Well, it's with anticipation we open again to 1 Corinthians chapter 14, a wonderfully instructive chapter for the church, actually for the church worship services. If you were with us last time, you know that we left off at the end of part one attempting to bring out the emphasis of the text. We are to let prophecies Now the prophecies are contained entirely in the Bible. We are to let those prophecies have their building up effect. They are meant to have an edifying effect in God's church. We are to let those prophecies in Scripture build us up. I also highlighted at the end there the historic fact of how God has used the preaching ministry here at Hope Bible Church. Preaching has always been, since the founding of this church, the central element and strategy for building this church. Literally, the preaching has built Hope Bible Church from the ground up. God providentially brought many people here, many of you here. You heard the Word of God from this pulpit And you heard the Word of God because we were committed to a form of preaching called expository preaching. You know that. That has been your experience since you have been here. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, the head of the church, has chosen this method and this commitment to build His church, to build this very church. In truth, our church would be Exhibit A for you and your eyes and your growth and understanding demonstrating how a clear proclamation of God's Word week after week does edify and does build up a church. Give it time and the Spirit of God will use it. I have to admit that in the course of my life and time, there have been moments where I have wondered whether or not that would come to pass, but God indeed blesses His Word. the love for Jesus Christ, the fellowship that you and I experience here on Sundays and other times during the week, the outreach that we are developing, though we still need to do a lot more, they are all directly traceable to this commitment, a commitment that was instilled in me by the Master's Seminary to bring week after week the Word of God for the edification and the building up of His Church. And by no means did the master seminary invent this. They got that commitment from great men of God who lived centuries before them. And obviously they ultimately got it from the scriptures and the belief that the scriptures are infallible, inerrant, trustworthy, and powerful. They are effective. This is how God has always built up his true church through the clear preaching of the scriptures. It is God's method. It is God's method for church growth. It is God's method for church maturity. It is God's method for church reproduction. And God willing, one day we'll be able to start other churches. Hope you pray to that end. And there'll be expository preaching churches. The greatness of the instrument in the pulpit is not the issue at all. It is the greatness of the Word that is made plain to the people of God. And the Spirit of God moves and works and impresses that Word upon the minds of God's people. This is Jesus' church. And this is God's Word to His church. And all of this is the work of the Spirit of God. Now we have shown already that the gift of prophecy is not exactly the same thing as preaching. But we have also shown that they are and remain related. Prophecy brought to us our New Testament revelation directly from God. New Testament prophets and apostles bringing to us God's Word fresh and for the first time. Prophecy is the direct and infallible voice of the Holy Spirit of God. It is the pure Word of God. It has no errors. It can't have errors, for God cannot lie. 2 Peter 1.20, Know this, first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation. Verse 21, "...for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God." True prophets delivered the Word of God fresh from God. A first revealing. It was infallible. It came without error. That gift of prophecy operative in the first century church resulted in the writing down of that revelation in 27 documents we call the New Testament. Those 27 and none others. Today as we study and read 1 Corinthians 14, we are to see the value of prophecy, the New Testament scriptures for the edification of this church. How does the gift of prophecy edify the Church in the 21st century if all of the prophecy ended at the completion of the 1st century and the New Testament canon? Answer, through the exposition of the prophecies already deposited to God's Church. Preaching, though it is not prophecy itself, actually can become the mouthpiece for prophecy in our present age. We take the deposited truth and we make it known. And when we make it known with accuracy and clarity, yes, with boldness and relevance, then the Word of God is heard in God's church and it builds up His church. We're dedicated to expositional preaching at Hope Bible Church. Why? One of the great reasons is that it edifies, it builds up, it does its work. I'm memorizing right now 2 Timothy chapter 1 and in that chapter Paul is really emphasizing to Timothy the importance of being bold and not having a spirit of timidity because God didn't give us a spirit of timidity but of love and boldness. But in that first chapter of 2 Timothy it also talks about the need for Timothy to guard the treasure that had been entrusted to him. You see the apostle Paul was writing his last letter, he was moving on, he knew that the time of the apostles would end and the job of the second generation and every other generation after that was to guard what was already given, what was already deposited to the church. That's our role. Don't let anyone rob us of its truths. Our gatherings and worship services and all that we do in a worship service should advance the Word of God. That's how we guard it and protect it. That is particularly true in preaching. So today we're going to take the truths that Paul writes about in this great chapter about prophecy, and we're going to make application to our use of prophecy today in our worship service through expositional preaching. In addition, we'll continue to learn some important things about the gift of tongues and prophecy that I know has your interest. how they were used in the first century, what they really were about. Let's read our text. It's 1 Corinthians 14. We pick up with verse 13 and we go down through verse 25. Verses 13 through 25. Please follow along as I read. Therefore let one who speaks in a 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 10,000 words in a tongue. Brethren, do not be children in your thinking. Yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature. In the law it is written, By men of strange tongues and by the lips of strangers I will speak to this people, and even so they will not listen to me, says the Lord. So then tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe, but to unbelievers. But prophecy is for a sign, not to unbelievers, but to those who believe. Therefore, if the whole church assembles together and all speak in tongues, and ungifted men or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are mad? But if all prophesy and an unbeliever or an ungifted man enters, he is convicted by all. He is called to account by all, and the secrets of his heart are disclosed. And so he will fall on his face and worship God, declaring that God is certainly among you. Now, the wise apostle has taken up much space here describing what should be happening within their worship service there at Corinth. What does that tell us? Well, it immediately tells us how important worship is to God. There's all this instruction back in chapter 11, you may remember, and into chapter 12, and into 13 about love and the body, and into 14. How we worship, what we do in a worship service is important to the Lord. our worship and our gatherings, this gathering that is here today, the one we'll have next week and the week after that or Wednesday night or wherever. It is always done in the sight of God. It's done in the sight of holy angels. It is also done before a world that's looking in and trying to figure out what Christianity actually is. And so how we preach and how we worship is very important, just as how they prophesied and how they worshiped was important. And here we learn the simple but very important truth, preaching to the mind, preaching to the mind is essential for edification. And there are four reasons preaching to the mind is important, and they're all related. They kind of slur together, but I'm going to separate them for our thought here. Four reasons preaching to the mind is so important. The first is that preaching to the mind edifies the speaker himself. Second, that preaching to the mind edifies the church. Third, that preaching to the mind matures the thinking. And fourth, that preaching to the mind convinces everybody. of God's truth. We're going to go through this. First, preaching to the mind edifies the speaker. That's in verses 13 through 15. Look at them again as I read them. Preaching to the mind edifies the speaker. Verse 13. Therefore, let one who speaks in a 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. That word therefore, the beginning of verse 13 builds off of verse 12 and the principle of edification that he laid down there in verse 12. Look back at verse 12. He says, So also you, since you are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek to abound, for what? The edification of the church. And then he says, Therefore. Now notice first that this principle of speaking to the mind is not limited to prophecy or to preaching. It applies, as is stated here, also to singing and to praying. In other words, all that we do in church, music, singing, prayer, preaching, needs to be aimed at what? The mind. The mind. It is to be aimed at the mind. It is to be filtered by the mind. And if it isn't, it does not have value for God's church. Notice again in verse 13, those who were gifted with the gift of languages, that's what the gift of tongues is, the gift of languages, could not edify the church. Why not? Because no one could understand their foreign language. They were speaking in a language that was known throughout the world, but not known by the Corinthians. So it didn't benefit anyone there. By the way, for a discussion of what the gift of tongues is all about, please listen to the first message we went through, verses 1-12 last week. It will clear up a lot of things for you, I hope. I do believe that the true gift of tongues, the true gift of the Spirit of God was being practiced at Corinth. I do not believe it was a false gift or an imitation gift. Paul never says they had an imitation gift. The problem they had wasn't that they had a wrong gift. The problem was they were using it incorrectly. All of it is about their wrong purpose and their wrong use of the gift. The gift itself was genuine. They had the true gift. It just was being used inappropriately. They were not using it for edification. They were not using it knowledgeably. They were not even using it in an orderly fashion. And thus you see this prolonged correction by Paul towards them. There was one way, Paul wrote, that tongues could be helpful to the church. One way and one way only. And that was what? It feels interpreted, right? If there was an interpreter, we learn that back in verse 5. And so Paul here next says that the one speaking in the gift of tongues should also pray that he may interpret. And interpretation is necessary for the sake of edification. Now, commentators debate back and forth whether Paul means the individual himself would be praying to have the interpretation. or whether or not he would be speaking in a tongue in order to generate an interpretation, praying indeed that someone would be there that would give the interpretation. It's unclear exactly which one, but what is clear is that the interpretation had to happen. The main point is that the only justification for a tongue was that when a tongue was given, an interpretation also followed. Paul's aim, when he spoke in tongues, in an assembly was to produce an interpretation. His aim was not to show that he had the gift of tongues. His aim was not to impress anyone with something that came out of his mouth. His aim was to edify. His aim was loving. His aim was building up. And he's telling the Corinthians here in verse 13, that should be your aim as well. Notice verse 14. It gives the reason for the prayer request. The verse starts with the word for there at the beginning. Praying in a tongue, that is, in a supernaturally generated foreign language, yes, it was indeed praying. They were true words, they were expressing a prayer, but the mind of the one praying remained unfruitful. Paul uses himself here in a hypothetical situation. He says, if I pray in a tongue with no interpretation to follow, of what good is that? What's the benefit in doing that? He's trying to get them to think. He's prodding them. It's unfruitful. It doesn't benefit anybody. And that's his whole point. It's amazing that some people actually read this passage here and reverse Paul's message by saying that Paul was endorsing praying in the Spirit only. What does it say? I will pray in the Spirit and I will pray in my mind. Paul is not advocating praying only with the Spirit. In fact, he's arguing against that. He is not saying that sometimes I pray in the Spirit and sometimes in the mind. No, it's not what he wrote. He says, I will pray both in the spirit and in the mind simultaneously. They both have to be going on for the prayer in the assembly to have any benefit. Notice the clear statement way down in verse 27. He says, if anyone speaks in a tongue, it should be by two or at the most three and each in turn and one must interpret. It must be spoken to the mind. There must be an interpretation, whether you're preaching, whether you're praying, this is commanded. Just like back in verse five, greater is one who prophesies than one who speaks in a tongue, unless he interprets so the church may receive edifying. Over and over and over again in the chapter, that is the apostle's aim. Notice also verse 15. Verse 15 gives the correct practice. This is how it should be happening. It shows that Paul is advocating praying with the spirit and the mind, singing with the spirit and with the mind. Paul never wants his tongues to not be understood. He would not send out a message that could not be heard. This gives us a worship principle. Really, the principle extends beyond simply how the gift of languages was to be used in the church. It's saying that singing must be true. Singing and songs and music must be filled with truth. We shouldn't be singing things that are rote or mindless. Repetition just to gear us up into an emotion. That's not worship from God. Music and church must not just simply generate excitement. Oh, so much worship these days is about that. The Spirit of God is working. Why? Because our emotions are high. The Spirit of God must be working a lot more at the Redskins-Cowboys game. His emotions are higher there. The mind is very much to be engaged. Engaged in the time of singing. Engaged in the time of worshipping. I know it's hard. I've been out there before. You listen to a sermon, it goes on, and sometimes you have a hard time keeping your mind engaged. You're taking notes out there, you're trying, your mind drifts and all, but the truth is we only receive benefit when we're able to lock in. That's why we tell you things like get a good night's sleep, go to bed early on Saturday, start planning for church because your mind is important, edification is important. If we get excited merely because of the tune that we're singing or the music, ah, that's my favorite song, oh, I love that tune, That's great if you want to go whistling along for a country drive somewhere, wind blowing through your hair, just enjoying some time, you want some nice music on, I do that. This is worship here. If it's the music that excites, then just stick any old words in there, it doesn't matter. What were we singing? I don't know, but it was a great tune. I felt close to the Lord. Stick any old words in there. We'll be singing John Denver for all we know, still like it. We're not listening to the words. We're not rejoicing in the truth. It's not Christian worship. It's sad to see modern worship, many modern contemporary songs, though they're understandable, they're in our language, they still trend toward the reduction of truth within their songs. Have you been noticing that? Even prayers that are led by leaders in church seem to trend this way. Their content is shrunk. They talk all about the feelings they have about God. You don't hear Scripture being prayed back to God. Paul says a healthy worship service aims for edification, and edification comes when the mind is reached. Please don't misunderstand. Paul is not arguing against emotion. expressed in the worship service. He's not trying to say if you show emotion, that's wrong. That's not what he's writing about. Of course, it's important to be vigorous. Our emotions are part of our worship. Formalism or liturgy is not what Paul is advocating here. Mere contemplation would reduce worship only to the mind. That's not what he means. But the caution here is that the mind must be more engaged for it to be edifying and beneficial to us. There may be certain songs that touch your heart, touch your spirit. It has just the right melody, the harmony, the tone, the beat. It resonates with your soul when you hear it. Your emotions are drawn out by it. All of that is fine. But that is not enough. That lasts for a few minutes. And then you go and your mind is unchanged. And you're not sanctified. You're not changed. The church is not built up. It's a feeling. As soon as someone is mean to you, the feeling is gone. As soon as you don't get something you want, the feeling is gone. What, are you going to listen to the song all day long? You'll get tired of the song after a while. It's like making the feeling you get from the song your God and your Holy Spirit. You can't have joy without that kind of music, you see. Because your mind's not impacted. You're just listening for how it makes you feel. It must be defined. It must help us to understand we have a high and a holy God. Thoughts of this great being, this God who loves us, who's infinite and powerful. That should transform our thinking and have a lasting impact on us even as we worship here. So we aim for the mind because it builds up the speaker himself. Secondly, second benefit of aiming for the mind in preaching. Preaching to the mind edifies the whole church. That's verses 16 and 19. Preaching to the mind edifies the entire church. Look again with me at verse 16. It says, 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 as 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 10,000 words in a tongue. In verse 16 it says, blessing with the Spirit only means that the blessing was given, but without knowledge of it being given. It harkens back to the tongue speaker. He's blessing God. His words are coming out of his mouth, but it's another language. It's not understood. Nobody there understands that language. God is blessed. The words blessed Him, but no one there knew. Since the blessing is a supernaturally generated foreign language, No one present at Corinth will be able to agree and hear all of it and go, amen. Not going to say amen when you disagree. By the way, amen is not a period at the end of a prayer. Do you know that? You can say amen in the middle of a prayer. You can say amen in the middle of a sermon, the end of a sermon. It's not a period. It just means what? It means truly. It means I agree. I agree. Truly what you're saying is right. That's what amen means. Someone's listening and they're agreeing with you in prayer. The other person's speaking and they want to say, yes, I agree with that. Amen. But they can't because they don't understand anything you're saying because it's in a tongue. The ungifted person that Paul mentions in this verse, ungifted person in the assembly does not refer to an unsaved person. You'll notice later he talks about the unsafe person and the ungifted person. The ungifted person does not mean a believer who has no spiritual gift. All believers have spiritual gifts, at least one, as chapter 12 taught us. We all have a bodily function. It means in this context a person who does not have the gift of interpretation. You compare that down with verses 23 and 24 below and you see that. He's unable to generate meaning from the tongue statement because he doesn't have the gift of interpretation. So he doesn't know what you're saying. He's ungifted in that regard. Dr. Robert Thomas explains it this way. Here was a Christian seated in a public worship service of his local church, hearing sounds that proceeded from a speaker's lips, but unable to connect any meaning with those sounds because he himself was ungifted in interpreting, and no other person was performing that function for him. That's a pathetic situation, isn't it? He's looking left and right. He's like, something exciting is happening. I wish I could enter into this. I wish I could get excited and worship God, but alas, I don't know what is being said. I remember visiting a large Pentecostal church where they were imitating the gift of tongues. It's not the true gift of tongues. It's ecstatic utterance. We talked about that last week. But they're all going on and on and they turn and they look at you. If you're not saying anything, like you ought to be doing this too. I remember looking back at them like, what? What do you want me to do? So that's not the gift of tongues. I'm not joining you in that. And I don't know how that's helping me or anybody else in here. There's no sense to this at all. You cut me off. If you're having a good time, I'm out. We're all sitting in the room together, but we can't engage in corporate worship. Might as well go home. Worship at home. Can't understand a speaker. Verse 17, look at it. It says, You are giving thanks, that is, in the Spirit. Some words were indeed lifted up to God in the foreign language. God certainly understood them. But the other person wasn't edified. Oh, again, please see how important bringing out the truth of God's Word is to God's people. There is sort of an anti-reason, anti-logic, post-modern mentality that we are living amongst these days. We need to make sure we don't bring that mentality in the church and ask our leaders to keep reducing, reducing, reducing, reducing, because I don't want to listen to that much truth. That's what other leaders have done through the years. They've felt pressure from their people constantly. That's too long. I can't follow that. Oh no, do I have to do that much? Why is doctrine that important? Do you have to bring up that? And they're just basically saying, look, let's just all get along. The only way we can get along is not to think. And that's dangerous. That's very dangerous. That's not Christian. Look at verse 18. Paul returns to that personal note again to explain the importance of the mind. And from verse 18, we learn a couple of things. First, we learn that Paul spoke in tongues. Paul had the gift of languages. Second, we learn that Paul thanked God that he had the gift of languages. Do you see that? He was thankful for the gift. There was nothing wrong with the gift. The gift was a true gift. It was from God. He's happy he had it. He thanked God for it. And third, we learn that Paul spoke in tongues more than any of the Corinthians did. Ha ha! I speak more than all of you." I don't think he's engaging in hyperbole here. I think he really did speak in more tongues than any of them did. Does that sound like boasting? Do you know, Paul did this once in a while in his letters, particularly to the Corinthians. He entered into something that he knew was foolish, and he even called it foolish, in order to prove something to the Corinthians. In 2 Corinthians 12, verse 2, he said, you're boasting about your dreams and visions I know of a man that was caught up to the third heavens and he heard things that were inexpressible and he said, nevertheless I will not boast in those things. He was talking about himself. So if you want to start comparing spiritual power and experiences, I'm an apostle. I've gone up to heaven. I don't even know whether I was in my body or outside of my body. That's how great it was. Don't you disregard what I'm saying as an apostle because you think you're more spiritual and you have the gift of tongues and I don't. I have it and I do it more than you. I know what I'm talking about." He's showing them their pride. Paul was a humble man. Frankly, the pride of the Corinthians sounds reminiscent of a lot of what goes on in our world today. There's often a tone of pride on the part of those who look at you and say, well, if you don't have the gift of tongues, you can't possibly understand what we're doing, nor can you sit in judgment on it. I doubt they would even listen to a series on spiritual gifts from a church that doesn't speak in ecstatic utterances. Why bother? They don't know what they're talking about. And frankly, today's pride extends beyond that of the Corinthian pride, because at least the Corinthians actually had the gift. People today don't, but they pretend they do. and they confuse others. And then they boast of it and tell you, you don't know what you're talking about. There's a lot of pride in that. There's a lot of sinful pride in that. And that sinful pride is why the communication doesn't work between churches, because they won't listen. What people have today is something that is imitated throughout the non-Christian world, many, many places, Hinduism, Buddhism, ecstatic languages, they have it. They don't need the Spirit of God to do that. That's been proven over and over and over again. There's nothing supernatural about ecstatic languages. It is not the gift of tongues. I've been in at least four different churches. What I hear is always the same. I've heard many others, it's the same thing. It's repetitive syllables. It's meaningless. There's no language to it. There are no language patterns. It's been recorded. It's been analyzed. It's not supernatural. It's not a sign. It's not something to be impressed with. You don't need the Spirit of God to do it. Paul used tongues the right way. He said he would use these tongues in the appropriate way. How did he use them? Well, he doesn't tell us here, but he tells us how not to use them, and we have a glimpse of how they're used in Acts, and so we can deduce that Paul used tongues in his missionary travels. He used them as one of the many signs he as an apostle did to prove the truthfulness of the new revelation that was being given, the proclamation of the gospel. He did not use them privately. He already spoke against that. He did not use them without an interpreter. He's made it clear that that's not what should happen. The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance by signs and wonders and miracles, he told the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 12, 12. In Romans 15, 18 he said, I will not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me, resulting in the obedience of the Gentiles by word and deed, in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Spirit, so that from Jerusalem and round about as far as Elyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. He preached the gospel and the signs accompanied, and that's how he used it, along with healing, casting out spirits, and other signs. And so Paul returns again to the correction in verse 19. Notice, he said, Paul did not value tongues, even in the extreme, if they weren't going to be interpreted. Not even 10,000 words. It'd take five words of prophecy over 10,000. that couldn't be understood. That's similar to what Jesus said in Matthew 6-7 when you're praying, "...do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him." Pray intelligently! Preaching and singing and praying to the mind edifies the church. It encourages, it consoles, it comforts, it corrects, it instructs, it impresses the Word of God deep within us so the Spirit of God can use it in the transformation of our mind. It's why your faith grows and your love increases, because the Word is applied to your mind. It is what we're committed to doing, and that is why. Third, preaching to the mind matures the thinking. Verse 20, preaching to the mind matures the thinking. He says, brethren, and that's said tenderly, do not be children in your thinking, yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature. Oh, that's what he's really after here. He gives an exhortation, and then he qualifies it. He says, do not be children in your thinking, In your thinking, be mature. Just the two sides of the same exhortation. Don't be children, be mature in your thinking. I think this exhortation would likely have been received by the Corinthians as a rebuke, because they prided themselves on their maturity of thinking. That was what they thought they were. But they were acting like children. Children in their understanding, giving all this attention to tongue speaking. They preferred the amusing, the amazing, the tantalizing. That's what children do. rather than that which was solid and useful. They wanted to display the fancy gifts of the Spirit. Those that glittered and sparkled made themselves look good and spiritual, gave them status within the congregation. But it is truth that matures the mind of the congregation. This is what Ephesians 4, 11-15 is talking about. Just listen to it. Christ gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers. Why? For the equipping of the saints, for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ. What do those apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors do? They teach truth and it matures the mind. It goes on in that passage, "...until we all attain to the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine." What's a wind of doctrine? Just check back in the Christian bookstore about once every six weeks, you'll see a new wind of doctrine coming through. Come through, look around what's on sale. Whoa. Come back six weeks later, there's another wind of doctrine blowing through. by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming." The best way to deceive someone is to make them think it really is Christian. Put it in a Christian bookstore, put it behind a Christian pulpit, Christian radio, and let them spout off foolishness and worldliness. That's not what mature people do. But mature people don't get mature without their mind being engaged in the Word of God. The whole Bible church needs to strive to be known as a church that reaches the mind. I don't know if Diane remembers this or not, but there was once a lady that came to one of our tables, evangelism, and she said something to the effect of, your church is an educating church, isn't it? And I think she tried to say it as nicely as she could, but thought maybe we're a little heady. Having truth taught to the mind doesn't mean that we're not supposed to have relationships. It doesn't mean that our friendships are not dear to us. It doesn't mean that we don't express emotions and cry and weep and laugh with each other and hug and shout hallelujah whenever we want to. It doesn't mean any of that. But we should never back away from a reputation that says we're a church that aims at the mind. God's Word is a grand and great self-revelation of the greatest being in the universe. Who wouldn't want to engage the fullness of their mind in that? It is a revelation that gives us wisdom for life. So often, we grow up, we're like, I don't know what to do. Well, you know what? You don't know what to do. When you're younger, you didn't study enough the Word of God. And now, it's caught up with you. And you should have listened better. That's where I am sometimes. I'm like, man, I can't get all this stuff right. Wish I'd started learning sooner. It's a revelation that must necessarily grip the mind if you understand what it's saying. The qualification about maturity Paul sandwiches in between there. Did you notice that? This is interesting. In evil be children. He does not want maturity in evil thinking. Boy, that's a great insight, isn't it? In evil be infants. Don't let there be any development towards maturity here. Stop. Don't do it there. What does it mean? Well, it does not mean that we're not supposed to know what false teaching is. It doesn't mean we're not supposed to study false teaching to know how to refute it. That's one of the characteristics of an elder. It does not mean we're ignorant of Satan's schemes. Paul said we're not ignorant of Satan's schemes. It does not mean that we don't know what shameful behavior is. We certainly do know what it is. We're just not to engage in it or speak of it the way others do. What it does mean is don't have experiential knowledge of evil. Don't join in with the sinners to try to figure out what sinning is. Don't master the subject of evil by your involvement with it. Don't do as Eve did when the serpent tempted her and said, if you eat the fruit, you will know good and evil. Sounded great, but it hurt bad. Don't indulge. Don't develop evil. It harms. It hurts. It deceives. It ensnares. Stay away from creativity and imagination in the area of evil. Be dumb in that. You don't need to be burned with fire to recognize the guy next to you that got burned that wasn't pleasant. You don't need to sip on poison to recognize the guy next to you is vomiting and there's something wrong with drinking that. You don't figure out love by lusting anyways. You don't figure out contentment by coveting. in evil, be little tiny babies. Learn nothing there. Fourth and last, preaching to the mind convinces everyone. It convinces the unbeliever and believers alike. Preaching to the mind convinces everybody. We want to convince people of truth. We want people to see that something is true. We don't want anybody to convert to Christianity if they can't see it's true. You have to believe that it's true. It grips the mind and it convinces you. This is what he's saying in verses 21-25. He says, "...in the law it is written, by men of strange tongues and by the lips of strangers I will speak to this people, and even so they will not listen to me, says the Lord. So then tongues are for a sign not to those who believe, but to unbelievers. But prophecy is for a sign not to unbelievers, but to those who believe." And now he goes to the application of that principle. It seems like he's contradicting himself, but he's talking about the abuse of that principle. Verse 23, Therefore, if the whole church assembles together and all speak in tongues, and ungifted men or unbelievers enter, will they not say, You are mad? But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever and ungifted man enters, he is convicted, that is, convinced by all. He is called to account by all. The secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so he will fall on his face and worship God, declaring that God is certainly among you. He gets it. His eyes are opened because of truth to the mind, preaching to the mind, songs to the mind, prayers to the mind. Now if you go back up to verse 21, verse 21 is a quote from Isaiah chapter 28 and verse 11. Sometimes the entire Old Testament was referred to as the law. And so here one of the prophets is being quoted and he calls it the law. Those who had the foreign tongue in that Old Testament context were the Assyrian armies, the Assyrian conquerors. They did not speak the Hebrew tongue. They brought their own language as they brought war. The half-tribe of Ephraim was not listening to their own prophets. God was trying to reach them through their own prophets and speak to them. They wouldn't listen to their own prophets, and so God decided to speak to them another way, by the oppression of Assyria. God spoke to them through their foreign masters who brought a foreign language. And yet the reality was, He says, even so, they will not listen to me. They were so stubborn. And so tongues in Isaiah's time proved that God was at work in a very special way. This foreign language that was brought by the Assyrian conquerors, it wasn't the gift of tongues, but he's talking about a foreign language here. As it came, it showed God was working in a very distinct and special way in Israel's history. Only this time it wasn't fun and exciting, it was the oppression of another nation. That special work of God in that case was a work of correction. Verse 22 then is the deduction from the Isaiah quote. To know how to use tongues appropriately and to use prophecy appropriately, one had to understand the purpose for both of those gifts. If you didn't know the purpose, you wouldn't know the practice. Let's start with tongues. What does he say the purpose of tongues is? It was a sign for who? For unbelievers. For unbelievers. The gift of tongues had a purpose. Its primary purpose was to be a sign, a miraculous sign, a miracle, to indicate to unbelievers that God was doing something special. It's one reason, by the way, why we call certain gifts of the Spirit sign gifts, because the Scriptures call them signs. They're gifts that are signs, the Scripture says so. They were the kind of miraculous gifts with the purpose of being a sign to unbelievers. They had evangelism and apologetic purpose. I'm going to refer back to Dr. Thomas again as he explains why the signs were necessary at that time. Think about this. He says certain critical phases in God's program down through history have required special evidence. and the transitional phase presented by the period of Jesus Christ and his apostles was most certainly one of those. Those who had been steeped in Judaism all their lives needed elements of tangible proof that the new movement founded by Jesus Christ was genuinely of God. Those whose background was exclusively heathen also needed that kind of help. The God of the Old Testament was completely strange to them, as was the new message brought by missionaries such as Paul, divinely produced credentials were certainly in order, for example, tongues and the other sign gifts." End quote. Now that Christianity has obviously been established in the world for two millennia, many centuries, all such gifts to authenticate Christianity and its truth are unnecessary. It's the wrong time for that. People now are referred to the foundation of Christianity, to Jesus' life, to the inspiration of scripture, to the beginning of the church, to the resurrection. Those are the evidences for this age, along with what the Bible does to predict the future we see coming to pass in our day and age. The idea that signed gifts might be needed today somewhere in the world, makes as much sense as attempting to authenticate a religion and a message which God already authenticated 20 centuries ago. When people today say the signed gifts are still needed somewhere, whether they realize it or not, they are minimizing the credentials of Christianity that God put in this world 20 centuries ago. In effect, they are tacitly agreeing that the evidence already given is insufficient. However, what Paul is writing here is that tongues clearly is not a sign to believers. It is a sign to those who do not believe. Those already converted to Christianity were not the target of these signs. They were already convinced. They were already persuaded. That's why it is so strange that the Corinthians wanted to give such attention to this gift right in the middle of their worship service where who was gathered? All the saints were gathered, the believers. That was so incorrect! And it expressed their immaturity in their thinking. Those who understood the purpose of tongues understood it was for the unconverted. It was designed to be in the realm of evangelism and apologetics. Remember, that's exactly how it was used in its first appearance back in Acts chapter 2. We looked at that last week. The unbelieving Jews are there, the tongues as a miraculous sign speaking in foreign languages given, and they're convinced, they're persuaded, along with the preaching that day that Peter gave, that this is true. Jesus is the son of David. He is the Messiah. And in mass they repented. It had a great effect. You turn to Acts 10 and Acts 19. Again, you see it serving as a sign sometimes to the Jews who doubted that the gospel and the spirit of God would advance to the Gentiles and to the Samaritans. And so the Jews, again, were given a sign. See, the spirit of God is now moving out into all the world. The gospel is for all people. The church will include all. And the sign is given as evidence again to doubters, those who had doubted what God was going to do. In all cases, it served as a sign to convince. Prophecy is different. Prophecy has a totally different purpose. Please notice in verse 22, it is not assigned to unbelievers primarily, but to who? To believers. It has an edifying function within the body. It's assigned to believers. What do those who are in the church need? They need building up. They need exhortation. They need instruction. Now, we've seen that prophecy has a predictive element to it. But often the fulfillment of a prediction by a prophet takes a long, long time before the eyes see it fulfilled. With tongues the sign was given immediately and was immediately received. It had instant impact. Prophecy, though, has instant power for the present, for immediate exhortation, immediate edification. as the people were encouraged to obey the revealed word of God. Look at verses 23 and 24. They are the application of verse 22. Since tongues are a sign for unbelievers and since prophecy is the sign for believers, therefore, if all speak in tongues, it will be a state of confusion. The unbeliever will not be impressed. He will not see it as a sign, but as madness. Trying to reconcile verses 22 and 23, by the way, where they seem to contradict themselves, is easily attained when you remember how the gift was supposed to be used. Again, I quote Dr. Thomas. He says, what might have been and often was an instrument in bringing them to conversion in a secular setting became an object of disdain when used improperly among those gathered for Christian worship. In this setting, it was inappropriate because they were carrying on a conversation that no one understood. It was a misuse of the gift. And even the unbeliever could walk in and figure out, that's not the way that's supposed to go. It's mad. The Liberty New Testament commentary says the very purpose of the gift is mitigated by the unbridled exercise of it. On the other hand, if it was used appropriately, it would bring out the interest as a miracle to the message. Dr. Thomas in his commentary calls this first church here, analyzes this first illustration here, a tongues-dominated church. They're gathering together and tongues is dominating. Paul pictures the whole church here assembled together in verse 23. Here the listeners would be largely believers, the vast majority are saved, they belong to the church, and so tongues is not appropriate here. Even an unbeliever who might come into the service, he'd be able to figure it out. People are all speaking in foreign languages. They don't even understand one another. They're just sitting around talking and no one's listening to each other. They're mad. They're crazy. What am I doing in here? The Zondervan Illustrated commentary gives a little color to this word as well. Matt is one that was used to describe the frenzy of mystery religions, such as that of the Greek god of wine, Dionysios. Paul wanted the church to be very different from these mystery cults. They knew about that craziness that went on. The church wasn't to be that way. In verses 24 and 25, it shows the positive effect of prophecy. Prophecy will bring the unbeliever to his knees, will bring the unbeliever to acknowledge God, The truth is there, it's edifying the church, and even an unbeliever would benefit from it. You see, he's not trying to say that prophecy is only for unbelievers and contradict themselves. He's saying prophecy has such an effect, it edifies and teaches to such an extent that the unbeliever comes in and that effect of building up the church now even spills over and benefits an unbeliever. Now, we know the church is not designed for unbelievers. There are some churches out there that are called seeker-driven churches and they're trying to design everything they do in church for unbelievers. The church is for believers. It's for believers. We're believers. We gather together. It's for us. In fact, the church is believers. Take away the building, you still have the church because the church is believers. It's for believers. But that doesn't mean that there aren't unbelievers who come in from time to time and listen and hear. And if they do, the effect of the body having truth taught to their mind will even spill over and benefit and affect unbelievers. This conviction of this unbeliever brings to mind the words that Jesus spoke in the Upper Room Discourse in John 16, verse 8, where he said, When the Spirit of God comes, you will convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment. The unbeliever will be convicted of sin and righteousness and judgment. They will be revealed who they are, how helpless they are before God. They have no chance with a holy God. They're under His judgment. They're sinners. There's a righteous standard that they do not meet. They thought they were good. Now they've heard the word of God. They know they're nowhere near good enough to go into God's presence. And they're brought under conviction. And in this case, they fall on their face. It shows their shame and their guilt and their self-condemnation. They don't even want to look up. They're unworthy before a God who is present in this place and they worship. And they understand the power of God there in that congregation. Rather than crying out, you are mad. His words are very different. God is certainly among you. Nothing like this is in other religion. What a difference. What a difference. Can you see, beloved, how important it is to worship and preach aimed at the mind? His name is at stake here. Our testimony is at stake here. We are to be orderly, rational, yes, passionate, but peaceful and clear. And so prophecy benefits all who gather, unbeliever, the church, the gifted, the ungifted with interpretation, anyone there. It edifies, it builds up. It's not a coincidence that so much of the New Testament aims sanctification at the mind. We're told in Romans 12 to do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your what? Your mind. And that's what God wants for us. I'm gonna pray God impresses his word on our heart, and then Pastor Allen is gonna come, and we're gonna have a child dedication. Lord Jesus, thank you for the gift of prophecy given to your church. Thank you for the privilege of having unfolded a portion of that prophecy today. Take it, use it, impress it upon our hearts. In Jesus' name, amen.