Prophecy & Tongues – Part 1

Introduction

As we continue our study on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, we now move into the more controversial aspects of this subject – namely the gifts of prophecy & tongues.
This subject of prophecy & tongues has been a topic of debate and confusion not just in our time, but throughout all of church history, even in the Corinthian church to whom Paul is writing this letter.
Therefore, I want to pursue this subject cautiously, yet decisively. Since the subject itself is controversial, you can expect a lot of controversial statements from me. This is not because I want to offend, but because I do not want to water down the offence caused by the Scripture. Brothers and sisters, I do not believe, for I do not see any reason to believe that the Bible offers any measure of confusion regarding the subject of prophecy & tongues.
And that, is probably where we should begin.

Why the controversy?

If the Bible is clear, as I say, regarding this subject, then why is there much controversy surrounding it?
To answer that question, we have to first understand the nature of spiritual maturity that allows a Christian to disagree with his fellow brethren regarding different aspects of theology.

• Why do Christians have disagreements? Because God found it pleasurable according to his divine design, to have his people discover the truth about him, and his purposes through the reading, study, meditation & preaching of his word.
  God wants us to know him through his word. That means a lot of things to us.
• A Christian must pursue the habit of reading.
• A Christian must be thoughtful, learning to interpret, understand & apply the truth he reads from the Bible.
• A Christian must turn to the Bible, and not to the world, as the source of his meaning & purpose in life.
• A Christian must subject himself/herself to the hearing of sound preaching & teaching.
• A Christian must use the Bible as a tool for prayer & worship.

I could keep going on and on, but as delightful and purposeful this way of the word is, God has allowed room for debate & discussion on many subjects, and a look at the doctrinal triage will help us see this.
We use, what we call, the doctrinal triage, which is a framework that can be described as three concentric circles, with the centre or innermost circle being Primary Doctrines, the middle circle being Secondary Doctrines, and the last outer circle being Tertiary Doctrines.

• The Primary Doctrines are those doctrines of the Christian faith that are non-negotiable. They are subjects that address the very root of our faith, the essence of what it means to be a believing Christian. To deny these doctrines is to deny the Christian faith. For example, the Trinity.
• The Secondary Doctrines are those doctrines that are negotiable to an extent. God seems to have allowed a degree of ambiguity, intending for us to reason, discuss & debate over these subjects and come to an understanding to the best of our conscience. Here, we have Christian disagreement. Those who disagree on secondary doctrines have to be able to do so in love, recognising one another as genuine Christians, willing to fellowship and associate with one another, although they may not be part of the same local church. For example, the sacrament of baptism, Calvinism & Arminianism, or cessationism & continuationism.
• The Tertiary Doctrines are those that are out on the periphery that even those mature Christians who strongly hold to a certain view, do so with a certain caveat of caution that they ‘could’ be wrong. For example, eschatology.

The doctrinal triage gives us an emphasis on crucial theology, but also an emphasis on the nature of biblical clarity on different subjects. Here again, I want to classify this nature of biblical clarity into three categories.

• Intellectual Ambiguity – For example, if we take the subject of baptism, both paedobaptists (those who believe in infant baptism) & credobaptists (those who believe in the conscious involvement of the catechumen), quote tons of biblical passages to argue their cases. Therefore, anyone who objectively surveys this debate will come away confessing that the Bible could have been clearer, but rather has an intentional lack of clarity that allows for Christians to go to and fro over the subject.
  Now, some might ask, “Then why should we debate over these things?”. Because the Bible expects us to. Because, the Bible is not undecisive, just because it is unclear. God has set forth his divine decree, and we are trying to understand what that decree is, and one side of this debate is most definitely wrong.
• Emotional Reluctance combined with (often a tiny dose) intellectual ambiguity – This can be seen in the case of Calvinism & Arminianism. The Bible is clear on the subject, yet the subject itself is very hard for many to grasp. Not hard to understand what is being said, but hard to believe it. Unlike baptism, the cause for debate isn’t so much the lack of clarity in the text, but the confusion that arises from the lack of biblical harmonising that many can do with the whole counsel of the word. They are afraid that if they believe this, they compromise on other aspects of biblical truth.
  The subject of Calvinism & Arminianism is a debate with only a tiny dose of intellectual ambiguity but there are confusing texts readily available that stumble many Armenians.
• Purely Emotional reluctance – All this, for me to make my first controversial statement of the day. The debate over the cessation of the gifts is purely an emotional reluctance. No objective student of the word, with no prior bias or influence, will ever come to a cessationist standpoint from any measure of studying the Scripture. It’s just textually absent.
  That is not to say that cessationists don’t make scriptural arguments, but these arguments are an order of magnitude far inferior to the Arminian arguments.
  I have poured over the entire half a mug of cessationist arguments, and I find a constant and undeniable urge to import into scripture some kind of emotional reluctance.

This, I believe, is the root reason behind the controversy over spiritual gifts. It is not a biblical lack of clarity, but emotional reluctance. And the arguments raised are at best a dance of logic stemming from such a reluctance.

How do we handle this disagreement?

By recognising, that among all the arguments of the cessationist, there is one that I intensely respect, and passionately agree with them. That none of the Gifts can ever compromise or subserviate the word of God.
Prophetic revelation cannot overrule Scripture. Visions cannot overrule Scripture. The gift of tongues and its interpretation cannot change the words that have been written in the Canon of Scripture. The cessationist’s fear that the gifts can be used to compromise Scripture is a legitimate one. But what they fail to see is that the abuse of something does not disqualify its usefulness.
I believe this fear to be unfounded from a biblical standpoint because as a biblical charisma, I do not believe these gifts in their genuine function ever compromise or subserviate the authority of Scripture.
There is a reason why I haven’t preached on my disagreements with cessationist theology yet (though I intend to do one sermon on that at the end), and that is because I don’t want to expound on emotional reluctance but from the Bible. I’d rather that we go to the source material and read for ourselves what we find. And the more we do this, the more confusing it may become for some of you mainly because the text is so clear about it.
Note that we’re talking about cessationism and not the nature of the gift itself. There are many biblical grounded debates over the nature of the gift of tongues and of prophecy, but these discussions do not implicitly warrant the cessation of these gifts.
Brothers and sisters, let me remind you that we do not owe our allegiance to our comforts and opinions. We owe our allegiance to Christ and his word. We go with what he says and not with what John MacArthur has to say, or what Michael Teddy has to say. I want to push your nose down upon the text of scripture so that you can see for yourself directly from the source material (the whole of it) that nothing in scripture remotely suggests that the Gifts of the Holy Spirit have ceased.

Running through 1 Corinthians 14

Now, what I want to do today is begin a run-through of 1 Corinthians 14, where we will read the chapter, and I will make a few comments along the way. We will cover as much ground as we can today, and pick up the remaining next week.
Post our run through chapter 14, we will do a systematic study diving deeper into the nature & purpose of Tongues & Prophecy. But I want us to first see Paul’s train of thought in counselling the Corinthian church.

1 Corinthians 14:1 ESV
¹ Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.

• The pursuit of love, as we saw last two weeks, is the more excellent way, not in a manner of replacing the way of gifts & service, but rather in the way of empowering and motivating them.
• Therefore, Paul exhorts that the pursuit of love is accompanied by the earnest desire for spiritual gifts.
• Especially that you may prophesy. Without explicit biblical warrant or instruction regarding the cessation of the gifts, this becomes a command of Scripture and the question is if you, the Christian, will obey it.
  You are not just called to desire the gifts, but to desire especially that you may prophesy.

1 Corinthians 14:2–4 ESV
² For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit. ³ On the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation. ⁴ The one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church.

• Paul then begins to compare and contrast tongues & prophecy. One of the reasons for this is probably because of the widespread abuse of tongues within the Corinthian context.
  For obvious reasons, it is easier to fake tongues than to fake prophecy. And if a church were competing over who was more spiritual with regards to their gifting, then the chaos of unbridled tongues will be the inevitable result.
• And so, Paul notes that tongues are not speech unto man, but unto God. To say gibberish unto God is foolishness. The veracity of the tongues matter.
  And the grounds for this case that Paul is making, as the word for suggests, is because no one understands him.
  This is one of many suggestions that are reasons to believe in what we call heavenly tongues. There is a kind of tongues, unlike the Acts 2 kind where they spoke in other earthly languages they did not know before, that is a language not of this earth. It is likely the same reference Paul makes in:
  1 Corinthians 13:1 ESV
  ¹ If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not to love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.Some argue that Paul here is using hyperbole and does not intend to say that we can know the language of angels. However, Paul’s allusion that no one understands him, suggests otherwise. At least, it goes so far as to suggest that there are tongues gifted to man which no other man understands, but are mysteries uttered in the Spirit.
  Therefore, one can conclude that the nature of tongues in 1 Corinthians 14, at its core, is the utterance of mysteries in the Spirit.
• On the other hand – here comes the contrast. The one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.
  So, as opposed to tongues which are speech to God and not to man, prophecy is the speech to man, and not to God.
• And this gift of prophecy is given for upbuilding, encouragement & consolation. Do you see the one reason intentionally missing here? Paul does not say that prophecy is given for teaching.
  Whatever prophecy may really be, it is not given for the function of teaching, but for upbuilding, encouragement & consolation. The NASB translates it as edification, exhortation & consolation. This gift of divine revelation, therefore, has an agenda, and consequently, this agenda drives the content of the prophecy.
  • Upbuilding or Edification – the word means bringing something closer to fullness or completion, like assisting in constructing an incomplete building.
  • Encouragement or Exhortation – is the act of earnestly supporting or encouraging, specifically a response or action.
  • Consolation – the act of giving relief in affliction.

Prophecy is meant to build up, and aid in helping construct the incomplete man. It encourages him to respond and take biblical action. And it comforts him in affliction.
In these elements, you can begin to see a degree of differentiation in the utility of prophecy in the OT and the NT. We will dive more into this in the coming weeks.

• And therefore, Paul concludes, that the one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church.
  Tongues is self-edifying in that it aids in building up the man himself. How? Because the mysteries uttered are by the Spirit, and such prayers offered to God on our behalf through our lips are great to our benefit. Anyone who recognises the power and benefit of prayer can recognise the power and benefit of prayer offered by the Holy Spirit through us.
  Romans 8:26 ESV
  ²⁶ Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.But the one who prophesies builds up the church. Again, Christian, you are given this tool for building the church, and the question is, would you deny it for selfish reasons?

Conclusion

1 Corinthians 14:5 ESV
⁵ Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up.

• Paul encourages both the speaking in tongues & prophecy to a church riddled with a chaotic display of tongues & prophecy. Paul’s response to charismatic chaos is charismatic order, not cessationism.
• He wants us all to speak in tongues, but even more for us all prophecy. It is strange is it not that after explicitly stating in chapter 12 that not all prophecy and not all speak in tongues, Paul desires for all to do so. The Bible never says that all must be teachers or preachers. In fact, he explicitly says the opposite:

James 3:1 ESV
¹ Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

• The nature of these gifts is such that the more that have it, the merrier.
• Beloved, Christ is our price, our goal. And his word is our truth. Cling to him regardless of your fears, and form your minds from the Bible alone.