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In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
Brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults.
In the Law it is written:
“With other tongues and through the lips of foreigners, I will speak to this people, but even then they will not listen to Me, says the Lord.”
Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers; prophecy, however, is not for unbelievers but for believers. So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and inquirers or unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? But if an unbeliever or an inquirer comes in while everyone is prophesying, they are convicted of sin and are brought under judgment by all, as the secrets of their hearts are laid bare. So they will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, “God is really among you!”
1 Corinthians 14:20-25
This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
The Bible speaks about the Lord giving His people gifts and as we have seen in this fourteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul has centered teaching on two specific gifts: prophesy and the speaking of tongues.
The distinction between these two means of speaking messages from God has been made clear. Prophecy is always intelligible for the hearer but anyone speaking in tongues fails to bring any sense of understanding to what they are saying unless they or someone else has been granted the ability to interpret what has been said. This is what has led Paul to assert that prophecy is the preferred message of communicating God’s word and will to others, whether they are believers or unbelievers.
This assertion is central to our message for today drawn from verses 20 through 25. Look again at those words here:
Brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults.
In the Law it is written:
“With other tongues and through the lips of foreigners, I will speak to this people, but even then they will not listen to Me, says the Lord.”
Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers; prophecy, however, is not for unbelievers but for believers. So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and inquirers or unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? But if an unbeliever or an inquirer comes in while everyone is prophesying, they are convicted of sin and are brought under judgment by all, as the secrets of their hearts are laid bare. So they will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, “God is really among you!”
Here, we find Paul continuing to speak to the power of prophecy and why it is preferential over speaking in tongues, especially when it comes to its impact on unbelievers.
If an unbeliever walked into a church and everyone was speaking in tongues, there would be no understanding of what was being said and the unbeliever would walk away thinking that the church congregants were crazy. But if the congregants were speaking words that were comprehensible, words of understanding from a God who is always seeking to show His people the way He wants for them to live, then the unbelievers will get the message loud and clear, feel convicted of their sin, and feel judged as “the secrets of their hearts are laid bare”. The end result will be that the unbelievers will fall down and worship God, repenting because they know that God is really in their presence within the congregation.
No one can possibly know the will of God unless someone clearly communicates it to them in a way that they can comprehend. Anyone speaking prophesy accomplishes this by sharing the power of God’s word in a way that is understandable to anyone who hears it. This is what makes it greater than speaking in tongues.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
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