The New Testament Church, Part J
Taped by John Greene, transcribed by Mary Kay Lynd
Bible quotes are from NKJV unless otherwise stated.
We're going to finish up Acts Chapter 2 because what we see here at the conclusion of what we're going to now do is something that needs to be done in Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches. We're going to look at what Paul has said was from the Lord, in 1 Corinthians 14 that details operating in the Spirit.
In Verse 37 he says, "If anyone thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord." Paul has given us some ways from Scripture to look at and see from Scripture whether something is of God or not. We have both what I would call Godly common sense, and we have Spiritual, and when I say Spiritual, I'm speaking specifically of the Spirit of God guiding us into common sense. We have both Spiritual common sense, and we have godly common sense. Godly common sense comes from a heart's desire to just know what the Scriptures say. Spiritual common sense comes from the revelation by the Holy Spirit. So what we're going to have is just a little look at what discerning some of these events that happened in church and see what the Word of God says about them, because we need to have guidelines.
The Corinthian church was a church in chaos. They followed different people. They decided what gift of the Holy Spirit was more important than another. They were just in total envy and strife. And when you have envy and strife, according to James, you have confusion and every manner of evil(James 3:16). That's what was taking place in the Corinthian Church. Total chaos! And God is not of chaos. And that's the other Scripture we need to have as an understanding. It says, "For God is not the author of confusion but of peace as in all the churches of the saints." So these guidelines that we are going to look at, I don't want to say that this is the letter of the law, because I don't want to go that far and you'll see why I don't want to go that far but look back in 1 Corinthians 13. Verse 1 says, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing." Skip over to Chapter 14 Verse 1. It says, "Pursue love, and desire spiritual things, but especially that you may prophesy." So what we're going to look at here are some details about looking at these events so that we don't have to be ignorant about these things. We don't have to be absolutely spell bound and accept because somebody says something that that's from God. We are in the process of understanding according to some of these Scriptures that God loves us. He loves his people. He created us and so he wants a personal relationship with us. Including the full purpose behind the Great Commission. And the Great Commission is empowered by love, God's love for people. And he sent His Holy Spirit that began on the day of Pentecost, which we've already seen and it ends at His coming back. That great outpouring upon all people who want the Holy Spirit and believe that the Holy Spirit is the same Holy Spirit, all believers who desire the truth of the Holy Spirit will receive the infilling and the baptism; the infilling being when you come to the point of repentance and regeneration, the baptism of the Holy Spirit coming with some subsequent event after that. Then you have received the Holy Spirit with the power of the Holy Spirit.
At some point after that some maturity takes place and God begins to utilize you as a vessel that the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit can operate. It's obvious that God doesn't offer the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit through unbelievers. And Paul doesn't tell us that the Corinthians are unbelievers. Quite the contrary! In the first verse of the first chapter of 1 Corinthians we see that he calls them brethren and he goes on through, he says that they have problems and he deals with problems and he calls them carnal; but they are still of God. They're still Christian. In their church there's this chaos and being what some people would characterize them today as a charismatic church they had some serious problems, so the person that had the gift of prophecy at times would prophesy but would think that what they said far outweighed any other gift; so that for another person in the congregation who may have the gift of discerning of spirits at a time would be insignificant, so the flesh got involved there and many times when the flesh gets involved if not every time you begin to have a lack of understanding about what's taking place, especially when you're not looking at things from Scripture! When you're looking at things through the emotion, through eyesight, what you see and not through what the Spirit of God reveals can many times be wrong. And the judgments and conclusions that you make on what you see or what you hear may be wrong. So Paul came along correcting the Corinthian church and praise God we have this information for us today. So that's what we want to look at, the discernment of what is of the Spirit and what is not of the Spirit! Because there are certainly today things going on around this world that are not of God and yet are labeled of God. There are things that are in some "charismatic" churches that are not of God, and when you have all of this ignorance going on out there, it's certainly easy to see why people just don't want to accept the truth of the Holy Spirit because there's a lot of ignorance! However, with that said, that is no excuse for not accepting all the truth of Scripture.
"Pursue love, and desire..." Desire. That's the word we get zeal from, desire. Be zealous for! Hunger with a thirst and a hunger that is unending. It's a hotness. It is an intensity that can't be quenched for spiritual things. You see that's what the Corinthian church wasn't doing. They wanted to put each other on a pedestal. They wanted to walk in the flesh and not the spirit. So the hunger wasn't there for the spiritual things of God. What are the spiritual things of God for? For the Great Commission. To go out and make disciples all over this world for Jesus Christ. Not get people saved. Not to be a soul winner! All that's hogwash; but to make disciples, preach the truth of God's Word, and demand people to adhere to God's Word. Those that truly are committed to Christ will grow and mature. The Spirit of God will reveal who they are, because it's the Spirit of God that brings them to the body of Christ. It's the Spirit of God who regenerates, so those people who are being discipled and growing and maturing in Christ, teach them to desire spiritual things; teach them to desire all that God has in Scripture for them, including the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
But Paul also adds this one phrase in verse 1, "but especially that you may prophesy." So Paul is placing some emphasis on prophesying. And we're going to see what prophesying really means, to speak forth. And Paul is going to describe it himself and what we need to do in this particular case especially is using Scripture to define what prophesying is. Yes, we have the etymological word, and we can use that word wherever it is being used, but in this case let's use Scripture.
Look at what verse 2 says. "2For he who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God." So when somebody is speaking in other tongues they are not speaking to men, they're speaking to God. And no one understands them. Paul tells us that. "for no one understands him, however, in the spirit he speaks mysteries." Now that's not The Holy Spirit. That's in the man's spirit. In the man's spirit is speaking in other tongues, he's speaking mysteries to himself. But we have Scripture saying that in those tongues he's speaking to God, and we have other Scriptures that tell us, we've already gone over that, that he is in worship and he's in prayer, he's speaking God's language in such a way that is asked to do his Will, it's the Spirit making intervention. Any number of those things, but to the person who's in the tent of the flesh like we are when you speak in other tongues it's not intelligible for us to understand those things. "But he who prophesies speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men." Now here's what Paul is talking about for prophecy. Now this is the gift of prophecy from the Holy Spirit. This is not the Word of God coming forth from a prophet. This is the gift of the Holy Spirit operating. "He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church." Prophecy, because it's in the language of that congregation, is available to be understood by that congregation. Here you hear me speaking in English. That is my language. I speak in English. So if I'm going to prophesy I would prophesy in English. That's my language. Prophesying edifies, prophesying exhorts, prophesying comforts. Who? The people in the congregation who hear what God's placed on the individual vessel that He has so chosen to use by His Spirit. It's going to edify those who hear it. Is everyone there going to be edified? Not necessarily, unless they listen to what God's saying. There's sometimes when God says repent the person who hears the Word repent rebels against God and doesn't want to repent. Are they edified because they're in rebellion? No. If they repent then the peace of God will come into their lives, wash away their sin, and cause them to have a right open spiritual relationship with the Lord. That would be an edifying situation. Here we have comfort. Here we have exhortation.
Now exhortation is also something that could be misunderstood because sometimes we are exhorted to do something that we haven't been doing. For example, we're supposed to be about the Father's business. The Father's business in these times is simple. Go out and make disciples of all nations. That's the Father's business. How has he so done such a thing? Well, He places individual burdens on different people's hearts. Different ministries and different churches have a different burden or oracle of God on their hearts, and so you have one church perhaps that might be called by God to be an agent to minister to physical needs such as clothing and food to a county or to a town or to a section in a town; and so they try to do that, so if there are some people in that congregation and the Holy Spirit speaks exhorting them to do that well it would bring comfort and edification to them if they obeyed but if they rebelled within that congregation not doing that then they're not going to be comforted. They're not going to be edified. So in the sense that exhortation comes sometimes you can hear exhortation and think of it as being condemning, but that's not so! Exhortation is not necessarily condemning and usually isn't. Because you're exhorted to do something. You're never exhorted to do something wrong. You're always exhorted to do something right. So keep in mind again that the rule of thumb here that God is behind something is the love of God, the power of God to minister to where it's at, where it's needed, where He has so ordained, and you can't take one church and compare it to another church and say, "Well, we're doing God's Will and you're not doing God's Will" because they may have a different focus. Another church may be a church that is able to be a giving church in terms of finances. We don't know necessarily, that is not to cop out and say that some churches don't need to give. I'm not saying that. What I'm using is a comparison. You have some people in one church that would be in the flesh and want to compare churches. You can't do that. You can't compare one ministry to another ministry except through what Paul was talking here. And notice that when Paul is talking here he's talking about the local congregation, the local ministry, in this specific case he's speaking directly to the Corinthian church. He says, "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." So here he's dividing the difference between worship tongues, prayer tongues, and the gift of tongues. The gift of tongues is interpreted. Verse 6: "But now, brethren, if I come to you speaking with tongues, what shall I profit you unless I speak to you either by revelation, by knowledge, by prophesying, or by teaching?" Again one of the horrors that sometimes happens is the neglect of a church to follow what God is saying. Sometimes they get what man is saying and that may not necessarily be of God. I have been in a church service or two where the whole church was asked, because it was a charismatic church, to pray in tongues and to keep praying and they were going to pray in tongues for hours to a service lasted. Well that's not Biblical because a church is a public place and anybody can walk into a public place. If there were a time constraint and if there were people that were ""ushers" so that if somebody from the outside came into the church they could be understood what was happening, they could be taught what was happening, they could know these things in order that what was happening wouldn't be weird, wouldn't be chaotic, wouldn't be misunderstood, all of the things that we see happening today from different levels of media interpretation. When we speak in the church Paul is saying, "Hey, let's speak intelligently. Let's not try to put on airs. Let's let God be God." Notice what he says again, "unless I speak to you either by revelation, by knowledge, by prophesying, or by teaching?." So those things exist in the church and if it comes through the gift of tongues it will be interpreted. And we'll get into what the interpretations are a little bit later. "Even things without life, whether flute or harp, when they make a sound, unless they make a distinction in the sounds, how will it be known what is piped or played? 8For if the trumpet makes an uncertain sound, who will prepare for battle?" Well he's simply saying what he's saying. You take a hammer and bang a nail you get a specific sound. You take a horn and toot it you get a specific sound. You know what it is. Can you imagine Bach sitting down at his piano and just making one sound and then saying that's my symphony? No! The notes were put together in such a way that he called it a symphony. They made specific sounds. They had specific purposes. And each thing that Paul mentions here has a specific purpose. They're not uncertain. When the Israelites heard the silver horns blowing they knew specifically what those horn blasts meant. They could be the call to war. They could be the call to retreat. You know these things. When we hear today the playing of taps we know that it's time for lights out, everybody is to go to sleep. We know these things because we know the sounds. But if it's an uncertain sound we don't know what's going on, and Paul's saying, "If you act stupidly in your services somebody from the outside coming in is going to think you're nuts." And can I add this? Rightfully so!
A lot of what is ignorance out there and is taught is justified and a lot of the blasphemy of God is justified based on the ignorance and the idiocacy of many people who have done these things in Pentecostal churches!! And they weren't doing these things in the Spirit! They were doing these things in the flesh. Paul's saying, "Look, let's discern a little bit. Let's see what's going on." "So likewise you, unless you utter by the tongue words easy to understand, how will it be known what is spoken? For you will 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. 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." Paul pretty much says, "Hey, let's get into the guidelines of what God is all about: order, understanding, and exhortation, bringing growth to the body." That's what God desires; that's the commission; that's the thing that is of the utmost of understanding, that God is not a God of confusion!
God wants his people to grow up because what's the great commission again? To make disciples. A disciple is a learner. A disciple is somebody who needs information to grow from. And so that's what we're to do. Give out information to grow. And as a body there are many members of the body with different functions to bring about the growth of each other. "Even so you, since you are zealous for spiritual gifts, let it be for the edification of the church that you seek to excel." There again Paul places it, smack dab on the head. "Corinthians, you are doing things in your flesh, and you don't care about the church you care about yourself. That's not of God. That's sinful." Remember he called them carnal, sarkikoV/sarkikos, the natural man. The natural man can't understand the things of the spirit. Only the spiritual man can! So God wants the spiritual man to come to church. God wants the spiritual man to be in the congregation. Because the spiritual man is going to be able to grow and excel. The church will grow and excel. The church will be edified when the people in the church do what they need to do. This is part one of understanding how to discern some of the events in the local church. These are some of the things that again I'm not going out on a limb and saying this is the letter of the law. We'll show you this next tape. But I hope you get something out of this.