Episode Transcript
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First Corinthians chapter fourteen. Please remain
well, go ahead and be seated.
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It's a little bit longer. First
Corinthians Chapter Fourteen, and we'll give our
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attention to God's word as we continue
hearing it from this wonderful letter by the
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Apostle Paul. Now I'm going to
I'm going to be reading through verse Twenty
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Five this morning. Let's hear God's
word. Pursue love and earnestly desire the
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spiritual gifts, especially that you may
prophesy. For one who speaks in a
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tongue speaks not to men but to
God, for no one understands him,
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but he asked utters mysteries in the
spirit. On the other hand, the
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one who prophesies speaks to people for
their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation. The
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one who speaks in a tongue builds
up himself, but the one who prophesies
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builds up the church. Now I
want you all to speak in tongues,
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but even more to prophesy. The
one who prophesies is greater than the one
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who speaks in tongues, unless someone
interprets so that the church may be built
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up. Now, brothers, if
I come to you speaking in tongues,
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how will I benefit you unless I
bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy
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or teaching? If even lifeless instruments
such as a flute or the harp do
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not give distinct notes, how will
any one know what is played? And
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if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle?
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So with yourselves. If, with
your tongue you utter speech that is not
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intelligible, how will any one know
what is said, for you will be
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speaking into the air? There are
doubtless many different languages in the world,
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and none is without meaning. But
if I do not know the meaning of
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the language, I will be a
foreigner to the speaker and the Speaker of
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foreigner to me. So with yourselves. Since you are eager for the manifestations
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of the spirit, strive to excel
in building up the church. Therefore,
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one who speaks in a tongue should
pray that he may interpret. For if
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I pray in a tongue, my
spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful.
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What am I to do? I
will pray with my spirit, but I
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will pray with my mind also.
I will sing praise with my spirit,
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but I will sing, pray,
sing with my mind also. Otherwise,
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if you give thanks with your spirit, how can any one in the position
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of an outsider say amend to your
Thanksgiving when he does not know what you
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are saying? For you may be
giving thanks well enough, but the other
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person is not being built up.
I thank God that I speak in tongues
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more than all of you. Nevertheless, in Church, I would rather speak
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five words with my mind in order
to instruct others then tenzo words in a
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tongue. Brothers, do not be
children. In your thinking, be infants
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and evil, but in your thinking
be mature. And the laws it is
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written by people of strange tongues and
by the lips of foreigners. Will I
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speak to this people, and even
then they will not listen to me,
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says the Lord. Thus, tongues
are assign not for believers but for unbelievers,
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while prophecy is a sign, not
for unbelievers but for believers. If,
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therefore, the whole church comes together
and all speak in tongues and outsiders
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or unbelievers enter, will they not
say that you are all out of your
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minds? But if all prophesy and
an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is
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convicted by all, he's called to
account by all, the secrets of his
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heart are disclosed, and so,
falling on his face, he will worship
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God and declare that God is really
among you. Praise God for his intelligible
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word to us. So in chapter
thirteen that we considered last week, Paul
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was almost singing to us about love, a very lyrical and beautiful passage in
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which he impresses upon us love,
it's importance, its lastingness, its loveliness.
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As I mentioned, there's many ways
in which first corinthians thirteen helps us
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to fall in love with love maybe
fall in love with it again. It's
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a beautiful thing and it's something we
are all called to well. Today,
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in Chapter Fourteen, Paul wants to
talk more about that, in particular how
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it applies in our worship services,
how love makes a difference for what we
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do and what we don't do when
we come together each Sunday. The first
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thing we want to notice as we
begin to look at this passage is our
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attitude or our approach toward love.
What is the way that we ought to
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approach love in our worship services and
at all times? What does Paul say
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he says at the beginning of Chapter
Fourteen, pursue love, and then he
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says earnestly desire the spiritual gifts.
So how should we approach love? While
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he wants us to pursue it?
And you know what it means to pursue
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something right? When a Predator up, for example, pursues its prey,
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it moves forward with a burst of
energy. It flies, it zooms,
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it dives, it strives, its
strategizes, it doesn't give up, it
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persists. It runs, it runs, it runs. This is what Paul
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calls us to do with love.
He doesn't tell us to wait around and
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look for a convenient opportunity, he
says to pursue it. It's love when
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you take the first few awkward steps
of friendship, the first hello, the
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first text, the first you want
to hang out. Pursuing love happens when
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you show up before everyone else to
make sure that the coffee and the water
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are ready. Pursuing love is sending
a card after a tragedy, even when
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you feel like it's not enough.
Pursuing love is having a Crock Pot of
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food ready for lunch after church to
share, or listening to someone formulate their
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thoughts when they're not formulated yet,
listening to someone or helping someone when they
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need a break, filling in when
somebody needs a rest. These are the
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ways that we pursue love. We
look for the opportunities, we hunt them
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down, we find them and we
zealously go after them. We might be
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doing these things from time to time, but Paul is asking a little more
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of us, isn't he? Maybe
a lot more in some cases. He
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doesn't just tell us to do loving
things or to be loving, he tells
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us to pursue it, and that
some question worth asking ourselves. Are we
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pursuing love? Always waiting until you
feel like it is not pursuing it.
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Always waiting until it's convenient or cheap
or easy is not pursuing love, and
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neither is pushing people into love either, or demanding that they accept your loving
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actions. In our zeal to be
loving towards one another, we never want
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to take away someone's right to say
no thanks. You may not understand why
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they don't want a hug or why
they don't want to meet up with you
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right now, but you don't have
to understand that in order to love them.
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That's because, as we read in
First Corinthians Thirteen. Love that we
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pursue, the kind of love that
Paul wants us to pursue, is a
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love that is patient, a love
that is kind, a love that isn't
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irritable or demanding that you accept everything
that I give to you. It's not
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a pushy love, even as it
is a pursuing love. This is the
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approach that he wants us to take, and it's a good one. It's
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a wonderful one to experience and it's
a wonderful one to give. It is,
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of course, the one that God
does for us. God didn't just
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wait around until it was easy and
convenient to love us. We read in
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the scriptures that, in the fullness
of time, according to all of his
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strategies, we might say, and
all of his providences, that the exact
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Roment and the right time, according
to his perfect will, Jesus Christ came
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into the world and he gave his
own blood, his own life, in
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order to love us. What's in
this kind of love and having already been
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pursued by God in this way that
Paul now calls us to exercize, that
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in accord with our spiritual gifts.
So, having considered the zealous way in
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which we ought to approach love.
He now applies that to spiritual gifts in
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the church. And Remember, he's
picking up where he's left off, because
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in Chapter Twelve Paul was teaching us
about this. And Chapter Twelve he talked
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to us about how we are like
a body, right, a body with
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ears and eyes and feet and all
of these parts, different and distinct and
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yet held together in this amazing way, each member of the body working together
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to build up the rest of the
body, as he said, as he
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said in our passage this morning,
in verse twelve, he says, so
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with yourselves, since you are eager
for manifestations of the spirit, strive to
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excel in building up the church.
This is how we're supposed to use our
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gifts. We are to strive to
excel, we are to improve, get
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better and practice and grow. And
now, having talked about this way of
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love, he returns to that again
in chapter fourteen and zeroes in on two
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spiritual gifts in particular, prophecy and
tongues, and speaking in tongues. Prophecy
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and speaking in tongues. Prophecy refers
to the proclamation of God's word. Speaking
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God's word and he talks about some
of the ways it's used for for building,
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for edifying, for encouragement, for
consolation, teaching these kinds of things.
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That's prophecy, the proclamation of God's
word to people. He also speaks
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of speaking in tongues, and this
refers to speaking in languages, known,
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languages that are understand understood by other
people. Now, both of these gifts,
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prophecy and speaking of tongues have extraordinary
and ordinary forms. Extraordinary forms of
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prophecy are predicting the future, telling
the future, like agabus did when he
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foretold the famine, or they like
Paul did when an angel spoke to him
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that the men on the ship that
he was with would all be saved,
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and they were. But it also
includes the ordinary gifts of prophecy, which
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are like preaching, teaching, encouragement. From the Scriptures we see this gift,
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for example, an Aquila and Priscilla
when they met with a police in
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his early days and taught him more
accurately the way of God. As far
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as speaking tongues goes, it's in
the same way. We have extraordinary forms
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of this, like we see in
acts to or the spirit of God descends
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on the disciples, these followers of
Christ, and they begin speaking in the
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languages of all these people who are
in Jerusalem, and all these people are
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amazed to hear the word of God
in their own languages. An extraordinary moment.
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But we also have the ordinary speaking
of languages on the ability to then
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which many people, I do,
strive and excel. The these people are
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still useful to the witness of the
Gospel and the building of the of the
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church as they translate the Bible,
as they translate sermons and worship services,
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as they go out into different parts
of our community and reach people with the
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word of God, which means that
everything here in chapter fourteen applies to us
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today. These two gifts in their
ordinary forms, and prophecy and speaking in
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tongues, speaking languages, definitely still
applies today and we ought to think about
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it very carefully and how it applies
to our worship services. It's true that
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those extraordinary gifts have passed with the
laying of the foundation that the apostles and
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prophets did. So we read last
time in Ephesians to twenty. The cannon
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has been closed and those authenticating extraordinary
gifts have largely ceased. But we still
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proclaim God's word, don't we?
And we still do it with languages.
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So these issues are still very much
relevant and worth our paying attention to.
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So what does Paul say? What
are how are we supposed to think about
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these things? Well, Paul's Point, overall point, is pretty straightforward.
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He says it's better to prophesy than
to speak and hungs. Now, why
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is that? His answer is because
it builds up the body more, especially
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when there's no one to interpret the
language that is spoken. Now that connects
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to love in this way, because
the spiritual gifts aren't for showing off.
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The spiritual gifts aren't just to have
a private time with the Lord. The
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spiritual gifts are for the public upbuilding
in love of the people of God.
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That's what he's saying over and over
and over again. There were some very
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talented people in Corinth. It was
a very cosmopolitan city, likely with lots
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of people who spoke languages, perhaps
some extraordinary, perhaps many, many in
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ordinary ways. The ability to speak
in languages, even today is still often
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an impressive thing. When somebody tells
us that they speak another language, we
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all wow, that's really cool.
And if they tell us they speak three
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or four or five or six.
We right and we honor and we're amazed
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at that sort of thing. But
what Paul says is don't be overly impressed
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with just the gift if it's not
used for the building up of the body.
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Imagine if I came to you this
morning and every single thing that I've
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said up to this point has been
in a language you didn't know. How
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would you be feeling right now?
How would you feel if not a single
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whole thing that has happened, it's
been understood and we're already, you know,
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forty five, forty minutes in?
It would be frustrating. You might
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feel a little bit like an outsider, like a foreigner, like somebody who
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doesn't belong. With the word of
God, even if it was preached very
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articulately and intelligently in the language that
I was speaking, benefit you at all?
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It wouldn't. And so Paul says
it doesn't matter if we speak lots
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and lots of languages or lots and
lots of words if they're not being used
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for the building up of the people
of God. Paul, in other words,
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asks us to reevaluate our priorities here
speaking in another language is impressive indeed,
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not to mention many languages, but
it's not the better gift in the
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church, because the point of the
gifts is for building up. Now does
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that mean that speaking in tongues is
not important? The Paul doesn't care about
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it, that he doesn't want to
know. He says I wish that all
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of you would speak in tongues.
Paul doesn't undervalue it. He doesn't or
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say it's a sinful thing in any
way. It's a great thing, but
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only when it's used for the building
up of the church, and it seems
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that the Corinthians were having difficulty with
this point. Speaking God's Word is good
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and he says even if you speak
it to yourself, that's fine, but
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if it's not fruitful in the mind
and the minds of other people, it
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is of no it vantage. It
must be understood. Paul gives an analogy
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to this, a couple of them
that are I find a little bit funny,
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just to imagine the images that he
gives. First he talks about a
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flute and a harp, these lifeless
instruments. So I just imagine a flute
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like sitting on a chair or something. It's not doing anything. It's just
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there and if you go over and
you clack some keys or you blow into
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it and it makes us sound,
you made a sound, but you haven't
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made music right. Nothing distinct has
happened. The notes haven't been ordered in
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a such a way that communicates something
that brings joy or sorrow, that lifts
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up or whatever the intention is.
It's just a sound. Same with the
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harp. He speaks of a trumpet. Next he says these notes that are
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given, these particular notes, they're
meant to communicate. Here he gives this
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wonderful example of getting ready for battle. Right, sometimes musical instruments are used
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to communicate very specific messages, and
with trumpets, right in military context,
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it's time to wake up, it's
time to go to war. Well,
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if the trumpeter gets up and he
just and then puts his trumpet down,
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right as the message been communicated?
No, if it's not understandable, what's
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the point? This Paul's point here. Likewise, with speaking in tongues,
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the message must be distinct, it
must be understandable and even if the language
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you're speaking and is known to you
and God knows it, you know you
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can understand each other that's fine,
but it's not for the public edification of
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the church, and that's what these
gifts are for. We must speak in
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intelligible ways. When we don't,
we shut people out, we make them
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feel like they don't belong and even
worse than just making them feel like they
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don't belong, we literally do not
give them the message that we are commanded
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to give. Think about the Great
Commission. What did Jesus say? Did
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he say go and shut the nations
out, or did he say, go
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and speak to them and teach them
to obey everything that I commanded you?
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We are to be people of the
word who not just know it, who
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not just know it and speak to
God about it, but who know it
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and share it, who know it
and teach it, who know it and
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encourage and bring consolation, who tell
people about Jesus and the hope that he
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offers. Even as we have been
told, sometimes this is difficult imposes challenging
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situations, but it's also in those
situations that we have the opportunity to reflect
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on situation, on on this word
and apply it and ways that are very
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beautiful. For a while, when
I was growing up, I belong to
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a bilingual church where most of the
people spoke English but many spoke only Chinese,
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and the church, Abiding Ball Paul's
instructions here in First Corinthians Fourteen,
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had to think very carefully about how
to make all this work, how to
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join together as the body of Christ, and they made several practical choices.
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One choice they made was to have
to worship services and English service and a
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Chinese service, so that the word
of God everybody could hear it. There
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was opportunities to hear it in a
language that you could understand. A second
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thing they did that I always thought
was impressive as they worked with both the
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English speakers and the Chinese speakers to
help them learn each other's language. Now,
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not everybody was capable of doing that, but it was encouraged and there
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were opportunities for that and instruction for
that, so that over time, in
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striving to excel in these gifts,
the people would be built up and there
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would be more encouragement and mutuality.
No, not likes I said. Not
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everyone was could do this, but
all were encouraged to do so as they
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were able, and sometimes we'd have
joint worship services together in which both languages
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were offered and sometimes even we would
sing the same songs in both languages.
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Now this white seemed to be a
little contrary to what Paul was saying,
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because you have this cacophony of sound. But in this particular instance I don't
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think it was for a couple reasons. One is that as both length as
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both languages were being spoken at the
same time, it was with the same
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song that everybody knew there was would
be an overhead projector over here with English
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and overhead projector over here in Chinese, and so you can see see the
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words and it was all being translated
as all happening the same time. It
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was a little bit of a mess, but it was also a beautiful one
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and one that everyone could understand an
expression of Christian unity. Of course there
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was this normal translation of the sermons
and other things going on as well.
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Different churches have to decide these things
differently, depending on their context the places
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they're in, but they here's something
we must be thoughtful about. According to
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some two thousand and fifteen data and
Pema county they're about fifty to a hundred
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thou people who speak a language other
than English at home and don't speak English
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very well. From time to time. This is why I will ask some
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of you who know other languages to
be on the lookout for newcomers who might
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benefit from these things, to be
able and to be ready to sit beside
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someone and translate and to help as
we are age able. Why? Why
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do we do these things? Because
intelligibility matter, ers being unable to understand
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what is going on matters. It's
a loving thing to do, to pursue,
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to strive for, even when it's
hard and difficult, to earnestly desire
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and to work toward. It's why, in and it's why the reformation was
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right to emphasize the translation of Scriptures
into languages that people understand. It's why
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the reformers were right to to encourage
and even demand that sermons happen, that
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services happen in languages that people know, not just Latin or whatever else.
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And it's why we also rightly reject
some pentecostal practices of just everybody making noise.
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These things are not intelligible and they're
not right, they're not loving and
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they shut people out and they deny
people the word of God that we are
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called to give. And so the
application all of this Paul says we ought
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to grow up. He says,
do not be children, and you're thinking,
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sure, be infants and evil.
That's a good way to be like
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kids, but not in your thinking. Understand what God is doing. And
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then, this is at the end
of the passage, he quotes this section
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from Isaiah. He says by people
of Strange Tongues, this is verse Twenty
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One, and by lips of foreigners. Will I speak to this people?
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And even then they will not listen
to me, says the Lord. This
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is an interesting reference. Here Paul
speaks to the people of Israel in judgment
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and he says, because you didn't
listen to me, you're basically going to
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be overwhelmed by these people that speak
foreign tongues. You're going to hear all
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of these things and the word of
God will you won't be able to to
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understand it. It won't be able
to know it. And in this way
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it's a signed for unbelievers, the
unbelievers being, of course, unbelieving Israel.
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Here he takes that and he trains
changes it in just a little bit
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of a way and he says,
yes, it's still for unbelievers, but
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it's but the unbelievers. It's not
you, core church and Corinth, but
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it's these outsiders. They need to
hear the word. We are reminded that
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God uses the God reveals himself in
ways that we can understand. God does
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not speak to us as he speaks
to himself. We do not know God
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as he knows himself, who is
infinite and unfathomable, and his wisdom and
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his ways. Instead, God condescends
to us and speaks to us in ways
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that we can understand, and he
gives it's not one word or a few
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words, but many words. The
Bible, the word of God, is
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a prized possession. It's precious to
us. We study it, we learn
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it, we know it because God
has spoken. God has chosen to bless
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us with it, to make himself
known. If we take that word and
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we stopped speaking in a way that
is known, we in a way begin
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to undo what God has done,
to shut people out who have a right
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to hear no, Paul says.
Instead, when you speak in tongue,
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speak in a way that is understandable
and intelligible. As we close, one
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of their application to consider in this
passage, as it a lot of times,
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and I noticed that people today thinking
very individualistic terms regarding church. I'm
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here to get fed and if I
don't, that's bad, and if it's
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good, it's good, and that, of course, is a part of
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it. God feeds us with his
word, he helps us, he encourages
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us, all the things that are
mentioned here in this passage and others.
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But I don't just come here to
get fed or to to be fed.
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I don't come here just to eat, but I come here, we all
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come here to be part of a
group me and that's a different thing.
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What you actually have in a worship
service is not just a time for you
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to be with God, but a
time for you to be with the church.
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With God. It is a group
meal. It's about eating together.
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We celebrate a sacrament that we call
communion, and that communion is not just
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with the Lord, is with one
another as a part of what Paul has
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been calling the body of Christ and
that applies to all aspects of our worship
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service, from the preaching of the
word of God, which needs to be
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understandable and intelligible, to every part. When you sing, in other words,
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it's not just because you've been called
to sing, but that we have
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been called to sing. We need
to hear your voice. It's not and
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when we call it, when we
confess our sins, it's not just because
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you need to confess your sins,
but we need to hear you confess your
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sins. We need to confess our
sins to one another. Going back to
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the analogy of a meal, it's
a totally different thing right to grab a
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sandwich out of the fridge and sit
by yourself in front of the TV then
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it is to sit down with your
family, to sit down with your relatives,
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to sit down with your brothers and
your sisters and your friends, and
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to pass food and to wait for
food and to share the food and to
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talk about the food and to rejoice
with each other. Totally different experiences.
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When we come together and worship and
the as a church, God calls us
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as a church, as a body, and that's why we must exercise these
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gifts in love. It's being who
he's called us to be, it's doing
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what he's called us to do and
it's living in light of the promises that
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he's already made. Of course,
we fail at this in all kinds of
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ways all the time. We don't
pursue love as we ought to do.
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We don't strive for excellence as we
ought to. Sometimes we struggle because we're
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just stubborn and lazy. Sometimes we're
struggle because we don't know what the right
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thing is to do and we can't
quite figure it out. There's all kinds
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of reasons, but our hope of
it is that we are bound up in
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this love that ultimately comes from the
Lord himself. As I said before,
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it's the Lord who pursues us,
it's the Lord who unites us, it's
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the Lord who then blesses us.
We are here as a family of God,
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to experience and to receive his blessings. So let's do that when we
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come to church, let's come expectantly
and hopefully and waiting on the blessings of
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the Lord, knowing that we will
hear his word and we will hear it
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intelligently and that, as we have
opportunity to do so, we will share
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it with others and little conversations,
in our confessions, in our singing and
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all these different ways, and as
we do these things, may God be
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glorified, may the spirit be made
more manifest. Best I mean the outsiders
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and the strangers and foreigners come in
here, say Amen and give glory to
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God. Let's pray
