For Edification - Christopher G. Brenyo

Ascension Presbyterian Church Longwood

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1 Corinthians chapter 14. This is God's holy and infallible word.

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Pursue love and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy.

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For he who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men, but to God. For no one understands him.

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However, in the spirit, he speaks mysteries. But he who prophesies speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men.

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He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church.

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I wish you all spoke with tongues, but even more that you prophesied. For he who prophesies is greater than he who speaks with tongues, unless indeed he interprets that the church may receive edification.

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But now brethren, if I come to you speaking with tongues, what shall

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I profit you unless I speak to you either by revelation, by knowledge, by prophesying, or by teaching?

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Even things without life, whether flute or heart, when they make a sound, unless they make a distinction in the sounds, how will it be known what is piped or played?

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For if the trumpet makes an uncertain sound, who will prepare for battle? So likewise you, unless you utter by the tongue words easy to understand, how will it be known what is spoken?

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For you'll be speaking into the air. There are, it may be, so many kinds of languages in the world, and none of them is without significance.

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Therefore, if I do not know the meaning of the language, I shall be a foreigner to him who speaks, and he who speaks will be a foreigner to me.

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Even so you, since you are zealous for spiritual gifts, let it be done for edification of the church that you may seek to excel.

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Lord, you command that all things be done for edification. Lord, we confess today that we seek our own advancement, as we confessed in that prayer, that we seek our good over the good of others.

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We seek our cause above that of the cause of Christ and his church.

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Lord, I pray that your church would be built up today, that your people would see their responsibility and their obligation, their joy in building one another up into a spiritual house for the glory of Christ.

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We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Please be seated.

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I walked in and the Episcopal minister apologized for the heat, the air conditioning is not working as it should, so I will try, try to limit the preaching today.

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I won't go as long as I could go. Preserve your comfort, your attention.

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My whole sermon is basically built on this thesis. I hope that all the points and evidence

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I provide will support it. The gift of prophecy, and this is encompassing things like exhortation and teaching, is to be preferred over tongues because it edifies and builds up the church.

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The Corinthians were engaged in activities that were edifying themselves, and they weren't as concerned about edifying the church.

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If you're taking notes, I have a few points to help guide you along the way. First, pursue love, desire spiritual gifts.

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Restatement of the love chapter, which we concluded last week, and it actually goes back all the way to 1

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Corinthians 8, where the subject was taken up. And Paul said there in chapter 8, verse 1, love edifies.

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Pursue love, imperative, desire spiritual gifts.

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Number two, the priority of prophesying, teaching, and its place in the church.

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The priority of prophesying. Number three, the heart of the thesis of the sermon, the building up of the body, edification.

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All things in the church, in the hearts of believers, individualized families, as we come together as a corporate body, we should be thinking about building each other up, edification.

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And finally, number four, the need for clarity, that the church may understand the need for clarity, that the church may understand.

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Well, let's look again at verse 1 of chapter 14.

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Paul says, pursue love, that first phrase in verse 1.

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And we learned last week that the greatest of these gifts was love because of love's permanence and love's service to the body.

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Faith and hope will pass away in the realization in the fullness of time when we can see

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Christ face to face. We will no longer need faith. We will no longer need hope because we will be with Christ.

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But love will exist both now and into eternity. Love will be the activity of heaven.

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Love for God and love and that common union in Christ. That will be how we spend eternity.

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So Paul's point is very strong. Pursue love. And he doesn't diminish the importance of their desire, their zeal to have and possess spiritual gifts.

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But he wants to redirect them now. They've been obsessed with tongues and they believe that tongues to be the preeminent gift of the church at Corinth.

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And he said, no, love is the greatest gift. But there is something else that they should give attention to.

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And that is to prophecy. But one of the things that's interesting about prophecy, particularly when we think about looking to the future.

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One of the things that we forget is that the prophets of the Old Testament were prophets who preached the law of God.

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And we have some places in Daniel and Ezekiel and elsewhere. There is forth telling of events in places like Amos and elsewhere.

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However, the dominant message of the prophets is to proclaim again the word of God to them.

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And at the heart of Paul's message here, he said, but Corinth needs what every church of Christ really needs is teaching.

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And the teaching that the church needs is the teaching of the gospel. The teaching that the church needs is the scripture.

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We need to be daily bathing in the scripture. We need to be preached to in the scriptures.

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Sunday morning, I need to preach clearly, distinctly and definitively about the grace of God in Christ.

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The doctrine of the church is found in the scriptures. And I believe

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Paul is taking them and saying you're interested in these external utterances. You're interested in these signed gifts.

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But now I want you to get down to the serious business of being students of the word.

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Pursue love, desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy.

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I want to ask you a question. And I was thinking about this. I was kind of ashamed of my own answer.

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And I want to ask you a question. Are you actively seeking spiritual gifts? Are you actively thinking about being used of God for his glory in the life of the church?

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I stumbled upon something this week. It was anecdotal quotes about geniuses and people who achieve a lot of things.

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And several of them said that, you know, they're called a genius. Michelangelo painted the

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Sistine Chapel, all those sculptures, all the things that he did. He said, they'll be surprised at how much hard work goes into my genius.

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I spent a lot of time working on my craft. And maybe you think, how much time is the average

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Christian to devote to cultivating and developing the spiritual giftings that God has clearly equipped each of you with?

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How much time do you think about? Well, I've been given this ministry. This is the area that the Lord seems to lead me to serve.

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How much time do I devote to cultivating those talents? I could take a group of young men and have them run up and down the grass field out here, and I could tell you within five seconds whether they can play high school or college football.

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I could tell you just immediately. But the greatest among them will never achieve that next level of athletic success without the hard work and determination that goes with it.

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So natural talent's not enough. I think part of what Paul is calling them is, it's good,

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Corinthian church, that you want spiritual gifts. But I want you to develop them and cultivate them.

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And I want to move you away from some of these self -serving ideas about spiritual gifting. And I want you to think about how your gifting and your service benefits and blesses the church.

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I'm going to embarrass you. We have the Stouffers here today from Heritage Church, and we've been praying for Bert, and please wish them well.

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I hope you all can stay for lunch today so we can spend time with you. But these people are gifted musicians, and they are a blessing to the church.

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And from what I can tell, they spend a lot of time and effort and work developing their musical gift that they might be a blessing to the body.

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We have to do that as well. Whatever it is that we're gifted at, however God has led us to serve the church, we have to cultivate and stir up those gifts that we might be a blessing to others.

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Not that we might exalt ourselves and our talents, but that the church would benefit from our zealous service for Christ.

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That the church would be built up. So that very little old phrase, desire spiritual gifts, is loaded.

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Desire the spiritual gifts, you should want them, but cultivate them so the church might be blessed.

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Especially this gift of prophecy. Let's look at the second point, the priority of prophecy, prophesying.

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Today, we don't have a lot of need for forth telling of future events.

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We don't have a need for that, in part because of the completed canon of scripture.

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However, we have a tremendous need for the interpretation of scripture.

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And the gift of teaching, the pastoral office, the elders of the church, they are tasked with this very important job of interpreting the scripture.

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Telling people, thus saith the Lord. This is what the Bible says, this is what the Bible teaches.

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We need to be very eager and diligent. I need to do a tremendously better job of being a faithful pastor in this area.

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I need to study more, study harder, more diligently, more smartly. That I might communicate to you accurately what the word of God says.

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My chief business is the word and prayer. I need to be praying for you and I need to be proclaiming the word faithfully to you every week.

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So I have a lot of work to do to improve and get better myself. I need to cultivate the gift that God has given me.

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However meager, however small, he's given me gifts, I need to develop them and so do you. Pursue love, desire spiritual gifts.

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But the priority is on the teaching of the word, the exhortation surrounding the word of God.

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Let's turn to 1 Timothy chapter 4. I've got a couple of quick references for you today.

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If you're interested in time, we'll go quick. I'm not spending a lot of time there, but I just wanted to let you see it with your own eyes.

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1 Timothy chapter 4. Paul talking to young Timothy about being an example for others.

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Talking about his life and ministry. This is what he says in verse 9.

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This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance. For to this end, we both labor and suffer reproach because we trust in the living.

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God was the savior of all men, especially those who believe these things, command and teach.

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Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word and conduct and love and spirit and faith in purity.

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Till I come, give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.

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Paul doesn't tell young Timothy, you make sure you get those revival meetings going where you speak in tongues.

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Get everybody whipped up emotionally and say it. He says, preach the word to them.

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Tell them the truth about who Christ is. And here it is in verse 14. A great connection to what

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I just mentioned a moment ago. Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the eldership.

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Meditate on these things. Give yourself entirely to them that your progress may be evident to all.

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Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them for in doing this, you will save both yourself and those who hear you.

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Timothy was given remarkable gifts, apparently. Paul told him elsewhere to go out and strengthen the churches.

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Some estimates have said, I've told this before, that as many as a thousand churches were planted through the church at Ephesus.

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It doesn't mean that Timothy planted each one, but from the ministry of the church at Ephesus, churches went out.

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Men were trained. People were equipped to do the work of ministry. So, Timothy heeded the words of Paul.

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And he gave himself to doctrine. He gave himself to the scriptures, which he learned from his grandmother and his mother.

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He continued that pattern in his own life that he might be a blessing to the church.

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One of the things that's happened over these years of ministry is there have been a lot of hard things that we've had to go through in our life over church.

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And one of the things that always keeps me encouraged and excited is to know that the preaching of the gospel plainly and truly from the scriptures is

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God's ordained way of building his church. So, whatever happens, we can have more people leave, we can have splits, we can have divisions, all the things that can happen in the life of a church.

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I know from the depths of my being that God will bless the preaching of his word.

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The true doctrine of the church being articulated as a congregation corporately, striving to glorify him in our worship.

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However feeble it is with the limited resources we have. We don't have a lot of musical talent. We don't have a lot of great singers in our congregation, but our praises are sincere.

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We really want to worship the Lord here. I believe the Lord blesses that heart of obedience.

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Well, let's turn back to our text. Romans, excuse me.

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First Corinthians 14. I'm going to read a reference from Romans. You don't have to go there.

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While you're turning back, I'm going to quote Romans 15, verse two.

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This doctrine of edification being central to the Christian experience,

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Paul talks about elsewhere in different ways. In Romans 15 he says, let each of us please his neighbor for his good, leading to edification.

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I have another question for you. If you're like me, you haven't spent a lot of time thinking about your spiritual giftings, as much time as you should, and how you might cultivate them, that you might be better equipped to serve the body.

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But how much of our time have we given to pleasing our neighbor, helping our neighbor for his good, for his edification, for his building up?

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We're pretty selfish people, aren't we? We only think about, or primarily think about ourselves.

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And everything is kind of distorted in our relationships, in our church life, in our family life.

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Our relationships, our vision is distorted because we're always going back to this lens of self.

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We're always looking back at ourselves. How does this affect me, negatively or positively? When it seems that when we live for others, live for Christ, live for the building up of the church, that these things go so much better.

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When I try to exalt myself, I trip and stumble and I fall. But when I'm living in service to Christ and trying to build up the body, things seem to go well for me.

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A Christian needs to live a different kind of life, totally antithetical to the world's way of doing it.

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The world says, you go and get everything you can for yourself. Christ says, lay down your life.

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Give your life to me. Give your life in service to the body. And here you will find blessing.

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Verse three of that same chapter, it said, For even Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproach you fell on me.

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Do you ever take one for the team? Do you ever look over an offense, slighting for the good of the body?

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You don't have to have a big war every time something goes bad in the life of the church.

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Sometimes you can just forgive people who have sinned against you and forget it. Sometimes you can not allow something to escalate by saying, well, my pride is the only thing that's being assaulted here.

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I'm just going to allow that to happen because I need my pride to be wounded. See, the Corinthians were thinking about exalting themselves.

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They were overwhelmed with their own pride. And this distorted this vision of love that they would have and prevented them from building each other up.

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Well, you're back there at the text. Let's look at verse four. He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church.

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Paul says, effectively, you have exalted this gifting of tongues to such an extent that you're the only ones who are being edified.

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And if this is a secret prayer language to God, no one else is benefiting from it.

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Only you are benefiting from it for this conversation that you're having with God. But he who teaches the scripture edifies and builds up the church.

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He says in verse five, I wish all of you spoke with tongues, but even more so that you prophesied.

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For he who prophesies is greater than he who speaks with tongues, unless indeed he interprets that the church may receive edification.

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There's something here, and we're at point three now, the center of the message, the building up of the body, this edification.

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There's something very central to this notion that should be evident in every

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Christian church. We should be laboring and striving to build each other up.

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Do you know that the world, the flesh and the devil are tearing you down every day?

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Why would you come into this oasis of peace and love and joy in the

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Holy Spirit and tear down? Why would we sabotage our lives?

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I've been watching people sabotage their lives in recent days, their happiness, their joy, total sabotage.

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Why would we sabotage our lives and bring strife into the life of the church?

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Why would you sabotage your life by being mean to your wife and your husband? Children, why would you sabotage your life by being disobedient to your parents?

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Why would you do that? It's a place of blessing, a place of hope, a place of love.

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If we're not building, we are tearing down. When I was in Wales for my research degree many years ago now,

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I was really surprised about something. There were really some beautiful things. Everything's very old there, and I like that.

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It's pretty cool because I'm from Orlando. There's nothing old here. Strip malls, new

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McDonald's and stuff. There was another side to this. The government had a restricted policy about buildings of a certain age that you couldn't renovate them.

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You had these beautiful structures and beautiful stone. You can see the erosion of the wind and rain eating away at the stone, and they weren't allowed to fix it.

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This is something true in our lives. If we're not building, we're eroding.

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We need to be building. It's not just a place of neutrality. It's either we're building or we're tearing down.

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Paul's calling us to build. In our relationship with our spouse, we should be building that relationship.

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We shouldn't be eroding it. We should be building it. In our relationship with our parents, with our children, we should be building it.

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In our relationship with our co -workers, we should be building it. But in the life of the church, we should be thinking,

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How can I build up my brother or sister in Christ? I come to church not to get something from the sermon.

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I come to edify and build up the body. I come to give something.

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I come to church to give my gifts and talents and service to the Lord that my brothers and my sisters will be built up in the faith.

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I love that imagery of us being built into a spiritual house, a holy temple, dwelling place of the

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Spirit. I always thought about the Spirit's activity in doing that.

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I think there's something else. You know what I love? I love that my wife would say, You know, you've got a big clump of spinach in your teeth.

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You need to take that out. It doesn't look good. And as Christians, we need each other.

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There's a sense in which we're chiseling off the rough parts of each other in the life of the body.

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I was always thinking about the Spirit's work in building us and knitting us together and forming us. But there's a very real sense that we, as living stones next to each other, living in community, living for the glory, but there's a sense in which we're chiseling each other in a loving way.

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Iron sharpening iron. Us helping each other live the Christian life and to walk in faithfulness.

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That's a very rare thing, I think, in this world, that Christian communities, a church, would live in this way.

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They would live to build each other. Not to tear someone down, not to absolve yourself. We, metaphorically, we pop the zip on each other's nose, not to find fault with them, but to get that out of there, to help them.

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Not to exalt ourselves, but to help the other. That was not a good illustration.

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I missed all the faces. Sorry. It's terrible. Let's look at verse 6.

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But now, brethren, if I come to you speaking with tongues, what shall

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I profit you unless I speak to you either by revelation, by knowledge, by prophesying, or by teaching?

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Even things without life, whether flute or harp, when they make a sound, unless they make a distinction in the sounds, how would be known what is piped or played?

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If this were a cool non -denominational church right now, I would go over and strike the keys on the piano so you could hear how bad it is.

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But there's a difference between someone who knows how to play piano and someone who doesn't.

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There's a difference to know who's going to play the trumpet or play the horn than someone who doesn't.

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It's obvious. And Paul says, the thing that you're doing is disorderly.

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You don't know how to play the music. You don't know how to read music. You don't know the song. There's nothing that you're doing in your speaking of tongues that causes someone to tap their toe, to clap their hands, to sing or to dance.

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It's all for you. And when someone who knows how to play music plays a piece of music, you see what we hear is the freedom from distraction, the elegance of it.

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We don't hear choppy, messed -up, crazy sounds. We hear beautiful sounds. When you see a great athlete, you see elegance of movement.

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You don't see crazy running. You see elegance of movement. And Paul says, effectively, you've got a disorderly church.

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You've got all these people praying in secret languages that no one understands.

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But we should be focused on speaking to one another in revelation and knowledge, teaching and exhortation, truth.

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Look at the flute. Look at the harp. When they make a sound, unless there's a distinction in the notes, it's just noise.

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And what about the warring trumpet, verse 8? If it makes an uncertain sound, who will prepare for battle?

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Very stinging rebuke of the practice of the Corinthians. I hope it's not true for us.

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I wonder today, is there anything in us that is tearing us down? Is there anything in the life of the church that's not building us up?

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And if there is, we need to labor to put it away. In verse 9 it says,

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So likewise, you, unless you utter by the tongue words easy to understand, how will it be known what is spoken?

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For you will be speaking into the air. I had a friend one time, this was in a business context,

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I think there's a great application here in the life of the church. He said, you can always tell the guy who doesn't really know what he's talking about in this situation because he uses all of the technical jargon.

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He uses all these big words. He just keeps throwing those out. The guys who really understand surgery and understand these procedures, they speak in really plain terms.

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I think it's true for theology and preaching as well. Sometimes preachers like to sound smart, but we're not here to entertain other professors.

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We're here that the body may be built up. So my preaching needs to be in plain words.

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I need to speak clearly in a way that you would understand, that my little three -year -old will understand.

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I need to preach in that way. Let's speak something about the life of the church.

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We should be helping each other grow up in maturity, but we've got to do it in a way that's helpful, that's beneficial.

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It can't be disorganized. It can't be like me playing on the piano. It has to have order and organization.

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It has to make sense. So it is in the life of the church. Well, I promised a shorter message, so I'm going to move to application now.

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So we know we're supposed to pursue love. We know we're supposed to desire spiritual gifts.

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We know that prophesying the truth of God's word needs to come forth loud and clear.

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We have to ask the question, well, what do we do about that? What do we do now? First, you and I need to be eager students of the word.

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We need to desire the pure milk of God's word. That's true for individuals, families, and the life of the church.

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Is the Bible boring you right now? That's a heart problem.

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That's not the scripture. That's a heart issue. We pray that the Lord would tenderize your heart, that you might be an eager student of the word.

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Number two, that first imperative of the text today, pursue love.

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If I'm concerned for my brother, I will seek his good. I will want to build them up.

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Number three, and this is where we all have to really look soberly and intently into the mirror.

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Don't tear down the world, the flesh, the devil, the culture.

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Everybody's doing that. That's easy. Demolition is so much easier than construction.

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Anybody can swing a sledgehammer. It takes skilled people to build. Don't tear down your words, your attitudes, your actions.

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It can actually contradict and hinder the building up of the body.

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We all need to be builders. Number four, and a great assault on our pride, it's a rare commodity really in the world, is we need to be teachable.

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We need to be teachable. We need to be humble. We won't need to long to know more of God's word through all of his appointed beings.

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Most notably things like preaching, studying scripture. Number five, we need to acquire knowledge, not so that we can feel good about ourselves.

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I'm concerned about students. Since my first interaction with them, the first abides that Michael started at the campus ministry,

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I was concerned that theology would become an end in itself, an academic pursuit stimulating the mind.

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We need to acquire all the knowledge of scripture we can that we might understand and use that understanding to help others worship and use their gifts for the building up of the body.

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It's not that just we'd be a repository of theological information, but that knowledge would be translated into understanding and helpfulness to the body of Christ.

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Finally, I need to teach poignantly in language that all of you will understand and you would need to communicate to your children, to your families, to those you come in contact with in a way that they'll understand.

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As the text goes on, it says there are many kinds of languages. None of them is without significance.

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Therefore, I don't know the meaning of the language. I'll be a foreigner to him who speaks.

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It really speaks to the condition of Corinth. They were foreigners to one another because some people didn't speak the language of tongue.

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You and I need to never be foreigners to each other, nor do we need to be foreigners to other

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Christians. The last time I was in Burma, it was easier than the first time.

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It was impossible to communicate with people who didn't know

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English. We had guides with us who could speak some English. It was a very unusual thing to be an

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American used to living in an English place, to go somewhere where no one spoke your language.

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The most basic things were prevented from happening because they didn't understand what

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I was saying. Imagine the consequences of that in the life of the church if we don't speak each other's language, if we're foreigners to one another.

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We should labor to understand each other, to know each other, to communicate in a way that is accessible to one another.

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Today, in our text, Paul said that prophesying was superior to speaking in tongues because of its edifying qualities in the life of the church.

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You and I today need to take this message and labor to discern what is in you, what is in me, that's tearing down my family, my marriage, my church.

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And what do I need to do to build up the body? And each of us will have some things that we should be working on.

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We should have great hope and confidence. It would seem that God would be very pleased to work in this area.

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After all, the will of God is our sanctification. He wants us to grow up in godliness.

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He's going to be there with us when we are striving to grow in this way. May the

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Lord be pleased to build up this congregation, our denomination, and all the faithful churches in this land, that we would be an edifice, a built -up dwelling place for God in the

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Spirit. Amen? Let's pray again. Lord, we lack attention.

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We lack things that give us fame, things that make us look good and make us feel good.

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But I pray that we would put those childish things away and that we'd grow up in the faith today.

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And that we would seek the up -building, strengthening of the church.

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That we would reach out to our brothers and sisters who are weak and hurting and shore up their foundations and shore up the cracks in their walls.

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Lord, I pray that we would love each other so much that we'd be willing to speak to one another about sin and our deficiencies.

38:47

And that if we were in need of help, that we would cry out to one another and ask for help, that we might be built up and strengthened.

38:56

Lord, I pray we would be engaged in this hard work. It's so easy to tear down, but it's so hard to build.

39:06

Lord, I pray that we would be a congregation of builders. Oh Lord, would you make it so in us.

39:12

Would you cause us to be a faithful house, a dwelling place for you in the spirit.

39:20

Give us wisdom and discernment about what we need to do that we might build.