Turn with me please to 1 Corinthians chapter 14 and let us stand out of reverence for the reading of the Word of God. 1 Corinthians 14 beginning with verse 1. Pursue love yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts but especially that you may prophesy. For one who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God, for no one understands, but in his spirit he speaks mysteries. But one who prophesies speaks to men for edification and exhortation and consolation. One who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but one who prophesies edifies the church. Now I wish that you all spoke in tongues, but even more that you would prophesy, And greater is one who prophesies than one who speaks in tongues unless he interprets, so that the church may receive edifying. But now, brethren, if I come to you speaking in tongues, what shall I profit you unless I speak to you either by way of revelation or of knowledge or of prophecy or of teaching? Yet even lifeless things, either flute or harp, in producing a sound, if they do not produce a distinction in the tones, how will it be known what is played on the flute or on the harp? For if the bugle produces an indistinct sound, who will prepare himself for battle? So also you, unless you utter by the tongue speech that is clear, how will it be known what is spoken? For you will be speaking into the air. There are perhaps a great many kinds of languages in the world, and no kind is without meaning. If then I do not know the meaning of the language, I shall be to the one who speaks a barbarian, and the one who speaks will be a barbarian to me. So also you, since you are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek to abound for the edification of the church. Therefore, let one who speaks in a tongue pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful, what's the outcome then? I shall pray with the spirit, and I shall pray with the mind also. I shall sing with the spirit, and I shall 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're saying? For you're giving thanks well enough, but the other man 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 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 babies, 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. Maybe see. In our several-month-long study of the book of 1 Corinthians, we came a couple weeks ago to these chapters that deal with the subject of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit. And if this is your first sermon time to worship with us, let me encourage you to get the past two or three tapes so that you can see where we have come from. And let me encourage you to come next Sunday so that you can see where we're going. Now, by way of review, let me just say two things that we learned last week about these miraculous gifts of the Spirit, like tongue speaking. We saw, first of all, that the Bible does not record a history that is full of miracles from Eden to Patmos. As a matter of fact, if you study the Scriptures, we find that there are only three miraculous eras, and in between those eras, miracles are relatively scarce. That the history of God's mighty works from the Garden of Eden to the Isle of Patmos in Revelation is not a history of continuous miracles. There are three big times in which lots of miracles occur. In between those three times, there's hardly any recorded. The first big time is the time of Moses. And you know about the plagues in Egypt and the rivers turning to blood and then going out of Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, the miracles in the wilderness, the manna that watered out of the rock. All kinds of miracles took place around Moses. Then after his time there's not many miracles, there's a few, but there's not many until you come to the time of Elijah and Elisha. And during that time you read of a lot of miracles taking place. The raising of the dead and the altar, fire coming from heaven and burning down the altar when the priests of Baal couldn't get their God to answer them. Then after the time of Elijah and Elisha, there's not too many miracles until you come on to the New Testament. And there you see this supreme display of all kinds of miraculous events and gifts relating to Jesus and the apostles. Now those are the three times in which we have a lot of miracles. In between those times there's not many. Notice also and remember in your mind that in those three miraculous eras there's something else going on. And that is there's all kinds of revelation from God taking place. There, Moses, you have God giving to him Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. During Elijah and Elisha's time, you see the beginning of the great school of the prophets that brought God's Word to man. And then you see the culmination of this whole revelatory process of God revealing Himself supremely in the Lord Jesus Christ and through Christ's Spirit, anointed apostles. Now, keep that in mind. The second thing is to keep in mind the subject of last Sunday sermon, and that is the nature of tongue speaking. We saw that the nature of tongue speaking in the Bible is not some kind of irrational, emotional, uncontrollable, ecstatic utterance that doesn't have any syntax or structure to it. But the tongue speaking, according to the Bible, is the speaking of an unlearned human language foreign to the speaker. That is, when this speaker, when God takes over his vocal cords and causes him to speak in another language, another human language, which he himself has never learned. And then you see the first, in the second chapter of Acts, where the first reference of tongue speaking takes place, people from all over the world came and said, we heard these men speak in our own languages. They were speaking in tongues. Then when you go through every other instance of tongue speaking in the New Testament they use the same phrases, the same terminology so that the only kind of tongue speaking the New Testament knows anything about is speaking in a foreign language that God enables you to speak miraculously but which you have never learned. Now that's what tongue speaking was. Now this morning I want us to look at two things as we have time. The first is what did they say? When God took over their vocal cords and enabled them to speak things that had never been spoken before, in languages that they'd never spoken before, what was the content? They were languages. It made sense. Paul says that's why you have to have an interpreter. He said, if I speak in a language and there's nobody there that understands that language, my spirit benefits, but the understanding of my mind isn't benefiting anybody. And that's why he always required an interpreter. Before you allowed anybody to speak in tongues, somebody had to be there that understood that language or else you were just speaking to the air. You might enjoy it because, I mean, God's working in your life. But the primary reason God gave you the gift was not that you might sit back and speak German when everybody else speaks Finnish, but so that you might speak in a language that people might understand. All right. Now, what did they say? Well this is a thing that we lose sight of and yet the Bible is so clear and that is tongues, tongue speaking in the New Testament was a vehicle or a mode of revelation from God. What they spoke, when they spoke, God took over their vocal cords and caused them to speak information, revelation that came right out of the mind of Almighty God. So that when they spoke in tongues, just like when the apostle inspired by the Holy Spirit wrote the Bible, when they spoke in tongues, they spoke prophecy. They spoke information and words and sentences that they didn't make up, but that God himself was the origin of. You see this in the very first example in Acts 2. In Acts 2 it says that they were sitting around, everybody spoke in tongues, everybody thought they was drunk. And Paul says it can't be drunk, it's too early in the day to get drunk. And he said, this is what the prophet Joel talked about, your young men and women shall prophesy. And so here Peter says this tongue speaking is the fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel that people are going to prophesy. And so from the very start, tongue speaking is identified with prophecy, information straight from the mind of God himself. Now, the most important verse, I think, in the Bible that helps us understand what they said when they spoke in tongues is in 1 Corinthians chapter 14 and verse 2. And there it says it, right out. For one who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God, for no one understands. Of course, if somebody's there who understands, then he speaks to men too. But in his spirit, he speaks mysteries. Now there you have what he spoke. Whenever people spoke in tongues in the New Testament, they spoke mysteries. Now we've gone over this before. And we know that when the Bible uses the word mystery it means it differently than what we use the word mystery. When the Bible uses the word mystery it has no reference to Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes or any of those guys and ladies. A mystery in the word we use today is something that you can figure it out if you put your mind to it, but it's really hard to do. In the Bible, the word mystery had the connotation of something that was otherwise totally unknowable if God didn't reveal it to you. That's what a mystery is. A mystery is something you never would have thought of in a million years. It never would have come to you. You never would have known it. You never would have realized it if God hadn't revealed the information to you. Now, you get a concordance and you go through the New Testament and you look up the word mystery. And you're going to find that some of the most thrilling truths of the Scriptures God refers to as mysteries. Some of the fundamental parts of the Gospel. God says these are otherwise unknowable truths and realities that you would never come across if I hadn't told you about. For instance, you might want to jot these verses down. We're not going to look them up, but you look them up this afternoon. This will save you getting a concordance. Romans 11.25. God says, I'm going to tell you something you'll never know otherwise. Romans 11.25. Why is Israel so hard? Why has it rejected Christ? Because I've hardened its heart in judgment until the fullness of the Gentiles coming in. You're never going to know it if I hadn't told you. But there's coming a time in which Gentiles, non-Jews in mass all over the world are going to come to Jesus and that's going to end the hardening of the Jews. And at the same time you're going to see a massive conversion of Jewish people to Jesus. It's a mystery. You wouldn't have known that if God hadn't told you. Then you look in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 51. 1 Corinthians 15, verse 51. God says, here's another mystery. Those that are alive when Jesus comes back to earth are going to be instantly transformed. Now there's no way that logic could ever reveal that to you. God says, I'm going to tell you what's going to happen the last day. It's a mystery. You'll never know it otherwise. When Jesus comes back on the last day, those that are still alive are going to be instantly transformed. Romans 16, verses 25 and 26, God says the gospel itself is a mystery. You would never have thought up the gospel. You would never have understood the gospel. You would never have understood salvation. It'd never come to you if I hadn't revealed the gospel of Jesus to you. The gospel itself is unknowable until God reveals it. Ephesians 3, 3 through 6. The word mystery occurs again and God says, I'm going to tell you something else. You Jewish Christians, you're not going to know this unless I tell you. It's going to be hard for you to believe unless I tell you. And that is non-Jews get to be fellow heirs in the Body of Christ. That the Church of Jesus is not going to be predominantly Jewish. It's going to include Jewish people, but it's going to include non-Jewish people as well. Now I've told you that God said you wouldn't have known it otherwise. Colossians 1.26. In Colossians 1.26 the word mystery is used and God says in effect through Paul, here's the great mystery of all, the best mystery of all, Christ in you, the hope of glory. And in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, Paul says, In verse 7 through 13, whatever I preach under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says the Apostle Paul, whatever I preach while under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is mystery. It's all otherwise unknowable, incomprehensible, inconceivable information if God had not revealed it. So you see this idea of mystery. is a powerful word in the Scriptures. And in 1 Corinthians 14, 2, it says that when people spoke in tongues, they spoke the mysteries of God. That is, whenever anybody in the church of Corinth or in New Testament times spoke in tongues, they spoke mysteries. That is, God took over their vocal cords and they were enabled to reveal some aspect of the hidden will of God to men. And when they spoke in tongues, because it was directly a revelation from God, whatever they spoke in tongue speaking was on par with the Bible itself, inerrant, infallible, fully authoritative from God Himself, and to be believed and obeyed by all men. Now you don't hear people say that much today. But that's what tongue speaking was in the New Testament. God took over their vocal cords, and in a language they never understood, God would cause them to speak information that didn't originate with them, but originated with God himself. On par with the Bible, and just as infallible and unmistakably divine as any book of the Bible. In other words, What tongues speak and tell us is that God has really and truly spoken to us. He's really and truly given us information about what He's like and about what His will is for us. He hasn't left us in the dark. And whenever God speaks, He speaks powerfully, He speaks dramatically, He speaks clearly, He speaks unmistakably, He speaks infallibly, and He speaks in words and sentences, human words and sentences, we can understand. And today God still speaks to us by His Spirit in, with, and through the Bible which is the Word of God. Now there's a second thing I want us to look at this morning. Tongue speaking was a vehicle through which God got His infallible Word to man. Now I want us to see why did He use tongue speaking? What was the purpose of tongue speaking as the revelation of mysteries? What was its purpose? And you might want to write this down because the Bible says there are only two purposes of tongue speaking. Now, you travel around the country today and you hear people with all kinds of other reasons. For instance, some people say, well, tongue speaking enables me to pray better. Somebody came to me one time and they said, Joe, I have my own private prayer language. Do you have your own personal prayer language? I said, yes, sir, I do. He said, that's great. Let me hear it. I said, all right. After this manner pray ye our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Well anyway there's people who say, you know tongue speakings give me to help me praise God. Well show me in the Bible where it says that. I mean everybody's got all these purposes for things. All I know is the Bible. And the Bible says there are only two purposes for tongue speaking in the Scriptures. The first purpose, write this down somewhere. The first purpose, it is a sign from God confirming the message of the apostles. Tongue speaking is a sign from God confirming the message of the apostles. That is, I'll give you some scripture references here. Whenever the apostles, like Paul and Peter, whenever they preached while under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, God would, by a powerful display of the miraculous, confirm and validate what they were preaching. The purpose of miracles of which tongue speaking was one, healing all kinds of miracles was to get people's attention. I guarantee you a real miracle will get your attention. What is pawned off on most of these television shows of healers and evangelists doesn't impress me at all. I mean somebody comes up with a particular disease or malady that you can't see and you wonder whether they have it or not. I'll never forget I saw one and you see it often. I saw a guy hardly make it up on the stage. were helping him. And he got healed while he was up there of this lameness in his legs. And to prove that he was healed they helped him hobble off the other end of the stage. I mean there is nothing impressive about most of the miracles you have today. I'll never forget going to a conference one time with a young black fellow that worked in his younger days and he told me this. He worked for a healer, a traveling healer by the name of Bishop Paul, P-A-U-L. And Bishop Paul was this great old big guy, I mean, made me look skinny, something fierce. And Bishop Paul would stand up on the platform and people with diseases would come up this way and he'd heal them and they'd walk off that way. And the friend that was with me at the seminar was in the back working the electronic equipment. And he said one time, and he said this wasn't unusual, he saw this little lady come up to Bishop Paul and Bishop Paul looked at her and he said, Woman, what's wrong with you? She said, I got this aching in my back. I've always had back problems. He said, you believe God can heal you? She said, yes. He said, shut your eyes. She shut her eyes. He put his hands on her head and all that 400 pounds shook her for all she was worth. And he let out with a big holler and one last shake. He said, mama, open your eyes. She opened her eyes and looked at him. He said, can you see? She said, yes, sir. And he turned around to the crowd and said, she can see. It was her back, remember? Well, miracles were to get people's attention and it was God's way of confirming this man speaks infallible revelation from God. So the first purpose of tongue speaking was a sign from God confirming that this apostle was speaking the Word of God. Now let's look at some verses that show it. Turn to 2 Corinthians. 2nd Corinthians chapter 12 verse 12 The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance by signs and wonders and miracles. What was the sign by which a person could say, I'm really an apostle from God, I speak His words. If you accept my words, you accept Jesus' words. If you reject my words, you reject Jesus' words. What's the sign? What's my credentials? Paul says it's the ability to work wonders and signs or the ability to bestow a miraculous blessing upon somebody else and enable them to do so. Turn to Hebrews chapter 2 and you see the most thorough explanation of these miraculous things as signs from God confirming that this Apostle who spoke and performed these miracles was really speaking the infallible Word of God. Hebrews 2.3 How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? After it was at the first spoken through the Lord it was confirmed to us by those who heard God also bearing witness with them both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His will. And here you see the flat-out statement. It says you're not going to escape if you neglect the preaching of salvation because God Himself has borne witness to the preaching of those whom we heard by the miraculous gifts of the Spirit. And so there you see a passage that says that this apostolic preaching, which is the basis of what the book of Hebrews is writing about, what we've heard, this apostolic preaching, God bore witness to it that it was true by giving these men the ability to perform the miraculous. Now turn to Acts 14. Acts chapter 14 and verse 3. Therefore, they spent a long time there, speaking boldly with reliance upon the Lord, who was bearing witness to the word of His grace, granting that signs and wonders be done by their hands." There you have it. God says, they preach the word of my grace, and I bore witness to its authority by making them perform miracles by their own hands. So the miraculous gifts of the Spirit were God's signs validating, confirming the preaching. And you know, remember we said there's three miraculous eras? Do you know that God has been very careful to show the purpose of miracles in each of those eras is the same? Turn back to Exodus chapter 4 and I want to show you why God let Moses perform so many miracles in Egypt. Turn to Ephesians chapter 4 and you're not going to find any variation. Exodus chapter 4 and verse 3. Listen, Moses is before Pharaoh and he's doing the thing with the snake, throwing the rod down and it becomes a snake and all that stuff. Well listen, verse 1, Then Moses answered and said, What if they will not believe me, or listen to what I say? What if they don't believe that what I say is from God? For they may say, The Lord has not appeared to you. And the Lord said to him, What's that in your hand? And he said, A staff. Then he said, Throw it on the ground. So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses fled from it. But the Lord said to Moses, Stretch out your hand and grasp it by its tail. So he stretched out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand again. That they may believe that the Lord, the God of the fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has appeared to you. Down in verse 8, And it shall come about that if they will not believe you, or heed the witness of the first sign, they may believe the witness of the last sign. Sound like New Testament language? That's where Paul got this. That's where he learned what the purpose of miracles was for Moses. God enabled Moses to perform miracles so that his message would be confirmed by God, unmistakably from Him. Now the second great miraculous era we said was Elijah. All right, turn to 1 Kings chapter 17. 1 Kings chapter 17 and verses 17 and following. Here you see a miracle being performed. Verse 17, Now it came about after these things, that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became sick, and his sickness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. So she said to Elijah, What do I have to do with you, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my iniquity to remembrance and to put my son to death. And he said to her, Give me your son. Then he took him from her bosom and carried him up to the upper room where he was living and laid him on his own bed. And he called to the Lord and said, O Lord my God, hast thou also brought calamity to the widow with whom I am staying by causing her son to die? Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and called to the Lord, and said, O Lord my God, I pray thee, let this child's life return to him. And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah, and the life of the child returned to him, and he revived. And Elijah took the child, and brought him down from the upper room into the house, and gave him to his mother. And Elijah said, see, your son is alive. Then the woman said to Elijah, now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth. See why he performed that miracle? So that woman would know he wasn't making this up as he went along. But what Elijah spoke was the truth of God. And she said, I saw the miracle. Now I believe it's truth. And you know Jesus said that about His own ministry? Turn over to the 10th chapter of John. 10th chapter of John. Throughout the Scriptures you see this emphasis. Not just the Apostles that used miracles to confirm their message, but Jesus did as well as Elijah and Moses. John chapter 10, verse 25. Well, look at verse 24. The Jews therefore gathered around him and were saying to him, How long will you keep us in suspense? If you're the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you, and you didn't believe. The works that I do in my Father's name, these bear witness of me. I've told you. You've seen me perform miracles. These were witnesses from God that what I said was true, and you deliberately refused to accept my claims, even though you've seen the testimony of God in the performing of the miraculous. Look at the 20th chapter of John. 20th chapter of John, verse 30. Many other signs, therefore, Jesus... Signs meaning miracles. Many other signs, therefore, Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name. In other words, it's saying we could fill all kinds of volumes of books with miracles that Jesus performed, but we didn't. But the miracles we did record are there so that you might be moved to believe what He said about Himself. Now turn back to 1 Corinthians 14 and see, you understand what He meant down in verse 22. So then tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe. But to unbelievers, the purpose of the miraculous is that you might believe the Word that's spoken by Almighty God. So there's the first of the two purposes for tongue speaking and the miraculous all together in the Bible. Tongue speaking and the performing of the miraculous comprise a sign from God that confirms what the apostles preached was the infallible Word of God. Now, there's a second purpose of tongue speaking in the Bible that hardly anybody knows about today, but it's there. Secondly, tongue speaking is a sign from God of His covenantal curse on Israel because she refused to believe that Jesus is the Messiah. Tongue speaking has as its purpose the fact that it is a sign from God representing His covenantal curse upon Israel, ethnic Israel, for rejecting Jesus as the Messiah. Now the covenant of God is that bond that He's entered into with His people, and it's a two-edged sword. If you've studied Deuteronomy 28 or Leviticus 26, you find there's all kinds of blessings for those who obey the Lord, all kinds of terrible curses for those who disobey Him. So that if you claim to be a member of God's covenant, a member of God's family, and you have undergone baptism, and you're a member of His congregation, and you live in a way that's faithful to everything that baptism symbolizes, and you live in obedience, then you're going to experience God's special blessings on your life, and the covenant's going to be fulfilled in your life. But if you've been baptized and you claim to believe in Jesus and then you live like the devil and you really don't care how you live, that doesn't mean that the covenant of God is not going to be effective in your life. That means that all these curses are going to come down on your head because God's covenant always works. faith in Jesus and obedience you get the blessings. Through disbelief and rebellion you get the curses, but it's going to be applied. Now those curses we said are in Deuteronomy 28. So I want you to turn back to Deuteronomy 28 and I want you to look at one specific curse that God said this is what Israel, or anybody for that matter, but this is what Israel is going to experience if it ever wanders off from Me and apostatizes and refuses to accept My Son, Jesus, as its Messiah. If you just look around in chapter 28 you see all kinds of terrible, gruesome things that will come upon them and did come upon them for rejecting Jesus. But now look at verse 49, "'The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth as the eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you shall not understand, A nation of fierce countenance who shall have no respect for the old nor show favor to the young. God says one of the curses that's going to come upon Israel if she refuses to bow the knee before the Messiah or if she ever apostatizes from me is that a nation is going to overrun her and she is going to lose her self-rule and her freedom and be dominated by people whose languages they don't understand. Now turn over to Isaiah 28. Isaiah 28. And what's the situation in Isaiah's day? Situation in Isaiah's day is Israel has apostatized. Israel has wandered away from the Lord. Now God has raised up the tremendous army of the Assyrians who's eventually going to destroy Israel and then He'll destroy it through the Babylonians and then later in Jesus' time He'll do it with the Roman armies. But Isaiah says, because you won't repent, all these curses of the covenant are going to come upon you. And look at verse 9. To whom will He teach knowledge? To whom would He interpret the message? Those just weaned from milk, those just taken from the breast. For He says, order on order, order on order, line on line, hear a little there. Indeed, He will speak to these people through stammering lips and a foreign tongue. He says, God's going to raise up an army, they're going to come to you, and as you listen to them talk, you're not going to understand what they say. It's a foreign language, it's just going to sound like they're stammering when you listen to them. But the presence of a foreign army speaking a language you don't understand in your midst is a sign of my curse for your rebellion against me. Turn to Isaiah 33. Isaiah 33, verse 19, he says it again. Except now, he says, you will no longer see a fierce people. of unintelligible speech which no one comprehends, or a stammering tongue which no one understands." He says, there's going to be a foreign army that's going to invade you and ravish you, and you're not going to understand its language, but eventually the curse is going to be lifted, and that day is not going to be there anymore, prophesying the restoration of Israel to faith in Jesus somewhere out there in the future. But the reason I read Isaiah 2811, because if you remember 1 Corinthians 14 that's the very verse Paul quoted to explain tongue speaking. So turn back to 1 Corinthians 14 and notice in verse 21 there you have the quote that we read from Isaiah 28. Verse 20, Brethren, do not be children in your thinking. Verse 21, In the law it's written, By men of strange tongues and by the lips of strangers, I will speak to this people, and even so they'll not listen to me, says the Lord. Now let me ask you a question. Should you ever quote a verse out of context? Should you ever take a verse in the Bible and just let it mean whatever you want it to mean, disregarding the words that come before and after it? No. A text without a context is a pretext. I mean that's the way all the cults do. That's how all the cults get established. They take a verse and they build everything around that and they forget all the verses coming before it and after it which explain the verse. There is a verse in the Bible that says there is no God. So you can prove from the Bible there is no God because that statement is right smack in the Bible. But of course it's context, it says, the fool saith in his heart, there is no God. So you've got to take seriously the context. Do you think the Apostle Paul ever quoted a text out of context? No. So when Paul quotes Isaiah 28 and says, listen Corinthians, now this is one of the most important things I've said. When he says, listen, Corinthians, I want you to understand tongue-speaking, the tongue-speaking that you're experiencing in Corinth is just like the tongue-speaking Isaiah 28 talked about. And that in the Old Testament, when Israel saw an army come whose language they didn't understand dominating them, they knew that it was the outpouring of the curse of God upon their rebellion. And so when Paul quotes Isaiah 28 to these Corinthians, he's saying, Corinthians, the fact that you're speaking in tongues, the fact that tongue speaking took place on the day of Pentecost and all of these Jews saw it and crouched in fear and repented of their sins, the fact that the Jews demand a sign and Greeks demand wisdom. Corinthian Christians, the presence of tongue speaking is a sign that God's curse is about to fall on ethnic Israel. And brothers, just three decades later, Roman armies, whose language they did not understand, ravaged Jerusalem in the greatest calamity in any war in human history. Tongue speaking is a sign of God's curse. upon the disobedient. Now, what's the conclusion? The conclusion of all this is that tongue speaking, as well as the other miraculous things, are really a sign from God. It's something that God testimony by to get your attention and to make a statement so that you're not going to miss it. And it's a sign that has a two-fold but very closely united meaning. Tongue speaking is given as a sign, was given as a sign from God to confirm that the Apostles were really speaking the infallible Word of God. And if you didn't listen to the Apostles you had God to deal with. Secondly, tongue speaking and the other miraculous gifts were signs that the Jews who rejected Christ were to fall under the curse of the covenant, and that took place at the fall of Jerusalem. Now listen brothers, I've got to say this appendix, and that is I guess you've read in the Atlantic Constitution that the Jewish Anti-Defamation League is after me and people like you for being so anti-Semitic. Well, I'm here to tell you, I'm not anti-Semitic. I believe that any Jew or any Gentile upon the face of this earth that received Jesus is accepted with God, no matter who they are, no matter what they've done, if they repent of their sins. But I'm also here to tell you, beloved, we would have no salvation without the Jews, for salvation is of the Jews. How in the world can you be anti-Semitic and have a Savior like Jesus? My Savior had a Jewish mother, but not a Jewish father. He had a Jewish mother. But the very people of whom he was a part, the ethnic Jewish people of whom he was a part, he came unto his own and his own rejected him. And because they were in a better position than any race of people on earth to accept the Messiah and rejected him, God curses them. with a curse that meant the devastation of Jerusalem, and a hardening upon them and their hearts and their minds throughout century after century of human history until that time in the future when God is going to open their eyes, says Romans 11, and cause ethnic Jewish people in mass to come to faith in Jesus Christ. So, Understand that's the purpose of tongue speaking, to prove that God's curse is on ethnic Jewish people because they rejected Christ. That's not anti-Semitism. That's truth and that's reality. The third thing we learn from tongue speaking is that tongue speaking was a sign that the final phase of redemptive history has begun. The gospel which was formerly in the Old Testament almost exclusively for the Jewish people is now for the whole world. And the fact that tongue speaking was a sign that God's word was being consummated in Christ and that God's curse was coming upon the Jewish people was also testimony to the fact that the final phase of history has begun and we're in it. The last days of the history of mankind. Those glorious days when the gospel of Christ is open to the whole world and it's not confined to one little ethnic group. So brothers and sisters, what can we learn today from tongue speaking? I present you with three great and glorious truths. Number one, God has spoken. God has spoken through the prophets and through the apostles unmistakably. And you know why I believe that God has spoken in this book? It's not because my reason tells me it is. 13 years ago we had a man who was a member of our church whom none of you know, maybe one or two, but nobody else knows. Came to my office and he said, he said, Joe, you know, I'm starting to believe this stuff about Jesus and salvation and all that. I said, well, that's great. I said, you claim to be a Christian, don't you? He said, yes. I said, well, why do you believe these things? Why do you believe Jesus? Why do you believe what the Bible says about Him? Well, because I've reasoned it all out. I've reasoned it all out and I've considered it very carefully and it fits in with the way I think and so I'm going to believe it. I said, Sir, that means you're not a Christian yet. That means that you still haven't surrendered your sovereign mind to the Word of God. You've said, I'm going to believe the things in the Bible because I have submitted them to the bar of my supreme reason. And having reasoned them out, and caused them to pay their due to my reason, I shall believe them. I said, Brother, 1 Corinthians 3 says, If any man thinks he is wise in the things of this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. And to become a Christian you have to surrender that mind of yours to the Word of God. I've never seen the guy since. So why do you believe? Why do you believe the Bible? Why do you believe the things about Jesus are true? Well, that's what I'm supposed to believe as a Presbyterian. It's not going to get you in. It's not good enough. Well, I believe the Bible is the Word of God, and I believe the things in it because that's what my granddaddy believed, and I want to keep with the heritage of my granddaddy. That's not enough. Well, I've looked at all the evidences that demand a verdict, and I've rendered my sovereign verdict. And it seems reasonable to me. Not enough. Well then why do we believe? Upon what does our faith rest? I'm going to tell you what my faith rests on. The witness of Almighty God in tongues speaking and miracles. 2,000 years ago God Himself bore testimony through tongue speaking and miracles that this is the Word of God. And I believe it because God bore witness to it. And brother, I dare not ask for any corroboratory additional evidence. I don't need any proof from man. I don't need any evidences from man. God said this is true. Here's a miracle to prove it. That's all I need. I'm not going to question God anymore. My faith rests on the witness of Almighty God in tongue speaking and in the miraculous by these apostles. That's all you need is God's confirmation. And you know if God confirms that something is true, do you need any more confirmation? If God says, I confirm this, this is true, listen to me, it's true. Do you have any basis to doubt it ever again? If God confirms something as true and then because you go to college or whatever some ignorant professor causes you to have doubt, what are you supposed to do with that doubt? Ask God to forgive you? I mean how in the world can you doubt the confirmation of Almighty God? When God confirms something, it's confirmed. He doesn't try to confirm it. God's the greatest communicator that ever lived, Dr. Ronald Reagan. And when he communicates something, you can bet your boots that what he wants communicated, you're going to receive. And the communication of God is, I bear witness to it. It is my word. Believe it on that basis and on that basis alone. And if your faith rests on anything else but the witness of God, your faith rests on man. And it can be shaken and it can be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. But when you believe the Bible is the Word of God upon the testimony of God Himself, I believe this is the Word of God because God told me it was by His Spirit's witness. You believe it like that, then people can come at you with all their assaults and you'll stand firm when everybody else's puny faith is falling apart. So that's the first thing I love about tongue speaking. Tongue speaking tells us that our faith rests on God's confirmation and not upon man. And you know there's a second thing that you and I must learn from tongue speaking in the New Testament and that is God really and truly curses people that reject Jesus. I mean now consider what Jerusalem was. Jerusalem was the holy city, the center of the theocracy. It's where David reigned and Solomon reigned. It's where the prophets came to preach. It's where the temple of God was. For a good while it was the very presence of the most sacred place on the earth. They had prophets. They had the Word of God. And ethnic Israel rejected the very Jesus whom God sent to be their Savior. And for rejecting Jesus, particularly since there was no good excuse to do so, God literally and truly destroyed their whole nation by raising up Roman armies to devastate them. And Jesus said that 70 A.D., when Jerusalem was destroyed, was the most devastating event in all of history. So, beloved, God really and truly curses people and nations who reject Jesus. And if America continues to reject Jesus, God will really and truly devastate America. Tongue-speaking proved it. And then there's one third application, and that is, This is the last phase of history before the return of Jesus. We're in it. The last and greatest phase of history so far is the period between the death, resurrection of Jesus and His coming again. The next great spectacular revelation of God that's going to take place on the scene of human history is the return of Jesus Christ at the very end of the world. Between now and then is the last part of the last phase of human history and it's going to be the best. The gospel has been open to the whole world and the Bible says that someday that world is going to be so influenced by the gospel of Jesus Christ and people start streaming into the Christian church in such numbers that that massive conversion of those massive numbers of people, the total effect it's going to have on the world, says Romans 11, is nothing short of spiritual, cultural resurrection from the dead. The best is yet to come. God told me that. The Bible's the Word of God. God told me it was. All those people and nations that rebel against God, they're going to be cursed. God told me that. But if you repent of your sins and believe in Jesus and let your faith rest upon the witness of God, God will forgive you of everything you've ever done and He'll accept you as His child through all eternity. God told me He would. Let us pray. Father, we praise You that we have a place to cast our anchor that's strong and secure. We thank You that our faith does not rest in us in any way or in any other man. but we thank you that it rests upon you alone. Lord, build up and strengthen our faith. Grant us repentance. Bless this country with repentance of our sins. Help us to live knowing what lies ahead for us and the great things this world has yet to experience because of the success of the gospel. God, give us the strength to rededicate ourselves to the advance of that gospel over all the world. And we thank you for it because without that gospel, without that mystery, we would be lost. And we pray in Jesus' name, amen.