Do all speak in tongues? What did Paul mean by that rhetorical question, part three.
Hi, welcome to today's Little Lesson. Thank you so much for joining me. We're in the midst of a
fairly long series on speaking in tongues and the baptism in the Holy Spirit. I think this is our
26th lesson if I'm getting it right. I could be wrong about that. We've kind of been involved in a
kind of a sub-topic here, under the bigger heading of the baptism in the Holy spirit
and speaking in tongues, and that is this whole question of what did Paul mean when he said,
"Do all speak in tongues?" And it was a rhetorical question. The answer
obviously was no. I've done my best already to address that in the last two Little Lessons,
so I'm not going to punish the people that watch those by repeating everything, okay.
But I want to today continue in 1 Corinthians chapter 14,
where Paul is admonishing the Corinthians to think about everybody else, don't just be selfish
when it comes to the spirits against think about being a blessing, rather than just being blessed
yourself. And that's a good word for us all, isn't it? And the Corinthians were like that.
They had a lot of indication of selfishness and carnality within their midst. And one of them was
even when they were gathered together and the Holy spirit was in some degree of manifestation
and people were speaking out in tongues and there was no interpretation. And Paul was saying, "Hey,
no, one's being edified by that, do that at home." Okay. But we've looked at it in light
of Paul's rhetorical question, do all speak in tongues, and I've made my best argument.
And I've still got a little more to argue here that Paul was not talking about that
ability to pray in tongues that accompanies the blessing of being baptized in Holy spirit,
something that every Christian can and should experience.
But he's talking about one of the nine gifts of the spirit that is similar, but different in that
sometimes the Spirit wills that someone would speak out in tongues. And if that is the Spirit,
there'll be an interpretation of what was said. And I have been in church services over the last
four decades of my Christian life, where I've actually seen that in manifestation. And it is
really neat. So Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14, verse number 14, I notice this time,
he's talking about praying in tongues. "For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays,
but my mind is unfruitful." Now, what can that mean, other than the fact that the source of the
utterance is not one's mind when one prays in tongues, but one's spirit, one's inner person,
the real you, that when your body dies, that's the person that leaves, okay, the spirit.
The Bible teaches that we are tripartite in nature, spirit, soul, and body. And when the
body becomes an unfit container for the spirit and the soul they evacuate. All right. So Paul says,
"If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays and my mind is unfruitful. I don't know what I'm saying.
What is the outcome then?" Here was Paul solution. "I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with
the mind also. I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also." So can you see very
clearly, Paul is saying, it's up to me. Just as I pray with my mind and my own personal will is
involved in deciding when I want to pray and how long I want to pray with my mind, so the
same is true when I pray with my spirit or pray in other tongues, I will pray with the spirit and I
will pray with the mind also. I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also.
And you see, singing is something that we do by our own volition. If you wanted to sing right now,
you could sing. And if I wanted to sing right now, I can sing. And so same thing is true
with, once you've been baptized in the Holy Spirit, you can not only pray in tongues
anytime you want to, you can add a melody and sing in tongues. And some of the most beautiful
gatherings that I've been in among Christians were when everyone in the gathering is singing
spontaneous, heartfelt praises to God, many of whom are ... I've been
groups when all of them were singing in other tongues. And of course it's okay then,
because everyone is being individually edified, because all are praying in tongues.
People try to take the letter of what Paul is saying, nor the spirit of it, it's okay to pray
in tongues in groups if everybody is praying in tongues, because then everybody's being
edified themselves. As Paul said, we read it yesterday, earlier up in 1 Corinthians,
up in chapter 14, 1 Corinthians. All right. So then Paul says in verse number 16, "Otherwise,
if you bless in the spirit only how will the one who fills the place of the ungifted say
'amen' at your giving of thanks, since he doesn't know, not know what you are saying?"
So the ungifted is the person who doesn't have the gift of interpreting what you've,
singing or praying in tongues. And Paul's saying, "You're blessing the Lord. You're giving thanks.
But nobody knows it because they don't know what you're saying, so they can't say 'amen.'"
And he goes on, "For you are," he said, "giving thanks well enough,
but the other person is not edified." I told you, I think, early on, that there've been
three times in my Christian life where I have prayed in tongues, in the presence of someone
who understood what I was saying. Not was given the gift of interpretation, actually understood.
And in all three cases, I was speaking in Japanese. And one of those cases I said in
Japanese, "Thank you, very much." Well, see, I was giving thanks to God in Japanese. I've
never learned in any Japanese. And one time. I said in Japanese, on another occasion,
and someone who understood some Japanese heard me say it. I said, "You are so good." Well,
I'm blessing God, praising God, you are so good. I say that in English. And I've said it in Japanese.
So our praying in tongues and our singing in tongues is, at least, apparently at times,
worship and praise unto God. Well, it's got to be good. It's got to be
biblical and scriptural, right, if it was coming from the Holy Spirit within our spirit. So then
Paul goes on here and here's an interesting verse in 1 Corinthians 14 and verse number 18.
"I thank God I speak in tongues more than you all." Now, he wasn't saying, I thank God more than
you all, that I speak in tongues as if I'm more thankful. He said, "I thank God I speak in tongues
more than you all." So obviously Paul valued that ability and exercised it rather frequently
to be doing it more than the Corinthian bunch. Okay, so he was an avid tongue talker. And if
you don't like tongue talkers, not only do you not like me, you don't like the apostle Paul.
All right, now, surely nobody doesn't like me. So, but Paul goes on, the same sentence, "However,
in the church, I desire to speak five words with my mind so that I may instruct others also rather
than 10,000 words in a tongue." So maybe he was speaking 10,000 words in a tongue in his
private devotional times and praising God that way, but when he's gathered together in church,
he's saying that's not the appropriate time. Okay. So now can you see, I think it's inescapable.
I don't know if there's any ... could be any other conclusion if there is, I haven't thought
of it. Maybe you can think of something, but I haven't thought of it, but it seems very clear
that it would be wrong to make the conclusion that Paul's rhetorical question to all speak in tongues
is just a carte blanche, a definitive statement that we should never be praying for anyone
to be baptized in Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues.
Because contextually, that's not what Paul's saying. He's not addressing
well, the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the infilling of the Holy Spirit
and the initial evidence of that which we see in the book of Acts with speaking in tongues,
he's talking about the operation of tongues and other things during a church gathering. Well,
on the day of Pentecost, they were all in tongues. We're they all out of order? No, because they were
all speaking in tongues. What Paul said here in 1 Corinthians didn't have application really then
on the day of Pentecost because they were all speaking up. There was no one who was ungifted.
There was nobody who wasn't being edified individually, as they prayed in tongues.
When Cornelius's household in Acts 10, was all baptized in the Holy Spirit and they all began
speaking in tongues, were they violating what Paul said here, that they should be quiet when they're
all gathered? No, because they were all speaking, everybody individually was being edified.
When these things are wrong, is when there are people who are ungifted people who don't
speak in tongues, who can't edify themselves. And they're just stuck, they're listening to you speak
in tongues and it doesn't do them any good. So to love my neighbor as myself, I'm not going to treat
him that way or her that way. And in Acts chapter 19, when Paul laid his hands upon those Ephesian
disciples and they all began speaking in tongues, were they violating the spirit of what Paul said
here? No, no. No, because they were all speaking in other tongues. So that's why it's okay for
Spirit baptized believers, to all come together and all worship God in other tongues together.
And I told you, I've been involved in some of those gatherings over the years,
and it's just absolutely beautiful experience to, for everyone to be praising God in other tongues.
And there are millions of Christians, tens of millions of Christians around the world. I've said
this over and over again, who have experienced exactly what I'm talking about. Okay. All right.
So I'll do one more little lesson on this sub theme and probably that will close out this entire
series as well. But I want to encourage you, then, to pray and ask God to baptize you
in the Holy Spirit. If you're a believer in Jesus, this is a promise for you. And then by faith,
open your mouth and expecting that the Lord will give you the utterance and begin to speak
in other tongues. Just don't speak in any languages that you know, okay.
And you will see that as you step out by faith, that the Lord will help you. And if
you're a little bit embarrassed to do that around somebody else, then just go do it, pray quietly,
secretly I should say, somewhere. And that way, when you begin to speak out in tongues,
you don't have to worry about who's listening to you, okay. And then when it happens to you, please
write me and tell me, okay. Some of you already have, and I so appreciate that.
And even in the comments below, you can tell others and encourage them, okay. All
right. If you've never been to davidservant.org or.com, please do check us out there for just a
ton of biblical teaching. And so we not only have this YouTube channel, that's got,
I guess, over 1,000 videos now, but we've just got hundreds of written articles and books that you
can just download for free at davidservant.org, okay. Until next time, may the Lord bless you.