FBC Morning Light – April 14, 2022

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Thursday morning to you. Again, I hope your week is going well. If you're in the area, the

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Sterling area, I hope you're planning to attend our Ammandi Thursday service this evening.

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It's at 7 o 'clock, and just as a reminder, we come together to do several things in this service.

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One is that we read the Scriptures, we look at the Scriptures regarding the Last Supper and the night before the crucifixion, and then read some

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Scriptures, selected passages related to the crucifixion. The evening really ends with Christ's death.

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We commemorate the Lord's Supper together, and we sing some hymns and songs together, and have a devotional time.

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It's about an hour -long service, and it really is designed to prepare our hearts and our minds for the coming

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Lord's Day, Resurrection Sunday. Again, 7 o 'clock tonight, if you can make that special Ammandi Thursday service.

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Today we're reading in 1 Corinthians 14, and there's so much that can be said about this subject.

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I just want to touch on one little thing regarding the matter of tongues. It's quite a bit of a controversial thing among certain

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Christians today. It doesn't seem to have quite the popularity as far as a topic of discussion as it did maybe 40 -50 years ago.

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I remember in high school, it was all the rage. The charismatic movement was really gaining steam in the

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United States, and therefore there was a lot of talk about the gift of tongues and so forth.

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One of the things I want to point out is a lot of the confusion related to this gift of tongues is its very nature.

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What was that gift? As it's employed today, the supposed gift of tongues, it's essentially gibberish.

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People who supposedly have the gift, they stand up in a service and then they just spout off this gibberish that is nonsensical.

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But in the book of Acts, the gift of tongues were actually foreign languages. When the apostles spoke on the day of Pentecost in tongues, they were speaking in languages.

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That's clarified because there in Acts chapter 2, it talks about these people who are from all these different areas and regions of the

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Roman Empire, and they said, what's going on? We're hearing these Jewish people who normally would speak

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Aramaic or something, we're hearing them speak in our own language, in our own tongue.

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That gift that was given to those apostles was the ability to speak in a foreign language that they didn't know, and to do so so that people who were in attendance who spoke that language could hear and understand.

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That comes out in chapter 14 a little bit, but in chapter 14, what

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I want to emphasize is in verses 21 and 22, what is the purpose of it? What's the purpose of that gift?

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Paul says in the law, that is in the Old Testament, it is written in verse 21, with men of other tongues and other lips,

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I will speak to this people, and yet for all that they will not hear me. He's quoting an

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Old Testament prophecy, and he's saying that people of other tongues or languages will speak to this people, that is the

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Jewish people. He says, and yet for all that they will not hear me. Paul goes on to explain.

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He says, therefore tongues, this gift, are for a sign, not to those who believe, but to unbelievers, but prophesying or the preaching of the word is not for unbelievers, but for those who believe.

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Tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe, but to unbelievers. Yet when you think about how that supposed gift is used today, it is predominantly something supposedly for the benefit of believers.

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I think that just flies right in the face of 1 Corinthians 14, 21, and 22.

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There's a whole lot of other things that can be said about tongues, and I don't want to get into that,

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I'm not going to, but I did just want to point that out. That gift had a purpose, a specific purpose, and it was designed to provoke to conviction unbelieving

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Jews who heard the gospel spoken in their own language in a unique way.

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The other thing I want to emphasize is what Paul emphasizes at the end of chapter 14, and that is when

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God's people gather together for gathered worship, what takes place should be done in an orderly manner.

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He addresses the problem in Corinth because that's not what was going on. He says, when you come together, each one of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation.

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You're all coming together, you all have your thing, and it's random, it's almost cacophony, it's very scattered, it's unorganized, it's in disarray.

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Then he says, let all things be done for edification. Here's our purpose for gathering together as God's people on the

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Lord's Day. Please note that the primary purpose is not evangelism.

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I'm not saying evangelism cannot or should not be a part of the gathered worship, so that you never share the...

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No, I'm not saying that. Paul's emphasis is that the gathering together and the employing of all these different aspects of that service should be for edification, the building up of the body.

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Then he goes on to make some applications regarding anyone who speaks in a tongue.

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He says, let it be two or at the most three, and in turn, and then let one interpret.

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If there's no interpreter, then be quiet. Why? There's no value in someone standing up and spouting off a foreign language that nobody in the congregation understands if there's not somebody who's been gifted to interpret it.

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Let that one be quiet. That implies, by the way, that the person who has that gift of the foreign language knows that there's also someone who has the gift of interpreting that foreign language.

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Then he says, let two or three prophets speak and let others judge, but if anything is revealed to another who sits by, let the first keep silent.

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The point in this is not so much the components of what we would do.

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The sign gifts are gone, is my conviction, and I believe the Bible bears that out.

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The sign gifts of speaking in tongues and so forth. But the point of this section is the orderliness in which things are to take place.

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He says, for you can all prophesy one by one that all may learn and all may be encouraged. Then he says, the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets, and here is the point,

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God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.

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He's calling for an orderliness in the gathered assembly of God's people in their services.

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He ends the chapter in this way, let all things be done decently and in order.

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I think that's important to emphasize because I've been in the ministry now for a long time,

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I think. It seems long to me, time is 40 -some years, so I guess that's a long time.

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In those years I've run across some well -meaning Christians who seem to think that church services should be much more spontaneous, and we shouldn't have an order of service.

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We print it up in our bulletin, and that's not allowing any room for the spirit to move and to change things around.

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I strongly disagree. I've come up with an order of service on Wednesday and plug in the songs and all the rest of that stuff and plan and think through the different elements of the service on a

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Wednesday for the following Sunday. But there have been times, sometimes, when at the last minute

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I've changed something, flipped around a song that we sing or whatever, and I believe that's the spirit leading in that particular way.

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But the guiding principle is that there should be order.

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Everything should be done decently and in order. We need to appreciate that in our churches.

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Why? Again, it facilitates edification, and that's the purpose.

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When we come together, Paul says, let all things be done for the building up of the body, and that is most effectively and efficiently accomplished when things are done decently and in order.

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Well, I trust that we'll take that to heart and we'll appreciate good order in our services.

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So, Father, bless these thoughts to our hearts today and encourage us to be appreciative of the goal of edification, and we pray it in Jesus' name and for his sake.

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Amen. All right, have a good rest of your Thursday, and Lord willing, we'll see you tonight if you can make it to that Maundy Thursday service.