CMLC 2025-01-19 Sermon (Traditional)

Another one of my friends is going to be getting married sometime in the next month and

In looking at this as I started thinking about some of the weddings that I've done before

What was funny is that before coming to Christ Memorial?

I don't know that I've ever actually conducted a wedding in a church before I had done a wedding on a mountain

I had done a wedding in a bar. I had done a wedding on a ranch

You know in a box with the box with socks. I mean whatever it may be

but one of the things with the different weddings is that

99 times out of a hundred you can almost guarantee

That they're going to want one specific passage read in the wedding, which would be

first Corinthians 13 and

You've got to have the love is patient love is kind love keeps no record of wrongs and some of the couples that are out there are saying

I think we may have to go revisit those a little bit there

But in thinking about it is the funny part about first Corinthians 13 is that it has absolutely nothing to do

with weddings and in reality it has actually nothing to do with

couples whatsoever is that it actually is trying to explain a little bit more

About what we're speaking about the unity of the church from first Corinthians 12 now

I'm not going to be the jerk pastor who tells a married couple. You're not you can't use that passage

It's not technically about weddings and then everybody goes to find somebody else to do their wedding for them

But with it though is when we think of some of those parts of that chapter

When we think what is before the wedding scripture of first Corinthians 13?

We realize why all those random parts are in there

Because it seems so out of context when all we know of it is the wedding scripture

So for example when it says if I speak in the tongues of angels and of men but have not loved, you know

I'm a sounding gong clanging symbol

Because we're looking at first Corinthians 12 talking about having gifts of speaking in tongues of angels

And he's trying to put it in context or to realize that it's not just you can do it

That's great. But are you loving your neighbor as you do so or if I have the gift of prophecy and I can fathom all mysteries

What does that have to do with married couples? Well, no is that realizing is that in chapter 12

Some people had a gift of being able to speak the truth of the present or the future and others were able to give

Wisdom and knowledge so they're trying to explain yes, but

Whatever gift you have are you doing so with love for your neighbor?

Not just trying to be puffed up and prove something to other people if I have a faith that can move mountains

Because in chapter 12 it had said

For those who have faith who have the gift of faith and it sounds strange

Because we may be thinking well wait a minute

Shouldn't we all have the gift of faith? Yes, but it's specifying the idea of faith that can do miraculous things

And then on top of it says love does not dishonor and this idea of being able to point out

that oftentimes in

Especially in the early church, but we still see it sometimes today is that people might try to prove themselves to be more

Spiritual than somebody else and it's almost like trying to honor yourself

by shaming somebody else and

It says when I was a child that thought like a child spoke like a child that reasoned like a child

But when I became a man, you know, I put away childish things and you're like, okay now you just lost me Paul

And that's because in chapter 12

He's trying to let them know that they need to become more mature

They need to think through what it is they're doing and not just try to be excited and try to just have everything be

Whatever seems like fun at the moment

And he's trying to get them to think through things

So trying to understand

chapter 13

Today's passage is needed

But today's passage has a lot to it and one of the things that always struck me whenever I would read chapter 12

Was the idea when it says no one who says Jesus be cursed has the spirit of God

And that's one of the things about this is this idea of

Can Christians say?

Jesus be cursed and you know, that's something that's interesting is how often

Do you feel like you are genuinely being asked by somebody to curse Jesus?

That's not like a normal thing you don't go to Starbucks and give them your Starbucks points and they say thank you

Would you like whipped cream great? Would you like to curse Jesus? No, okay? That would be fine. That'll be seven dollars

But we think about what in the world is the understanding that's happening here

What are they trying to get across now? What you have to realize is that there actually were times

Where people were being interrogated

About whether or not they were actually Christian and there was a test

Later on so this was later after Paul was writing here, but it gives a context

is that emperor Trajan the Roman Empire if he wondered if someone was following this

Christian sect would actually have a person in front of him and say okay curse Jesus and

If a person could curse Jesus in front of him and give a sacrifice to the gods

He would let them go because no one who's a Christian can do that

But if they couldn't and if they still had to proclaim Jesus as Lord

It kind of proves who they truly are

But you see there's also a lot more to this context too

See there were also

different cults at the time that might try to combine

Christianity

into what they were teaching and doing at the time

Dionysus or

Bacchus or basically the god of partying and revelry there was a cult and

With it was that they would oftentimes have these like strange worship times where they were in these ecstatic movements and everything where they were just

Experiencing whatever was overwhelming them at the moment and in their ecstasy. They would say all sorts of random things and

some Christian believers at the time speaking to Corinth

Some of them were tempted to listen to some of them and what may come from these particular

priests and priestesses

The thing is though

That you never knew whether they would or wouldn't bless or curse Jesus

And to be able to say that whatever you're hearing from people around you

It should never be if it's the spirit of God the spirit of God is not going to fill somebody and then they go

And curse Jesus

But third

Is to remember that whatever we do to the least of these we have done

onto Christ

We oftentimes love the idea of blessing Jesus name

But are we willing to do so by blessing the people he loves and

That's something that we have to remember is that whether we have blessed or cursed our neighbor is

Also indicative of whether we are blessing or cursing

Jesus

Because as much as we in the world we have to make difficult life decisions

We don't have to do so

hurtfully or without compassion

We can always pause whether it be our family our friends our business our home the world around us and always say

Can I do this?

With compassion and understanding in my heart

But it then goes from this idea of

Those who follow Jesus his spirit cannot say Jesus be cursed and it starts going into the different gifts of God's spirit

The thing is is that there are different places in scripture that actually list out

What are the gifts of God's spirit and?

There are some that are listed here in 1st Corinthians 12. It talks about

Sorry, it talks about being able to give wisdom as well as those who can give knowledge

Talks about those who have faith and those who can do healing and miraculous powers

Those who can have prophecy

distinguished between spirits speak in different kinds of tongues and

In and interpret the tongues

We're going to notice that the two in regarded tongues are last in this list and

We know that Paul is trying to help explain to the people

What they're supposed to do with those tongues, but you see this list

This is not the only place for time where we see a similar list

It's it says in here about wisdom and knowledge. Let's be honest

There are a lot of times where somebody may have a lot of book learning, but they don't seem to be very wise

So maybe they are able to teach

Physics to a high school class, but they're not quite sure what to do with the breaker box outside of their home or

Oftentimes wherever somebody may be able to be really intelligent about knowing all these completely flowery things to speak

Maybe they majored in communication, but then in person they seem to get on everybody's nerves

And there can be knowledge, but not always wisdom

And at the same time there can be wisdom and not knowledge

Or maybe a person is always trying to somehow balance things out, but doesn't have enough input to do so

but comparing this list with

Romans 12

Where it says having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us

Let us use them if prophecy in proportion to our faith if service in our serving the one who teaches in

His teaching the one who exhorts like you are urging people to things

Then in his exhortation the one who contributes in

Generosity the one who leads in zeal and the one who does acts of mercy

with cheerfulness or

In Ephesians 4 it says he gave the apostles the prophets the evangelists the shepherds and

Teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ

All of these lists are supposed to be similar. They're not exhaustive

It's not like you can't say well, you know, I have a particular gift from God and I'm glad to use it

But it's not listed in here. So therefore I have to ignore it now granted

I believe that the Spirit of God has given me that the gift of terrible jokes

But for some reason Paul forgot to include it in here because I don't think he knew the Greek word for it

But with these is that we realize that the other passages

Notice that they don't specify

speaking in tongues

And that's because speaking in tongues was not supposed to be something so special and set apart

That it missed the point of all the other gifts

It's not supposed to be something for its own sake

Not something where that goes beyond

speaking the gospel

teaching

Bringing people to know one another and to know God more clearly

And that's something that we need to at least understand a bit before we can ask this question about

speaking in tongues

huh, and

Let's just be honest

Lutherans have a rough time with passages like this

We really do and you know if somebody all of a sudden were to over often the fellowship hall start speaking in tongues

We probably go check to see if the security guard is still here in the narthex and that's the thing with it though is

What even is it?

What is the speaking in tongues?

Because there are

discussions about whether or not

There are two different things happening

between acts to

Where the people at Pentecost

We're speaking in different languages in different tongues

Versus first Corinthians 12

Where they are the speaking of tongues and the interpreting of tongues

now

Oftentimes we may be looking at this idea of whether or not those are two

separate types of things if you look at reading the chapters on their own if

You look at them in their context because what we see in acts, too

Is that you have people that are all of a sudden speaking languages to people in front of them that they can understand?

Whereas you may normally have people that are speaking Aramaic

Maybe Greek maybe Hebrew remember Aramaic was kind of a common language

It's like what English has become for us today, but for business

You would speak Greek

For religious purposes you had Hebrew

But now all the different people that might be coming through

Jerusalem and the Roman Empire speaking all these other languages and all of a sudden you're

Explaining the gospel to them, but it's coming out in completely different and strange words

it was like

when I was in in China and I was trying to learn

Chinese and I was trying to like pick up some things and

Sometimes whenever you've learned you're trying to learn a different language

But maybe you had tried a different one before and you realize I never learned that word

but I had never learned the word sandwich in Spanish and

Here I was trying to learn sandwich in Chinese

Sun Misa

All right, and so I could say

Well, y'all Sun Misa I want to sandwich

But the problem was that I never learned what it was in Spanish. The problem is is that nowadays I

Keep trying to say yo quiero un sandwich and all I come out with is yo quiero un sun means

Oh and the poor lady at the taqueria has nobody to deal what I'm trying to say to her

Now in my mind

I'm trying to say sandwich and I'm trying to do it as bilingual as I can

But the word coming out is completely wrong

Or different from what I'm expecting

But could you imagine that now at this moment?

They're not just doing this as bilingual or trialing will people who accidentally slip up and fall into their other language

But now they're doing it with languages that they never actually knew

Their brain is trying to say one thing and it comes out differently

But now if you look at first Corinthians 12

It seems completely different a ton of angels

as if it's some other type of language that nobody actually speaks on earth and

The only way to try to understand it if somebody else is standing there saying okay

I think this is what the angels would understand you to say they might call it holy mumbling in some ways now

And do you have to mention is that?

we

believe

That God could very well utilize tongues again as

Needed to spread the gospel it is always possible for God to do his work

What's been interesting is the cessationists the ones who say that there are no more gifts of the spirit today

what they will say is

that

At that time first Corinthians 12 did not mean anything other than speaking in

Human languages that other people understood at the time and they believe

Many of them that only until the Pentecostal movement became a thing 18th 19th century

That all of a sudden commentaries

Started adding this angel language in there to meet what was being taught

by that particular church body

The reason why they would say this number one because many of them are

uncomfortable with the concept of tongues, but also

When they look at the word tongues is that it's the same word between the two passages

But if you look at the context in first Corinthians 12 and it speaks to there are the tongues of angels

We also know that there were many early church fathers

When they were speaking and talking at different times that would reference this idea of there being a different language

That somehow came from heaven

Ignatius and tertulian and

Augustine

Even to the point where there was even

Montanus who even had a heretical sect based out of it or

Even during the dark ages the Middle Ages if you will where they would be

Different monks or nuns who would speak to the idea of having a heavenly language and ecstatic speech

So ever since the time of Paul there have always been those

Who have felt like they were able to have some time of

Speaking in some other language that no human would understand

But is there something to it

To be fair

It has actually been studied

To actually measure the brain waves is that when a person is speaking in tongues at a time like that

It actually shows

That it's not using the same part of the brain

That you would normally use to communicate when talking to people

So whatever is happening

They genuinely believe that they are speaking in a heavenly language in their mind. They're not faking it

But that doesn't mean that we should just always

accept it

No matter what comes from it

Why is that?

because of the purpose of gifts

Because the purpose of gifts is always to proclaim

Christ

Because that's the thing about this is that if somebody is wishing to have a time where they are

Speaking something that they feel is mystical or grabs attention and somehow people are going to listen more

Is that we have to be careful at those times?

Even for those who feel themselves gifted in

This particular area many of them are trained to start by doing it by just mumbling and

Hoping that the spirit will take it from there or

Others where they know that they have just been caught up in a community that was doing the same

But even more than that is even asking what was the purpose

Because Paul tells us that tongues were only meant for unbelievers

the purpose behind it

Was going to the Gentiles

Was going to people who were speaking other languages and making sure that they could hear the gospel so if you are

In a worship setting with believers the gift God desires

is prophecy

speaking truth

And that's the thing that we have to be careful about

We are in a world where people have many different perspectives on what faith may be

But whatever that perspective may be that is always meant for the same purpose

To proclaim Christ Jesus

It's not about trying to do something for ourselves

But more than that

Is to also be able to point out

That many of us have many different gifts

We are all sorts of different gifted types of people

There are those who are teaching there are those who are teaching

There are those who are preaching there are those who are comforting and caring for one another

There are those who are getting out there to make sure that they share the gospel and those who are going out to plant new churches

There are many people doing many different things

But we're all meant to be sharing in the same spirit of God

Whatever it is that we feel called to by God

We should still be learning who he is in spirit and in truth

And we should still be asking is this bearing the fruit

That God desires of us

Because whatever your gifts may be

They will always be to share love

joy

peace

Patience kindness

goodness

faithfulness

gentleness

and self-control

Whatever someone may tell you is from God

If it is not to proclaim his gospel and to bear the fruits of his spirit

then run away

Because all of these are meant for one spirit and for one Lord

So as we continue in this world around us and we see that there are so many things that we may pursue in faith

People may come to you with things that they declare to be of the spirit of God

But you must always pause and ask

Is this

Proclaiming Christ Jesus to the world in a way they can understand as

It and is it helping us to grow in humility and truth in the fruits of God's spirit

Because nothing from God will ever contradict that

Thanks be to God