Welcome to be on Sunday, an extension of the preaching
ministry here at Leemington. Emci am Pastor Jonah Chitty,
joined as always by Pastor Joe Penner and Pastor Jake.
And I say as always, Jake's been out a couple times, a couple
episodes, but he's back today, back and ready as ever.
Thank you. And he preached the sermon on
Sunday. I'll let you, Jake, I'll let you
give us a recap of that. Share your title, go over your
points. If you want to share it, share a
little bit about it. I think we did you, we didn't do
you any favors by giving you 40 verses to go through in First
Corinthians. But, and I think in in like in
our defence that it might be one sentence for Paul.
You know, he just like he liked to talk and run on sentences.
And if you look at it, if you look at in the original text,
there's no punctuation, no capital letters at all.
And so must have been hard to read.
I must have or maybe no lowercase letters.
Sorry, it was all caps, no punctuation, no spaces.
It must have been really hard to read.
So if we're confused by it, just think who the original
translators how confused they were by it.
That's right. Yeah.
So, yeah. So I looked at the preaching
calendar and uh oh, this passage falls to me and 1st Corinthians
14 and has never been an easy passage for me to, to understand
or to really dig into, much less preach on.
And I don't think I've ever preached on 1st Corinthians 14
in my life. And I've preached for many, many
years. And so for me, this was a hard
one in the sense that not only is it difficult in terms of
understanding, but also how do people today interpret and apply
it? I thought to myself, OK, how am
I going to navigate this and do justice to the text?
But then also, it's so big. And as we talked briefly prior
to this podcast about it would have been good to split it up.
And I really thought about it. Maybe I should just pick a few
verses and just hone in on them and just say, I'm going to leave
the rest out. But I thought, no, I'd rather
not do that because this is what we're doing and I don't want to
leave anything out. So I tried to dig through the
whole thing and spend a lot of time on it.
And I came up with the title, the importance of orderly
worship and how Paul uses the words, the concepts of speaking
in tongues and prophecy. What, what interested me was how
he started that whole discussion off with pursuing love.
And that's kind of a foundation out of which everything else
grows. And basically as I preached my
sermon, what Joe preached in the previous sermon was if love is
not there, then nothing else really works.
And so this whole thing has to be understood in that context as
well. And as far as the, the, the
concepts of speaking in in tongues and prophecy, I don't
think everybody today in our world understands it the same.
And I for myself just want to take this as literal as
possible. When Paul just uses the word
tongues, he means languages. That's how I understand it.
And even though I know not everybody might agree with that,
but also then prophecy. When when Paul says prophecy
here, I understand him to mean simply exhortation,
encouragement, building up, not predicting future events that we
don't know yet, as some would say, well, I have a word of
prophecy for you. The Lord is going to do XYZ for
you in the next month or so. And so that to me is is kind of
in a nutshell. And he talks about the goals of
it, what it's supposed to do again, lifting up, encouraging.
And then the most difficult part for me, I think was, well, maybe
not the most difficult. I have to recorrect that the
women should be silent in the church.
And that I really wrestle with because he doesn't explain it in
great detail, but I assume the people he was writing to, they
knew what he was talking about. And of course, then in our time
today, there have literally been churches, may still be, I would
say there still are churches where women literally have to be
sound except for singing. As far as I know, they cannot do
anything except sing. And yeah, so yeah, it's a
difficult passage in some ways, but I think at the same time, I
think it's helpful for us. So yeah, leave it open for
anybody. If you could, I don't know if
you had to summarize the the the sermon in one sentence, like
what would the main point of your sermon be?
Yeah. So the main point it would be
practice orderly worship through the use of the gifts God has
given. You good?
Yeah, I like that's good. That's that's something that
that we should all strive for using our gifts, orderly worship
for for building others up. Yeah.
So. Yeah.
And I think that's a good a good summary of it because sort of
like you mentioned already, Jake, like he sort of starts the
passage off by saying pursue love and earnestly desire the
gifts, especially that you may prophecy.
And so then he's going to later on talk about doing that in an
orderly way, right. So it's like, yeah, love each
other, seek to seek ways to use your gifts.
But like, it should all be done orderly and it should all be
done well. And so that's that's a good
summary. I think the people in Corinth
the way I understand the letter, I'm just trying to imagine what
was in this other side of it in Corinth, what was going on and
the way I I'm assuming it happened.
I think this is correct is there were worship services was noisy,
chaotic, people shouting over each other and women too, which
was not normal in that day and age.
And so these worship services, they were actually doing more
harm than good. And so here are visitors coming
to this church in Corinth, not even Christians necessarily, but
curious what's going on there. And I'm hearing these strange
stories and they're doing this and that and the other and Paul
saying, look, guys, what you're doing is not helping.
God is not being honored. You're not being built up.
And the unbelievers, they don't get anything and they're not
even convicted. Yeah, yeah.
And one of the things, one of the things you said early on in
your in your sermon as you were talking about like the orderly
worship, is you ask the question like, is my personal time with
the Lord orderly? Yeah.
And that was an interesting thought.
I've never thought of that before.
I don't know. Do you?
I don't know if you remember saying it, but I don't know.
Would you be able to expand on that a little?
Bit very much. So here's here's the struggle I
face. Maybe I'm alone in this.
I think I'm not. But here's here's the struggle I
face sometimes. See I have an iPad to do my
studies and devotions in the morning.
I sometimes thought about just putting aside and use only the
Bible and the pen and notepad. The reason I do want to
sometimes do that is because the the iPad is such a distraction
in some ways. Oh, that just popped up and my
mind goes in all kinds of directions.
I'm reading and I'm in prayer and then all of a sudden
something else comes. I'm going to quick and check
this. And so I don't know if you ever
do that, but this has been a struggle for me sometimes
because my mind is not orderly. Now, if the Holy Spirit lives
inside of me and he's dwelling in my heart and mind, what does
he think about all this? It's not orderly.
If if my thoughts would would be in a continuing stream across
the across the street, the screen in the in the front of
the church, what would they be reading?
Where would my mind be? What's for lunch?
Yeah. Oh, I better get home soon
because the roast is burning or I wonder who's going to who's
going to be at such and such a place in the afternoon, right?
Man, he talks fast. I do talk fast.
Yeah, that. Would that would might be coming
across my screen like as a as a as a redneck from the South in
the United States, it's sometimes very, very fast.
That's a good thought. It is a good thought though,
like is our are we are we setting aside times or days
specifically for the Lord? I know like I've even had
conversations with this recently with, with people in the church
and we talked about the difference of, yeah, I mean,
it's great. It's great to have your Bible,
you know, on your phone all the time.
And that is a benefit if you're at, you know, you're at the
doctor's office or you're out. I don't nobody rides a bus, but
if you're on a bus and you. Know somebody out there rides a
bus? Somebody maybe rides a bus, but
if you're out there and it's like if you're just out and
about and you can pull up God's word, I mean, that's excellent.
That's great. But to use that for your
personal time, like even in a positive way, you use your phone
for 1000 things and now just to add Bible reading as another one
of them, like you said, your mind often gets distracted, but
in a negative way. You know, your phone is used
quite honestly to sin. And it's like, now there's stuff
that you sort of have this tool that it can be beneficial at
times, But maybe there's, there is a place.
I, I agree with you. Like just specifically, like
when I read a Bible, I want to read a physical Bible and I'm
going to hold that physical Bible and it's like there is no
distraction. There is no notification that's
going to pop up. There is nothing distracting My
time like my phone is off to the side and, and I'm focused on
reading the word. And one thing that I had a
professor say as an idea was inevitably as you read, you're
going to have things come to your mind, even if you set aside
the phone and turn it off. So he said, like what he does is
he has a notepad beside him so that it's like, Oh, I need to
remember to do this today. He's like, if, if I don't do
anything with that, it will keep coming up in my mind.
He says, but if I write it down, then I can then I can push it to
the side and go, OK, I've, I've written it down so that I can
remember it and now I can focus back on reading because those
are those distractions will come.
But we can have strategies, again, like you said, for
orderly worship to say this half hour, this hour, this 15
minutes, whatever it is, it's like is blocked off and it's
like for the Lord and it's not going to be distracted by other
things. Because we would not do that to
a friend. If we sit in a coffee shop with
a friend, we have time now devoted to this person.
To spend time with this person to look at the phone is
disrespectful. Yeah, well, it used to be.
I would say now it's more normal than.
Than it but it's not healthy. It's definitely not healthy.
But yeah, I didn't think you just made a comment earlier.
I use this thing to send and why would I use it to like it's an
instrument of Satan. Then you're going to you're
going to use it as your tool for worshipping God.
That's something to think about because for a lot of, for a lot
of people who, who have issues with pornography, things like
that, they're literally saying this is the instrument of my
sin, but I'm going to like make an excuse and this is also my
Bible. And I think.
You're staring at the same piece of glass that you would stare at
to send or yeah, that's pretty incredible to think about.
Yeah, the the only thing I would say as well is that for those
who cannot quote UN quote read and they use this as an audio
device. So there has to be exceptions,
right? And So what I really like here,
what we're doing now is taking the Bible onto the pulpit and
reading from the Scripture, even though you use a tablet to to
read from, because it's simpler, but you still use the Word when
you read the passage. We're reading from the Word.
Yeah, and I hope nobody sees us as saying that it's wrong to
have your Bible on your phone. I, I think it's just, it's an
interesting thing to be thinking about.
Like how can I separate maybe at times?
Like again, I, I think I do think it is great to have your
Bible on your phone that you could access it whenever you
want. But I also agree with you, this
idea that like I should be reading for my physical Bible,
which maybe just to mention here in this podcast, again, I would
know, we've said it from the pulpit that, you know, we, we
try not to have the text up on the screen, like the the
physical verses that we're going through, because we want people
to be bringing their Bibles. You know, we love to hear the
pages turning as as we're turning to the text and, and
those sorts of things. We want you to bring your
physical Bible. Yeah, when we're reading, if we
look up and you're looking at us as we read the Bible, I, I
wonder why I want that's, that's something honestly, that's not
like, I mean, it's like it's funny and but the thing about,
but honestly, like if you're at church, the pastor's reading
from the word. You should read along with him.
So for one thing, make sure he's reading and saying what's in the
Bible. Right.
You're going to make everybody just look down so that that's.
All right, that's all right. Don't make eye contact with me
on Sunday as I preach when I'm reading from the Scripture.
So. Another thing about disorderly
services, I'm reminded of something that AW Tozer wrote
many years ago and I don't remember the book he wrote it
in, but he talked about the the increasing level of all kinds of
things we need in our services today.
And he's passed away many years ago.
And I'm just kind of thinking, what would you say today?
Because I remember how frustrated I have been at times.
Now I am not tech savvy at all. And sometimes on Sunday morning
in church, I get so frustrated. We're having technical
difficulties. That phrase just grates on me.
That's the huge disorder thing. And so we have this whole thing
in the back, this big sound board, and it's all good stuff,
I get it. But it's this big sound board
that you have to train professionals to run it.
And then we have electrical difficulties or technical
difficulties. I think to myself, OK, can we
not just use a Bible in a songbook?
Well, anyway, back to AW Tozer. He said back in those days when
these books were written in the New Testament and all that, they
had a Bible. Not even not just books,
letters, Scripture passages and some songs.
That's all they had. He said today, now use his
words. He said we have a truckload of
claptrap and we still can't get it right.
And so I'm just wondering at what point where is it the best?
I'm not saying technology is sin or wrong, but it does become a
distraction, at least in my life, too much of it.
Now, I know it's subjective. Somebody would say we don't have
enough of it. Some say we need more of it.
We need to come to a happy medium, I guess.
But to me, too much becomes distracted and so that it
borders on disorder. Yeah, Yeah.
That's a hard, that's maybe a hard thing to think about.
Like so you mean specifically in church?
Like you're not talking like technology in our lives?
I mean, you're not a church service.
Yeah, like some church services. They're they're so busy.
It's so cluttered. There's so much stuff going on,
so many moving parts. Where's the where's the, the
sweetness or the, the, the calm. I'm shouldn't be calm is the
wrong word, perhaps. But this, this Worshipful
atmosphere. Yeah, Yeah.
Well, I mean, I guess something to make me think about that what
comes to my mind right now is like Israel like, like that
doesn't strike me as a simple like when they had, you know,
their full orchestra going and all the different, all the
different instruments and all the different people singing.
Like, I don't think that was like a solemn it.
Was noisy. Quiet, like I'm guessing that
was a very like that was an incredible sound that was, you
know, probably very extravagant, you know, but I think I think I
get the point of what you're saying.
And I think it has to do with culture, because it was born and
raised in, because it was very solemn, it was very somber, it
was Worshipful, meditational, that kind of.
Thing but Worshipful this is this is where you're bumping up
against culture and you just made the comment Worshipful to
you seems like it's somber. It's it's meditative but
Worshipful to others may be exuberant right and joyful and
and motion and feeling and neither one are wrong.
See, and that's where I came up with this, this illustration,
this lady that came to our church some years ago, this is
way back. She literally left me says he
says you're too quiet, you need to.
And so I sense that. And so is there a place in time
when we just, we can't just get rid of what we do?
How do we accommodate? Can we do both in the same
service? Can we?
Can we do together? And yeah, those are not easy
questions. Yeah, different postures of
worship. Yeah, that's good.
Whatever the case, it should be done orderly fashion.
Where'd you see that Joe? Verse 26.
Verse. 26. There's a verse in the Bible
that says make a joyful noise unto the Lord.
A lot of people who Can't Sing say that they they, they're
using that, that verse, but they're just making noise.
They're just joyful. It's joyful.
Yeah. I may not be able to sing, but I
can make a noise. Yeah, I know.
One of the things I appreciated that you drew out was like your
second point was prophecy is better than speaking in tongues.
And so I know you were sort of like trying to draw out like the
difference between those two things.
I know Paul says, well, I'd rather, I'd rather say a few
words and be helpful than say 10,000 words and nobody knows
what I'm saying, right? Like so the, the point of your
gift is to be a blessing to other people.
It's for the mutual benefit or for the upbuilding of other
people that your gifts are to be other others focused and not for
yourself. And so I was, I was grateful for
that. I don't know if you have
anything you really want to. Add to that, but I wonder
sometimes how much do we literally think of I'm going to
go today to church. My primary purpose is first to
worship my Lord, but also second, to be a benefit and a
blessing and upbilling to my neighbor.
How much do those thoughts cross our minds?
I'm going to go to church today and I'm going to see people and
going to wish them well. Hi, good morning and encourage
them, give them a handshake and sometimes a hug.
I don't do hugging much, but you know what I mean.
Just this, this, this atmosphere of I'm glad to be here and glad
you're here. We're connecting, right?
Building each other up. Yeah, I think sometimes I miss
that. We go there because of a job to
do, or we go there because it's routine, it's habit.
Yeah, yeah, that's actually that's that's a really good
thing to challenge people with because I think our culture has
trained us to be consumers that like I should always be looking
for the benefit to me. And I think like what you're
saying, it's like how many people come to church with that
mindset of like, you know, are are they going to, you know, is
the who's on who's on coffee cart today?
Is it going to be, you know, the strength of coffee that I
prefer? Or what songs are they going to
sing? Is it going to be the songs that
I like or, you know, those sorts of things like is, is, is it the
passage that I like? Are they going to preach in the
way that I like? And we're too focused on
ourselves. That's a really good question to
say in what way, as you prepare your heart to come to church,
are you looking for ways to serve other people?
Like you should be walking in the door having already prayed.
Who can I bless today? Who can I serve today?
Who can I encourage? Who can I pray for?
You know, can I be looking for a guest who maybe they're here for
the first time and maybe somebody's been praying for them
to come to church and this is the first Sunday they've been in
church in a year or two years or five years.
And how can I be minister to someone else and care for
someone else rather than just, oh, they sang that song again.
I hate that song or whatever it is right?
Like always looking for like what I get out of it.
Yeah, the building up of the body and by what we do with each
other. Yeah, very much so.
Yeah, along those along those lines we brought up, you brought
up the prophecy in tongues. We did have a question from from
our audience. And so this person's question is
about prophecy. And then he says, it seems like
it encompasses several things. In the Old Testament, the
prophets would usually warn people to repent or there would
be judgment. In this passage, Paul says, and
he quotes 1st Corinthians 14. Three.
He uses the New Living Translation in his question, so
I'll just read it. He says, but one who prophecies
strengthens others, encourages them and comforts them.
And so he's asking, is there a difference between what Paul is
saying prophecy is here in First Corinthians, and what the
prophets of the Old Testament would be?
Yeah, it's a very good question. And if you read prophets like
Isaiah, Jeremiah, they had words of warning and repentance and
count in judgment if they would not repent.
And that's different than what Paul is doing here.
Paul here is talking to people who are believers, who are
followers of Christ, who have, who are saved.
And as he says here, the one who prophesized strengthens others,
encourages them and cumbers them.
Versus Jeremiah when he was talking to the people of Israel,
he wasn't comforting them, he wasn't encouraging them, He was
talking, you guys turn around, you got to repent or else.
So there's different prophecies. Oh, OK, I'll push back just a
little bit there. But it's not Jeremiah
prophesying saying you need to repent or else that that can't
be an encouragement. Oh, yeah, you're right.
I mean, I get it. It makes sense, John.
That makes sense. It can be it, but also I think
the idea of disposed to that the fear of God was gone and those
people, there was no respect for God.
They had sort of, so to speak, worship services still happen,
but there was no respect for the Lord.
They were very brazenly living in sin.
Jeremiah is is is very distraught about that.
The Spirit inspires him to preach this is sin, you need to
repent and judgment is coming versus this passage.
There's no mention of, oh, somebody needs to repent, or
well, at least from this passage.
But we do find later, a little bit later on, people will be
convicted, unbelievers will come and hear the prophecy.
So there must be something along those lines.
But here, just this verse alone that we have here, but one who
prophecies, strengthens others, encourages them and comforts
them, OK. Yeah.
And I, I, I would tend to agree that there's a, there is a
difference between the two that prophecy served.
There's prophecy in the Old Testament, like, like an
impending judgment, right? Like if you continue in your
ways, like God's gonna punish you, right?
And I think there's prophecy in the New Testament as well.
You know, we think of even a revelation where, you know, John
saw a vision, right? And he?
Gives passage. He gives prophecy about the end
of the world, right. Judgment is coming and you know
you you should repent. And so I, and I think to me, to
me, this verse that you know, this, this person sending in the
question is quoting chapter 14, verse three.
He says the one who prophesized speaks to the people for the
upbuilding and encouragement and consolation or comfort.
As the NLT says, I think Paul is defining what prophecy is.
So for him, that is what prophecy is it it it and maybe
the and maybe he is talking I, I think he's talking about like
you, you're saying something that's encouraging.
You're saying something that strengthens, you're saying
something that comforts. So we may think of prophecy
sometimes as preaching and I and I think it is proclaiming God's
word, but Paul may just have in mind the the ability to use
words in a way that we're strengthening and encouraging
and comforting other people. And so I think this is a gift
for everybody. And I think that's why he says
earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially to prophecy.
And so like the second part of this, this listener's question
is how do you think we pursue prophecy?
I think that's it. We ought to be in God's Word
every day. We got to be praying every day
so that I can be an encouragement to other people
when I come to church. How can I speak words to
encourage, to strengthen, to comfort other people?
And that's how you use that gift to be a blessing to other
people. It doesn't have to be.
If you don't, God's going to get you.
And I think one of the one of the prophets that comes to mind
here, I was thinking about this and I was doing a bit of
research on this question. Like John the Baptist was also
considered a prophet, right? And So what did he do to the
Pharisees? He called them straight up said
you repent, you what brutal Vipers he calls them.
And so that is very aggressive and that's very confrontive and
didn't go so well for him, though he confronted Herod too.
And of course, that was the end of his ministry right there in
the sense that he got, he got jailed and eventually died for
it, so. I think it went perfectly well
for him. Well, yeah, of course I see your
point, but from a human standpoint, things didn't go
well. Well, I think, I think I'm just
going to push back on your, your Joe's description as well.
I, I think verse 3 says, on the other hand, the person who
prophesied speak to people he's not.
I don't think he's describing what it is.
I think he describes why they do it.
So for the benefits, so for the strengthening, for
encouragement, for consolation. So I think, I think, I think
it's, I think you're right, But also it's like a it's subtle
like shift in thinking that the reason that, that we prophesize
for building others up. I think that it comes to the
same point, right? But, but again, I, I think like
to, to be fair, I, I don't know that, that they're completely
different. I, I think that, yeah, Old
Testament prophets, we're given a specific word of the Lord for
a specific time and place to a specific people to, to express
God's word. That's what they, that's what
they did. That's what prophets did.
They expressed God's word. So in the same way, like I'm not
a cessationist in the in like when it comes to prophecy, like
a lot of the gifts, like this is one of them that a lot of people
say is dead. I don't believe that it is
because I believe that that for us to preach, we stand in front
of God's people and we say thus says the word of the Lord.
And then we we we take that word and we take what we know about
those people and we say this is how it applies to you.
Like that. This is this is what this word
means for us. So like we we take it, we
understand it, we explain what it means to the people who it
was written to. And then we take it and we
expand on it. We say this is how it applies to
us. So I think, I think they're the
same. There is taking the word of the
Lord and giving it to the people for a specific time, a specific
place, specific moment. You have to go down to the third
definition in the lexicon to get to prophecy as foretelling.
So like you mentioned, Revelation, Revelation is a mix
of literature, it's a mix of genre.
So they got, you got letters, right?
We got in the 1st 5 chapters, we got 7 letters to seven churches.
Then we've got, we've got prophecy, we've got some
apocalyptic language that's in there that's way different.
And, and so like, yeah, John and I think John the Baptist wasn't
like the reason he's mentioned as a prophet is he's the first
prophet after 400 years of silence, right?
The reason that that I would, I don't know that I think the, the
reason people say that prophecy is dead is because we have, like
you mentioned earlier, we were talking Joe, we have God's full
counsel. Like we don't need any more
revelation to understand who God is and become a saving faith in
him. And so I think, I think, how do
you pursue prophecy? You pursue it by studying the
word and then and then studying people and then forming
relationships with people, as you mentioned earlier, Jake,
like being relational and then figuring out, all right, how am
I going to go to church today, going to meet with the body of
believers. We're going to get together as a
church. What, what, what, what's the
word of the Lord for them, right?
And how does, how does what I've been studying this week apply
And how do I help edify and build up the church?
So I don't know, maybe that's too much.
Maybe I have a slightly different take than you guys on
it, but that's kind of where I feel about prophecy.
Yeah, well, I mean, you would be, you would be prophetic.
I would say be prophetic by by doing exactly what you said,
reading and studying God's Word and then telling people about
it. Yeah, right.
Like we're going through Revelation.
Revelations. Revelation And the interesting
thing in like chapter 16 that I was reading is, you know, here
you have these seven bowls of God's wrath that are poured out.
And the thing that stands out to you is all, all the people of
the earth are facing these incredible judgments, this
incredible wrath of God. And then you have this phrase
that's repeated, I think three times.
They did not repent and give him glory.
They did not repent of their disease, their deeds.
And so rather than repenting and turning to God, these people are
are continuing to to face God's wrath because of their
unrepentance. And so it's like we're prophetic
in the way that when we tell people the only way for you to
be forgiven to get to heaven is by trusting in Jesus Christ your
savior. Otherwise you will face God's
wrath, you know, and that is a prophetic statement.
It is, but it's being faithful to God's word.
And I think maybe, and maybe we could talk briefly because I'm
sure this question maybe came up to people if they were thinking
about prophecy as as foretelling, like you were
saying, what do we do with people who speak a prophetic
word, you know, and claim some sort of like, I don't know,
something right? Like this person is the
Antichrist or this is the here is what's going to come, some
sort of prophetic word. How do we sort of handle those
sorts of things? Yeah, it's a good question.
I think to me it's easy. It's like, does it contradict
what we already have revealed to us in Scripture?
And if it does, then it's not a word from the Lord, because God
doesn't contradict himself. He's had one plan from the
beginning of time, since the foundation of the world, and
he's been and he's been carrying out that plan.
And for someone to say something that contradicts it is it's,
it's just, it's wrong. And so that's something that you
wouldn't put your faith in, you wouldn't believe.
Now, I don't know, like if Jake, you mentioned someone came and
said, Hey, you know, I've that someone prophesied over me and
said I was going to be healed of whatever XY or Z and it came
true. Well, I don't have that.
We don't have somewhere in scripture to test that, right?
So like you just have to test their, their heart and like, you
know, have conversation. I believe that's what you would
do anyway. It was like, are they, what are
they, what do they have to gain from this?
Did they ask me for anything for it?
Did they, did they try to manipulate me in any way by
saying that, you know, that's the types of things I would
question. I don't know if anybody else has
anything to add there. When people say things like,
well, God spoke to me and your son will be healed from his
cancer. Well, I don't know that.
And that may not happen because then all of a sudden there's a
lot of disappointment and discouragement and
disillusionment. I think we as believers should
not say things like, and even in the Old Testament there were
prophecies made that way, But I don't think we in the New
Testament, the new, in the new covenant, we should do those
things. I shouldn't go and say, well,
God has told me that your grandfather will have a he
healed from his cancer, whatever.
I think those are very broad statements and I've heard those
things and it can be very detrimental to to people's
faith. Yeah, absolutely.
And. But I think the answer to it
right, Joe, I'm sorry to cut you off.
I just think the answer to all of this is like this idea that
that that there are a few small subset of people who hold the
keys to the word of God and they're the only ones that can
read. It is just a lie from hell.
So my encouragement to the church is to to read your Bible,
like study your Bible. Like none of us would ever say
to somebody, oh, you don't read the Bible.
And if we ever do, you should question our motives.
Are we trying to hide something from you?
Are we trying to keep you from we're trying to manipulate you
in some way. This idea that the preacher is
the only one who can handle the word of God is alive from hell.
And it's what our Protestant forefathers fought against,
right? Yeah, like very much talking
about tongues. You go to Latin Mass.
What in the world? Nobody.
Well. People understood.
It, they don't even speak Latin now, it's like they just
repeating phrases on a, on a, on a paper in front of them.
The priest may not even understand what he's saying.
And so like talking in tongues, like that's a tongue and it's
not being interpreted. And people go home thinking,
well, I didn't, I went to church today and then I'm just going to
go do whatever I want to do after.
And it means nothing. No, I mean, that doesn't mean I
don't believe that there are some Catholic Christians.
You know, I think that there are probably a whole bunch.
But like, yeah, I mean, like if that's if the Mass is in Latin
and you don't speak Latin, it's no good for you.
So anyway. It doesn't build you up.
It doesn't. I just felt like I got a little
bit on a soapbox there and I apologize to the audience.
I'm not apologizing, you guys. But anyway.
No, it's good. And I think it's this idea, like
you said, that we have God's revealed word.
We have it and we can read it. It's complete.
It is complete. We're even told not to add to
it. Exactly.
And so anybody who seeks to
seeks to add to it. It's like, yeah, don't.
Don't. So yeah, and I think it's
important for us to like, let's put in context what First
Corinthians is, right? Like First Corinthians in this
day was being written like it wasn't in their byway, right?
The Scriptures for them in this time, maybe a gospel or two, and
then the letters that were written, but they were just
circulated. They may not have been
considered Scripture yet. And then but the whole Old
Testament. And so let's be clear about
that. Like like in Paul's day when
he's talking about like fresh words from the Lord, like it
could have been like they they had to really test.
Did this come from an apostle? Is this something that I can
trust? Is this is this, you know, is
this Scripture? They had to think through those
things. They had to use discernment.
They had to have the Holy Spirit had to help guide them.
And we're grateful that he did, right?
Because otherwise we wouldn't have a complete word, you know,
because when when you said it's in there, it tells us not to add
to it. Well, in order for it to be in
there at that point, it had to be added.
That's true. And so like, we had to think.
We had to think clearly about these things and like, be like,
there. Yeah.
I mean this. This wasn't scripture until it
was. It's interesting how right even
the Apostle Peter, in one of his letters, I don't remember which
part, which from one first or second Peter, he talks about how
some people distort Paul's writings or misunderstand or
misuse Paul's writings, and then he says as they do other
scripture, so Peter gave recognition to Paul's writings
as Scripture. Yeah, he did.
He did. Absolutely they did.
And they knew that it was, I mean, Peter also knew that it
was God breathed, right? He recognized that as he was
writing the letters that that this was something way bigger
than even he could even like comprehend.
Like could you imagine being, being Peter and, and realizing
that what you're writing in Scripture, like just I, I, I
don't know where these thoughts came from.
There's not the like, I couldn't have come up with this on my
own. I don't know.
So I in those days, in the context, it's, it's poor for us
to remember that like these Christians had it way harder
than us at some points, right? They, they had to discern all
these different things. And I think Paul, Paul's doing
here is he's given like a like, like what what God did for the
Israelites, right? Like you look at you mentioned
the services back then, like God gave that in order, right?
Remember, read Exodus and all the different chapter after
chapter after chapter about how to set up the temple and how to
set up the well, it wasn't the temple then, but you know what I
mean, Like set up all the different elements of worship
wherever they went and there was God.
God is not a God of chaos, but of order.
And I think Paul is reminding them of this saying, hey, we
need to worship in an orderly way if someone speaks multiple
tongues, languages. I agree with you, Jake.
I think it is languages. I don't think it's gibberish.
I think like if you, if you're speaking Hebrew in a in a
primarily Greek community, you should probably switch if you
know Greek so that everybody could be built up.
So I think that's that's something to think about.
But yeah, those are my thoughts on the question that we got from
the audience. Yeah.
That's good. Well, and I, I think going back
to like things being done in order and, and for the
upbuilding of other people. And I think the way with the way
you sort of mentioned like the Holy Spirit inspiring.
I think, Jay, you touched on that in your 4th point that, you
know, the, the gifts are like Spirit, they're spirit LED,
they're spirit driven, they're not self generated, right.
And sort of your point about the Holy Spirit speaking through
these guys as they were writing scripture, I think the Holy
Spirit works that same way today, but it's not the Holy
Spirit is not, it's not through like new revelation.
It's not through like new scripture.
It's through like, and I'm sure everybody probably has
experiences at some point where it's like something comes to
your mind, a story, a scripture or some word of encouragement in
the, in a conversation where you didn't, you don't have no idea
where that came from, but the Spirit gave you a word to speak
or an encouragement or a scripture to use to strengthen
that other person or to say something that edified them.
And you're sort of like at a loss of like.
How did that happen? Because.
Because I know I've, I've someone, someone even recently
said, and this has happened to me in the last couple months
too, where it's like it was something that was like 15 years
ago that I didn't even know. I still remembered clearly I
didn't, you know, it was like the Spirit reminded me of that.
It's like, how do those things come to your mind?
It's through the Spirit, you know, the Spirit is working in
your heart to give you a word of encouragement to other people.
You reminded me of a story I just recently read.
Last night I was reading, I'm reading a biography on George
Mueller, who was he started so many orphanages in England just
on faith. Like he didn't ask for a single
cent. But in his early on in his life,
he talks about the first time he was asked to preach.
It was, it was basically a new Christian.
He had theological training but got saved during his theological
training. Sort of an interesting story.
But anyway, he's asked to preach and he said, he said, oh, I
don't know, I've never preached before.
Maybe I can memorize a sermon and I can just just like say it
from memory. So he did that in the morning
service and then he did it in like a second service in an
afternoon. And then like, it was like it
fell flat. No one paid attention.
It was like this. It was horrible experience for
him. And then like over the over that
that afternoon before the evening meeting, he, he, he just
felt the, the urge of the spirit to, to read the text and to
speak from the heart. And he said it was like, I came
alive, like the the Spirit helped me, gave me words to say
in that moment that all applied to the Scripture that he was
reading. But like, but in these, like the
people woke up. And it's like that, that.
So it's something about like being Spirit empowered,
especially from the pulpit, That's it's unexplainable how it
works. Yeah.
You can't really control that. Yeah, we can try.
And so I think that's like why I think we should we should all
like commit right now, like I'm put you on the spot, commit to
2025 being the year of no manuscript and the.
Oh my goodness, my wife would be happy.
I think people might not like like is looking at them the
whole time well. It's, it's kind of funny because
there's times like anybody who knows me and has heard me say
this before, it's like I'll walk around in the gym here at the
church sometimes and read over my texts and I'll like preach it
to myself. And there's times I look at my
watch and I'm like, and it's been 30 minutes and I'm like, I
wish everybody would have just been here for the last 30
minutes and heard that. Because it like sometimes it
just questions come out and things come out.
And I would encourage anybody who maybe you're experiencing
dullness in your, in your Bible reading, go for a walk and read
your Bible, read it out loud, ask questions and go, I have no
idea what that means. And then keep reading.
Cause a lot of times the writer will answer his own questions
and just ask questions, do things right, Like just read
and, and pour over the text yourself.
And it's like, it just brings it to life.
And yeah, there's times I'm just like, man, if I could just
recorded that and like preached it, then I wouldn't have to do
all this work for the next 10. 15 hours it does that I know.
Yeah, it's encouraging. The Spirit is very encouraging.
Yeah, that's good. Joe, you got any more questions
for the for our pastor based on this text?
I was, I was going to poke fun a little bit at Jake because I
know he, he sort of, he sort of mentioned, he says the average
person says 10,000 words in 40 minutes.
And I was like, I don't know that.
I don't know that the average person could even physically
possibly say 10,000 words in 40 minutes.
But it was just I, I sort of found that kind of funny.
But it's fast. I know well.
Actually that according to your research that's totally wrong.
I'll just take that. We did play.
I mean, we encourage you all to go listen to someone speaking
250 words per minute. It's very fast.
I do speak a lot of words in 30
minutes about 7000, give or take a little bit.
Yeah. And what my manuscript is 7000
words and so I don't preach it word for word, but I'm, I know
that a lot of guys do about 5000 and half an hour.
And so they're a lot slower. How many?
How many 7007 thousand words? How many pages is that?
Depending on my font size, yeah. And my margins too, so.
He can get it down to 3 pages, Joe.
No, no, no. I have about 15 to 20 pages on a
Sunday morning, 1515 to 20 depending.
Sometimes I have a bigger font than others.
Margins are always the same and so often times it's even even up
to I've had up to 30 pages on a Sunday morning.
That's a lot of material. It's too much, Yeah.
You mean in logos? In logos, Yeah.
Yeah, sometimes mine are 25, but my fonts real big OK and I talk
real slow. Yeah, Yeah.
I like what what Paul says about saying less.
Saying 5 words that means something versus 10,000 and in a
tongue volume of it does not mean blessings, right?
Sometimes less is more. That's a good encouragement for
all of us. But I was, I was not trying to
make you think I was being. I was being but.
It's good and I didn't think that threw.
I just sat on the top of my head.
I didn't even know that that's not my notes.
Though No, no, no, that's totally OK.
That was not my notes. It's not in your notes, but it
is in the record. It's in the record, That's fine.
I never heard it. But yeah, I thought it was a
good encouragement. Even sort of at the end of the
year sermon, you sort of closed with, you know, why do we come
to church? And, you know, your
encouragement was to bless other people.
And so I think that's just a good word of encouragement that
again, it just, I think Paul's whole point is it's not about
you. It's not about you showing off
your gift. It's not about you being louder
than everybody else and whatever.
It's about how do I seek to be a blessing to other people?
Yeah, I think that's true. But in a way, it's not even
about them, right? It's not even about others.
That's true. And I think like the whole point
of all this is like, show people your devotion to God.
And in a lot of ways, that's encouragement to others.
That's edifying to others, right?
But yeah, I mean, Paul is definitely, he's been, he's been
banging this drum all the way through the letter about making
sure that what you do is for the benefit of your brother or
sister. I mean, this has been the
heartbeat, if you will, of the whole letter.
Like everything sort of rolls back to like this idea of loving
neighbor more than more than you love yourself.
So yeah, it's really good. But that's an encouraging
thought, even like you said about like, let your love for
God be what fuels, that inspires other people.
Because like, maybe everybody who's listening to this podcast
right now, like take a minute to think of someone who inspires
you as a Christian, because I know I can think of people in my
mind, even just this last Sunday.
It's not, this is not a guy I know really well, but this was a
connection I made at seminary. His name is Roger Palmer and he
has done training for our youth leaders.
And this is a guy you, you just, you could just listen to him for
like for however you could listen to for 30 hours straight
and you'd never get bored. This is a man who's just so
passionate about serving God. And it's just you leave that
conversation like fueled and inspired to want to live your
life for Christ. And, and I know there's people
like that in my life, people like that in our church.
I, I listen to them talk about prayer.
I listen to them talk about their love for the Lord.
And it's like, it just makes me want to love God and pursue God
all the more. And so you're right like that my
life is an example to others, you know, rather than like
honing my gift, honing my skill, It's like, man, I've heard this
encouragement from other people too.
It's like, I just want to, I want people to see my love for
Christ. That's what I want people to
see. Not like how I play a guitar,
right, or how well I can speak or whatever.
It's like I just want them to see how much I love Jesus.
And that's like the passion that they're catching on to.
Yeah, for sure. Pastor Jake, Last word.
I want you. Don't have to talk about all you
got to something else. Yeah, just briefly about the
women in church. Oh, you want to go there?
A little bit. That's the tiny bit.
It's your funeral. No, I'm.
Kidding. If it's a funeral, it's a
funeral. The reason I wanted to touch on
it is because obviously in Corinth, in the church, in that
church, there was a problem with women speaking out of turn.
And the reason it's important to me is because of where I've
grown up in the the history out of which I come, where women
were so restricted and they have so much to contribute and so
much to give. And that this has been
misinterpreted in our time. I think it's been
misinterpreted. And so here Paul does say
there's a there's a role for women.
And we find that previous chapters in Chapter 11, we find
that with women praise or prophecies, how she should do
it. And yet here he says, keep
silent. And I think we should always
just be careful not to take words out of context, take them
out of the place that they hold. And so, yeah, just wanted to add
that little piece there. Even when Paul says it's
shameful for women to speak in church, it it's a there's a
wider context to consider here. That's good.
Oh, you didn't say anything controversial.
I was waiting. For it, OK, I didn't want to say
anything controversial, but there was this order in the
congregation because of the disrespect for rules.
Yeah, and the, the, the they dealt with it in Chapter 11 too,
about the, the, the proper order of creation even, right.
So like, right, right. Harkening back to that and so.
Yeah, and I think this is where it's helpful.
We always have to use scripture with Scripture, right.
Then scripture descript explains itself.
And so you can't ever take like 1 section apart from all the
other sections. Like we have to have it all in.
So Paul speaks about this in other passages and and we can
get a well-rounded theology by taking all of scripture into
context, not just one passage. So that's helpful.
Final word. Yeah.
You don't ever have to talk about this again.
No, that's right. I don't know.
When I'll ever preach on 1st Corinthians 14 again.
You never know, you may be one of your favorite places now.
It could be, may go back there a lot.
Could be, who knows? Yeah, but I was just convicted,
I guess, and just inspired at the same time just the
orderliness with which Paul says we should worship and the perps
behind it building and edifying each other.
And so it's not about I don't come to church for myself.
I come to church for a higher reason than myself.
Yeah. And I think if we can get that
into minds, that's helpful. Yeah, it is good.
It is good. Next week I get to preach.
So excited you're preaching. I'm excited about it.
Yeah. We're going to see.
We're going to see what all this is about.
Like starting in chapter 15. It feels like I was telling Joe
this the other day. It feels like that all the way
through this letter. It feels like it's been
building, like there's been, Paul's just been building and
building and building. And now he's going to spend, I'm
not preaching all of these verses, but he's going to spend
58 verses, the next 58 verses of Scripture talking about what
it's all for. Like why do we do it?
You're going to be talking about the gospel 1st and then talking
about like the importance of Christians believing the
resurrection. And you guys will get to preach
on it as well, which is exciting.
But I'm just really excited we're going to be talking about
the gospel. So buckle up, that's all I can
say. Be fun that.
Sounds good, We're looking forward to it.
Yeah, Yeah. OK.
Yeah. I don't know.
I don't have anything I like this week.
Do you have anything you like, Joe?
I mean, I do, but I don't want to share it if you don't because
I don't want to be alone. Well, go ahead.
I, I honestly, yeah, it's, it's been a busy last couple weeks
and so I haven't, I haven't been reading anything.
But yeah, so yeah, I already mentioned George Mueller reading
his biography. Very is Rodger Steer wrote a
biography. We had to read it in seminary.
And I just felt like it was the right time to read it again.
And if you could pick it up, it's a fantastic story of a man
who who was just faithful and faithful in prayer, like he
prayed big prayers with faith. And it was, it's just an
inspiring story of a man who had had had a vision from the Lord
for something that he felt the Lord wanted him to do.
And that's to care for the orphans in England.
And they didn't have a dime. And then the kids never missed a
meal. And he built so many orphanages.
And just a very inspiring story about about how God will provide
for those who who genuinely want to do what he's doing in the
world. So I would encourage anybody
that that has time, it's an easy read to pick it up and read it.
So. Yeah, I do remember reading that
book for a class, and it was incredibly convicting because
he's just such a man of prayer. He committed when he finally
just when he decided he was going to start serving orphans,
he committed to never asking anybody for any money.
Ever. And he never did.
So it was always just a prayer. And so literally there would be
days where, you know, early on he only had a few orphans, but
later on they had lots of orphans, you know, maybe 2000
kids at a time. And there would literally be
days where it's like. It's there's no bread.
There's. It's coming up to lunch and we
don't have food, so let's pray and then there's.
Then someone drops off a check or something.
Drops off a check, someone drops off some food, and it's just an
incredible testimony to God's faithfulness to those who trust
Him. Yeah, it's a misnomer to say he
didn't ask anyone for money, but he asked the Lord.
He asked him every time in the in and he provided for him man
so faithfully for us to It's just I think biographies are
great for us to read or listen to.
If you can't read, find them on audio and listen to them.
Just people who had such strong faith can inspire you their love
for God, right? It inspires you to love God
more. So well.
If you guys don't have anything else, we can close this episode
out. LMC.
We are praying for you. We love you.
We think about you constantly and we pray that you have a
great week and we look forward to seeing you guys on Sunday.
Thanks for joining us. Until next time.