January 25, 2009
Morning worship
Text: 1 Corinthians 14:18
Subject: The Pentecostal Church
Title: Why Tongues?
I am thrilled to see the growth in our church. I have been told by a number of people that because of our location and the decreased population base in the area that we should never expect too much to happen in this church. But we see steady growth. One of the reasons for the growth rests on the backs of prayer warriors. Alice and Frances are here every Friday morning at 8:00 AM to pray for those in the church and those who will come into the church. They pray for every need. They pray for the sick. They pray for the lost. They pray for other churches. I believe with all my heart that the growth we are seeing now is a direct result of their prayer.
But I believe that there is another reason for the growth that we are seeing. And I also believe that even greater growth is about to come and I believe it is going to come quickly. I believe that the other reason for growth is that we are a church, and are becoming more so, that depends on the moving of the Holy Spirit of God to take us where we should be and make us what God wants us to be. That is what it means to be a Pentecostal.
Now, you all know my church background, and I know most of your backgrounds. Some are former Catholics. Some were Baptists. There are Methodists, Lutherans, Disciples of Christ, Church of Christ. There are some who grew up in this church and some who never went to church. But I want to say this to all of you – even those who are lifetime members of this body – it is not this church or our “denomination (we are not a denomination but a fellowship) that makes us Pentecostal. It is our conscious decision to seek the leading of the Holy Spirit in everything we do that makes us who we are. And I want to go beyond that. It is the wonderful salvation by grace that makes us Christians, but it is the wonderful experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues as the Holy Spirit gives the utterance that is drawing people to the church and keeping them. So many have had “religious” upbringings but have had no tangible experience in a relationship with the Father that would keep them in their dead churches. But in this church the Holy Spirit is alive and manifesting Himself in ways where people can have only one explanation – God is real and is being experienced in a deeper way through that baptism in the Holy Spirit.
I want to talk to you today about the Holy Spirit and what He is wanting to do in your lives today.
Let’s start by looking a little bit of the background from the first letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. The entire letter was written to correct problems in the church and to answer questions that had arisen. One of the problems was that the spiritual gifts were very active but the church there had placed a premium on the gift of tongues. Paul devoted a whole chapter to the problem and that is chapter 14. He laid down guidelines for the use of tongues in the church. He prefaced what he had to say in chapter 14 with a chapter about love in chapter 13. It is that kind of love that must be the motive behind all the spiritual gifts, especially the gift of tongues.
Are you ready?
1 Corinthians 14:18, 18I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you.
Lord, Open my eyes to see and my ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.
I. A WORK FOR ETERNITY. The primary work of the Holy Spirit is to draw sinners to Christ. John 6:44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him… Now look at John 15:26, “When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. In the church setting and outside of church as well, the work of the Holy Spirit is to touch people’s hearts to prepare them to receive the gospel of salvation. The Holy Spirit’s work in this respect is a work with eternity in mind. The Bible says that God desires that none should perish but that all should come to repentance. God does not want you to go to hell and He has given you a way – the only way - to avoid it. And that is through a relationship with Jesus Christ. Right now as I speak there may be some of you who are feeling quite uncomfortable about the message I am preaching. Don’t worry – it’s the Holy Spirit drawing you closer to a real understanding of God’s grace.
II. A WORK IN YOUR LIFE. Now for those who know Jesus in a personal way the Holy Spirit will teach you, guide you, and bring to remembrance all the words that Jesus said. His work is a continuing work of bringing people closer to the Lord. Jesus said in John 16:12-15, 12“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. 13But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. 14He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. 15All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you. For those who have trusted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savor the Holy Spirit will continue to move in your life to bring you to a closer relationship with Him.
III. A WORK IN THE CHURCH. Some people say that the church began when Jesus commissioned the seventy disciples to go out into the world and heal and cast out demons and preach the word. Some say that it began in John 20:22 when Jesus breathed on the disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit”. But the truth is that the church did not begin until the Day of Pentecost that we see described in Acts chapter 2. 1When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now, the reason I say this is because Jesus knew that in order for the church to be what He knew it should be, it had to have something more than what they had in their lives. It was Jesus who said that they were to go into the city and wait until they were clothed with power from on high. It was Jesus who said that he would build His church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. It was Jesus who said that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to Him. It was Jesus who said that he gave us authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy. It was Jesus who said that His disciples would receive power when the Holy Spirit had come upon them and they would be His witnesses… He was talking about the power of the mighty baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues as we see described in Acts 2:1-4, 8:14-18, 9:17, 10:44-46; 19:1-4. It is the power that the church needs today even more than it needed in days of old. I have had this discussion with a lot of people who have never spoken in tongues, “Why do you think that you have the Holy Spirit any more than me?” The fact is I don’t necessarily think that I have more of the Holy Spirit in quantity. I have more of the Holy Spirit in quality and purpose. Those who know Jesus have the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:9, And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. 10But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you. But the baptism in the Spirit is a secondary act of grace given to those who seek it for the purpose of having power in their lives and the initial physical evidence that someone has received it is that the will speak in other tongues.
IV. POWER AT WORK IN YOU. In Acts 9 it does not say that when Ananias prayed for Paul that he spoke in tongues. But Paul says, 18I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. Again, Paul was addressing a problem in the church at Corinth when he wrote this. People were coming to church and standing up and speaking in tongues all at the same time, without interpretation. It might have been when the preacher was trying to preach. It might have even been the preacher who would stand in the pulpit and speak in tongues. That is why Paul wrote, 18I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. 19But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue. Do you see the problem here? What good would it do for someone to stand up and preach in tongues if no one could understand him? I think that the church misunderstood the purpose of tongues. In order to understand that we have to understand that tongues are used for two different purposes. I used to say that there were two different kinds of tongues. There are two different purposes. There are tongues that you receive when you are baptized in the Holy Spirit. And there is the gift of tongues that if a gift to be used for the edification of the church as a gift of the Spirit. The gift of tongues is always to be accompanied by an interpretation. The other tongues are to be used in worship and personal devotions and prayer. One is a message from God to His people and the other is God’s people speaking to Him. Paul never said that you were not to pray in tongues in a church setting. 14:39, Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. Yet over my years as an Assemblies of God minister I have heard others in our fellowship say, “We don’t want tongues in our church. It scares people away.” Over and over and over I see that the Holy Ghost power is systematically being removed from the church, much the same way as God is being removed from our society. Without the Holy Spirit, in not too many generations, there won’t be a church. There might be something that is called a church but without Holy Ghost power those places are no more than a glorified social club. I have heard people say that you have to be careful so that you don’t get in the flesh when you speak in tongues. I’ve got news for you – you can’t speak in tongues without the flesh. When you resist what the Spirit wants to do in you because you don’t want it to be “in the flesh” you are giving in to the flesh and not the Spirit. You see, tongues are evidence, whether it is personal prayer language or the gift of tongues, that the power of the Holy Spirit is moving in a church. A world famous evangelist tells a story of a preacher from a large protestant denomination who came to him and told him that he had attended one of his meetings and he had experienced something that he had never seen before. He said I could tell that there was something different going on. I sensed the presence of God like I had never sensed it before and when the altar call was given he said he saw people running down the aisle to give their lives to Jesus Christ. He had never seen anything like that. He said that when he listened to his music at times the tears would just begin to flow down his cheeks for apparently no reason. And he told the brother that if he would agree to come to his city to hold revival meetings he could guarantee crowds of 20- 30 thousand every night. But he said, “something is bothering me, and it’s not anything that is a big deal, but if you could come and preach, would you do this one thing. You can preach in power and you can preach about healing, go ahead and keep the fire that you have don’t change anything but when you preach would you just leave off the tongues?” The evangelist’s response was this. “The tears that flow down your cheeks when you listen to my music, the urgency you see when people run to the altar to be saved, the power that is available to heal and the fire that is in this preacher’s bones would not be there if I left off the thing that you call insignificant, for what makes Pentecostal meetings different than other meetings is not talent, it is not ability, it is not exuberance, but it is the power of the Holy Spirit and the anointing that flows from the man of God as he preaches and flows out into the congregation. If you take away the insignificant thing you call tongues it becomes just like any other gathering.” Now I want to back up just a little to say this. There are some who teach that you have to have the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in tongues in order to get to heaven. There couldn’t be anything further from the truth. The Holy Spirit is involved in your salvation but not the way I’m talking about right now. “Well then, why do we need the baptism in the Holy Spirit if we don’t need it to get to heaven?” Let me tell you something. The work of the Holy Spirit in you for salvation is for eternity. When you receive the baptism in the Holy Ghost you are not any more saved, you are not any better saved. When you are saved you are not 50% saved and when you are baptized in the Holy Ghost you’re a hundred percent saved. The baptism in the Holy Spirit is not to help you get to heaven but is to empower you as you stay in the world. “Well then why do I need it?” If you are saved and are planning on going to heaven today you don’t need it. Just say your good-byes and go on to glory. But if you are planning on staying around for awhile and bound and determined that you are going to do a work for God, if you don’t have the baptism in the Holy Spirit you end up doing it in your own power. Salvation is God’s gift to the world. The Baptism in the Holy Spirit is God’s gift to the church. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit could not be received by the world because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. The Holy Spirit is for the church!
For a long time I was a little distressed over the state of the Assemblies of God. The things that I have heard coming from the mouths of A/G ministers concerning the Holy Spirit alarmed me. I wondered how long we would allow the Holy Spirit to stay in our churches. Then I came to this conclusion. I’m not going to concern myself with what other churches are doing. I’m not going to worry about the direction others are heading. (I say that but there is still a deep abiding desire to see all churches in Holy Ghost revival) But I am going to focus on what the Holy Spirit wants to do in this church. I can tell you today that He wants you to be saved. As a matter of fact He is drawing you to Jesus right now.
I can also tell you that He wants you to have the power available to you through the baptism in the Holy Spirit. He wants this to be a church that has the anointing flowing through it that will pull down strongholds. He wants this to be a church that is bold in its witness to the world. He wants this to be a church where all kinds of healing flow in the power of the Holy Spirit. He wants this to be a church that will stand and say I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
So now it’s decision time. Time to be saved and time to be empowered. Well pastor I’ve got everything I need. But don’t you have the desire to go a little deeper? Don’t you want a little more? It’s here for you today. God wants to save you and give you his power.
Go ahead and step out in faith to receive everything God wants for you.
