Grosey's Messages

1 Corinthians 14  The greatest of these is still love.

For about two thousand years it was almost unknown and unheard of, and then in the middle of the last century there was an Englishman by the name of Irving, a tall fellow about six feet, five inches tall, with his hair uncut, long, flowing over his shoulders, a Presbyterian, and associated with the world-famed Dr. Chalmers, and he led a movement, a tongue-speaking movement.  And it has appeared again in this century and in our day. Because of the way churches have gone in Australia, we here have been overwhelmed by the "successful" Pentecostal churches such as Hillsong. We have a tendency in Australia to magnify them as large, blessed by God, and successful.  However, while they have one or two large churches in Australia, the actual number of adherents to Pentecostalism in Australia is actually significantly lower than the adherents to  either the Baptists or the Evangelical Anglicans in Australia.  For instance, the numbers attending Anglican churches in the Penrith region is many times larger than the number attending Imagination AOG church. They just do better advertising.

The myth perpetuated by their advertising is of success, and being the way to go.

But the warnings Paul gives us in 1 Corinthians 14 should be quite sufficient to warn us that an over emphasis on the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues, which is the main deal in Pentecostal churches is both unhealthy and doesn't receive God's blessing.

The Corinthian church had a number of offensive situations that were neither "decent nor in order" in their worship services that Paul is seeking to correct in chapters 11-14.

• Women dressing improperly for worship (11:1-16).
• The Lord's Supper being abused by the rich, without concern for the poor in the congregation, who came with nothing to eat (11:17-34).
• An over-emphasis on speaking in tongues, and an under-emphasis on prophecy and other gifts in worship services (chapters 12 and 14).
• A lack of love towards one another in worship (chapter 13).
• Confusion in their worship services (14:26-33a).
• Women speaking out of order in the services (14:33b-35).

But these problems were only symptomatic of the bigger problems addressed in the earlier chapters:

• Pride and division
• Immorality
• Pettiness

Remember there are a couple of key words in Corinthians.

Knowledge puffs up, love builds up.       

Do all things decently and in order.

There are even more important Doctrinal problems associated with tongues:

• New revelations vs. the Sufficiency of Scripture.
• The Means to get it: Versus the Sufficiency of the atonement.
• Interpretation Problems  glossa vs babble

Babel and Acts 2 and babble

What are the facts of glossolalia?  When I turn to the second chapter of the Book of Acts: "When the day of Pentecost was fully come, there came suddenly a sound from heaven as of a rushing, mighty wind," the first miracle, "and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire," the second miracle [Acts 2:1-3].  The marvelous miracle of Pentecost is presented in that glorious pictures. 

Now the third miracle was: "And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance" [Acts 2:4].  Now, there were dwelling there in Jerusalem Jews, Hellenists from all over the world.  And they heard every man [speak] in his own language, the glorious works of God, "and they were amazed and marveled, saying, Are not all of these which speak Galileans?  How hear we then every man in [our] own tongue, wherein [we were] born?" [Acts 2:8]. Parthians, and Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans, Cappadocians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Latins. 

It was a phenomenal miracle, three of them: the sound as of a rushing mighty wind, the fire as it parted and lambently flamed upwards over the head of each apostle, and the preaching of the gospel of the Son of God in languages.  And all of the people, all of those representatives of those languages could hear it and understand it, and they were amazed by it! 

I turn the page now to the tenth chapter of the Book of Acts.  In the household of Cornelius at Caesarea, when Peter was done with his sermon in verse 44 of chapter 10, "While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all of them which heard the word.  And those Jews that were there with Simon Peter were amazed because on these Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Spirit.  For they heard them speak with tongues and magnify God" [Acts 10:44-46]. 

Later in Ephesus Paul met some former disciples of John the Baptist who had not yet heard of the crucifixion resurrection ascension and giving of the Spirit. "And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came upon them; and they spake with tongues and prophesied," magnified God [Acts 19:6].

Was tongues in the Corinthians' church it an un-understandable language?  Is it an unknown tongue.  In the second verse, Paul says: "He that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God:  for no man understandeth him.  It is an unknown tongue."  And in verse 14: "For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful. " It is an unknown tongue probably to the speaker and to many of the hearers.  But it is probably not a special "prayer language" or a special "angelic" tongue (1 Corinthians 13:1).

This chapter is not endorsing or promoting tongues, but it is a series of mandates to restrict it!  In every way possible, Paul is seeking to control, to dissuade, to discourage! 

One:  "In the church, I had rather speak five words with my understanding," five words with my understanding, "that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue."  "Let us speak five words intelligently, understandably, than ten thousand in an unknown tongue." 

Second  "Let your women keep silence in the churches:  it is not permitted unto them to speak.  And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home:  for it is a shame for women to speak in the church" [1 Corinthians 14:34-35].  Now I turn the page in my Bible.  I turn the page, and here in the eleventh chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul has just described how a woman ought to dress when she prays in public and when she prophesies in public [1 Corinthians 11:5].

Now this man Paul is stupid if he cannot remember that one page over he just got through writing how a woman is to dress when she prays in public and when she prophesies, prophemi, when she speaks out in public; and turn the page, and he writes, "Let the women keep silence in the churches; it is not permitted for them to speak.  For it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church."  Well, the reason and the answer is plain.  He has spoken here of these women in the very heart and middle in the chapter on glossolalia, and he is talking about a woman speaking in an unknown tongue!  He's talking about speaking in tongues! 

Well, why would Paul object so to a woman speaking in an unknown tongue?  When you study ancient Greek history, it is very apparent, most apparent.  If you have ever visited the ancient site of Corinth, the sea is right here and the city is here; the ancient city was built here.  And right there in the most impressive Acrocorinthus you could ever imagine, the Acropolis of Corinth: far more majestic, higher, larger than the Acropolis in Athens crowned by the Parthenon – the Acropolis of Corinth, and on top of that Acropolis was a glorious Greek temple to Aphrodite.  Her Latin name is Venus, and in that ancient day, they worshiped the goddess Aphrodite, Venus, in sexual orgies.  When a man went up to worship Aphrodite, that's the way he worshiped her.  The filth and the dirt of those ancient religious worships lie untranslatable in the language in which they have lain for thousands of years.  You don't translate it into modern language.  And every one of those temples had women dedicated to the goddess.  And those women, in order to carry through those orgies of worship, worked themselves up into frenzies! 

And Paul said if there were to happen by an unbeliever, and he stopped, and he looked in, and there your women are speaking in unknown tongues, he would say, "Well, we have a little colony of Aphrodites here.  Let's go in and take part in the orgy."  "No!" said Paul; such a thing is unthought for; it is unnameable in the house of God and in the churches of Christ!  Let your women keep silence.  It is a shame, as up there in Aphrodite, it is a shame for a woman to speak in an unknown tongue in the church.  And you take the women out of the unknown tongues movement and it will die overnight.  The frenzy, the ecstasy, the unknown glossolalia is kept alive by women, and Paul says, "No!"

The Purpose of Tongues In God's Intention

What is its purpose?  God has a purpose at Pentecost.  At Caesarea in the household of the Gentiles you saw it, and at Ephesus you saw it, and here he is speaking of it. This thing is in the Bible.  Well, what does it mean?  Where did it come from, and what is its purpose? 

Paul, under the inspiration of God, interprets what God has done, and what it meant.  You listen, verse 21, 22: "In the law" – that's in the Old Testament – "In the law it is written, With men of other tongues and other lips will I speak unto this people; and yet for all that they will not hear Me, saith the Lord.  Wherefore tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not" [1 Corinthians 14:21-22].

Well, what does it mean?  What is Paul speaking of here?   He is quoting here Isaiah 28:11 in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament "it is written," then he quotes Isaiah 28:11: "With men of other tongues and other lips will I speak to these people and yet for all of that they will not obey Me."  They will not repent and believe Me and trust Me.  Now, the historical context of that prophecy of Isaiah was this: the Lord said to His prophet Isaiah, "You say to these people, 'I have spoken to you plainly.  I have spoken to you in intelligent language.  I have spoken to you in a language you can understand, in your mother's tongue, but you are obstinate, and recalcitrant, and incorrigible, and disobedient.  Now, says the Lord God, I am going to speak to you in a language that you cannot understand, with foreign tongues.'"  And the historical context is God brought in the Assyrians, He brought them in to take Israel captive. And they couldn't understand Assyrian, and God brought in the Babylonians, and they couldn't understand Chaldean.  And the Lord spoke to Israel as a sign in these other tongues and other languages, and yet they didn't repent, and they didn't believe. 

And the sign of the foreign tongues of the Assyrians, the Babylonians and the Medes and Persians and then the Greeks and Romans was a sign to Israel that they had had it!!

Now Paul takes that prophecy out of Isaiah, and he applies it to what God is doing to the Jewish nation and the Jewish people.  "Wherefore," he says, "tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not."  It is a sign!  Well, I can see that now plainly.  Pentecost, there were three signs to the Jewish nation and the Jewish people, to the Jews in Jerusalem.  At the beginning of this new dispensation, there were three – there were three signs from God that the gospel, that the Lord Jesus Christ, the giving of the Holy Spirit is the beginning of a new dispensation, a new era [Acts 2:2-4].  First:  the sound as of a rushing, mighty wind: pneuma, breath, a type of the Holy Spirit.  Second: fire that clove, that split, that parted, flaming above each one.  Fire is a sign of the Holy Spirit.  Third: the gift of tongues; and they spake the word of God in the languages of all of the people, the Jewish people who had gathered there for the feast day from the ends of the earth; it was a sign to the Jewish nation.    And the same thing happened at Caesarea.  The speaking in tongues was a sign, as Paul says; it is a sign, for there were those Jewish brethren who came with Simon Peter into the house of the Gentile Cornelius [Acts 10:45-46], and when they returned to Jerusalem in the eleventh chapter of the Book of Acts, Peter and those Jews were called on the carpet.

You went into the house of a Gentile – and it is not lawful for a Jew to go into his house, much less eat with them – and Paul – and, and Simon Peter replied, "But, my brothers, we saw the sign from God!"  That's what he said: "this thing that happened at Pentecost, the sign from God that this is the gospel of the new dispensation, that same sign saw we at Caesarea, for we saw these Gentiles speak with tongues, even as we saw at Pentecost" [Acts 11:15-17].  The gift of tongues was the sign gift as Paul says to the Jewish nation, to the Jewish people in introducing the new dispensation. 

It was a gift to the church signifying the end of the divisions and dispersion begun in Genesis 11 and  the gathering of a new people regardless of what language they spoke.

The unity of the church as a gathered body gathered from every tribe tongue people and nation into one body, one church, is an amazing overcoming of the one thing that divides peoples: their languages!

But to a Gentile, but to us, to us, if the church comes together and you speak in tongues, and there comes a visitor by, he will say, "You are mainesthe!  You are mad!  You are insane!"  But if a man prophesies, if he promethe, if he speaks intelligently, and there come in that man unbelieving, the secrets of his heart will be manifest, he will be convicted in his soul, and he will bow down and worship God and say, "God is among you in truth" [1 Corinthians 14:23-25].  The sign was for the Jewish nation and the Jewish people as you see at Pentecost, as you see at Caesarea.

It was not a good sign. It was a sign of rejection! It was a sign of the end of Jewish exclusiveness. The Jews thought they had God by the toe.  No.  He is God. He sent His Messiah. The Jews rejected Him. This Messiah is now for all nations!

And so, tongues were for a sign, and when the sign had done its purpose, it ceased. 

And to recreate the sign is an affront to God!  It is not faith!  It is presumption! 

There was the historical act of God in the parting of the Red Sea under the hand of Moses – and we stand there and say, "Lord God, do it again!  Part the Red Sea again!"  Why, You did it, do it again!  Let's see it!"  It was a sign under the hand of Moses delivering God's people in a new dispensation, that of the law.  Do it again?  It had served its purpose. It was a once for all sign.

And Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind, and Elisha saw the chariot of fire and the horses of fire [2 Kings 2:11-12].  And we stand by the side of a godly prophet Isaiah, a John the Baptist, a Peter, a Paul, and we say, "Do it again!  Let's see you go up into heaven in a chariot of fire!  Do it again." 

Would you have the Lord Jesus crucified again and resurrected again before your eyes? It is an affront to God, saying that you are more important than the Saviour. You want God to be your performing monkey doing what you command for your own .. what? Aggrandizement? Sinful doubts? Conceits? Pride???!!!  And so pride turned tongues into something not good in the church at Corinth.

Now look at verses 23-25. A church meets.  There come in those that are unbelievers, if you are talking in tongues, will they not say, "You are mad?"  But if all prophesy and speak out to edification, to encouragement, to faith, to trust, to belief, if all prophesy and there come in one that believeth not, he's convinced of all, he's judged of all, and the secrets of his heart are made manifest, and the Spirit of God convicts him.  And so, falling down on his face, he will worship God and report that God is among you in truth [1 Corinthians 14:23-25].  That's the way, says Paul; that's the way.  The sign was for the Jewish nation at the beginning of the new dispensation.  It served its purpose.  It is done.  It has ceased.  No need for this kind.  But now, when you come together in church, let God call the lost to faith and the commitment by a plain and an understandable word.  And the simpler you can make it, the more effective will God use it and bless it. 

For God does not call His people to faith by signs, or by wonders, or by miracles, or by voices, and by tongues, and by strange sounds; but when God speaks to your heart, it will be in a plain and a simple language, and that is all that we could ask.  Trusting Jesus, we are not looking for an intervention from heaven.  We are not looking for a sign or a wonder.  It is enough that "Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures; that He was buried, and that the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures" [1 Corinthians 15:3-4].  And it is enough that Jesus has promised "Those that come unto Me, I will in no wise cast out" [John 6:37]. They that received Him, "to them gave He the right to become children of God, even unto them that trust in His name" [John 1:11-12], and that's enough. 

The Provision of God For Consolation   Upbuilding Exhortation.

ὁ δὲ προφητεύων ἀνθρώποις λαλεῖ οἰκοδομὴν καὶ παράκλησιν καὶ παραμυθίαν.

6 ⸀Νῦν δέ, ἀδελφοί, ἐὰν ἔλθω πρὸς ὑμᾶς γλώσσαις λαλῶν, τί ὑμᾶς ὠφελήσω, ἐὰν μὴ ὑμῖν λαλήσω ἢ ἐν ἀποκαλύψει ἢ ἐν γνώσει ἢ ἐν προφητείᾳ ἢ ἐν διδαχῇ;

12 οὕτως καὶ ὑμεῖς, ἐπεὶ ζηλωταί ἐστε πνευμάτων, πρὸς τὴν οἰκοδομὴν τῆς ἐκκλησίας ζητεῖτε ἵνα περισσεύητε.

26 Τί οὖν ἐστιν, ἀδελφοί; ὅταν συνέρχησθε, ⸀ἕκαστος ψαλμὸν ἔχει, διδαχὴν ἔχει, ⸂ἀποκάλυψιν ἔχει, γλῶσσαν⸃ ἔχει, ἑρμηνείαν ἔχει· πάντα πρὸς οἰκοδομὴν γινέσθω.

What is the provision of God for the upbuilding of the church.

Cut our pride.

Add in Love

Add in Scripture

For a man to come to the church today and say, "I have a revelation from heaven; I'm going to add a twenty-ninth chapter to the Book of Acts."  Or, "I am going to write a twenty-third chapter to the Book of Revelation."  And that's what they tried to do back there in the Montanist heresy.  Why, today, we would stand up and say, "But, my brother, this Bible is finished.  God said so.  And you are not to add to it and you are not to take away from it [Revelation 22:19].  So whatever your vision is, whatever your prophecy is, whatever your gift of the knowledge is, it has no use any longer, for the mature has come, the teleios, the complete, the perfect has come. 

Add in mutual ministry.

Add in Gospel Ministry.

This is what church is all about.  Everything else is just secondary.