, and that is to test all things. The purpose of the weighing of the prophecy is to determine the source. And we have a cross-reference, we have two cross-references that say that, to test that which is true, to test and hold on to that which is true, right?
And to test to see whether it's from God. So the weighing of the prophecies has to be done because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 1 John 4, 1 says that. So for him to say, well, New Testament prophecy can be inaccurate is just nonsense.
It's absolutely gobbledygook, okay? Will any of you, will anybody, why does anybody trust like Jeremiah Johnson or Chris Vallotton or Hank Kunneman after in 2020 they prophesied that Trump would win re-election in 2020?
Right, right. Okay, then it says this. If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent. You can all prophesy one by one so that all may learn and all be encouraged and the spirit of the prophets are subjected to the prophets for God is not a God of confusion but of peace.
Then he goes on and what I find absolutely shameful and disgusting is that this portion of 1 Corinthians 14 is legitimately ignored by the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. Legitimately, defiantly ignored.
So Paul writes, as in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. So when the church gathers together to do what the church does for word and sacrament, are women to be preachers?
No, okay? They are not permitted to speak but they should be in submission as the law also says. Now, here's how people argue it. Well, who are you gonna believe? Are you gonna believe the Apostle Paul or are you gonna believe Jesus, okay?
And so they pit Paul against Jesus. They'll sit there and go, the first people to preach the resurrection of Jesus were women, hmm, hmm. So how can you ban women? That wasn't in church, okay? I would note women have always played a predominant role in the church and there have been notable, very good, well-skilled teachers that were women in the church.
I gotta sneeze.
I hate it, it's like right there but it's not there. I'm waiting for it to arrive.
Ah, then it went away.
Okay, good.
Ah, I was just, I was this close. All right, let me give you an example. So one of my mentors is the late Gretchen Pasantino, okay? So I come up in the theological ranks through apologetics. My mentors are Rod Rosenblatt, John Warwick Montgomery, Gretchen Pasantino, kind of in that order too.
And Gretchen Pasantino was one of the foremost Christian apologists and an expert on Satanism. She was instrumental in the takedown of Mike Warnke. If you're not familiar with that fellow, Mike Warnke back in the day was a Christian comedian and he was top of the world.
Everybody loved listening to Mike Warnke and he claimed he was a Satanist who became a Christian. But my mentor Gretchen Pasantino knew better because she heard him give his shtick and she knew that that had nothing to do with Satanism whatsoever.
The things he was saying were not accurate. It was just mythological. It was like pretend fictitious Satanism. And so she did all the painstaking work and eventually wrote a very important article that outed him as a fraud and his whole ministry fell apart as a result of it.
She was not somebody that you wanted to mess with, okay? And she was a woman. In fact, she was a regular guest on Issues, Etc. When she died, Issues, Etc. even played special kind of encore episodes of Issues, Etc.
Kind of revisiting times that she was on the Issues, Etc. radio program. I knew Gretchen really well. Really, really, really well, okay? She was great and she was instrumental in teaching me certain tactics when it comes to Christian apologetics.
But I can tell you this, that woman never once preached a sermon. I never, ever saw her be invited to preach at a church and accept the invitation, ever. And had she, I would have lost all respect for her, right?
That's not to say that she didn't teach. In buildings where churches met, she would be invited to come and speak as a special speaker at such and such a church, but it wasn't on a Sunday when the church gathered for the divine service, right?
So the idea then here is that when the church gathers for word and sacrament, God specifically has a thing that's going on here. And that is that women are to remain silent in the church, they're not permitted to speak, and it says, as the law also says.
Now real quick, let me put you on the spot. Which commandment in the Mosaic Covenant says women shall not speak? Which one says that women have to be in submission?
Hmm?
I'm glad I like the answers in Genesis 3, okay? Here's what it says. To the woman, God said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing, and pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire will be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.
You'll note that women being in submission is not a creation order issue. Women being in submission is one of the consequences of man's fall into sin. And God wills that women be in submission, and the one place where that has to be exemplified now is in the church.
When the church gathers for the divine service, for word and sacrament, okay? And you'll note that husbands are the head of the wife. Now, you sit there and go, you're talking about patriarchy.
Yes, I am.
Get over it.
The entire universe is run by a patriarch. His name is Jesus. And yes, he's a man. He was circumcised, okay?
But that being the case, you're gonna note then that Christ's patriarchy is marked by sacrificial love for his bride. So if I see a fellow here at Kongsvinger domineering over his wife, we're gonna have words.
And he's gonna hear words of him needing to be called to repentance because he is commanded by God to love his wife sacrificially. Any domineering or abusive fellow needs to be disciplined. And where do churches always get this wrong?
They discipline the woman for not submitting when her husband's being abusive.
That's wrong.
That's just compounding the abuse, right? So you know, the idea then of women being in submission goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden as a consequence of our fall into sin. So in the church then, when the church gathers, the woman is to be in submission, as the law also says.
So if somebody says, why do you not allow women to preach? Answer, Christ doesn't allow it. And it's a sign to all of y 'all that women, part of the curse was that they were put in submission to their husbands.
It's a reminder of Genesis 3, okay? If there's anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. It is shameful for a woman to speak in church. And then, I've made this point before, I'll make it again.
Note what verse 36 begins with.
Or, okay?
Conjunction, junction, what's that function? Hooking up phrases and, right? What's a conjunction for? It connects two phrases together. So note, watch what's being connected. 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's reached? And then watch what he says. If anyone thinks that he's 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's not recognized. Who commanded this?
Christ.
What did Christ command? That women should be silent in the church. So when people sit there and go, we're gonna follow Jesus and not Paul, as I sit there and go, you morons. Do you not read? Paul makes it very clear that women being silent in the church is a command of Christ.
And he's an apostle of Jesus Christ. Are you an apostle?
Have you all seen the live action version of Cinderella? Like, one of my favorite movies of all time, right? Okay, when, at the very end, there's Cinderella. She's locked up in the top attic of this tower, right?
And the prince has finally arrived at her house, and he can hear her singing. They're about to ride off, and he can hear her singing. And he says, have we tested all of the maidens? And of course, the wicked stepmother's all, oh, no, no, she's nothing.
And so he sends his guy to go investigate. And so he goes up the stairs, and she unlocks the door, and there's Cinderella, right? And he says to Cinderella, your king has commanded you to come down. And this wicked stepmother steps in, and she says, I command her not to.
And the guy says to her, are you an empress? Are you a deity? Who are you to challenge a command of the king, right? So note here, if anyone thinks he's a prophet or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I'm writing to you are a command of the Lord.
And somebody says, we need to have women pastors. Are you a deity? Are you higher than Christ? Who do you think you are, right? That should be our response. Christ has commanded it to be this way, and who are you to say otherwise?
And everyone sits there and goes, we just need to get with the times. We need to be relevant and all this kind of stuff, right?
Baloney.
We need to listen to Jesus. If anyone doesn't recognize this, he's not recognized. So my brothers, earnestly desire to prophesy. Don't forbid speaking in tongues, as long as there's an interpreter. But all things should be done decently and in order.
And next week, we're not having Sunday school. And the following week, we're doing Ask a Pastor. So next year, we will get to the book of Acts. All right, Lord willing, we'll see you guys next time.
Peace.
