The Sign Gifts - Tongues (06/23/2002)

I want to, I taught a lesson on this last year. So I just want to use this to introduce, because this deals with all of the gifts.

And then after I generally discuss this little part here, then we're going to focus in on the one gift, the gift of biblical languages.

I don't mean biblical languages, the biblical gift of languages. So otherwise you'd be doing

Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. I didn't mean that. Okay, let's pray. Father, we ask that you would bless our afternoon service.

We know you'll bless your word, so keep us in the word, and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Start with me, verse four, 1

Corinthians 12, four. Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. So this is obviously going to pick up a discussion on the gifts, the gifts of the

Holy Spirit given in the church. There are diversities of gifts. So there are several different kinds of gifts, but the same spirit.

So it's always and only the Holy Spirit who gives legitimate gifts from God. Now we know that there are other verses, and I don't remember where it is.

I probably should have looked it up. 1 Corinthians or 2 Corinthians, I know it's there. Well, I don't want to look for it.

I could find it really quick, but it's the verse you'll remember that says that there is another gospel and another spirit and another something else.

What was the third? Hit pause on the tape.

No, I'm kidding. Come on, y 'all can help me with that. Just need a little help here. Another gospel, beware because there's another gospel.

Oh, another spirit and another Jesus. That's what it is. So I don't have to look it up now. That was it.

Another gospel, another spirit, and another Jesus. Not necessarily in that order, but the apostle

Paul warned us that there would be false teachers who would teach a different Jesus Christ than the biblical, historic, true

Jesus. That's taught all over America today because the Jesus they talk about now is a Jesus who you pray and accept him into your life and then he doesn't do anything with it from that point.

They just go live like they want to. Well, that's not the Jesus of the Bible. And then another gospel is the gospel that would propagate that Jesus.

And then the other spirit, now there's what relates to our lesson today. Paul taught very clearly that there is another spirit or other spirits in the context of another

Jesus, another gospel. That means to me where you have the other gospel there and another spirit, it's a teaching spirit, a false teaching spirit that will cause things to happen in churches that aren't supposed to happen.

Now, that spirit is a demonic spirit, of course. It's the kind of spirit that we'd be referring to. There are listed in the

Bible the phrase doctrines of demons. So the spirits will place the doctrinal thoughts in men's minds and they will teach those doctrines in the churches and some people will receive those because they are not studying their own

Bibles or they just hadn't thought about that topic perhaps. So now with that as a backdrop, you see here that there are many gifts but one spirit and that's talking about the

Holy Spirit. So it's talking about true genuine gifts, not counterfeits. But we know then there will be counterfeits if there's another spirit, then the other spirit or spirits will then produce counterfeit things in the church and we've observed this in life around us.

Now, look at verse five. There are differences of administrations but the same Lord. Now, I want you to look at these next verses because it's gonna mention the

Godhead. You're going to see Jesus, you're going to see the Holy Spirit, you're gonna see the Father and look how they work in with regard to the gifts.

First of all, the differences of administrations are done by the same

Lord, that's the Lord Jesus. Now, look at verse six. There are differences or diversities of operations but it is the same

God which worketh all in all and that is the Father, so he is the one.

When you look up that word work in the Greek, it's the word erg and it's the physics term for work and I think that means, if I remember right, the energy that it takes to move an object from one point to another.

Energy may not be the right word but that's the definition of work and it's God that supplies the ergs, the energy, to make it move from one place to the other.

So therefore, it is the Father himself even though the Holy Spirit creates the diversity of the gifts, he is the one who will bring the gifts and the

Lord Jesus is the one who administrates them. It's all under the sovereignty of God, you see. Man does not pick and choose these things and then you come down to the very

Father himself. He's the one that turns the energy on when and where he wants to do it and without that energy, all you can produce is a counterfeit from another spirit.

Now, the young man that I talked with yesterday, I had a good time. It's fun to talk with 20 to 25 -year -olds because they know everything and so they do ask good questions.

But another thing we talked about was this energy that comes from God to turn these gifts on and so the

Bible clearly teaches it. Now, I want you to go into chapter 13.

That's just kind of the backdrop of this whole lesson and really that's a backdrop for a study in the gifts and it's so interesting to see that the three persons of the

Godhead are all mentioned there. The Holy Spirit, Jesus and the

Father and so it all comes under the sovereignty of God and God is the one who decides when and where and if these gifts are operative.

So I have changed my view of 20 years in the last two years because I used to read a lot of books on the gifts and they would always say, well, they're no longer operative and I don't use that phraseology anymore because that would be to say that God can't turn them on if he wants to or that he hasn't somewhere where I wasn't there to see it like Africa or India.

That's ridiculous. So what that was, you know what, that's a theological box they built to make it tidy.

I liked the tidiness of it but I had to reject the fact that it was not scriptural. But what is scriptural is that the gifts did not go away but looking at it from God's point of view, they simply are always under his sovereign control of when and where and if they happen.

I think we can look at history and see that some of these that the other authors do call the signed gifts and that's a proper name for them, by the way.

There are certain gifts that you could put in a division different than the other gifts. Let's give one like the gift of giving, for example.

That's not a signed gift. That's a gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift of giving, the gift of teaching is another.

That is not a signed gift but it is a gift. So if you took all the gifts of the Spirit, there are some of those you can pull aside and put them in a group and say these are signed gifts.

They were predominantly used to authenticate the apostles and show that their office was true.

In fact, there's places where Paul used those and said here, some say I'm not an apostle but I have the gifts of an apostle.

Now I would ask this question. If those were available to every man, woman, boy and girl in church, or in a charismatic church somewhere, and those were available just to get by the asking, then how could

Paul have used them to prove he was an apostle? Because if everybody has them, it doesn't prove anything. Now that's a hard question for the modern charismatic to answer but it's a good question.

If everybody has access to them, how would that prove Paul is anybody? But if there were gifts and signs and wonders and miraculous things that God did through these men to authenticate their office as the apostles of the church, the foundation,

Jesus was the cornerstone and the rock and these were the foundation upon which the church is built, then they are not available to people who are not apostles.

Now not all the gifts are that way but there are some that we call signed gifts and so don't throw away that terminology.

It's not necessarily in the Bible but it's a good theological term to use to differentiate the gifts that were apostolic in nature.

Now then there were some gifts that the apostles did but then other people also did. Tongues was one of those.

And so you can't just say that there are certain gifts that are just inoperative and God is, they're just gone now during the church age like we used to teach.

And that was before I had studied as much quite frankly. I just, sometimes when you're young, you tend to accept what your theologians teach you and you don't study it on your own.

But I think after more careful study, it is more biblical to say that God, as in verse six where you see the word operations, understanding that that word is from the

Greek word erg, it's the power, it's the energy, without which the gift cannot even appear.

God turns that on when he chooses and where and if. And that's just the way the thing works.

So therefore, men cannot teach other men to do the gifts. And yet,

I don't know this by firsthand but I have been told by people who grew up in Pentecostal churches that they do get the new people that come in, the visitors bring them down and they say, now you can get this, just listen, then they'll go get it or whatever they do.

And they begin to try to get them to get the gift of tongues. You can't do that.

God is the only one who can turn that on. And if he turns it on, you couldn't stop it if you tried. And it's gonna be of God.

Now, the thing that's frightening for Baptists is that Joel says in the end times, around the second advent, you're going to have these rising up again like they did around the first advent.

And so we don't know. I think specifically, if you read Job carefully, it tends to me to indicate during the actual seven -year tribulation period, the seven -year part of the end times where the moon is actually red and the sun is darkened and so forth, says then will your sons and daughters prophesy and this stuff, da -da -da -da -da.

So I don't know if that would say to us that it couldn't begin to have some of those things happen as you approach that seven -year period because we're not gonna know when that starts necessarily as we come up to it, we don't know the foot, we may be in the foothills right now.

If you consider them to be the mountains. So will some of these genuine Holy Spirit gifts come as signs again in our lifetime in this church and around us and be real and not be counterfeit?

Quite possibly. So we need to know, as Brother Otis has said many times, how do they teach people that deal with money how to find a counterfeit?

Predominantly they teach them what the real thing looks like. At least that's what you've told me and I think you would know or you wouldn't teach it.

So they predominantly teach what the real thing looks like. That's what I wanna do with tongues. So just a little introduction.

Go to 1 Corinthians chapter 13, the first point of this study.

We'll answer the question, two, a couple of questions. Is the tongues in Corinthians different than the tongues in Acts?

We know that in Acts, okay, put your hand there. I know I do that to you a lot.

Some of my preaching is extemporaneous, obviously. That's the part that makes it last longer. Go to Acts chapter two.

I think we all agree on this, but we might as well, let's get it on the tape because Brother Raymond passes these out all over the world.

Who knows who's gonna hear this? And they're gonna need, we've studied it recently, but they're gonna need to know Acts chapter two.

This is the recording of Pentecost, and it will tell you about what tongues were like at Pentecost. We go down through there.

On the day of Pentecost, they were all there with one accord. Suddenly there came a sound from heaven as a rushing mighty wind, et cetera.

Says the cloven tongues as a fire sat on their heads. They were filled with the

Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues and as the

Spirit gave them utterance. Now, when you look up the Greek word for tongues, you're going to find that it is the predominant word in the

Greek language that's used to mean language. So it means a language.

It does not mean anything you might put into that because you've already been around Charismatics and Pentecostals all your life and you've read about it in the papers.

You've either been there and seen it or heard it or whatever, and so you've kind of filtered through that modern definition.

The modern definition of tongues is totally different. And so when you see this and it says that they spoke with other tongues, you're thinking that means whatever your friends told you tongues were.

But I'm saying in the Bible language, what it actually meant is language.

It is the word predominantly that there is one other, at least one other they use to mean a language, but this is the one they generally almost every time use when they say, well,

I learned French. Oh, you know a foreign tongue. Well, yeah, and I know Spanish. Oh, well, you know a foreign tongue too.

That's just how they use it. And we would tend to say language, but sometimes we would say, well, do you speak in any other foreign tongues?

Especially in the 1611 English, you would say that. Well, we're gonna go on and basically it's gonna name the languages.

So let's go on. I just wanna point out some people may not know the Greek there means language. Okay, I won't stop there.

Let's go on. It goes on down and says, they were filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other languages as the spirit gave them utterance and their words.

Well, now it's gonna give part of the purpose, not all of the purpose for tongues. That's another thing we will discuss in this study is what is the

Bible taught purpose for them? The Bible will tell us the reason for having this.

What is it? We're gonna answer that maybe not today, but we'll get part of the answer here. It says that there were people dwelling here in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men out of every nation under heaven.

There are other places in the Bible where it literally says out of every other nation and other tongues. It may be used here in just a minute, but it means language.

So you had these people, the Jews had come in from every nation and every language.

And now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together and were confounded because that every man heard them speak in his own language.

There's the word. Thank you, Diane. You're getting me there. So we see clearly language, tongue.

Now, if you look in the Greek, by the way, the Greek word for language at the end of verse six is identical to the

Greek word for tongue everywhere you find it. You see my point? It just means language.

And they were all amazed, marveled, saying one to another, behold, are not all these which speak Galileans?

So how can they speak this other language and so forth? Now it's gonna come in and list the languages they were speaking that day.

And how here every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born.

Now, Bill brought up something interesting the other day when we were talking about this. He said, well, maybe the miracle was in the hearing because it clearly says they each heard in their own language.

So it was in fact, in this passage, this was a two -way miracle.

It did have to do with the speaking also, but it had to do with the hearing because as Bill pointed out, if you had at least 12 apostles, as we know, well, we know that probably would have been at least 12 apostles.

No, maybe 11 at this point. They were all speaking at the same time, perhaps from the same large little area, different languages.

And how would anybody hear anything? So there had to be a miraculous hearing of it too. But I do believe it involved the speaking as well.

But in either way, let's look what the tongues were. What were the tongues? Look at verse nine. These tongues were

Parthenian, the language of the Medes, the tongue of the Elamites, the tongue of those who dwelt in Mesopotamia, the language of those who were in Judea, those who were in Cappadocia, the tongue of those who lived in Pontus and the language of those who were from Asia, the tongue of those who were from Phrygia and Pamphylia, the language of the

Egyptians, the tongue of those who lived in Libya and Cyrene and in Rome, what does it say?

And strangers or pilgrims of Rome, the Jewish, Jews and proselytes, both.

These were all either Jews or proselyte Jews from all of these people. Cretes, the tongue of the

Arabians. We do hear them speak in our tongues, our languages, the wonderful works of God.

There's the Bible definition for what tongues is. Has that what you've been told though? Is that what you've heard in the paper, on the radio, on television?

If you've gone to some of their meetings, is that what they were doing? No. There are other spirits, my friends, and the

Holy Spirit, even Christian people, even

Christian people who may be seeking the things of God if they are not in the word, which

God commands us to be in the word. He commands us to have on the whole armor of God.

He tells us there will be false prophets so much in the end times that they'll be doing signs and wonders so much that if it were possible, even the very elect would be deceived.

We're told that, and yet, we just go believe everything we hear. Just because I see it, it's real. Well, yeah, it's real.

It's like my wife told the lady, yeah, he believes in tongues. He's seen it happen, you know.

He has one. Doesn't mean it's the tongue of the Bible or of the

Holy Spirit. If it is, it will be a foreign language. That's clear. Now, let's rush right back to 1

Corinthians. Many say that, yes, that's true. You see, they've had to develop their arguments because the

Baptists keep coming back, hitting them and saying, hey, that's unbiblical. I mean, you're not doing a foreign language. And they go, oh, you know what?

They have a point there. It'd be the wisdom. What can we do now? Well, we say, oh, well, the tongues over in Corinthians is different.

It's a prayer language, a private, angelic language. And it doesn't sound like a human language because it's an angelic language.

That issue I will touch, I will complete the point on this issue and we'll be through, okay? 1

Corinthians 13. We're going to answer the question now, is there an angelic language was, that is different than the tongues of Acts?

And is this what Paul was teaching them they could and should do in the church? Okay. Now, let's start with chapter 13, verse one.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, oops, there it is.

There must be an angelic tongue, especially if we put the period right there and we close the

Bible and don't read the rest of it. Now that's called proof texting. And the people that do that don't want you to read the rest of it.

They're counting on you being an ignorant Baptist. They're counting on that they know more about this topic than you do because you're not that interested in it.

They'll even tell you the reason you don't have this in your church is because you're not interested in it. And don't ask for it.

Don't want it. So that makes you sovereign, not God. Because since you don't want it, since you're sovereign, it won't happen.

Now I say this, whether we want it or not, if God puts it in this place, it'll happen. We can't stop it.

And the thing to learn, though, is you can't start it and be of God. So that's the problem with the modern movements is they are

Arminian. I really believe that thanks to Brother Otis's teaching, he's caused all of us to try to see everything from God's viewpoint, not that we don't realize there is a human viewpoint, there always is, two sides of the coin, but to study from God's viewpoint.

And because we do that, I believe, I really believe that the Lord's been able to teach me more about the gifts and all the gifts through the sovereignty of God and to understand it better than the people who don't see it that way.

All of us, I think, will see it better if we look at it from the sovereignty of God. Now let's look at this, though.

Goes on and says, the gifts of tongues and have not love, I am become a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal, and though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all.

Now here's what I want you to do, because I'm trying to make this a little quicker for you. Look at the word all in the next few phrases.

I understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains.

Notice it doesn't say move mountains from there to the sea, it says remove the mountain. That's not even the same

Jesus we're talking about. He said if you had faith you could pray and move the mountain to the sea or something like that.

He says if I had all faith, where I could just totally, the mountain's gone. I could just think and it's just gone.

Now, but if I could do that and not have love, I'm still nothing. Now you would think

I was something. If I said follow me, y 'all come on out the side door, I'm gonna show you something. See that water tower over there?

Just watch, and I go, and it disappears in front of your eyes.

Would you not think I'm something? I mean, if it really could happen, you would think

I'm something. You might not know what, but you would think, you would think I'm something, wouldn't you?

But you know what God just taught us is if I didn't do that in love because of my love for God and for you, then it was nothing.

Even if it disappeared and vaporized, it's nothing to God because it wasn't done in God's love.

Now he goes on and he says, and though I bestow all my goods, I take everything

I own in the entire universe and I get rid of it all and give all that money away to the poor, and if I took my body and totally doused it with gasoline like the

Buddhists did in the Vietnam War and lit it and burned up right in front of your eyes, but I didn't do that for the love of God and of you, then it profits, nothing.

Then it goes into this long diatribe about charity is this and defines it all the way through the rest of the chapter.

The chapter is about what? What's it defining? Love. Is it about how to speak in tongues?

No, so you have to look at the context. So it's about love, and what it does is he starts out with the first three, four verses, and he is going to teach you about the importance of love in everything you manifest in the

Christian life. That's the teaching and that's what it's about. Now, here's what he does, and Marianne, you'll verify this for me.

When you look at figures of speech in language, especially in writing, there is one, and I'm not gonna get the name of it right.

You may know it, because I think there's even a taste that has it in there, but it means this. You use the language of exaggeration to prove a point.

For example, I would say to my wife, if I could fly like an eagle, my dear,

I would fly to your doorstep. If I could move the mountains,

I would move the mountains and bring you all the diamonds. Well, that's pretty good, poetic.

But it's common in poetry and in writing to use the phenomenal language is one thing, maybe that's what it's called, but the language of exaggeration.

Now, that's exactly what the Holy Spirit has, do you know the name of it? Okay, hyperbole, good.

You use the exaggeration to teach the point. Now, notice with me, once again, let's go through this and look and see if this is not what the

Holy Spirit has inspired Paul to do, to teach us how important love is. Look what Paul says, and I'm gonna start at the bottom and go back up towards the top, because I'm trying to make a point here that is not easily made.

And this is why people use the very first phrases of verse one to form an entire doctrine and whole churches have come out of this verse without even looking at how to interpret this passage.

Look at verse four, I'm gonna go backwards now. That's where the definition of love starts, isn't it?

So let's look at the bottom of verse three, we'll go backwards up through here. Okay, first of all, if I would take my body and burn it as a religious act, it would mean nothing if I didn't do it because of God's love.

Now let me ask you this, how many of you plan on going and burning your body to show me you love God? I mean, is that really a work that we probably have in our church as described as some of the things we wanna show to the community to show them we love

God? It's a bit of an exaggeration of a Christian work, good works, wouldn't you think?

I mean, you take good works to the limit. Well, I mean, I've done everything I can do. You know, I've spent hours up here mowing and cleaning and witnessing and praying, and now

I'm just gonna burn my body. That'll prove it all. See, it's an exaggeration of a Christian work.

Now this gets more obvious, look here. Look at this, I'm gonna take, now, how many of you believe that from time to time

God might lead you to help the poor, especially if it's a brother or sister who's had hard times and give some money to the poor?

Okay, how many of you think that you would take all of your assets, now assets are the things you have that enable you to make more money for your family and to help others later?

So you're gonna take your asset base and everything you have in your life, and you're going to get rid of it and sell it and give every penny of it away to that poor person.

Now, how are you gonna help the next poor person? Is that not a bit of an exaggeration of helping the poor normally?

I mean, normally, you would not give it all. You would give them enough to help them. So there's an exaggeration of giving to the poor.

Now let's look at the next one. What if I had not just faith, but I had all faith?

Now, who can name the man who had all faith? Jesus Christ. He had the

Holy Spirit without measure. He had all faith. So it would be a bit of an exaggeration for me to say that I have all faith so that I could look at that water tower and just, and it goes away, or better yet, a mountain, an entire mountain, and I can focus on that, and by my faith,

I can make it disappear and remove it from the earth. Is that an exaggeration of the kind of faith that Christian workers have or not?

It is an exaggeration. You are not going to have that kind of faith, ever.

You're not even gonna have it in heaven because you won't have faith there. So you are not going to have that kind of faith.

Only Jesus had that kind of faith. You will never have it, but even if you could have it, if you didn't do it in love, which would be impossible because without the

Holy Spirit doing it, you couldn't do it, and if he did do it, you'd have his love. But the point is, he's teaching, don't go and try to move mountains if you don't have love first.

So there's exaggeration is used. Now let's go up and look at this. What if I were a person who understood every mystery in the universe?

He says all mysteries. Every mysterious thing, Brother Bill, how many are there?

Let's just take, let's take just one little point of science. Let's just take physics.

How many mysteries are, let's take one little point. Quantum physics. How many mysteries are there in what little bit they know about that?

But let's pretend that starting right now, you're a person who knows everything about that and you're right about it.

And not only that, but all of chemistry, all of math, everything in the entire universe, you have all knowledge of all mysteries.

Is that an exaggeration, Brother Bill? Okay, so you're not going to get there, are you? But if you did, and you didn't have love, it would still be worthless,

Brother Bill. Now, let's go right on up here. What if I had the ability to speak in whatever language the angels in heaven speak?

Or is there a language God speaks that when you pray and the Holy Spirit takes that prayer and presents it at God, it's in that language and it's just, you know, an infinite dimensional language of some kind.

Wouldn't that be something? Do men speak in those angelic languages?

Could men? Is there ever a recorded incident ever anywhere of a man speaking in some language? Do we even know if the angels speak a different language?

What's the only language they ever spoke recorded in the Bible? Hmm? Yes, but what language did they say it in?

Hebrew, or Aramaic, or Greek. But it wasn't Greek, so it was Hebrew or Aramaic probably.

Yes, there is. But there's not an occurrence of a man making those utterances, though.

And so there is no example. The only example we have of an angelic language is

Hebrew or Aramaic. We're not sure which one, but it would be one or the other. It's the only language we know they ever spoke.

Now we would have to probably wonder if maybe in heaven they might speak their more magnificent language.

But there's no example of an angel doing that on the earth, let alone a man. So when you take verse 1 and you go through and you say, okay, if I could burn myself, if I could move a mountain, in fact, remove a mountain, if I understood prophecy so much and had such a great grip of prophecy that I was all -wise and all -knowing and knew all mysteries, and if I could even speak like the angels of heaven, if I could do all that without love,

I'm still worthless. That's the teaching of the passage. Now tell me that teaches that I'm supposed to go try to talk like an angel.

It is not teaching that unless you want it to be teaching that. If you have a predisposition for some reason to believe that's what it is, you might say it says that, but no objective person would ever say that teaches that.

It is the language of exaggeration. What is it? Hyperbole.

It is an accepted form of literary speech to make a point.

And if you interpret it in any other way, you're not interpreting it in the context that this passage is written in.

Therefore, there is no such thing as a person in church supposed to speak an angelic language or any person who ever has ever recorded in the

Bible. Now your neighbor may say, well, I did that, so it's real. Well, yeah, it's real, but there are other spirits too, and they're real.

There are other religions, and they're real. Other doctrines that are not in the Bible, and they're real.

It doesn't prove anything. If you can't prove it by this book, why discuss it? But what we did just prove is there's nowhere in the

Bible where there is an angelic language taught. Now next time, we'll move on through chapter 13.

We'll discuss what is tongues. What does this chapter teach that the tongues were?

Does it differ from what they were in Acts? Let me tell you ahead of time in case something happens to you this week and you don't come back, it's the same.

It's languages. Go ahead and read ahead if you would like to, and you'll see very clearly that there are world languages of significance in the world, and this teaches exactly the same language or tongues that Acts does.

Yes, Brother Clarence. Thank you.

Yeah, let's see. Yes. Let me read it on here so it'll go on the tape.

Brother Clarence was pointing out the verse we quoted was 2 Corinthians 11, 4. For if he that cometh preacheth another

Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive another spirit which you have not received, or another gospel which you have not accepted, you may well bear with him.

So thank you for that. All right, let's pray and we'll close. Father, thank you for your word that it is our guide, it is our true guide and our only guide, and it ought to be our only guide along with your

Holy Spirit. As you quicken us and quicken the words on the page, bring it from God's heart and mind to us.

We thank you that you do that for us so that we're not lost in darkness, but you give us light of understanding.

And we pray, Father, you'd be with us as we complete this study and that it would do away with any confusion that might be out there.

And, Father, we pray for those who might listen to this on a tape and never have even thought about these things, that they would have their mind open to the truth of the pure word of God and set aside everything that may have been taught by anybody in the world, just set it aside and just see what the

Bible says. And we pray that it would bring great clarity and unity among the brethren.