Tongues Bring Clarity?

1 Corinthians 14 and the Need for Edification

But now, brethren, if I come to you speaking in tongues, what will I profit you unless I speak to you either by way of revelation, or of knowledge, or of prophecy, or of teaching? Yet even lifeless things, either flute or harp, in producing a sound, if they do not produce a distinction in the tones, how will it be known what is played on the flute or on the harp?

For if the bugle produces an indistinct sound, who will prepare himself for battle? So also you, unless you utter by the tongue speech that is clear, how will it be known what is spoken? For you will be speaking into the air.

There are perhaps a great many kinds of languages in the world, and no kind is without meaning. If then I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be to the one who speaks a barbarian, and the one who speaks will be a barbarian to me.

So also you, since you are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek to abound for the edification of the church. Therefore, let one who speaks in tongue pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful.

What is the outcome then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the mind also. I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the mind also. Otherwise, if you bless in the spirit only, how will the one who fills the place of the ungifted say the amen at your giving of thanks, since he does not know what you are saying?

For you are giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not edified. I thank God I speak in tongues more than you all. However, in the church I desire to speak five words with my mind, so that I may instruct others also, rather than ten thousand words in a tongue.

Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for your word. Lord, we thank you for the mysteries that pop up in scripture, Lord. Lord, help us to understand this morning. Give Josh the words to speak, filled with the Holy Spirit.

Lord, we thank you for your Holy Spirit. Lord, so many things we don't understand, but Lord, you are there to help us, to give us knowledge, to give us wisdom. Lord, I pray for the men and women in this room, that you would give ears, attentive ears to listen, Lord, that you would soften hearts, Lord, that you would edify our body, Lord.

Help us to encourage one another, help us to praise you as we listen, and we sing more hymns later on. Lord, we love you, we praise you, it's in your name we pray, amen.

Confusion reigns on this topic. It's the one that I've been dreading, even more than head coverings. Here we are, where decisions have to be made, there has to be direction given on this spiritual gift.

And this spiritual gift that Paul takes pains to put kind of at the bottom of the list. It's one that is really only spoken about as a spiritual gift in this passage. And this passage in many ways is descriptive of what's going on in the church at Corinth.

It's not so much a doctrinal treatise for us, it is rules for order for the church in Corinth. And so it would be no surprise to us that in the modern day, we've lost a lot of context of Corinth, and we try to swoop in to chapters 12 through 14 to get doctrine about these mysterious topics.

Now with prophecy, we have many, many pieces of scripture that illuminate what prophecy is, both prescriptive and descriptive. But with tongues, we have this, and so confusion reigns. And I know that you guys have these questions.

So let me just go through a few of them. The gift of tongues, what are they? What is that? Are they real? Are they a prayer language? Is it tongues of angels? Is it a spiritual tongue, or is it merely languages of men?

And in our modern day, I think this question is really important. What is the point? Why would this gift be poured out ever? And then to the Corinth church and to our modern charismatics, the question that needs to be asked is, do they make you more holy?

I heard a screed this week, I think it was a cut put together of a bunch of Paula White's inane ramblings, where she said things like, everywhere she walked in the White House was holy ground because she walked on it.

And then she broke in to a nonsense garbled, shabbadah, shabbadah. And what's funny about that is that was the least blasphemous thing that she did. Because the rest of it was so ridiculous, so blasphemous, taking the Lord's name in vain, that the tongues part was actually kind of funny.

The problem is that it's not, right? Because especially when we gather in the church, when we are here on the Lord's day to give honor to the Lord, we should never take these things lightly. We should never unthinkingly say that the spirit is doing something that he's not doing.

And so that guides us. And then confusingly, but actually very clearly, when you read through chapter 14 and you look at what's come before it, both what's going on in chapter 12 and then especially what's going on in chapter 13 with the essential of us to love one another, that all of the gifts drive that way, that the gifts should make us love one another.

We see that in chapter 14, there's actually something that's quite simple to understand about tongues. Now, the nitty gritty questions about like, is this it? Is that not it? Those things remain difficult.

But one thing that is simple when you read chapter 14 is that tongues are there to provide understanding. They are not to confuse. They are the opposite of that. The gift of tongues is to make what is uncomprehensible or incomprehensible, understandable.

The gift of tongues is given so that the message would be received. And in our modern day, we use them in exactly the opposite way. We try to shield. We try to confuse. We try to make spiritual gurus that nobody can understand what they're saying.

And we are not alone in that. See, the modern charismatic church with their expression largely of the gift of tongues is falling into the exact same error that the church of Corinth was falling into. And that is an elevation of this lesser gift to a position of prominence where one who could speak in tongues was the greatest of the spiritual expression.

And that misses the second thing that's very clear about chapter 14. And that is this. Prophecy is greater than tongues and love is greater than all of them. Right? So prophecy is the thing that we're supposed to be seeking.

Paul on Edification, Prophecy, and Interpretation

And so in trying to untangle this knot, let's look back this morning before we look forward. And we're only going to look back one verse. I think it's very important for today's text. If you would look at your Bible, read chapter, or sorry, chapter 14, verse 5, here's what Paul writes.

I wish that you all spoke in tongues, but even more that you would prophesy. And greater is one who prophesies than one who speaks in tongues, unless he translates so that the church may receive edification.

If you're looking for the central point of 1 Corinthians chapter 14, it would be this. The church needs to be edified. Everything that happens from a spiritual gifting standpoint is there to edify the church.

And if it does not edify the church, then it should not be expressed in the church. It should not be brought in to that situation. And so we know now, we see that prophecy is the greater gift, but there is a proviso, right?

Unless the tongue is interpreted. And that starts to give us a clue into what's going on here. And the clue is this, is that God has a message for the church. And the important thing, the spiritual giftedness is that this message gets understood, that it is communicated.

And so prophecy is greater because that is a message from God to the church. It's greater than tongues unless the one who speaks the tongue interprets, because then that is also a message from God that needs to be understood.

So tongues is there to understand, not to muddy. It is there to clarify, not to confuse. And if we want the prime example, this is the place where we learn, at the very least, this is what the gift of tongues is.

If you would, it's very important, turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 2. Acts chapter 2. And I want to read this a different way. I'm going to read a section of it, but I want to bring us up to the point.

I'm going to start in verse 14. But before that, the Holy Spirit descends as tongues of fire on the apostles. Just imagine. They were afraid, remember? They were afraid. They were holed up. And now the Holy Spirit descends in a visual way, and they go out, and the first thing that they do when they are filled with the Holy Spirit is they go and preach the gospel.

And what's miraculous about this preaching of the gospel is that in this cosmopolitan area, with all of these different languages, every person understands what the apostles are saying, the gift of tongues.

And it's so weird. It's weird and wild for the people who are understanding the language because they say, aren't these people Galileans? We shouldn't be able to understand them. Are they drunk? What's going on?

And it's interesting to note that spiritual outflowing is often confused by the world with drunkenness. And that is because the drunken ramblings of someone with their inhibitions lowered is a counterfeit of spiritual giftedness that is done by Satan.

And there's a lot of counterfeits with spiritual gifts. So let me pick it up in verse 14. This is what the gift of tongues clarifies in Acts 2, this message. But Peter, taking his stand with the eleven, raised his voice and declared to them, men of Judea and all you who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give heed to my words.

For these men are not drunk as you suppose. For it is the third hour of the day. They weren't drinking in the first thing in the morning, okay? But this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel. And it shall be in the last days, God says, that I will pour out my spirit on all mankind and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams.

Even on my male slaves and female slaves, I will in those days pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy. And I will put wonders in the sky above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and vapor of smoke.

The sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And it will be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And here's the punchline.

Men of Israel, listen to these words. Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst, just as you yourselves know, this man delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of lawless men and put him to death.

But God raised him up again, putting an end to the agony of death since it was impossible for him to be held in its power. And we have the prophetic unleashing of the gift of tongues. So we can know clearly why was the gift of tongues given at Pentecost?

The answer is quite clear, right? It was prophesied. And the way it was prophesied was that when the new covenant was ratified, that the mysteries of God were going to be unleashed to all the nations in a broader scope.

If you think of the new covenant, it is a beautiful covenant, it is clear, it is beautiful in its clarity, in its beauty, but also in its power, that it is unleashed and widespread. And so Paul would write in Romans that the gospel now has been heard all over the world.

And the reason that happened is because it no longer depended on disobedient Israel, it depended on the true Israel, Jesus the Nazarene. And so the gift of tongues comes down, not to confuse, but exactly the opposite.

Do you see that God wanted the message of the gospel to be heard and understood by every single person within earshot in Jerusalem that day? How have we messed this up? Do you see how far off we've gotten?

Because what we do instead is somebody like me will stand up here and go, boom, shakalaka, gabadabadoo. And when it's out, we practice, they practice this thing. And what it does is it makes a mockery of what the gift actually is.

Because the gift is for people to understand. The gift is in humility, that it's not the person who spoke in tongues that should get all the glory, it is the message that brings all of the glory. And that's always the case with the prophecy.

It's wrong to uplift the prophet, it's right to listen to the message. The message is what is the miracle, not the person, not the person. So when the Lord provides, we see this, and it is consistent with 1 Corinthians 14 as you read up and down.

What we see in Acts 2 is that God delivers a message. This message was not new, was it? See what Peter did right away. He quoted Joel. This prophecy was well known. And the unleashing of the gospel was prophesied for centuries before.

And as it gets unleashed, it's clarified. And it's not a new religion, it's not a new message. It is the fulfillment of all the prophecy of old, and it gets unleashed to the world. And the gift of tongues comes about because the message needs to be heard.

It is in many ways, and as many scholars rightly point to, it is the reverse Babel. Babel is where man decides that they are eccentric and they are the Savior, and they will build a tower so that they will be as God, and he confuses their languages.

And so to this day, we have a confusing of languages. But tongues is the reversal of Babel, where they all understand each other just as they did before in their arrogance, they built the tower. So we see that when the Lord provides the language and the Lord provides the interpretation, it is akin to prophecy, and we need to hear it.

Is that not what happened at Pentecost? The message of the Lord was that you, you have delivered the Son of God to lawless men to crucify him. And what is the result of this preaching? We know it, right?

They were cut to the heart and they said, what must we do? That is gospel preaching for repentance, because the Lord provided the language and the Lord provided the interpretation. And so Peter's words were just as important as a prophetic utterance, because it was the prophetic utterance of the Holy Spirit.

There is a link. And as we get into our text today, we will see in verse six that Paul links things together. In verse six, he links substance to delivery. If you will read it now, brothers, if I come to you speaking in tongues, what will I profit you unless I speak to you either by way of revelation or of knowledge or of prophecy or of teaching?

See substance and delivery. The substance is revelation and the delivery is prophecy. The substance is knowledge and the delivery is teaching. There has to be a means and a vehicle by which the content gets expressed.

And all of these things, whether it be prophecy of revelation or whether it be teaching of knowledge, they should all edify. If they don't edify the church, then they should not be uttered. So we prophesy what is revealed by the Holy Spirit and we teach what is known, which is established doctrine.

The majority of what I do in the office of a teacher, the office of an elder, is I teach established doctrine. I deliver the doctrine that is sound, as Paul would write in Titus. It's hygienic. It makes you clean.

It makes your house clean. It is a good thing that if you follow established doctrine, your life will be blessed from it. But then we pray that we would prophesy to hear the revelation of God. Now what Paul is going to embark on is this idea that the words that you say do no good whatsoever unless they're understood.

So if I could speak fluent Koine Greek, and I read this whole passage in Greek this morning, you might think that I was incredibly smart and studious, but the message would be absolutely worthless to you.

That's what Paul's talking about. There's no point in saying it if the listener doesn't understand it. I'm reminded of numerous funny stories in my life where that's the case, where you try to speak Spanglish and the person you're talking to doesn't understand, and so what you naturally do is just keep saying the same thing louder.

That's kind of what's going on in the church at Corinth, is you don't understand, so I'll just keep saying it even louder. Can you imagine that situation where multiple people every week at the Lord's Day are standing up and speaking in gibberish and no one understands, and you're just going, what are we doing here?

Would you like to sit there and listen to that? Does that glorify God? And the answer that Paul provides is absolutely not. It does not glorify God. So brothers, if I come to you speaking in tongues, what will I profit you?

Then he goes in verses seven through nine, he goes into a metaphor, and this one's very important. There's two of them here. Important for us to understand. Yet even lifeless things, either flute or harp, in producing a sound, if they do not produce a distinction in the tones, how will it be known what is played on the flute or on the harp?

For if the trumpet produces an indistinct sound, who will prepare himself for battle? So also you. Unless you utter by the tongue a word that is clear, how will it be known what is spoken? For you will be speaking into the air.

It does no good to speak to the air. Usually when I speak to the air, it's in anger, and it brings shame on myself, and the Lord hears it. I scream at the clouds, okay? It doesn't do any good. But in this passage, we have two metaphors that are both illustrating a lesser to greater principle.

The lesser thing is a lifeless instrument. What you are is a Holy Spirit-filled instrument. We're both instruments. Both us and the harp or the flute or the bugle, we are all instruments, but we have the Holy Spirit of God indwelling us, enlivening us, turning what was dead into life, while these instruments have absolutely nothing unless a human uses them, right?

That's the idea. So what happens is, even with lifeless instruments, when they do not have distinctive tones, the flute and the harp, if there's no distinctive tone, then a beautiful instrument, and he picks these two, right?

Have you guys ever heard a harpist play beautifully? It is a soothing, beautiful instrument. So is the flute. My wife is a flautist, right? She can play the instrument. It's a beautiful instrument. But you know what's not beautiful?

Me trying to play it. Not beautiful at all, all right? Because I don't know music. There's no distinction to the tones. It's basically just hammering the same sound over and over if you can make any sound go through it.

In fact, what happens is with these lifeless instruments, when someone does not know how to communicate through them, then what happens is they are just a cacophony of ugliness without musical scale, without organization, and with no imagination.

It's if you get the guitar and you just hammer the same string over and over again. It doesn't do anybody any good. It's not pleasing to listen to, and it doesn't communicate anything. But we know, right, in the hands of a master, that these instruments communicate beauty.

They fill your soul with wonder. When you hear someone play an instrument like that with the complexity of a symphony and you hear it and it stirs up emotions, I'm not the only weirdo that's that way, right?

Music stirs emotion, and beautiful music uplifts you, right? It makes you think of something that's transcendent. So understand, understand that the languages that we speak in the church are always to have distinctive organization so that they would uplift the hearer, so that they would express the transcendent, so that you would understand what was not understandable.

That's the idea. And so when the spirit, the spirit is not a spirit of confusion, he is a spirit of clarity. He brings hierarchy and organization because he is God. And that's what God delights in, is hierarchy, organization.

When you look at the world around us, it is organized, is it not, into categories and hierarchies. And we can understand things through nature because of the way the architect has created all of it. So it is with languages.

He has given us languages so that we can understand and communicate. In many ways, it's what separates us from the apes, okay? Is that we can build civilization because we can communicate complex ideas to each other.

Clear Signals, the Battle Trumpet, and the Lord's Day Gathering

Now, the second one is an even more interesting article. I've quoted many times, I think, in sermons by talking about how obnoxious an instrument the trumpet is, right? The trumpet can be beautiful when used the right way, but the trumpet is often an obnoxious instrument.

But it serves a different function because it is loud, piercing, and distinctive. And so it is, the lifeless instrument of the bugle, there is a predetermined tone that the bugle or the trumpet is played that signals to the army what they're supposed to do.

Is it charge? Is it fall back? Is it wait? If there is no signal that's understood, though, it is just a trumpet blaring and it holds no meaning. So in the church, we who are filled with the Holy Spirit, when we provide communication, it is not to confuse, in fact, it's to clearly communicate the battle plans.

Because the church is a place where we are built up, the church is a place where we are built up to do a mission. We are on a mission to make disciples. And the way we make disciples is through the clear communication of the gospel, just like at Pentecost.

And so we cannot communicate unless the correct tone is played. And so the spiritual gifts all come into play. What is the correct tone? That is the words that are inspired and given by the Holy Spirit, which largely, largely are going to be the very words of Scripture.

But always, 100 of the time, are going to be words that conform to Scripture. We don't get to go outside. We don't get to make up novel doctrines. We don't get to make it up as we go. The Scripture is our guide for all tools for righteousness.

So if it is annoying and egregious, if you were to hand me a harp and listen to me record it, it would be an abomination of that instrument. You don't want to hear that. Nobody wants to hear that. And it's grievous when that happens.

But how much more grievous is it, brothers and sisters, when men who are brought from death to life and filled with the Holy Spirit produce indistinct sounds that are incomprehensible and therefore accomplish no good whatsoever?

Remember what our words are supposed to do, right? Our words are supposed to encourage. They are supposed to edify. They are supposed to rebuke, exhort, build up. Our words are supposed to be seasoned with salt.

Our words are what we are going to be judged for, right? Jesus knows every word that proceeds from our lips, and he will hold us to account for those words. Those words should not be babbling incomprehensible garbage.

So as he moves away from the analogy of the instrument and talks about it, remember the big point. If the Spirit indwells you, you should produce sounds that are distinct and that are understandable. The distinction comes from the harp and the flute.

They need to be organized. They need to have structure to them. And then the communication comes to the bugle. It needs to communicate something. It needs to be a clear message. That's why the bugle sounds will usually be quite simple, easy to understand, not easily missed.

Now, as he moves to verse 10 through 12, we will see that we should seek clarity. This is to a church in Corinth that is awash. They are not clear about the law, and they are not clear about the gifts, and they are not clear about the very foundation of the faith.

So here we go. There are perhaps a great many kinds of sounds in the world, and none is without meaning. If then I do not know the meaning of the sound, I will be the one who speaks a barbarian, and the one who speaks will be a barbarian to me.

So also you, since you are zealous for spiritual gifts, seek to abound for the edification of the church. Now, in verse 10, we see a word there that I was already translated sounds. In some of your Bibles, it might say tongues.

This is one case in this whole passage where the word is different, and the word just means generically sounds, not languages. Usually when you see tongues, it is a translation of the word that means languages.

Here it means sounds. So there are many, many languages and tones. There are angelic tongues. We know this from 2 Corinthians. There is also music. There's whistling. There's language. And none of them profit us at all unless they're understandable, all right?

If I started whistling, and it was just a piercing note, you would get annoyed very quickly. If I could whistle the theme to Andy Griffith, it might bring back waves of nostalgia for some of you guys for one of the greatest television shows ever.

That's nostalgic whistling. There's all kinds of sounds, and they communicate something, but if they don't communicate anything, they're just noise, and we should not engage in that. Languages are for understanding communication.

The primary tongue, the primary use for tongues is clarity, as I've said over and over, because it's the main point of this. It's the main point. So there is a reverse thing going on. When you see Pentecost in Acts 2, which I believe is the key to understanding tongues, when you see in Acts 2, there is an opposite of Babel, right?

And we see this today. When Paula White talks, when we get this mumbling, stumbling, and it sounds like it's rehearsed, and it's always the same, it's almost like it's a joke, right? It's almost like plucking the same string of the guitar, because it sounds the same every single time, doesn't it?

Does your language sound that way? We use a host of different words, but oftentimes in the nonsense that we deal with, it's the same three phrases that are just repeated ad nauseum. There's no distinction, and so what we have is what was supposed to be the opposite of the rebellion at Babel becomes the same thing again.

When we use tongues wrongly, it's actually saying, hey, Babel, just come back. We love being confused in the church. It's going to be great for us. Just give us the sign of rebellion. But when tongues are used rightly, it evokes Pentecost, which is when thousands were saved in one day by the gospel.

See, let's not get too complicated here. The spiritual gift of tongues is so that the souls of men will be saved, and so that the people of God would be edified. You cannot be edified unless you understand.

So the overreaching principle of the whole thing, and again, I said, this is the highlight of chapter 14, you need to understand it. The overreaching principle of this section and chapter 14 is that all of the gifts that you are zealous for are for building each other up.

It is very good to be zealous for spiritual gifts. Paul does not chastise the Corinthians for being zealous for spiritual gifts. He chastises them for their execution and their wrongful use of spiritual gifts because it became all about themselves.

It became, look at me, look at how gifted I am by the Holy Spirit. Instead, what it should always be is look at what God has done and look at how he knits us together and helps us, how we work together, how we encourage one another.

A church who is dead will not be zealous for spiritual gifts and will not see spiritual gifts. In the day, the lampstand is taken away, and you've seen this. Many times with faithful churches, their lampstand is taken away through death and attrition.

The people just die out, and it's sad, but it also has some sweetness to it, right? Because there's these last days. There's these last days where faithful shepherds teach to three people for months and years, and it's a beautiful thing.

It's not such a beautiful thing when churches, in their rebellion, they forget their first love and they think that they're doing it themselves, and God takes the lampstand away, and you have churches with a lot of language and a lot of words but with no understanding because to understand the Word of God is to practice the Word of God.

If you understand it and you don't do it, it's worthless. That's why James says that we should be doers of the Word, not hearers only, because what does he say? The one who is a hearer only is like a man who looks in the mirror and he forgets what he saw.

We look in the mirror of God's Word, and we are not to forget what we see. So the gifts are to abound for the edification of the church. I know, I'm still pushing you off, even in this sermon. What are the nitty-gritty answers to the questions?

All right, I can delay no longer. Here we go. All right, so here's what we see. We're going to start with the beginning. Tongues and interpretation are inarguably and objectively gifts of the Holy Spirit.

We can't escape that. No matter what we want to do with our experience, they are in this section. They are listed over and over with other gifts that no one would say have ceased as gifts of the Spirit.

The gift of tongues and the gift of interpretation is a gift of the Holy Spirit and is, with many of the gifts of the Spirit, what we see is that there are ordinary and extraordinary workings out of those gifts.

I've explained before, the ordinary working out of the gift of preaching is that you study. You study. It's an ordinary means where the Holy Spirit brings to mind. The extraordinary working out of the gift of preaching is that the Holy Spirit convicts and encourages and exhorts people who I have no idea what's going on in your life, but the Spirit brings it to mind, and that's glory to Him.

Ordinary, extraordinary. The ordinary gift of tongues and interpretation, I think, is to quickly learn and speak languages. This is an ordinary working out where some people, because they want to go and they want to bring the gospel to people that speak a different language from them, they learn the language very, very quickly.

And if you guys have ever tried to learn a language, it's difficult. It takes a long time. It's really hard work. And if you're an adult, it's like three times as hard. It's really, really difficult. And I think that there is an ordinary manifestation of this spiritual gift for people who are going into the field to learn the tongue very quickly.

Now, does that mean there's not extraordinary manifestations? Well, I don't think so, because I think the ordinary and extraordinary is going on with every one of these spiritual gifts. So I would say that the miraculous speaking of a language without prior knowledge and translation without prior knowledge of the language is the extraordinary working out of the gift of tongues and knowledge.

So what I'm going to do here is a little weird for me. I'm going to break these questions of tongues up into what I am 100 confident about, what I think, and then, look, I don't really know. Okay. So we're going to go there.

All right. What I am 100 confident about, I will fight you over this, okay? This gift manifests extraordinarily when a message needs to be understood clearly by an audience of mixed or other languages.

I think this is the gift of tongues as expressed at Pentecost. To say that in less churchy words, I think that this gift has not ceased, that there are areas where God wants his message to be delivered where people speak a different language, and I think that at times and places people miraculously understand one another's tongue.

I am 100 confident of that. I have heard enough stories. God is not against himself. There is not a demon who is coming and counterfeiting by letting someone understand the gospel. When a missionary speaks and someone from a tribe who does not speak that language understands the words of that missionary, that is a miraculous outpouring of the gift of tongues, and I will fight you if you think that's a lie, okay?

Let's not be ridiculous. I have heard stories of a man who was preaching at the abortion mill, and a man who only spoke Spanish came up and they had a conversation. This guy was not lying about the conversation they had.

He didn't speak Spanish, and that dude didn't speak English, and he understood the gospel that day. That is an extraordinary manifestation of the gifts of tongues and interpretation. This gift, though, this gift is a gift that can potentially be copied by evil.

All the gifts can. So let me explain this really quickly. I know it's out of place and it's going to make me go long, but I already promised it, Brian. Think about how prophecy works, right? Prophecy is a revelation by God of something that you really couldn't have known.

Is that something the enemy can copy? Can he get things right that are not of the Holy Spirit? And the answer is absolutely yes. The reason why is that we do not see or perceive demonic spirits and spirits who are about, but they can see what you say, they can see what you write, and they can give knowledge to someone else who is especially praying to them for knowledge, right?

They can give them knowledge that they would have otherwise been unable to know because they're not omniscient, they're not omnipresent, but they can watch you, okay? And therefore, prophecy can be copied.

Charlatans who are false teachers can get things right, and the reason they do is because it attests their power, but their power is demonic so that they would fool even the elect if they could. We have to be discerning.

With all of the spiritual gifts, understand this, love covers all, and church discipline is done in love, and what we have to do with these miraculous gifts is that we have to pray that there would be a miraculous discerning and testing of the spirits so that the charlatans would not be able to invade and give copycat messages.

I know this sounds wild, but it's absolutely true. The enemy would confuse, deceive, and destroy you if he can. So it can be copied, but we also know that this gift is not going to pass away. We know this from chapter 13.

The gift of tongues does not pass away until the perfect, and it's very clear what the perfect is in chapter 13 because the perfect is described as when faith is no longer needed. The perfect is when we don't need faith because we're going to see with our own eyes the Lord Jesus Christ.

You don't need to believe in the unseen when the scene is right in front of you, and in that day tongues will cease because we will all understand each other. The full completion of the reversal of Babel will happen, and we will all speak with one another.

I'm 100 confident about that, and I would even go so far as to say I think that's what the gift of tongues is. I think it is. I think it's the understanding of languages of men, and I think it is for clarity and communication, and that it still happens.