Purpose and Regulation of
Tongues; 1 Cor.
One of the difficulties in
interpreting chapter 14 is that it is addressed to a historical problem in a
historical context dealing with the operation and function of certain spiritual
gifts that are no longer operational. So we do not have a clear understanding
of what exactly was going on in the Corinthians church and most of what we know
is inferred from what is stated in this chapter. One of the problems apparently
was that they would all come together and in the same manner as what happened
in their background where they were involved in the mystery religions. These
carnal Christians brought that baggage and that frame of reference with them
when they came into the church and were confusing the biblical gift of speaking
in languages with this pseudo tongues, this ecstatic gibberish that they had
practised in their paganism, and their worship services were degenerating into
the same kind of confusion and self-absorbed practices that they had been used
to in their pagan worship.
If we are going to advance as
believers we cannot be conformed to the world. That means we have to quit
thinking like a postmodern pagan. If you don’t
realize that all your life you have been inculcated with postmodern
paganism and that to some degree each of us thinks and responds like a postmodern pagan, and if you are not willing to do the hard
work to figure out how you think like a postmodern pagan
and get rid of that thinking so that you can be a consistent Christian thinker,
then you have no business coming to church because you are just fooling
yourself and drugging your own mind into thinking that somehow because you go
and sing your praise and worship choruses that you are worshipping God. You
cannot worship God other than by means of the Holy Spirit and truth. And what happens
in most of the “praise and worship” choruses, when you are taking Scripture and
setting it to music where its whole form and structure comes out of a postmodern pagan concept of music, what you are doing to is
trying to take the Word of God and blend it with a human viewpoint methodology.
You are blending truth with error in order to produce a certain goal that isn’t
biblical, and that is not worshipping God in truth and it is just a waste of
time spiritually. The same kind of thing was happening in Isaiah’s day. So now
there is a warning of judgment from Isaiah.
Isaiah 28:11 NASB “Indeed,
He will speak to this people Through stammering lips
and a foreign tongue.” In other words, Isaiah is saying: “You wouldn’t listen
to me when I was communicating to you in your native Hebrew, therefore God is
going to judge you and you are going to be instructed by foreigners in a foreign
language, one that is going to sound harsh to your ears.” [12] “He who said to
them, ‘Here is rest, give rest to the weary,’ And, ‘Here
is repose,’ but they would not listen.” That characterizes the message of
Isaiah, i.e. if you want real rest, real inner happiness, real peace in life,
that only comes because, first of all, you have trusted in Jesus Christ as your
saviour, and secondly, because you are responding to the teaching of the Word
of God and applying it into your life. That is the source of refreshment.
So the message of Isaiah is
summarized, “And this is the rest with which you may cause the weary to rest,
and this is the refreshing, yet,” the conclusion, “they would not hear.” That
last phrase, “they would not hear,” is the phrase from verse 12 that was picked
up by the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 14. Paul simply quotes verse 11 and the
last phrase of verse 12, indicating the sign of judgment and the warning of judgment
that Isaiah announced to the southern kingdom, they refused to listen, as the
northern kingdom did, and they eventually went out under divine judgment. This
principle that judgment would come and the warning of judgment would come in
the form of hearing instruction—this is not defining the instruction; the
Assyrians aren’t going to be instructing them with the Word of God but they
will be dictating policy to them, and even though the southern kingdom was not
destroyed by the Assyrians they were invaded by them when they surrounded
Jerusalem and put it under siege during the time of Hezekiah, and there was the
miraculous deliverance when the angel of the Lord wiped out the armies of
Sennacherib as they were encamped before the walls of Jerusalem. God did
deliver them but there was a period of time when they were under the oppressive
control and dominance of the Assyrian people—goes back to the Mosaic law. Deuteronomy 28:15ff deal with various categories of
divine judgments that will come upon the nation if they disobey God and disobey
the Mosaic Law.
Deuteronomy 28:47 NASB
“Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joy and a glad heart, for the abundance
of all things;
Another passage that relates
to this principle of judgment is in Jeremiah 5:15 NASB “Behold, I am
bringing a nation against you from afar, O house of
So Paul picks up on the principle
of Isaiah 28:11, 12 and says this is the principle of the gift of tongues in
the New Testament. Why did this happen? After the 586 BC dispersion
Jews ended up going to all the areas of
1 Corinthians 14:21 NASB
“In the Law it is written, ‘BY MEN OF
STRANGE TONGUES AND BY THE LIPS OF STRANGERS I WILL SPEAK TO THIS PEOPLE, AND
EVEN SO THEY WILL NOT LISTEN TO ME,’ says
the Lord.”
They had a real
opportunity, even after Pentecost, to accept Jesus Christ as Messiah. When John
the Baptist came he said: “If you change your thinking now about who Jesus is and about how to have a relationship with God
based on grace then the kingdom will come.” Jesus had the same message: “Repent
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The disciples had the same message: “Repent
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” If the Jews had changed their mind about
grace instead of following the Pharisees and the Sadducees and trying to earn
righteousness, and had accepted Jesus as their Messiah, the kingdom would have
come in in the first century. They still appear to
have that opportunity after Pentecost—Acts 3. When Peter preaches he said: “If
you respond the times of refreshing will come.” That is an allusion to Millennial blessing. Up until 70 AD there is this
sign or warning of judgment in tongues, “unless you respond.” Hypothetically
they could have changed.
1 Corinthians
Summary
of this verse:
a) It clearly states that tongues is
for a sign. This is the Greek word semeion
[shmeion] the word also used of miracles and it indicates that
something signifies or is a sign post. It points to something else.
b) A sign is some event which is designed to warn or to confirm
a promise of blessing or judgment, but it is something that is going to be
miraculous.
c) Tongues is a sign to unbelievers. This does not mean it is preaching
the gospel, although it may include that it doesn’t means that tongues is
evangelism. It doesn’t indicate the content of the foreign language speech at all, it simply says that the hearing of this miraculous
event, the speaking in Gentile languages, is a sign of judgment. All it
emphasizes is the miraculous occurrence of the foreign Gentile languages to
Jews, that this would be a warning of judgment. They didn’t necessarily have to
be present. Obviously they were present on the day of Pentecost and there were
other events in Acts where this took place and there were Jews present, but
they didn’t have to be present.
d) Prophecy is not said to be a sign in this passage;
prophecy is for believers, for edification. The emphasis of this section is to
put the emphasis on edification, not on this pseudo experience of speaking in
tongues. The legitimate gift of tongues for a sign to unbelievers.
1 Corinthians
1 Corinthians