Beyond Sunday Ep 16 (The Importance of Orderly Worship)

Welcome to be on Sunday, an extension of the preaching

ministry here at Leemington. Emci am Pastor Jonah Chitty,

joined as always by Pastor Joe Penner and Pastor Jake.

And I say as always, Jake's been out a couple times, a couple

episodes, but he's back today, back and ready as ever.

Thank you. And he preached the sermon on

Sunday. I'll let you, Jake, I'll let you

give us a recap of that. Share your title, go over your

points. If you want to share it, share a

little bit about it. I think we did you, we didn't do

you any favors by giving you 40 verses to go through in First

Corinthians. But, and I think in in like in

our defence that it might be one sentence for Paul.

You know, he just like he liked to talk and run on sentences.

And if you look at it, if you look at in the original text,

there's no punctuation, no capital letters at all.

And so must have been hard to read.

I must have or maybe no lowercase letters.

Sorry, it was all caps, no punctuation, no spaces.

It must have been really hard to read.

So if we're confused by it, just think who the original

translators how confused they were by it.

That's right. Yeah.

So, yeah. So I looked at the preaching

calendar and uh oh, this passage falls to me and 1st Corinthians

14 and has never been an easy passage for me to, to understand

or to really dig into, much less preach on.

And I don't think I've ever preached on 1st Corinthians 14

in my life. And I've preached for many, many

years. And so for me, this was a hard

one in the sense that not only is it difficult in terms of

understanding, but also how do people today interpret and apply

it? I thought to myself, OK, how am

I going to navigate this and do justice to the text?

But then also, it's so big. And as we talked briefly prior

to this podcast about it would have been good to split it up.

And I really thought about it. Maybe I should just pick a few

verses and just hone in on them and just say, I'm going to leave

the rest out. But I thought, no, I'd rather

not do that because this is what we're doing and I don't want to

leave anything out. So I tried to dig through the

whole thing and spend a lot of time on it.

And I came up with the title, the importance of orderly

worship and how Paul uses the words, the concepts of speaking

in tongues and prophecy. What, what interested me was how

he started that whole discussion off with pursuing love.

And that's kind of a foundation out of which everything else

grows. And basically as I preached my

sermon, what Joe preached in the previous sermon was if love is

not there, then nothing else really works.

And so this whole thing has to be understood in that context as

well. And as far as the, the, the

concepts of speaking in in tongues and prophecy, I don't

think everybody today in our world understands it the same.

And I for myself just want to take this as literal as

possible. When Paul just uses the word

tongues, he means languages. That's how I understand it.

And even though I know not everybody might agree with that,

but also then prophecy. When when Paul says prophecy

here, I understand him to mean simply exhortation,

encouragement, building up, not predicting future events that we

don't know yet, as some would say, well, I have a word of

prophecy for you. The Lord is going to do XYZ for

you in the next month or so. And so that to me is is kind of

in a nutshell. And he talks about the goals of

it, what it's supposed to do again, lifting up, encouraging.

And then the most difficult part for me, I think was, well, maybe

not the most difficult. I have to recorrect that the

women should be silent in the church.

And that I really wrestle with because he doesn't explain it in

great detail, but I assume the people he was writing to, they

knew what he was talking about. And of course, then in our time

today, there have literally been churches, may still be, I would

say there still are churches where women literally have to be

sound except for singing. As far as I know, they cannot do

anything except sing. And yeah, so yeah, it's a

difficult passage in some ways, but I think at the same time, I

think it's helpful for us. So yeah, leave it open for

anybody. If you could, I don't know if

you had to summarize the the the sermon in one sentence, like

what would the main point of your sermon be?

Yeah. So the main point it would be

practice orderly worship through the use of the gifts God has

given. You good?

Yeah, I like that's good. That's that's something that

that we should all strive for using our gifts, orderly worship

for for building others up. Yeah.

So. Yeah.

And I think that's a good a good summary of it because sort of

like you mentioned already, Jake, like he sort of starts the

passage off by saying pursue love and earnestly desire the

gifts, especially that you may prophecy.

And so then he's going to later on talk about doing that in an

orderly way, right. So it's like, yeah, love each

other, seek to seek ways to use your gifts.

But like, it should all be done orderly and it should all be

done well. And so that's that's a good

summary. I think the people in Corinth

the way I understand the letter, I'm just trying to imagine what

was in this other side of it in Corinth, what was going on and

the way I I'm assuming it happened.

I think this is correct is there were worship services was noisy,

chaotic, people shouting over each other and women too, which

was not normal in that day and age.

And so these worship services, they were actually doing more

harm than good. And so here are visitors coming

to this church in Corinth, not even Christians necessarily, but

curious what's going on there. And I'm hearing these strange

stories and they're doing this and that and the other and Paul

saying, look, guys, what you're doing is not helping.

God is not being honored. You're not being built up.

And the unbelievers, they don't get anything and they're not

even convicted. Yeah, yeah.

And one of the things, one of the things you said early on in

your in your sermon as you were talking about like the orderly

worship, is you ask the question like, is my personal time with

the Lord orderly? Yeah.

And that was an interesting thought.

I've never thought of that before.

I don't know. Do you?

I don't know if you remember saying it, but I don't know.

Would you be able to expand on that a little?

Bit very much. So here's here's the struggle I

face. Maybe I'm alone in this.

I think I'm not. But here's here's the struggle I

face sometimes. See I have an iPad to do my

studies and devotions in the morning.

I sometimes thought about just putting aside and use only the

Bible and the pen and notepad. The reason I do want to

sometimes do that is because the the iPad is such a distraction

in some ways. Oh, that just popped up and my

mind goes in all kinds of directions.

I'm reading and I'm in prayer and then all of a sudden

something else comes. I'm going to quick and check

this. And so I don't know if you ever

do that, but this has been a struggle for me sometimes

because my mind is not orderly. Now, if the Holy Spirit lives

inside of me and he's dwelling in my heart and mind, what does

he think about all this? It's not orderly.

If if my thoughts would would be in a continuing stream across

the across the street, the screen in the in the front of

the church, what would they be reading?

Where would my mind be? What's for lunch?

Yeah. Oh, I better get home soon

because the roast is burning or I wonder who's going to who's

going to be at such and such a place in the afternoon, right?

Man, he talks fast. I do talk fast.

Yeah, that. Would that would might be coming

across my screen like as a as a as a redneck from the South in

the United States, it's sometimes very, very fast.

That's a good thought. It is a good thought though,

like is our are we are we setting aside times or days

specifically for the Lord? I know like I've even had

conversations with this recently with, with people in the church

and we talked about the difference of, yeah, I mean,

it's great. It's great to have your Bible,

you know, on your phone all the time.

And that is a benefit if you're at, you know, you're at the

doctor's office or you're out. I don't nobody rides a bus, but

if you're on a bus and you. Know somebody out there rides a

bus? Somebody maybe rides a bus, but

if you're out there and it's like if you're just out and

about and you can pull up God's word, I mean, that's excellent.

That's great. But to use that for your

personal time, like even in a positive way, you use your phone

for 1000 things and now just to add Bible reading as another one

of them, like you said, your mind often gets distracted, but

in a negative way. You know, your phone is used

quite honestly to sin. And it's like, now there's stuff

that you sort of have this tool that it can be beneficial at

times, But maybe there's, there is a place.

I, I agree with you. Like just specifically, like

when I read a Bible, I want to read a physical Bible and I'm

going to hold that physical Bible and it's like there is no

distraction. There is no notification that's

going to pop up. There is nothing distracting My

time like my phone is off to the side and, and I'm focused on

reading the word. And one thing that I had a

professor say as an idea was inevitably as you read, you're

going to have things come to your mind, even if you set aside

the phone and turn it off. So he said, like what he does is

he has a notepad beside him so that it's like, Oh, I need to

remember to do this today. He's like, if, if I don't do

anything with that, it will keep coming up in my mind.

He says, but if I write it down, then I can then I can push it to

the side and go, OK, I've, I've written it down so that I can

remember it and now I can focus back on reading because those

are those distractions will come.

But we can have strategies, again, like you said, for

orderly worship to say this half hour, this hour, this 15

minutes, whatever it is, it's like is blocked off and it's

like for the Lord and it's not going to be distracted by other

things. Because we would not do that to

a friend. If we sit in a coffee shop with

a friend, we have time now devoted to this person.

To spend time with this person to look at the phone is

disrespectful. Yeah, well, it used to be.

I would say now it's more normal than.

Than it but it's not healthy. It's definitely not healthy.

But yeah, I didn't think you just made a comment earlier.

I use this thing to send and why would I use it to like it's an

instrument of Satan. Then you're going to you're

going to use it as your tool for worshipping God.

That's something to think about because for a lot of, for a lot

of people who, who have issues with pornography, things like

that, they're literally saying this is the instrument of my

sin, but I'm going to like make an excuse and this is also my

Bible. And I think.

You're staring at the same piece of glass that you would stare at

to send or yeah, that's pretty incredible to think about.

Yeah, the the only thing I would say as well is that for those

who cannot quote UN quote read and they use this as an audio

device. So there has to be exceptions,

right? And So what I really like here,

what we're doing now is taking the Bible onto the pulpit and

reading from the Scripture, even though you use a tablet to to

read from, because it's simpler, but you still use the Word when

you read the passage. We're reading from the Word.

Yeah, and I hope nobody sees us as saying that it's wrong to

have your Bible on your phone. I, I think it's just, it's an

interesting thing to be thinking about.

Like how can I separate maybe at times?

Like again, I, I think I do think it is great to have your

Bible on your phone that you could access it whenever you

want. But I also agree with you, this

idea that like I should be reading for my physical Bible,

which maybe just to mention here in this podcast, again, I would

know, we've said it from the pulpit that, you know, we, we

try not to have the text up on the screen, like the the

physical verses that we're going through, because we want people

to be bringing their Bibles. You know, we love to hear the

pages turning as as we're turning to the text and, and

those sorts of things. We want you to bring your

physical Bible. Yeah, when we're reading, if we

look up and you're looking at us as we read the Bible, I, I

wonder why I want that's, that's something honestly, that's not

like, I mean, it's like it's funny and but the thing about,

but honestly, like if you're at church, the pastor's reading

from the word. You should read along with him.

So for one thing, make sure he's reading and saying what's in the

Bible. Right.

You're going to make everybody just look down so that that's.

All right, that's all right. Don't make eye contact with me

on Sunday as I preach when I'm reading from the Scripture.

So. Another thing about disorderly

services, I'm reminded of something that AW Tozer wrote

many years ago and I don't remember the book he wrote it

in, but he talked about the the increasing level of all kinds of

things we need in our services today.

And he's passed away many years ago.

And I'm just kind of thinking, what would you say today?

Because I remember how frustrated I have been at times.

Now I am not tech savvy at all. And sometimes on Sunday morning

in church, I get so frustrated. We're having technical

difficulties. That phrase just grates on me.

That's the huge disorder thing. And so we have this whole thing

in the back, this big sound board, and it's all good stuff,

I get it. But it's this big sound board

that you have to train professionals to run it.

And then we have electrical difficulties or technical

difficulties. I think to myself, OK, can we

not just use a Bible in a songbook?

Well, anyway, back to AW Tozer. He said back in those days when

these books were written in the New Testament and all that, they

had a Bible. Not even not just books,

letters, Scripture passages and some songs.

That's all they had. He said today, now use his

words. He said we have a truckload of

claptrap and we still can't get it right.

And so I'm just wondering at what point where is it the best?

I'm not saying technology is sin or wrong, but it does become a

distraction, at least in my life, too much of it.

Now, I know it's subjective. Somebody would say we don't have

enough of it. Some say we need more of it.

We need to come to a happy medium, I guess.

But to me, too much becomes distracted and so that it

borders on disorder. Yeah, Yeah.

That's a hard, that's maybe a hard thing to think about.

Like so you mean specifically in church?

Like you're not talking like technology in our lives?

I mean, you're not a church service.

Yeah, like some church services. They're they're so busy.

It's so cluttered. There's so much stuff going on,

so many moving parts. Where's the where's the, the

sweetness or the, the, the calm. I'm shouldn't be calm is the

wrong word, perhaps. But this, this Worshipful

atmosphere. Yeah, Yeah.

Well, I mean, I guess something to make me think about that what

comes to my mind right now is like Israel like, like that

doesn't strike me as a simple like when they had, you know,

their full orchestra going and all the different, all the

different instruments and all the different people singing.

Like, I don't think that was like a solemn it.

Was noisy. Quiet, like I'm guessing that

was a very like that was an incredible sound that was, you

know, probably very extravagant, you know, but I think I think I

get the point of what you're saying.

And I think it has to do with culture, because it was born and

raised in, because it was very solemn, it was very somber, it

was Worshipful, meditational, that kind of.

Thing but Worshipful this is this is where you're bumping up

against culture and you just made the comment Worshipful to

you seems like it's somber. It's it's meditative but

Worshipful to others may be exuberant right and joyful and

and motion and feeling and neither one are wrong.

See, and that's where I came up with this, this illustration,

this lady that came to our church some years ago, this is

way back. She literally left me says he

says you're too quiet, you need to.

And so I sense that. And so is there a place in time

when we just, we can't just get rid of what we do?

How do we accommodate? Can we do both in the same

service? Can we?

Can we do together? And yeah, those are not easy

questions. Yeah, different postures of

worship. Yeah, that's good.

Whatever the case, it should be done orderly fashion.

Where'd you see that Joe? Verse 26.

Verse. 26. There's a verse in the Bible

that says make a joyful noise unto the Lord.

A lot of people who Can't Sing say that they they, they're

using that, that verse, but they're just making noise.

They're just joyful. It's joyful.

Yeah. I may not be able to sing, but I

can make a noise. Yeah, I know.

One of the things I appreciated that you drew out was like your

second point was prophecy is better than speaking in tongues.

And so I know you were sort of like trying to draw out like the

difference between those two things.

I know Paul says, well, I'd rather, I'd rather say a few

words and be helpful than say 10,000 words and nobody knows

what I'm saying, right? Like so the, the point of your

gift is to be a blessing to other people.

It's for the mutual benefit or for the upbuilding of other

people that your gifts are to be other others focused and not for

yourself. And so I was, I was grateful for

that. I don't know if you have

anything you really want to. Add to that, but I wonder

sometimes how much do we literally think of I'm going to

go today to church. My primary purpose is first to

worship my Lord, but also second, to be a benefit and a

blessing and upbilling to my neighbor.

How much do those thoughts cross our minds?

I'm going to go to church today and I'm going to see people and

going to wish them well. Hi, good morning and encourage

them, give them a handshake and sometimes a hug.

I don't do hugging much, but you know what I mean.

Just this, this, this atmosphere of I'm glad to be here and glad

you're here. We're connecting, right?

Building each other up. Yeah, I think sometimes I miss

that. We go there because of a job to

do, or we go there because it's routine, it's habit.

Yeah, yeah, that's actually that's that's a really good

thing to challenge people with because I think our culture has

trained us to be consumers that like I should always be looking

for the benefit to me. And I think like what you're

saying, it's like how many people come to church with that

mindset of like, you know, are are they going to, you know, is

the who's on who's on coffee cart today?

Is it going to be, you know, the strength of coffee that I

prefer? Or what songs are they going to

sing? Is it going to be the songs that

I like or, you know, those sorts of things like is, is, is it the

passage that I like? Are they going to preach in the

way that I like? And we're too focused on

ourselves. That's a really good question to

say in what way, as you prepare your heart to come to church,

are you looking for ways to serve other people?

Like you should be walking in the door having already prayed.

Who can I bless today? Who can I serve today?

Who can I encourage? Who can I pray for?

You know, can I be looking for a guest who maybe they're here for

the first time and maybe somebody's been praying for them

to come to church and this is the first Sunday they've been in

church in a year or two years or five years.

And how can I be minister to someone else and care for

someone else rather than just, oh, they sang that song again.

I hate that song or whatever it is right?

Like always looking for like what I get out of it.

Yeah, the building up of the body and by what we do with each

other. Yeah, very much so.

Yeah, along those along those lines we brought up, you brought

up the prophecy in tongues. We did have a question from from

our audience. And so this person's question is

about prophecy. And then he says, it seems like

it encompasses several things. In the Old Testament, the

prophets would usually warn people to repent or there would

be judgment. In this passage, Paul says, and

he quotes 1st Corinthians 14. Three.

He uses the New Living Translation in his question, so

I'll just read it. He says, but one who prophecies

strengthens others, encourages them and comforts them.

And so he's asking, is there a difference between what Paul is

saying prophecy is here in First Corinthians, and what the

prophets of the Old Testament would be?

Yeah, it's a very good question. And if you read prophets like

Isaiah, Jeremiah, they had words of warning and repentance and

count in judgment if they would not repent.

And that's different than what Paul is doing here.

Paul here is talking to people who are believers, who are

followers of Christ, who have, who are saved.

And as he says here, the one who prophesized strengthens others,

encourages them and cumbers them.

Versus Jeremiah when he was talking to the people of Israel,

he wasn't comforting them, he wasn't encouraging them, He was

talking, you guys turn around, you got to repent or else.

So there's different prophecies. Oh, OK, I'll push back just a

little bit there. But it's not Jeremiah

prophesying saying you need to repent or else that that can't

be an encouragement. Oh, yeah, you're right.

I mean, I get it. It makes sense, John.

That makes sense. It can be it, but also I think

the idea of disposed to that the fear of God was gone and those

people, there was no respect for God.

They had sort of, so to speak, worship services still happen,

but there was no respect for the Lord.

They were very brazenly living in sin.

Jeremiah is is is very distraught about that.

The Spirit inspires him to preach this is sin, you need to

repent and judgment is coming versus this passage.

There's no mention of, oh, somebody needs to repent, or

well, at least from this passage.

But we do find later, a little bit later on, people will be

convicted, unbelievers will come and hear the prophecy.

So there must be something along those lines.

But here, just this verse alone that we have here, but one who

prophecies, strengthens others, encourages them and comforts

them, OK. Yeah.

And I, I, I would tend to agree that there's a, there is a

difference between the two that prophecy served.

There's prophecy in the Old Testament, like, like an

impending judgment, right? Like if you continue in your

ways, like God's gonna punish you, right?

And I think there's prophecy in the New Testament as well.

You know, we think of even a revelation where, you know, John

saw a vision, right? And he?

Gives passage. He gives prophecy about the end

of the world, right. Judgment is coming and you know

you you should repent. And so I, and I think to me, to

me, this verse that you know, this, this person sending in the

question is quoting chapter 14, verse three.

He says the one who prophesized speaks to the people for the

upbuilding and encouragement and consolation or comfort.

As the NLT says, I think Paul is defining what prophecy is.

So for him, that is what prophecy is it it it and maybe

the and maybe he is talking I, I think he's talking about like

you, you're saying something that's encouraging.

You're saying something that strengthens, you're saying

something that comforts. So we may think of prophecy

sometimes as preaching and I and I think it is proclaiming God's

word, but Paul may just have in mind the the ability to use

words in a way that we're strengthening and encouraging

and comforting other people. And so I think this is a gift

for everybody. And I think that's why he says

earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially to prophecy.

And so like the second part of this, this listener's question

is how do you think we pursue prophecy?

I think that's it. We ought to be in God's Word

every day. We got to be praying every day

so that I can be an encouragement to other people

when I come to church. How can I speak words to

encourage, to strengthen, to comfort other people?

And that's how you use that gift to be a blessing to other

people. It doesn't have to be.

If you don't, God's going to get you.

And I think one of the one of the prophets that comes to mind

here, I was thinking about this and I was doing a bit of

research on this question. Like John the Baptist was also

considered a prophet, right? And So what did he do to the

Pharisees? He called them straight up said

you repent, you what brutal Vipers he calls them.

And so that is very aggressive and that's very confrontive and

didn't go so well for him, though he confronted Herod too.

And of course, that was the end of his ministry right there in

the sense that he got, he got jailed and eventually died for

it, so. I think it went perfectly well

for him. Well, yeah, of course I see your

point, but from a human standpoint, things didn't go

well. Well, I think, I think I'm just

going to push back on your, your Joe's description as well.

I, I think verse 3 says, on the other hand, the person who

prophesied speak to people he's not.

I don't think he's describing what it is.

I think he describes why they do it.

So for the benefits, so for the strengthening, for

encouragement, for consolation. So I think, I think, I think

it's, I think you're right, But also it's like a it's subtle

like shift in thinking that the reason that, that we prophesize

for building others up. I think that it comes to the

same point, right? But, but again, I, I think like

to, to be fair, I, I don't know that, that they're completely

different. I, I think that, yeah, Old

Testament prophets, we're given a specific word of the Lord for

a specific time and place to a specific people to, to express

God's word. That's what they, that's what

they did. That's what prophets did.

They expressed God's word. So in the same way, like I'm not

a cessationist in the in like when it comes to prophecy, like

a lot of the gifts, like this is one of them that a lot of people

say is dead. I don't believe that it is

because I believe that that for us to preach, we stand in front

of God's people and we say thus says the word of the Lord.

And then we we we take that word and we take what we know about

those people and we say this is how it applies to you.

Like that. This is this is what this word

means for us. So like we we take it, we

understand it, we explain what it means to the people who it

was written to. And then we take it and we

expand on it. We say this is how it applies to

us. So I think, I think they're the

same. There is taking the word of the

Lord and giving it to the people for a specific time, a specific

place, specific moment. You have to go down to the third

definition in the lexicon to get to prophecy as foretelling.

So like you mentioned, Revelation, Revelation is a mix

of literature, it's a mix of genre.

So they got, you got letters, right?

We got in the 1st 5 chapters, we got 7 letters to seven churches.

Then we've got, we've got prophecy, we've got some

apocalyptic language that's in there that's way different.

And, and so like, yeah, John and I think John the Baptist wasn't

like the reason he's mentioned as a prophet is he's the first

prophet after 400 years of silence, right?

The reason that that I would, I don't know that I think the, the

reason people say that prophecy is dead is because we have, like

you mentioned earlier, we were talking Joe, we have God's full

counsel. Like we don't need any more

revelation to understand who God is and become a saving faith in

him. And so I think, I think, how do

you pursue prophecy? You pursue it by studying the

word and then and then studying people and then forming

relationships with people, as you mentioned earlier, Jake,

like being relational and then figuring out, all right, how am

I going to go to church today, going to meet with the body of

believers. We're going to get together as a

church. What, what, what, what's the

word of the Lord for them, right?

And how does, how does what I've been studying this week apply

And how do I help edify and build up the church?

So I don't know, maybe that's too much.

Maybe I have a slightly different take than you guys on

it, but that's kind of where I feel about prophecy.

Yeah, well, I mean, you would be, you would be prophetic.

I would say be prophetic by by doing exactly what you said,

reading and studying God's Word and then telling people about

it. Yeah, right.

Like we're going through Revelation.

Revelations. Revelation And the interesting

thing in like chapter 16 that I was reading is, you know, here

you have these seven bowls of God's wrath that are poured out.

And the thing that stands out to you is all, all the people of

the earth are facing these incredible judgments, this

incredible wrath of God. And then you have this phrase

that's repeated, I think three times.

They did not repent and give him glory.

They did not repent of their disease, their deeds.

And so rather than repenting and turning to God, these people are

are continuing to to face God's wrath because of their

unrepentance. And so it's like we're prophetic

in the way that when we tell people the only way for you to

be forgiven to get to heaven is by trusting in Jesus Christ your

savior. Otherwise you will face God's

wrath, you know, and that is a prophetic statement.

It is, but it's being faithful to God's word.

And I think maybe, and maybe we could talk briefly because I'm

sure this question maybe came up to people if they were thinking

about prophecy as as foretelling, like you were

saying, what do we do with people who speak a prophetic

word, you know, and claim some sort of like, I don't know,

something right? Like this person is the

Antichrist or this is the here is what's going to come, some

sort of prophetic word. How do we sort of handle those

sorts of things? Yeah, it's a good question.

I think to me it's easy. It's like, does it contradict

what we already have revealed to us in Scripture?

And if it does, then it's not a word from the Lord, because God

doesn't contradict himself. He's had one plan from the

beginning of time, since the foundation of the world, and

he's been and he's been carrying out that plan.

And for someone to say something that contradicts it is it's,

it's just, it's wrong. And so that's something that you

wouldn't put your faith in, you wouldn't believe.

Now, I don't know, like if Jake, you mentioned someone came and

said, Hey, you know, I've that someone prophesied over me and

said I was going to be healed of whatever XY or Z and it came

true. Well, I don't have that.

We don't have somewhere in scripture to test that, right?

So like you just have to test their, their heart and like, you

know, have conversation. I believe that's what you would

do anyway. It was like, are they, what are

they, what do they have to gain from this?

Did they ask me for anything for it?

Did they, did they try to manipulate me in any way by

saying that, you know, that's the types of things I would

question. I don't know if anybody else has

anything to add there. When people say things like,

well, God spoke to me and your son will be healed from his

cancer. Well, I don't know that.

And that may not happen because then all of a sudden there's a

lot of disappointment and discouragement and

disillusionment. I think we as believers should

not say things like, and even in the Old Testament there were

prophecies made that way, But I don't think we in the New

Testament, the new, in the new covenant, we should do those

things. I shouldn't go and say, well,

God has told me that your grandfather will have a he

healed from his cancer, whatever.

I think those are very broad statements and I've heard those

things and it can be very detrimental to to people's

faith. Yeah, absolutely.

And. But I think the answer to it

right, Joe, I'm sorry to cut you off.

I just think the answer to all of this is like this idea that

that that there are a few small subset of people who hold the

keys to the word of God and they're the only ones that can

read. It is just a lie from hell.

So my encouragement to the church is to to read your Bible,

like study your Bible. Like none of us would ever say

to somebody, oh, you don't read the Bible.

And if we ever do, you should question our motives.

Are we trying to hide something from you?

Are we trying to keep you from we're trying to manipulate you

in some way. This idea that the preacher is

the only one who can handle the word of God is alive from hell.

And it's what our Protestant forefathers fought against,

right? Yeah, like very much talking

about tongues. You go to Latin Mass.

What in the world? Nobody.

Well. People understood.

It, they don't even speak Latin now, it's like they just

repeating phrases on a, on a, on a paper in front of them.

The priest may not even understand what he's saying.

And so like talking in tongues, like that's a tongue and it's

not being interpreted. And people go home thinking,

well, I didn't, I went to church today and then I'm just going to

go do whatever I want to do after.

And it means nothing. No, I mean, that doesn't mean I

don't believe that there are some Catholic Christians.

You know, I think that there are probably a whole bunch.

But like, yeah, I mean, like if that's if the Mass is in Latin

and you don't speak Latin, it's no good for you.

So anyway. It doesn't build you up.

It doesn't. I just felt like I got a little

bit on a soapbox there and I apologize to the audience.

I'm not apologizing, you guys. But anyway.

No, it's good. And I think it's this idea, like

you said, that we have God's revealed word.

We have it and we can read it. It's complete.

It is complete. We're even told not to add to

it. Exactly.

Exactly. And so anybody who seeks to

seeks to add to it. It's like, yeah, don't.

Don't. So yeah, and I think it's

important for us to like, let's put in context what First

Corinthians is, right? Like First Corinthians in this

day was being written like it wasn't in their byway, right?

The Scriptures for them in this time, maybe a gospel or two, and

then the letters that were written, but they were just

circulated. They may not have been

considered Scripture yet. And then but the whole Old

Testament. And so let's be clear about

that. Like like in Paul's day when

he's talking about like fresh words from the Lord, like it

could have been like they they had to really test.

Did this come from an apostle? Is this something that I can

trust? Is this is this, you know, is

this Scripture? They had to think through those

things. They had to use discernment.

They had to have the Holy Spirit had to help guide them.

And we're grateful that he did, right?

Because otherwise we wouldn't have a complete word, you know,

because when when you said it's in there, it tells us not to add

to it. Well, in order for it to be in

there at that point, it had to be added.

That's true. And so like, we had to think.

We had to think clearly about these things and like, be like,

there. Yeah.

I mean this. This wasn't scripture until it

was. It's interesting how right even

the Apostle Peter, in one of his letters, I don't remember which

part, which from one first or second Peter, he talks about how

some people distort Paul's writings or misunderstand or

misuse Paul's writings, and then he says as they do other

scripture, so Peter gave recognition to Paul's writings

as Scripture. Yeah, he did.

He did. Absolutely they did.

And they knew that it was, I mean, Peter also knew that it

was God breathed, right? He recognized that as he was

writing the letters that that this was something way bigger

than even he could even like comprehend.

Like could you imagine being, being Peter and, and realizing

that what you're writing in Scripture, like just I, I, I

don't know where these thoughts came from.

There's not the like, I couldn't have come up with this on my

own. I don't know.

So I in those days, in the context, it's, it's poor for us

to remember that like these Christians had it way harder

than us at some points, right? They, they had to discern all

these different things. And I think Paul, Paul's doing

here is he's given like a like, like what what God did for the

Israelites, right? Like you look at you mentioned

the services back then, like God gave that in order, right?

Remember, read Exodus and all the different chapter after

chapter after chapter about how to set up the temple and how to

set up the well, it wasn't the temple then, but you know what I

mean, Like set up all the different elements of worship

wherever they went and there was God.

God is not a God of chaos, but of order.

And I think Paul is reminding them of this saying, hey, we

need to worship in an orderly way if someone speaks multiple

tongues, languages. I agree with you, Jake.

I think it is languages. I don't think it's gibberish.

I think like if you, if you're speaking Hebrew in a in a

primarily Greek community, you should probably switch if you

know Greek so that everybody could be built up.

So I think that's that's something to think about.

But yeah, those are my thoughts on the question that we got from

the audience. Yeah.

That's good. Well, and I, I think going back

to like things being done in order and, and for the

upbuilding of other people. And I think the way with the way

you sort of mentioned like the Holy Spirit inspiring.

I think, Jay, you touched on that in your 4th point that, you

know, the, the gifts are like Spirit, they're spirit LED,

they're spirit driven, they're not self generated, right.

And sort of your point about the Holy Spirit speaking through

these guys as they were writing scripture, I think the Holy

Spirit works that same way today, but it's not the Holy

Spirit is not, it's not through like new revelation.

It's not through like new scripture.

It's through like, and I'm sure everybody probably has

experiences at some point where it's like something comes to

your mind, a story, a scripture or some word of encouragement in

the, in a conversation where you didn't, you don't have no idea

where that came from, but the Spirit gave you a word to speak

or an encouragement or a scripture to use to strengthen

that other person or to say something that edified them.

And you're sort of like at a loss of like.

How did that happen? Because.

Because I know I've, I've someone, someone even recently

said, and this has happened to me in the last couple months

too, where it's like it was something that was like 15 years

ago that I didn't even know. I still remembered clearly I

didn't, you know, it was like the Spirit reminded me of that.

It's like, how do those things come to your mind?

It's through the Spirit, you know, the Spirit is working in

your heart to give you a word of encouragement to other people.

You reminded me of a story I just recently read.

Last night I was reading, I'm reading a biography on George

Mueller, who was he started so many orphanages in England just

on faith. Like he didn't ask for a single

cent. But in his early on in his life,

he talks about the first time he was asked to preach.

It was, it was basically a new Christian.

He had theological training but got saved during his theological

training. Sort of an interesting story.

But anyway, he's asked to preach and he said, he said, oh, I

don't know, I've never preached before.

Maybe I can memorize a sermon and I can just just like say it

from memory. So he did that in the morning

service and then he did it in like a second service in an

afternoon. And then like, it was like it

fell flat. No one paid attention.

It was like this. It was horrible experience for

him. And then like over the over that

that afternoon before the evening meeting, he, he, he just

felt the, the urge of the spirit to, to read the text and to

speak from the heart. And he said it was like, I came

alive, like the the Spirit helped me, gave me words to say

in that moment that all applied to the Scripture that he was

reading. But like, but in these, like the

people woke up. And it's like that, that.

So it's something about like being Spirit empowered,

especially from the pulpit, That's it's unexplainable how it

works. Yeah.

You can't really control that. Yeah, we can try.

And so I think that's like why I think we should we should all

like commit right now, like I'm put you on the spot, commit to

2025 being the year of no manuscript and the.

Oh my goodness, my wife would be happy.

I think people might not like like is looking at them the

whole time well. It's, it's kind of funny because

there's times like anybody who knows me and has heard me say

this before, it's like I'll walk around in the gym here at the

church sometimes and read over my texts and I'll like preach it

to myself. And there's times I look at my

watch and I'm like, and it's been 30 minutes and I'm like, I

wish everybody would have just been here for the last 30

minutes and heard that. Because it like sometimes it

just questions come out and things come out.

And I would encourage anybody who maybe you're experiencing

dullness in your, in your Bible reading, go for a walk and read

your Bible, read it out loud, ask questions and go, I have no

idea what that means. And then keep reading.

Cause a lot of times the writer will answer his own questions

and just ask questions, do things right, Like just read

and, and pour over the text yourself.

And it's like, it just brings it to life.

And yeah, there's times I'm just like, man, if I could just

recorded that and like preached it, then I wouldn't have to do

all this work for the next 10. 15 hours it does that I know.

Yeah, it's encouraging. The Spirit is very encouraging.

Yeah, that's good. Joe, you got any more questions

for the for our pastor based on this text?

I was, I was going to poke fun a little bit at Jake because I

know he, he sort of, he sort of mentioned, he says the average

person says 10,000 words in 40 minutes.

And I was like, I don't know that.

I don't know that the average person could even physically

possibly say 10,000 words in 40 minutes.

But it was just I, I sort of found that kind of funny.

But it's fast. I know well.

Actually that according to your research that's totally wrong.

I'll just take that. We did play.

I mean, we encourage you all to go listen to someone speaking

250 words per minute. It's very fast.

It's very fast. I do speak a lot of words in 30

minutes about 7000, give or take a little bit.

Yeah. And what my manuscript is 7000

words and so I don't preach it word for word, but I'm, I know

that a lot of guys do about 5000 and half an hour.

And so they're a lot slower. How many?

How many 7007 thousand words? How many pages is that?

Depending on my font size, yeah. And my margins too, so.

He can get it down to 3 pages, Joe.

No, no, no. I have about 15 to 20 pages on a

Sunday morning, 1515 to 20 depending.

Sometimes I have a bigger font than others.

Margins are always the same and so often times it's even even up

to I've had up to 30 pages on a Sunday morning.

That's a lot of material. It's too much, Yeah.

You mean in logos? In logos, Yeah.

Yeah, sometimes mine are 25, but my fonts real big OK and I talk

real slow. Yeah, Yeah.

I like what what Paul says about saying less.

Saying 5 words that means something versus 10,000 and in a

tongue volume of it does not mean blessings, right?

Sometimes less is more. That's a good encouragement for

all of us. But I was, I was not trying to

make you think I was being. I was being but.

It's good and I didn't think that threw.

I just sat on the top of my head.

I didn't even know that that's not my notes.

Though No, no, no, that's totally OK.

That was not my notes. It's not in your notes, but it

is in the record. It's in the record, That's fine.

I never heard it. But yeah, I thought it was a

good encouragement. Even sort of at the end of the

year sermon, you sort of closed with, you know, why do we come

to church? And, you know, your

encouragement was to bless other people.

And so I think that's just a good word of encouragement that

again, it just, I think Paul's whole point is it's not about

you. It's not about you showing off

your gift. It's not about you being louder

than everybody else and whatever.

It's about how do I seek to be a blessing to other people?

Yeah, I think that's true. But in a way, it's not even

about them, right? It's not even about others.

That's true. And I think like the whole point

of all this is like, show people your devotion to God.

And in a lot of ways, that's encouragement to others.

That's edifying to others, right?

But yeah, I mean, Paul is definitely, he's been, he's been

banging this drum all the way through the letter about making

sure that what you do is for the benefit of your brother or

sister. I mean, this has been the

heartbeat, if you will, of the whole letter.

Like everything sort of rolls back to like this idea of loving

neighbor more than more than you love yourself.

So yeah, it's really good. But that's an encouraging

thought, even like you said about like, let your love for

God be what fuels, that inspires other people.

Because like, maybe everybody who's listening to this podcast

right now, like take a minute to think of someone who inspires

you as a Christian, because I know I can think of people in my

mind, even just this last Sunday.

It's not, this is not a guy I know really well, but this was a

connection I made at seminary. His name is Roger Palmer and he

has done training for our youth leaders.

And this is a guy you, you just, you could just listen to him for

like for however you could listen to for 30 hours straight

and you'd never get bored. This is a man who's just so

passionate about serving God. And it's just you leave that

conversation like fueled and inspired to want to live your

life for Christ. And, and I know there's people

like that in my life, people like that in our church.

I, I listen to them talk about prayer.

I listen to them talk about their love for the Lord.

And it's like, it just makes me want to love God and pursue God

all the more. And so you're right like that my

life is an example to others, you know, rather than like

honing my gift, honing my skill, It's like, man, I've heard this

encouragement from other people too.

It's like, I just want to, I want people to see my love for

Christ. That's what I want people to

see. Not like how I play a guitar,

right, or how well I can speak or whatever.

It's like I just want them to see how much I love Jesus.

And that's like the passion that they're catching on to.

Yeah, for sure. Pastor Jake, Last word.

I want you. Don't have to talk about all you

got to something else. Yeah, just briefly about the

women in church. Oh, you want to go there?

A little bit. That's the tiny bit.

It's your funeral. No, I'm.

Kidding. If it's a funeral, it's a

funeral. The reason I wanted to touch on

it is because obviously in Corinth, in the church, in that

church, there was a problem with women speaking out of turn.

And the reason it's important to me is because of where I've

grown up in the the history out of which I come, where women

were so restricted and they have so much to contribute and so

much to give. And that this has been

misinterpreted in our time. I think it's been

misinterpreted. And so here Paul does say

there's a there's a role for women.

And we find that previous chapters in Chapter 11, we find

that with women praise or prophecies, how she should do

it. And yet here he says, keep

silent. And I think we should always

just be careful not to take words out of context, take them

out of the place that they hold. And so, yeah, just wanted to add

that little piece there. Even when Paul says it's

shameful for women to speak in church, it it's a there's a

wider context to consider here. That's good.

Oh, you didn't say anything controversial.

I was waiting. For it, OK, I didn't want to say

anything controversial, but there was this order in the

congregation because of the disrespect for rules.

Yeah, and the, the, the they dealt with it in Chapter 11 too,

about the, the, the proper order of creation even, right.

So like, right, right. Harkening back to that and so.

Yeah, and I think this is where it's helpful.

We always have to use scripture with Scripture, right.

Then scripture descript explains itself.

And so you can't ever take like 1 section apart from all the

other sections. Like we have to have it all in.

So Paul speaks about this in other passages and and we can

get a well-rounded theology by taking all of scripture into

context, not just one passage. So that's helpful.

Final word. Yeah.

You don't ever have to talk about this again.

No, that's right. I don't know.

When I'll ever preach on 1st Corinthians 14 again.

You never know, you may be one of your favorite places now.

It could be, may go back there a lot.

Could be, who knows? Yeah, but I was just convicted,

I guess, and just inspired at the same time just the

orderliness with which Paul says we should worship and the perps

behind it building and edifying each other.

And so it's not about I don't come to church for myself.

I come to church for a higher reason than myself.

Yeah. And I think if we can get that

into minds, that's helpful. Yeah, it is good.

It is good. Next week I get to preach.

So excited you're preaching. I'm excited about it.

Yeah. We're going to see.

We're going to see what all this is about.

Like starting in chapter 15. It feels like I was telling Joe

this the other day. It feels like that all the way

through this letter. It feels like it's been

building, like there's been, Paul's just been building and

building and building. And now he's going to spend, I'm

not preaching all of these verses, but he's going to spend

58 verses, the next 58 verses of Scripture talking about what

it's all for. Like why do we do it?

You're going to be talking about the gospel 1st and then talking

about like the importance of Christians believing the

resurrection. And you guys will get to preach

on it as well, which is exciting.

But I'm just really excited we're going to be talking about

the gospel. So buckle up, that's all I can

say. Be fun that.

Sounds good, We're looking forward to it.

Yeah, Yeah. OK.

Yeah. I don't know.

I don't have anything I like this week.

Do you have anything you like, Joe?

I mean, I do, but I don't want to share it if you don't because

I don't want to be alone. Well, go ahead.

I, I honestly, yeah, it's, it's been a busy last couple weeks

and so I haven't, I haven't been reading anything.

But yeah, so yeah, I already mentioned George Mueller reading

his biography. Very is Rodger Steer wrote a

biography. We had to read it in seminary.

And I just felt like it was the right time to read it again.

And if you could pick it up, it's a fantastic story of a man

who who was just faithful and faithful in prayer, like he

prayed big prayers with faith. And it was, it's just an

inspiring story of a man who had had had a vision from the Lord

for something that he felt the Lord wanted him to do.

And that's to care for the orphans in England.

And they didn't have a dime. And then the kids never missed a

meal. And he built so many orphanages.

And just a very inspiring story about about how God will provide

for those who who genuinely want to do what he's doing in the

world. So I would encourage anybody

that that has time, it's an easy read to pick it up and read it.

So. Yeah, I do remember reading that

book for a class, and it was incredibly convicting because

he's just such a man of prayer. He committed when he finally

just when he decided he was going to start serving orphans,

he committed to never asking anybody for any money.

Ever. And he never did.

So it was always just a prayer. And so literally there would be

days where, you know, early on he only had a few orphans, but

later on they had lots of orphans, you know, maybe 2000

kids at a time. And there would literally be

days where it's like. It's there's no bread.

There's. It's coming up to lunch and we

don't have food, so let's pray and then there's.

Then someone drops off a check or something.

Drops off a check, someone drops off some food, and it's just an

incredible testimony to God's faithfulness to those who trust

Him. Yeah, it's a misnomer to say he

didn't ask anyone for money, but he asked the Lord.

He asked him every time in the in and he provided for him man

so faithfully for us to It's just I think biographies are

great for us to read or listen to.

If you can't read, find them on audio and listen to them.

Just people who had such strong faith can inspire you their love

for God, right? It inspires you to love God

more. So well.

If you guys don't have anything else, we can close this episode

out. LMC.

We are praying for you. We love you.

We think about you constantly and we pray that you have a

great week and we look forward to seeing you guys on Sunday.

Thanks for joining us. Until next time.