Why Prophecy Is Greater Than Tongues - 1 Corinthians 14 Explained

Hello, and welcome to 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. Okay, good to have everybody in, and we'll be ready to tape number 28, and it's the third part and the first half hour, so I'm just appreciating that Roy is now putting the numbers on the board, because every so often someone calls and says, well, what program was it that I saw last night? Well, now we'll be able to kind of pinpoint them. So all of you out in television, again, just watch for this number on the board, and it'll help us determine what program you've just watched. And we always like to make it known that all our programs are available on videotapes. They've been reprinted into little booklets on the same format, 12 programs in a book, 12 programs on a tape. And now we have just begun to produce the little audios. We have never promoted them before, because we just didn't feel there was a demand for them. But now all of a sudden we're getting such a demand for the audios, so we've begun production on these. They're in a little packet that comes in the same format as the videos and the books. In other words, if you order book one, it's word for word that's in the video one, or if you order the audio number one, it's the same programs that are in the video. So we've got the videos and the booklets, and now the audios from everything from Genesis up to where we presently are in 1 Corinthians. So for those of you here in the studio audience, of course, we have already opened our Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 14. And in our last program, we just barely got into this chapter. And again, before we start teaching, I always like to give the background, because I'm finding out very few people know the circumstances that surround a particular book or a letter or whatever. And to know the circumstances, the background, makes all the difference in understanding. And so bear with me, those of you who have been listening to me ever since 1 Corinthians 1, but I'm going to keep repeating for those that are just now catching the program, that the Apostle Paul is writing to this congregation in the wicked, immoral, pagan, idolatrous city of Corinth, not so much to commend them and everything, but to correct them. They had so many problems. And so the whole theme of 1 Corinthians is to correct problems. He does not commend them. In fact, in chapter 3, verse 1, he says, I have to write unto you as carnal, you're babes, you're not ready for the meat of the word. And so this whole letter of 1 Corinthians has to be read or studied in that light, that he is writing it to a congregation of weak, carnal, fleshly believers. But they're believers, see? They're believers. And amongst their problems were that they had picked personalities. One said, well, I'm going by what Peter says, and I'm going by what Apollos. And others even did, like so many people today, well, I'm not going to go by what Paul says, I go by what Jesus said. Well, Paul was up against the same thing at Corinth, and he had to correct them for it. And then the next problem, of course, he ran into was that they were going to the pagan courts and suing each other out there in the pagan courts, and so he had to correct them on that basis. And then they were having problems of what to do with meat that had been offered to idols, and so he has to straighten them out on that one. Then they had excesses at the Lord's table. They had made it something far beyond what God ever intended it to be, and so he dealt with that. Then he had to deal with the whole situation of marriage and divorce and so forth, and he dealt—it was a problem. All these things were problems. And then in our last four programs, I made the point, and I'm going to repeat it again today, that in between the next two chapters that are filled with problems, Paul, in order I think to kind of soften his approach, in order to kind of prepare the ground, if you will, the Holy Spirit prompted him to write chapter 13, the love chapter. Because Paul realized, as well as anybody, the only way that you can bring people around to the truth is in the spirit of love. You don't slap them in the face with anger. You don't ridicule them. You don't put them down as some kind of dummy. But in the spirit of love, bring them around to the truth. And that's what the apostle does then in both chapters 12 and 14, sandwiched by chapter 13. And so as even we go now into chapter 14, don't lose sight of what he wrote in the love chapter, that love is still the greatest of all the things so far as God's dealing with man is concerned. And so we start out. We'll just go back and look at verse 1 again. So he says, follow after love, that which he had just been writing about in chapter 13, and desire spiritual. Now, the word is italicized, I think, in most translations, and the word gifts is used, and I'm not sure that that's the best word the translators could have found. Personally, I like to use the word things. There's nothing wrong with desiring spiritual things. But of all the spiritual things that we might want or like to have, the greatest at this point in time when Paul is writing to the Corinthians was the gift to prophesy or to speak forth the Word of God. And again, I'll have to define why. At the time that Paul is writing to these early churches, there is still no New Testament written. The Gospels haven't been written and won't be written until many years after Paul's letters. His own letters have not gone out as the Word of God as yet. He certainly hasn't written to the Corinthian church before. And so you have to realize that these early, primitive, apostolic churches were experiencing their growth and reaching out in the pagan world without benefit of the written Word. Where would we be today if we didn't have the book? I mean, this is all we've got to go on, but they didn't have that. So what did they have to depend on? Gifted men. And they had to be gifted to the point that they could now teach people the Pauline doctrines and not that which was still coming out of the Old Testament, or they'd have had pandemonium. And so Paul realizing, by inspiration of course, that this was by far the most important thing the local church could have was men who could proclaim the truth of God's Word without benefit of having it in print. Now does that help? All right. And so he says, of all the spiritual things that you might desire, desire the gift to proclaim the Word of God. Now as he said in chapter 13, the time would come when that gift would fade away. And it is no longer a valid gift because now we have the printed page. We don't need men who are gifted in proclaiming the Word of God without anything to go on. Strictly by God's power. But now we have the Word of God, and we do not have to have men gifted in that particular area. Now of course, to be a pastor or a teacher is still a gift, and it's delineated as such. But once the printed scriptures came into being, Paul's letters come into the right format, we get the four gospels, the book of Acts, and so forth, and our New Testament's complete, there's no longer a need for that kind of gifted men. I had an interesting phone call the other day, and ordinarily I wouldn't put something like this on the air, but I imagine if the gentleman hears it, maybe it'll still get his attention. But I had a phone call the other day, and it reminds me when I say talking about gifted men who didn't have the Word of God. And he was such a kind, benevolent type, otherwise I'd probably hung up on him sooner than I did. But he was so kind, he was so benevolent, he was so sincere, and at first I didn't get what he was driving at. But finally he came out with so many words, he said, Les, you're just like everybody else, you are teaching men's words. He said, I wish I could sit down with you and teach you what God has said. Oh boy, the bells begin to ring, and the red flags start flying, and I said, now wait a minute, wait a minute. What are you trying to tell me? That you are the only one who has received the revelation of the true Word of God? Yeah. I said, I'm sorry, but I said, conversation has ended. And I hung up on him. Well, I had a note in the mail from yesterday that he couldn't figure out why I flew off the handle. Well, I didn't fly off the handle, I just said, you're way out in left field. I said, Len, why do you think I have the camera constantly putting the Scriptures on the screen? I said, that's the Word of God, not what someone like you has supposedly received. And I said, this is what I'm constantly trying to drive into people's thinking, that it doesn't matter what I say or think, what does the book say? And this is why I prefer it, it's on the screen now. I prefer the Word of God on the screen as myself. And so this is what we have to understand, that yes, in the early church, it did take men with that kind of a gift. But today, we have the Word of God. And it is in such a format that anybody, you remember I've said so often, old Tyndale, one of the reformers said, that he wanted to see a copy of the Scriptures in the hands of every plow boy in England. How much education did plow boys in England have? None. Probably enough to read. But yet that was sufficient for the Word of God to feed a hungry heart, see? All right, so now then remember that when Paul speaks of this gift of prophecy, it is under a whole different set of circumstances than what we've got today, all right? Then he comes down to verse 2, for he that speaketh in an unknown tongue. Now I defined all that in our last programs, that whenever you see the word tongue in these two chapters, 12 and 14, in the singular, and with the added word unknown by the translators, every Bible you've got, if the word unknown is in there, it's italicized, which means that the translators added it. Whenever you see that term, unknown tongue, singular, it's talking about a bunch of sounds that cannot be reduced to a print. They are not phonetic. There is no way anybody can write them down. It's just a bunch of noise. And Paul is going to make this so evident later through this chapter, all right? So when you see the word tongues, plural, then he's talking about languages. And of course, even then, in the city of Corinth, there were probably four, five, six languages that were being used constantly. There was Greek, there was Latin, there was probably Spanish, and there was Hebrew, there was Aramaic. And so all those languages, you see, were part and parcel of what made up the city of Corinth and all of its commerce with its two seaports and with its big temple in the background of the pagans. And so this all enters into the picture of these letters here, or chapters of 12 and 14. All right, so now then, he's speaking of this, what today we refer to as the tongues movement. It's an unknown language. Nobody can decipher it. Nobody can reduce it to print. They've never been able to do it yet. And so consequently, this is what the translators have called it, just an unknown tongue, all right? Now then, he says, no one speaks in an unknown tongue to men but to God, because God's the only one that could make anything out of it if it were possible. Men can't make anything out of it, all right? And so he says, no man understandeth him. Plain English, isn't it? How be it in the spirit, now that's a small s, so that's the man's spirit. In his own makeup, in his own mind, he speaketh mysteries. Now I made mention of this in our last program. You go into the pagan religions, and what is always at the core of a pagan religion? Mysteries. See? The mysteries that only the inner sanctum have any comprehension of. The people out on the fringe don't even know what the mysteries are, but the people at the center do, all right? And so Paul is saying what they're doing is using their own makeup, their own personality, and they're speaking things that to anybody else is nothing but a mystery. All right, verse 3, but, but, see, the flip side. The other side of the coin says, he that prophesieth, or he that speaketh forth the word as a gifted individual, he speaketh unto men to edification. I think you all know what edification means. It means to lift them up, to support them, to enlarge them, see? All right, so these men who had the gift of speaking the word of God, they were enhancing the congregation. They were helping all that heard them. And they exhort, and they comfort, see? All right, now verse 4. Now I'm not going to make a lot of comments, I'm just going to let people see what the book says. The book speaks for itself. He that speaketh in an unknown tongue, here we've got a singular again, edifieth himself. But he that prophesieth and speaks forth the word of God, he edifies who? The whole congregation, see? Now do you see what that says? When someone claims to have had a tongues experience, according to the book, I'm not going by what they say, but according to the book, who are they edifying? Themselves. It's an ego trip. That's what it amounts to. All right, reading on. Verse 5. Oh, Paul says, I would that you all spake with tongues, plural, languages. My, Paul says, it would be nice if you could just go up into northern Greece, up into Macedonia, and speak the dialects that those people do. My, it would be nice if you could go across to North Africa and speak the languages that those people are using. It would be great if you could go back over to Rome and be able to speak Latin. That's what he's talking about. My, today I'd say the same thing, and those of you who have missionary, you have kids out on the mission field, you know what I'm talking about. My, wouldn't it have been great if your son or daughter could have just gone to the mission field and picked up the language the next day? But instead, what'd they have to do? They had to go to language school, four or five years, just to learn the language before they could go to the field. So Paul knew what he was talking about. Oh, he said, it'd be great if you all spoke several languages. All right, then verse 5, continuing on. For greater is he that prophesieth, and here again, don't lose sight of that definition, speaking forth the word of God with the power of God, without benefit of a New Testament scripture. He that prophesieth is greater than he that speaketh with languages, unless he can interpret that the church may receive anything. All right, now let's take that little congregation in Corinth. Let's say that most of them were able to understand Greek. Now, there were probably some even in Corinth that couldn't understand Greek. All they could understand maybe was Hebrew or Aramaic. Oh, and now Paul says, now it'd be great if you could come in here to the congregation and be able to teach and preach in a language that they could all understand. My, what a great gift that would be, because that's what people needed. They had to hear the Word. They couldn't go home and read it. They had to hear it from men's lips, see? All right, verse 6. Now, brethren, now, brethren, if I come unto you speaking with languages, oh, Paul says, if I come in here and I speak Aramaic and Hebrew and Greek and Latin and Spanish or whatever else they may have had there, he said, if I come in here speaking with all these languages, what shall I profit you, except I shall speak to you either by revelation, by knowledge, by prophesying, or by doctrine? Those are the things that count, see? People even today need doctrine. Very few professing believers today have a good, solid understanding of doctrine. I guess I made the comment a long, long time ago, and one of the listeners from, I think it was Minnesota, I made the comment that I had learned over the years that most Catholics do not really know what they believe. And this lady happened to be a Catholic, and she wasn't scolding me or anything like that, but she said it just sort of shook me up. And I said, listen, is that the only group I mentioned on the program? And she said, yeah, I think so. I said, hey, I could have just about named every denomination in America, including mine. And I'd say the same thing. Most of them do not know what they believe. Now, you doubt that? You ask people. You ask them. You go to a good, solid Methodist, or Baptist, or Presbyterian, or you name it, and you ask them, what do you really believe? Most of them can't tell you much. And I say that sincerely. And this is what Paul is saying. Even the Corinthians, they were so weak in the fundamentals. But oh, they were emotional. They had a lot of hype, and they had a lot of enthusiasm. But you see, that in itself is not enough. And so he says, unless I come with revelation, or knowledge, or speaking forth the Word of God, or doctrine, what's the prophet? Verse 7, and even things without life-giving sound, whether pipe or harp, except they give a distinction in the sound, how shall it be known what is piped or harped? Now, I know what he's saying. Unless somebody picks up an instrument that knows how to play it, how to bring out the right tone at the right time within the score, what have you got? Hey, you've got a bunch of noise. In fact, as I was preparing for this, I couldn't help but think. I've been to a few concerts in my life, not many. I wish I could have had more. But especially if you go to a concert of a symphony orchestra, before they lift the curtain, what are those musicians doing back there? Oh, you've all nodded your heads. You know they're tuning their instruments, and it's just a bunch of gibberish and noise. There's no melody. There's no harmony. There's nothing worth listening to. You can't hardly wait until they're all ready, and the curtain can go up, and you can hear some music. All right, Paul is saying the same thing. See, look at it again. Even things without life, musical instruments, when they're giving sound, whether it's a pipe or a harp, except they give a distinction in the sound, in other words, the right note at the right place and in the right timing, how shall be known what is piped or harped? How can you make a melody? How would you know what song they're playing? Well, you don't, see? All right, next verse, verse 8. Now, he's going to use simple illustrations. That's why I say I really don't have to comment on them. I just want people to read it. For if the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to battle? Now, you want to remember the Romans used the trumpet for battle commands, much like you've seen in the movies that our American cavalry did with their riders and so forth. All right, the man at the head of the line, if he wanted somebody way at the back to get to the message, what did he do? He gave it to them on a trumpet, and they had a particular trumpet sound for each command. And every soldier knew what it was. Now, it's the same way in the Roman army. When they blew the trumpet, if the trumpet was blown right, they would know whether to retreat, attack, or whatever. And Paul is using the analogy. Now, what if, what if the trumpeter didn't know his commands? What if he's just blaring out a bunch of sounds? What would the poor troops do? Hey, they'd be sitting there looking at each other. What are we supposed to do, see? Confusion. All right, read on. Verse 9, so likewise, see how plain this is? Likewise, except you utter by the tongue, this tongue now, the organ, if you utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? For you shall speak into the air. Common sense? Yeah. In fact, I've even given the illustration before in one of the programs. I remember years ago, I was reading a book by one of the deep, deep, deep, thin theologians at that time, and I would have to just go back and read it over and over. And I mean, it was just so hard to dig any of the truth out of it because it was written in such complicated language. So one morning while I was fixing breakfast, and I was sitting there, and I just read a paragraph to her. I said, honey, do you know anything the guy is saying? And she said, no, what's he saying? Well, I just spit it back out in plain, ordinary layman's language. Oh, is that what he said? Yeah. Well, you see, this is what has happened across the whole spectrum. We've got men that are so theologians, or they are such theologians, that they talk above the heads of the average individual. And you know what I'm talking about. And you pray with me. I want you to pray with me that every time I teach, I can take these same truths and keep it so simple that a six-year-old can understand it. And this is what Paul is saying. What good does it do to come in with high-sounding, intellectual, perfectly formed statements if people don't know what you're talking about? The Word of God is simple. I explained just yesterday the gospel to a man that I'm sure had never heard it before. And I put it down in such simple language that I know he went down my driveway with no doubt about what it would take to gain heaven. I don't know whether he will or not. But I'll tell you what, he's going to stand responsible someday because I laid it out as plain and simple as it can be laid out. And he just stood there, and he said, I've never heard that before. Of course not. Most people don't. All right. Now come on down in this text. Verse 10, there are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification. Now you know what he's talking about. You go out even into the animal kingdom, and what are scientists learning more and more every day? That even the animals communicate one with another. Those of you who are quail hunters, boy, you bust up a covey. And the first thing, what do you start hearing? Oh, they start whistling. We scared up a wild turkey here a while back. We were out fishing, Iris and I. Our dog did. Boy, that old turkey went zooming across our fishing pond, and it wasn't long, and off in the distance, she started clucking. And her little poults were back in the woods, and they start answering. Well, what were they doing? They were communicating. And those sounds weren't gibberish. Those little turkey poults knew exactly what Mama was saying, and Mama knew exactly what they were saying. And we found it throughout the whole spectrum of the wild animal kingdom that they communicate. Sea creatures, they all communicate. And men, whatever our background, whether we're European, or Asiatic, or Russian, or whatever, we all communicate. And this is what Paul is saying. That's the purpose. That's why God gave us that ability to communicate. Then verse 11, "...therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, if I don't know what someone is saying, I shall be unto him that speaketh," and I'm going to put in the word, "...like a barbarian." What does that mean? What's he talking about? He can't understand. What purpose is there in making a sound if it isn't going to communicate? All right, "...and he that speaketh is like a barbarian to me." So how much understanding will come between a barbarian, an uncivilized person, and a cultured man like Paul? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. All right, we're just about at the end of the half hour already. Verse 12, "...even so you, forasmuch as you are zealous of spiritual things, seek that you may excel to the edifying," or the promoting, or the exhorting and lifting up of the church or the congregation. Not just one person or two, but the whole group. All right, reading on, "...wherefore let him that speaketh in an unknown tongue," here's that singular again, "...pray that he may interpret." Now I know most of our tongues people, and I'm not condemning them because the last verse of this chapter says He doesn't forbid it, but unless this sound can be reduced to something understandable, you're beating the air. And that's what this chapter is pointing out. "...wherefore let him," verse 13 again, "...let him that speaketh in an unknown tongue pray that he may interpret." For what purpose? To communicate. Otherwise it's just so much lost energy, it's lost time, and we're going to see in our next half hour that it had gotten to the place even in Corinth where it was just causing commotion in the local congregation, and no one was being edified by it. All right, so the whole purpose of this chapter is in the Spirit of love to bring these people to a solid understanding. With Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer -supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time for Through the Bible with Les Feldick.