[Passage: 1 Cor 14: 1 – 25; Sunday morning, 08 Feb, 2009]

AS WE have seen, Paul aims for the Corinthians to make sure that neither fellowship nor evangelism is hindered. And, if we use our gifts as they were meant to be used, that will happen.

Did you know that what we just read was a vital passage in the Reformation? It was important for the Corinthians. It touched Luther and Cranmer, too.
Are your hearts already protesting? “The Corinthians used tongues,” you think; “And the Pentecostals, too. But who did in between!”
What about Latin in the Catholic Church?
At a baptism, the priest declared,
Ego te baptizo in nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti, Amen.
When the service ended, he said,
Dominus vobiscum — the Lord be with you.
It was still that way in the Catholic Church until recently. It only ended in the 1960s.

The Reformers said, “You must only speak in tongues if someone can interpret. Otherwise, who gets built up in their faith? No one!”

When Luke first played the organ for us here, he was very enthusiastic for baroque religious music, and sometimes played it for the collection. We would all wait politely until he finished, but it wasn’t our kind of music, One or two of us understood that kind of music, but most of us were better with rock music or folk music, or country gospel.
After a while, Luke realised that he was playing in tongues, because what he played didn’t speak to people, so he changed, even though what most of us like wasn’t his favourite kind of music.
I still see his notes in the music books, things like, “This is a nice one.” or “Good harmonies!”. He was looking for music that was our kind of music, but that he could enjoy too.

That is how Paul wants us to think about how to use the spiritual gifts God has given us. How do our gifts build people up, and whom do they build up?

Of course we must build each other up. You might not be sure how to use your gifts to build other Christians up, but you know you should.
As good Baptists, you also know that we should build up unbelievers to help them become believers. They have to be confonted with the choice of following Jesus or of siding with those who crucified him. But they need to experience love and friendship and care from Christian people, so that they will be disposed to listen to the gospel message.

But you may be surprised that Paul also recognises that we need to build ourselves up, and has some surprising suggestions about how that works.

Building yourself up
The unusual bit is building yourself up. Let’s start there.
Paul writes,
2 For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit. 3 But everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort. 4 He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church. 5 I would like every one of you to speak in tongues, but I would rather have you prophesy. He who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets, so that the church may be edified.
The key verse is verse 4:
4 He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself…
That word, edifies, just means, builds up.

We saw last week that speaking in tongues can cover both natural human languages and unknown language–like sounds, glossolalia is the technical term. Paul won’t argue about whether this means people who can speak Greek, Aramaic, Latin, or one of the Celtic or Germanic languages common in parts of Europe. And he won’t debate about whether people speak some angelic language, or even something that just comes from our natural abilities when the Spirit powerfully touches us.

It doesn’t matter.

If others don’t understand the language of your worship, you are the only person who is built up.

Many years ago, for nearly a year I only read the German Bible in my daily Bible reading. In fact, I read the very old-fashioned German of the revised Luther Bible.
I understood it, but it would have done you no good at all if I had quoted it to you. I got built up, but it would never have helped you.

Did you know that Christians are not the only ones who speak in tongues?

Some Buddhists, some Mormons, some unbelievers and followers of pagan religions speak in tongues.

I sometimes speak in tongues, though I make it a rule never to do it in church.
I was praying one day — alone in the church before a youth night.
I really wanted the Holy Spirit to fill me.
I believed God’s command in Ephesians to
…be filled with the Spirit.
If God commands it, it is possible and it is desirable.
I claimed the protection of Jesus’ blood so that Satan could not slip in and wreak havoc.
I remembered Jesus’ teaching,
If you, being evil, know how to give good things to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

I trusted that promise, and I asked, and God in his grace did fill me with his Spirit.

It was a dramatic release and relief for me, because I had been searching for a long time.
I began thanking and praising God, and when I ran out of English, I continued in tongues. I had never done that before.

I am convinced that tongues, for me, came from within my own human capability. It was my response to speechlessness in face of the Spirit’s goodness to me.
I am not very confident. I have often struggled with doubts. I have asked myself, “Was your belief genuine when you believed?” “How do you know you really are saved?”
…and all those kinds of questions.

So, for me, speaking in tongues was very important, because it reminded me, every time I did it, that a very definite change had come into my life on that hot Sunday afternoon.

You don’t have to follow my path. God gave me what I needed to build me up. It was a kind of building up that no one else could give me.
One reason that speaking in tongues has become less important to me over the past 40–odd years is that I have grown more, I have seen more clearly how God has gifted me through his Spirit in several respects, and I don’t have the same need for reassurance and a reminder that God dealt with me in that way on that day.
If you are a true Christian believer, you will be growing. You will be changing. You will have experiences of different kinds that speak to you of Jesus our Lord.

They will add up. You will not need to look at one or two big events as time goes on, because you will have hundreds, even thousands of events to remind you that God loves you, to remind you that Jesus died for you, to remind you that he is alive today and indwells you by his Spirit, to remind you that his life is in you and will manifest itself through you if you allow him to use you.

We all need building up, and we all need experiences which speak to us of the work of Christ in our hearts. It’s great if you speak in tongues and are built up by it, but there is so much more that God hopes for us.

Building up the believers
One of the most selfish things I know of is Christians who  just focus on their own abilities, and think how wonderful they are, and have no interest in what others need. We are called to build up our fellow believers.
There are many ways we can build each other up.

When I was on beach mission, there was a girl on the team who was a little older than some of us boys. She drove us all to some meeting. When we got back, we all sat in her car and talked. She listened empathetically, understanding and reflecting our feelings.
That half hour with six or seven of us packed into an old Holden was a truly magic occasion! She really listened, but she also gently challenged us about our hopes, our plans, our views on putting our faith to work.
It was a real building up session.

That kind of thing is vital, but it is only one of the ways that God builds us up in our faith.

Paul sees prophecy as a key factor in building up believers.
He doesn’t expect a smelly old chap who lives on grasshoppers and honey to turn up in a half–rotten camel skin and tell us to repent or God will send bubonic plague on us all.
Prophecy is an important spiritual gift to the church. Once again, it comes about through a marriage of natural human abilities into a spiritual powerhouse when the Holy Spirit takes what you have and uses it to the glory of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

When the Church almost decided to ban prophecy because of the excesses of some prophetic movements, Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyon in France, argued that that must not happen, because he had several men in his church who prophesied every Sunday, and he didn’t think it right to stop them.

Generally prophets have a corrective role in a church.

For example, when our Baptist Churches were facing a big controversy about the training of pastors, the elected leaders started giving way under pressure from some people who wanted to gain power.
The General Superintendent of the Union came to our College Retreat that year, and led us College students in a time of letting the Holy Spirit speak to us.
I went to a quiet place, and three times my Bible opened at an unfamiliar place, a few verses in the book of Jeremiah. Afterwards, I tried opening it at random again, and it never opened at that passage. But three times in a row — there has to be something in it!
I read, but it didn’t mean much to me.
Suddenly, I understood. It was a warning to our leaders, including the General Superintendant, that, if they didn’t hold their ground, we would all suffer.
I shook as I told everyone what I had seen. I didn’t want to deliver that message to the man who was as close as we Baptists get to having an archbishop!

Sometimes God’s Spirit gives us a gift for a one–off occasion; other people can always hear a word from the Lord like that.

But prophecy can also be a word of encouragement, like the word of Jesus to Philadelphia in the Revelation of St John. John spoke the words of Jesus to a little struggling church which had not denied the name of Jesus despite many trials and fears.

Prophecy is sometimes even a word about things to come, like when Isaiah prophesied the coming of Jesus the Messiah, or when Jesus prophesied the destruction of the Temple, or even when men like the Catholic Reformer, Savonarola or the Reformer, John Knox, accurately prophesied what would happen to well–known leaders of their times.

These messages build up Christians.

As Paul wrote,
…prophecy, however, is for believers, not for unbelievers.
That is why Paul said that the one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he will be able to prophesy.

Building up unbelievers
Near our house in Ingleburn, there is an old fibro cottage for auction. It will probably be knocked down and replaced with a pair of townhouses, or a duplex. That‘s what they are building around that area.

Sometimes you can’t get a lot of building done before you do a bit of demolition, and Paul says,
But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, 25 and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, “God is really among you!”

The pride that keeps people from Christ must be torn down if anything good is to be built in their lives.

Tongues is a sign for unbelievers in the sense of that passage Paul quotes from Isaiah. Speaking in tongues of men or angels is a sign that God sends people of strange languages and foreigners to speak to people, yet they refuse to believe. It is a sign of God’s judgment, and the trustworthiness of his word. But it turns no one to Christ.

On the other hand, prophecy, when it is allowed to speak to hearts, convinces people and they declare that God is among us.

A young man came to a Bible Study I was leading, and didn’t have a Bible with him. So I lent him my pocket New Testament.
Later that evening, I asked if anyone would like to share how they became a Christian.
He said he had become a Christian that night. He had been under conviction about Christ for weeks, but did nothing.
When he opened my Bible, it was dog–eared, and the turned–down corner pointed to where Jesus says,
If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.

Just like a word of prophecy, that word spoke to his heart and turned him to Jesus that very night.
Prophecy is when God’s word comes powerfully to people with the ability to change lives. Unbelievers need to hear that, and know it is real!

Conclusion
So we have seen that Spiritual gifts build up the person who uses them, they build up believers, and they even build up unbelievers.
The thing we have to remember is that, when we refuse to seek and to use the gifts which are ours through faith in Jesus, when we refuse to let the Spirit infill us and empower us, we rob our fellow believers of chances to grow, we rob the people of the world of exposure to Jesus our Lord, and we even rob ourselves of the experience of Jesus at work in us and through us, which means we, ourselves, do not get built up.

Can I urge you: if you don’t know Jesus through faith in his name, please turn to him and believe; and if you are not using the gifts he gives you, please repent and do the things you were called to do!

May God bless us all as we seek to live in obedience to him.
AMEN