In Understanding, Grow up

Series on I Corinthians

VI Meeting for Worship

F Aim in Worship Text:14:1-25

Title: In Understanding, Grow up

Introduction

Last week i reminded you that the Christians at Corinth had the peculiar Greek view that was expressed by their Philosopher, Plato, “No one in possession of his understanding reaches divine exaltation.” So they gloried in speaking in tongues which nobody could understand because they thought, in such emotional ecstasy, we will find God. Today literally millions of Christians throughout the world have fallen prey to that same misconception. Churches which practice speaking in tongues in their worship are among the most rapidly growing groups in the world. Paul’s advice here is much needed not only because Pentecostal or Charismatic churches span the globe, but because Christians everywhere mistakenly identify emotional experiences as worship. Emotion is very important in worship. In fact we probably are not emotional enough. We do not feel deeply enough the greatness of God, the awfulness of sin, the wonder of his mercy. Jonathan Edwards wrote, “As there is no true religion where there is nothing else but affection, so there is no true religion where there is no religious affection. If the great things of religion are rightly understood, they will affect the heart This manner of slighting all religious affections is the way exceedingly to harden the hearts of men, and to encourage them in their stupidity and senselessness, and to keep them in a state of spiritual death as long as they live and bring them at last to death eternal.” The problem is not emotion. It is shortcuts to emotion. The key verse here is verse 20 where Paul says emotions should be produced by understanding. Things that appeal directly to the emotions and short circuit or bypass the mind, are not profitable. There are many beautiful things that may move the emotions directly. Fellowship, music, art, architecture, and rhetoric can appeal to the emotions apart from the reason. An example would be poetry that is hard to understand, but beautiful in its form. All of these beautiful things have the ability to circumvent the understanding. As the poet writes, “Feelings come and feelings go And feelings are deceiving; My warrant is the Word of God, Naught else is worth believing.” In the end only what the mind grasps can bring comfort to the heart. John Stott reminds us in his little book, “Your Mind Matters” that “The Christian mind has succumbed to the secular drift with a degree of weakness unmatched in Christian history. one cannot do justice to this complete loss of intellectual morale without having recourse to language which will sound hysterical and melodramatic. there is no longer a Christian mind.” So the issue Paul is discussing is important to us. He talks about two aims in worship: edification and evangelization.

I Edification

Paul has not lost sight of the primary aim in worship which is to praise and glorify God. If you look at the book of Psalms which is the great hymnbook of the Old Testament Church you discover that true worship is praising the name of the Lord, or ascribing to the Lord the glory due to His name. What is meant by His name is the sum total of all that He is and has done. You cannot have worship that glorifies God if it is not also edifying to the believer. If i come to church week after week with enthusiasm and raise my hands and heart and voice to God, but my understanding of who He is and what He has done is static and unchanging, that does not glorify God. Closed minds do not yield open hearts. The point is that emotion without understanding will not produce obedience. However, understanding and obedience will produce emotion. In the Beatitudes Jesus does not say you will be poor in spirit because you are happy or blessed, or you will be meek because you are happy. He says be meek and you will be happy, and be poor in spirit and you will be blessed. Ordinarily the emotion is the fruit of the obedience. A wife came into the office of a columnist full of hatred toward her husband. “I want to get rid of him, and before I divorce him, I want to get even. The man suggested an ingenious plan “Go home and act as if you really love your husband. Praise him constantly. Go out of your way to be as kind, considerate, and generous as possible. Spare no effort. Make him believe you love him. After you’ve convinced him of your undying love and that you cannot live without him, then drop the bomb. Tell him that you’re getting a divorce.” With revenge in her eyes, she smiled said “Beautiful. Will he ever be surprised!” She did it enthusiastically. She showed love, kindness, listening, giving, reinforcing, sharing for two months. When she didn’t return, the columnist called. “Are you ready now to go through with the divorce?” “Divorce? Never!” she exclaimed. I discovered I really do love him.” Motion resulted in emotion. Keeping the vows led to keeping the marriage. In focusing on edification Paul says two things about it. The speaking in tongues in Corinth was not edifying first because it was unintelligible and secondly because it was unfruitful. In neither case did it engender obedience.

A Unintelligible

If we read verses 1-13 we discover that no one understands the man speaking in tongues, but prophecy strengthens encourages and comforts because it is in your own language, Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy. For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit. But everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort. He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church. I would like every one of you to speak in tongues, but I would rather have you prophesy. He who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets, so that the church may be edified. Now, brothers, if I come to you and speak in tongues, what good will I be to you, unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or word of instruction? Even in the case of lifeless things that make sounds, such as the flute or harp, how will anyone know what tune is being played unless there is a distinction in the notes? Again, if the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle? So it is with you. Unless you speak intelligible words with your tongue, how will anyone know what you are saying? You will just be speaking into the air. Undoubtedly there are all sorts of languages in the world, yet none of them is without meaning. If then I do not grasp the meaning of what someone is saying, I am a foreigner to the speaker, and he is a foreigner to me. So it is with you. Since you are eager to have spiritual gifts, try to excel in gifts that build up the church. For this reason anyone who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret what he says. Paul who spoke in tongues more than any says i would rather speak five words which were understood than 10,000 words in an unknown tongue. Paul gives several illustrations. If you came here this morning and the people at the keyboard had only one note on their instrument, would there be any melody to lead you in singing? No! The instrument would be useless. Or consider the trumpet. There is a unique pattern the trumpet blows when men are called to battle, just as their is a pattern for getting up, reveille, and a pattern for retiring called taps. If you get up and hear taps you go back to bed. Communication is vital. Thoughts ideas, concepts, truths must be communicated if worship is to be meaningful. What if a foreigner was preaching this morning in his own language? Once we went to an anniversary celebration at the Korean United Church in Philadelphia. We had to sit through a very long service where the readings, the hymns, the announcements, and the testimonies were all in Korean. You hardly knew what to do with yourself, but at least, we thought, Professor Harvey Conn was preaching. We forgot that he spent years in Korea. He got up and preached in Korean. Now i wouldn’t say that the experience was completely useless. We gained something from just being there, but it was about the same thing that i experienced attending a hockey game when i didn’t know the rules. There were a bunch of guys skating around the ice hitting a little round thing. A person speaking in tongues or his neighbor would gain very little. We would be poor Christians indeed if that’s all the help we ever got.

B Unfruitful

Paul also says in verses 14-19 that tongues are unfruitful, For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind. If you are praising God with your spirit, how can one who finds himself among those who do not understand say “Amen” to your thanksgiving, since he does not know what you are saying? You may be giving thanks well enough, but the other man is not edified. I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue. Here he has reference, not to others in worship, but to the person himself. even though tongues are addressed to God, as Paul says in verse 2, if the person himself does not understand the activity it is unfruitful. It is not edifying in the church setting. Indeed Paul says that I need to pray with my understanding as well as my spirit, and i need to sing with my understanding as well as my spirit. The obvious conclusion is if doesn’t even edify the person doing it, it surely won’t edify others.

II Evangelization

The implications of this practice for evangelism are found in verses 20-25, Brothers, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults. In the Law it is written: “Through men of strange tongues and through the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people, but even then they will not listen to me,” says the Lord. Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers; prophecy, however, is for believers, not for unbelievers. So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, “God is really among you!” I suspect strongly that the Corinthians thought their worship would convince outsiders that God was present and bring them to conversion. They needed to reexamine their motives and methods. Someone has suggested some tests for evangelism as follows: 1) Is this way of presenting Christ calculated to impress on people that the gospel is a word from God? Or is its tendency rather to distract attention from the author and authority of the message to the person and performance of the messenger? 2) Is this way of presenting Christ calculated to promote or impede the work of God in people’s minds? Is it going to make people think and think hard about God and about themselves in relation to God? 3) Is this way of presenting Christ calculated to convey to people the doctrine of the whole gospel? Or will it hurry people on to the demand for faith and repentance without having made it clear just what they need to repent of or what they ought to believe? 4) Is this way of presenting Christ calculated to convey to people the application of the whole gospel? Or is it likely to give an inadequate, distorted impression of what the gospel requires? Obviously the answer to all the above is that the Corinthian practice was not passing the tests. Paul says in the Old Testament speaking in foreign tongues was a sign of God’s judgment. God said to his people, If you won’t listen to the prophets who speak your own language, then I will send foreign invaders who speak other languages or tongues. So they were really a sign to unbelieving Israel, but they were a sign of judgment. The irony is that instead of the clear voice of prophecy they would now hear the babel of foreign invaders and would not be able to believe. As this applies to unbelievers or inquirers who would attend the church they could not be convinced by speaking in tongues that they were sinners and repent and believe, and fall down and worship God. Only the clear voice of prophecy or preaching would result in conversions.

Conclusion

So we learn that speaking in tongues in modern worship is unintelligible to the people, unfruitful to the person, and useless to the public. This reminds us that the aim of worship is edification. Paul insists that in all true worship the mind must be fully and fruitfully engaged. Only in this way is God glorified because only then can we ascribe to him the glory due his name.