What the Bible Really Says About Speaking in Tongues

Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Les Feldick Ok, once again we'll pick right up where we left off and that will be in 1 Corinthians chapter 12. I think we got as far as verse 22 or 23. Again for those of you joining us on television, we just trust that you can feel like you're in a class and you're right here in the back row. We know that many of you have written, you take your Bible and your notes and pens and keep right up with us, and again we like to always emphasize how we appreciate your letters and our phone calls. We just love to hear from you, and I've said it before, don't feel obligated that if you write you have to send money. We just love to hear how you're getting along and what the Word is doing for you, that just makes our day. Okay, for those of you here in the studio now, we got the books on the screen, I guess we better remind people that all the programs are available on videotape. We put twelve programs on one six-hour video, and each six-hour video is transcribed into a little booklet, and now we're also of course making up a little book form of the audios, and they will be available shortly. So if you're interested in any of those, you call us on the 800 number or write to us and we'll get the list of contents out to you. Okay, let's get right back because I know everybody just loves to feed on the Word. We get that from our mail. So turn back with me again to I Corinthians chapter 12 where we left off, where Paul has been explaining that the Body of Christ, that invisible makeup of all believers from wherever they are on the planet and of whatever background, every true child of God becomes a member then of that Body of Christ. And that is a Pauline revelation. You do not see the Body of Christ taught until Paul comes and shares the revelations that he got from the Ascended Lord. That of course is what we'll be emphasizing in the next chapter after chapter 14, which is 15, and the resurrection. And you see that was at the very core of all of Paul's preaching, was the resurrection of Christ. But here in the letter to the Corinthians as we've come this far, he has been addressing problems because the church was still so carnal. They had not grown spiritually. Now it's interesting that of all the things he has dealt with in Corinthians from very chapter 1, where they had divisions of who they were following, some said, well, we listen to Peter, some said we listen to Apollos, and others said, no, we follow Christ, and then Paul says, but that's not the way it's supposed to be. So it was a problem. And then they had the problem of, you remember, going to court against one another, going into those pagan courts to sue each other as believers, and Paul had to deal with that. Then they had immorality, gross immorality in the church, and he had to deal with that. And then of course he has this whole what we call the tongues phenomena, and it had become a problem. He does not address it as some aspect of their spirituality. It was a problem. It had upset the function of the local church, and they were causing disorder, and he has to address it. And so all these things have been in answer, as we've said so often in this series, that they had evidently written to him, and what are we going to do about this? What are we going to do about this? And so he's answering them one by one, and that's why he says, now concerning, every once in a while. It's in response to that letter. And so the same way with this whole idea of the tongues in particular, it had caused a problem, and it was unique to the Corinthian church. And this is what I can't get over in my own study. Never again in any of all of his other churches is it ever so much as mentioned, only to the church at Corinth. And that should tell us something. The Philippians weren't aware of it, the Ephesian church had nothing to do with it, the Colossian church, the other churches, Rome, wherever, not a one. But only here to this carnal, fleshly congregation does he have to address this thing that we call tongues. But whatever, we've got to come back now first to I Corinthians chapter 12, where he is dealing with the Body of Christ, which is composed of people who have been baptized by the Holy Spirit. Now that Holy Spirit baptism is not an emotional phenomenon, it's not a physical thing. You nor I ever felt a thing, you and I didn't know anything that happened when the Holy Spirit baptized us into the Body. It's an unfeeling thing, and we know it happened only because the Book says so. That's the only way we know that we were placed into the Body of Christ, because the Book says we were. And we have to leave it at that. We don't try to look for some kind of an emotional thing, or a feeling. I've told people so often, that word feeling isn't used. It's never used in Scripture. We take these things by faith, and not by feeling. Now let's come back where we left off in verse 23. Those members of the Body which we think to be less honorable, and so also with members of the Body of Christ. So those members which we think to be less honorable, upon these we bestow more abundant honor, and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness. In other words, that's just the way God works. He takes the foolish things of this world, and confounds the wise. He says in another place in I Corinthians, He took the things that are not, to confound the things that are. And it's basically on this same premise. Verse 24. "...for our comely parts, the best part of our appearance, they have no need. But God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honor to that which lacked." Isn't that amazing? Now as I was studying this at one time, and like I said earlier, I've been on this for the last 2-3 months. I couldn't help but think of parents who have had a retarded child, and we've talked to several parents who had a Down Syndrome child, and even though they had several other children, which one was the most responsive? Which one did they pour their love to? And every parent that has one will tell you the same thing. They are the most lovable, the most loving, and the most easy to love. Well I think Paul is saying the same thing here. We take the weakest believer, the one that maybe the world would think, you know the church certainly can't use that person. But that's the very one that God wants us to enhance, and to bring them to the fore. Now let's look at verse 25. Ephesians 2. All of these things are for one purpose, that there should be no schism or division in the body, that is the body of Christ. That the members should have the same care, one for another. In other words, every believer in God's eyes deserves the same amount of love and compassion as the next one. Now verse 26. Ephesians 2. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it. And again he's going to use the analogy of the human body, and what is it? You hit your thumb with a hammer, and the whole body gets shot with pain. Well it's the same way with the body of Christ. If a believer is hurt, the whole body hurts with it. Verse 27. He repeats, "...you are the body of Christ, and your members." In particular as an individual, we don't just come in as a number. Every one of us are an individual in God's sight whom He knows. And He knows our every need, He knows our every heartache, and He knows our every joy. So many times I think Christians pray, and we think it's just another sound to God. No it is not. It's just as if you are the only one in the throne room, and that's the kind of a God we serve. Verse 28. Now again here is the list that he has in Corinthians, but compare it to the one which we saw in Ephesians. Ephesians 2. And God hath set some in the church, that is the local church. First apostles, we know they felled off the scene, we no longer have apostles. Second, prophets, we know that has left because we now have the printed Word. Third, teachers, and then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, or administrations. Diversities, or the ability to speak more than one language, that's what the word tongues in the plural as I had it on the board always implies. It was known languages that they were able to communicate the Gospel to people who were of a different language. And now he says, are all apostles? Well of course not. The church would get lopsided, and are they all prophets? No. Are all teachers? Absolutely not. Are all workers of miracles? Of course not. Do all have the gifts of healing? No. Do all speak with tongues, languages? Do all interpret? No. But covet, or desire earnestly the best gifts, not the ones at the bottom, but the best. And yet he says, I show unto you a more excellent way, and that's why I taught chapter 13 first. Because all of this, even to be an apostle, even to be a gifted man, especially the church of Corinth, if they didn't exhibit the love of God in what they were doing, they were better off staying at home. Just don't even do it if you can't do it in that attitude of love. We covered chapter 13 in our first program this afternoon, and now we're going to go right on over to chapter 14. Now before we start chapter 14, I want to read the first verse. Follow after love, as we've seen it in chapter 13, and desire spiritual things. Now we're not to ask for them specifically, but like I said a program or so ago, ask the Lord to use you, ask the Lord to enhance that which you're able to do. But we're not to ask for a specific gift, that's up to the Holy Spirit to discern. Follow after love, desire the spiritual things, but of all the things that you should desire, it would be to prophesy, and remember the word prophesy is not telling the future as we think of Daniel or Isaiah, but to simply speak the Word of God. Share the Word, that's what it is to prophesy, and that's what every believer should desire. Lord give me that ability to just share Your Word with people, whether it's believers who need to be taught, or whether it's the unbeliever who is still out there in darkness. Lord give us that opportunity to speak forth the Word. Now before we go into verse 2. For he that speaketh in a tongue, now watch the language here, because the word unknown is italicized. So it's been added by the translators, because even way back at the time of the King James translators, they really didn't know how to handle this word tongue in the singular. Because like I explained in an earlier program, this denoted a sound that had no phonetics to it. It could not be reduced to writing. It was just a guttural sound, and it had no pronunciation. Now then, he says, "...he that speaketh in a tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God." Only God could understand it, for no man could understand it. How be it in the Spirit, now it's a small s, so it's not the Holy Spirit. How be it in the small spirit, or the spirit of his mind and his own thinking processes, he speaketh mysteries. Those things that are beyond the ordinary human comprehension. But now before we go any further, and I probably won't get much further today. But come back to this, what we just read, that the person who speaks in this so called unknown tongue, or in this untranslatable tongue, or I shouldn't say untranslatable, but unwritten tongue, it was men speaking to men. Got that? "...he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God." Alright, now let's go back, I guess this is where my mind was running ahead of me. Let's go back to the three times in Scripture when the Holy Spirit delegated this miracle of speaking in tongues to men. There are only three of them, Acts chapter 2. And here is our first example of the gift of speaking in tongues, but it's plural, so it is a course back as God is still dealing with the nation of Israel. Acts chapter 2, and you all know the account, and it was on the day of Pentecost, and I've always maintained that Pentecost was a Jewish feast day. Gentiles had nothing to do with Pentecost, it was Jewish. And so when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place, and suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues, not of fire, but they looked like little flames of fire. They were like fire, and it sat upon each one, now that must have been of the twelve and maybe the whole hundred and twenty. Now verse 4, "...they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues." So what were they speaking? Other languages, because you had Jews here from all over the unknown world, many of them had been displaced from Israel for generations, and so a lot of these Jews came from Babylon and from Spain, all speaking different languages. Now the miracle of Pentecost was that God gave these apostles for sure this gift to speak all the languages of the people that were out there in that massive crowd in front of them. And then you come down to verse 6, "...they were confounded, because every man heard them speak not in an unknown guttural noise, but in a language that they could understand." Now this is the first time in Scripture that we have a manifestation of the Holy Spirit giving to men this gift of speaking known languages, but which were not intrinsic to their own education. In other words, where did Peter and most of the disciples come from? Galilee, uneducated, they were fishermen, and yet all of a sudden here they are speaking the various languages that were evident there on the day of Pentecost. Well of course it was miraculous, and it was the work of the Holy Spirit. But like Paul said in I Corinthians, who were these men talking to? Other men, other people. And what was the purpose? To bring them salvation. See that's the whole purpose of this book, from cover to cover. What is the purpose? That mankind might hear the plan of salvation, in the same way at Pentecost. Peter and these other 11 men were promoting the Gospel, that Jesus was the Christ, but they were doing it in languages that everyone could understand. It had a divine purpose. The next time this happens is in Acts chapter 10. And Peter is now up in the house of a Gentile, the Roman, Cornelius. And you all know the account, how that Peter contrary to his own desires, God forces him to go up to the house of Cornelius. And you remember the last thing Peter says as he goes through the door, is that Cornelius you know, it's an unlawful thing for me a Jew to come into the house of another nation. But God has shown me, in other words there was a distinct divine purpose in Peter coming up to the house of Cornelius. Now as he's preaching, and he is probably expounding about Jesus of Nazareth, and how He had come to be Israel's Messiah and Redeemer and King, and I imagine as Peter was laying all this out back in his mind, he was thinking, Why am I giving this to Gentiles? He had no idea that there was something moving in God's purposes, that He was now going to go out to the Gentile world. He certainly was not aware that in the previous chapter, I don't know how many months previous to this, that God had saved Saul of Tarsus, and had told him that He was going to go to the Gentiles. I don't think Peter knew that yet, but here he is in this Gentile house of Cornelius, and he's proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom, and then verse 44, "...while he yet spake, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word." Now you want to remember, this was in the confines of a gentleman's house. This wasn't in a great Colosseum, this was in the house of Cornelius, a Roman officer, so maybe he had two dozen, or a dozen and a half, I don't know. But it couldn't have been all that many. But as he was preaching, the Holy Spirit fell on that house full of Gentiles. And then verse 45, "...they of the circumcision," now that just means these Jews who believed. They were like Peter, they had recognized that Jesus was the Christ. So these believing Jews were astonished. Now we pointed this all out when we taught the book of Acts, that these Jews, the six men who came with Peter for a total of seven, were just utterly astonished that these Gentiles were hearing a salvation message and believing it. Now in order for God to prove to these seven Jews that He was doing something totally different than had ever been done before, what does He do? He proves it with these Gentiles speaking other languages. Not just the Latin in which they were grown and probably practiced, maybe not even just Greek that they probably used in their military conversations, but now as many as came with Peter, these six Jews, saw that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Spirit. How did they know? For they heard them, the Gentiles now, the house of Cornelius, speaking with known languages, and they magnified God. Now were they talking to God? No. They were talking to fellow men, and they were magnifying God in the presence of these seven Jews, as well as the members of the household of Cornelius. And there is no manifestation of an unknown language here, or a guttural sound. It was speaking languages. That's the second time now that the Holy Spirit was manifested by giving the gift of speaking more language than what they were normally living with. Now the third and last time that this happens in the whole book of Acts is in chapter 19. First time it happened to Jews, in Acts chapter 2, strictly to the Jew. Second time it happens to a whole house of Gentiles. Now the third time it happens, it's another unique little group, small in number, but they were representative of another larger group, and we'll look at it here in Acts 19. Verse 1. "...and it came to pass that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper borders, came to Ephesus, where of course a church had been founded, and he found certain disciples, and they must have been Jews, and he said unto them, Have you received the Holy Spirit, when you believe? And they said unto him, We have not so much as heard that there be a Holy Spirit. And Paul said unto them, Unto what then were ye baptized? And they said unto John's baptism, that is John the Baptist. Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, and you don't understand that. That was through the nation of Israel, and John baptized in Jordan, and he repented. Then verse 5. Verse 7. "...and when these twelve men heard, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with languages other than their own, and they prophesied." Plain as day, that's what it says. Now those are the only three times in the whole Book of Acts, in fact in all of Scripture, where the Holy Spirit manifested Himself by giving out the gift of speaking a multitude of languages. But they were known languages, they were languages that could be understood if somebody happened to be in the room from that same background. There was no need for interpreters, there was no emotional upheaval, this was just simply the working of the Holy Spirit to the third category of people that God would be dealing with in the Book of Acts. Remember what they were. Chapter 2 with the nation of Israel. Chapter 10 with Gentiles in the house of Cornelius. Chapter 19 with those who were in the transition. They were Jews who had been saved under John's baptism, but they had known nothing of Paul's Gospel, and now the Body of Christ, and these further revelations. So those three categories are the only ones that came under the manifestation of the power of the Holy Spirit to speak in languages other than the ones in which they normally practiced. We have two minutes left, come back with me quickly then to chapter 14. Remember this, that whenever the Holy Spirit was manifested in the Book of Acts it was for a divine purpose, to prove something, and it was to show Israel that God was now moving in in the work of the Holy Spirit. It was to prove to the Jews in the house of the Gentiles that God was now saving Gentiles. It was manifested in these twelve Jews to show that there was now a change in the overall program. It was no longer based on John's baptism and Christ's earthly ministry. It was now based on that which followed the work of the cross, His death, burial, and resurrection. So back to I Corinthians chapter 14 for just a moment. Verse 3. "...he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort." Now remember what He said up in verse 1? That the one that they should really long for is the gift of speaking the Word of God. That's the number one criteria. And now in verse 3 He reemphasized it again. "...he that speaketh forth the word of God, speaketh unto men, to edification, to lift him up, to support him, and to exhort him, to encourage him, and comfort him." Now we know that we're in this old world under the curse and a lot of people are hurting. How can we best comfort them? By proclaiming to them the word of God. Write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, OK, 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, OK, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported and your gift is appreciated.