The Proverbs-31 Man

Proverbs 31:1-9.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on June 19, 2022, for Father’s Day.

Today, we will focus on the Proverbs-31 man, and I don’t mean a man who is fortunate enough to marry a Proverbs-31 woman. 

No, we are talking about King Lemuel in verses 1-9.  You may even now be racking your brain trying to remember exactly who King Lemuel is.  This is the only place in the Bible where he is mentioned.  In fact, Lemuel means “king of the Lord,” or “king to the Lord.”

It is important for Christian men, and especially fathers, to focus on following the wisdom of King Lemuel’s mother so that we might be the leaders that He has called us to be.

Let’s look at our passage.

The path of a man who listens to wisdom

Proverbs is essentially written to supply wisdom for those reading it.  In this passage, we are given the instruction between a mother, and her son.  It seems most likely that Lemuel is remembering instruction that took place before he was to become king.  His mother took time to instruct him knowing that he would one day become king.  Perhaps, Lemuel is a nickname that is given to remind him that he is to be a king for the Lord, and not for selfish purposes.  It would be important for him to live, to walk, and to decide wisely.  You could say that the stakes are even higher because his life will impact and influence a whole nation.

It is interesting that wisdom is personified as a woman throughout the book of Proverbs.  This young prince receiving instruction from his mother is strengthened with the connotation that his mother represents wisdom.  All children need parents that will speak wisdom into their life and not folly- remember that folly is also represented as a woman.

As children grow, there is a manifold witness to them.  First, their parents attempt to teach them about life to one degree or another.  Second, a child should be introduced to the Scriptures by their parents.  It is the wisdom of God being witnessed to them.  Obviously, many parents do not teach their kids about the Word of God, so it is the duty of believers to share God’s Word with others.  This is an important witness to wisdom that God intends for them to have.  Third, life itself is the final witness to children about wisdom.  The rebukes of life are pictured in many proverbs.  As a child grows, lives, and makes decisions, they receive feedback from the world around them.

Of course, all kids will reach a point where they will have an adversarial relationship with the wisdom that has been given to them by others.  There will always be a part of humans that seeks to know for themselves.  However, the wise man is one who listens to wisdom.

The Past: We might be inclined to treat verse 2 as simply poetic address, but that wouldn’t be wise.  Lemuel’s mother addresses him in a way that emphasizes his connection to what has come before him.  She puts the question, “What?” to him three times with a different address each time. What is the lesson that she has for him?  She reminds him that he is first her son (and, of course, the son of his father).  She desires him not to only be her son, but even more to be a son of wisdom who lives wisely.  Kids must be instructed while they are young because these are the days when it is most clear to them that they need parents.  A wise parent will not wait until they think their kid is old enough to receive teaching.

Secondly, she addresses him as the son of her womb.  She went through sorrows and labored to bring him into this world.  Though a child didn’t ask to be born, they should still have a healthy respect for the difficulty that their parents, and ancestors went through to bring them into the world.

Lastly, he is a son of her vows.  This picture of a woman making a covenant, or vow, before God in order to obtain a child is all throughout the Bible.  Each of the patriarchs had wives who struggled to have children.  Of course, not all vows are about having children.  Still, she reminds him of her relationship with God and his existence as the proof of that relationship.

Wise men understand their connection to what has come before them in their parent’s home, their hometown, nation, and world.  We should humbly and wisely stand on the shoulders of the past knowing that those who created it are our foundation.

Women:  In verse three, Lemuel was warned about not giving his strength to women.  It is important not to make this say more than it is saying.  First, what is meant in the phrase “give your strength to women?”  Second, we should notice that it is “women,” a plural word.

It would seem strange for this proverb to be warning a man against women and then turn around to point out the quintessential woman, who should be desired by any man, in verses 10 and following.  You might see that proverb as an instruction of a parent to a daughter (be like this), or to a son (this is the kind of girl you want). 

“Charm is deceitful; beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the LORD, she will be praised.”  Finding a woman (singular) that is a good wife takes wisdom and prayer.  Spending the strength of your life with her to bring glory to God is a perfect picture of Christ and his Church. 

So, what is Lemuel being warned of?  He is being warned of focusing the mental and physical strength of his life on pursuing women (plural) and the pleasures therein.  Heaping up a harem of women will only destroy the good that a king can do.  What does it profit a man to have pursued and enjoyed many women in life, and yet to have lost his own soul?  Becoming king is not about getting everything your flesh desires.  It is about glorifying God and serving His People.  A good woman can be a strength to a good man when they are both focused on glorifying God in all that they do.

Intoxication:  Verses 4-7 highlight the error of intoxication.  A man who listens to wisdom is not trapped in intoxication.  Another image would be bitten by intoxication.  Proverbs 23:32-32 pictures wine like a serpent in the cup that stings those who drink too much of it.  “Do not look on wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it swirls around smoothly; at the last it bites like a serpent, and stings like a viper.”  Lemuel’s mother warns him that it is important that a king not be given to drinking and intoxication.

Of course, the mother recognizes that there are situations where alcohol might be useful.  She states that wine should be given to those who are painfully dying, or those who are bitter of heart, so that they might forget their sorrow.  However, this is not projected as an answer for those people with any hope in it.  If you are painfully dying, or in the midst of bitter sorrow, God holds a better hope out to us than just alcohol. Yet, for our purposes here, this is not the point that Lemuel’s mother is making.  She is concerned that he not become a drinker.

Intoxication affects our memory.  We would forget the Law of God, and we might pervert justice that is our responsibility.  People who love their family sometimes become stuck in the grip of addiction.  Yet, the sad truth is that alcohol and drugs cause us to forget the thing we should remember.  Under their influence, we lose our inhibitions and do things that are harmful to us and the people we love.  How careful we should be in our lives when people depend on us. 

You might be inclined to protest that you are not a king.  In fact, as a Christian, there is a lost world out there that doesn’t even know that it depends upon Christians who walk soberly and work to bring the light of Christ into their lives.  People’s lives depend upon the decisions we make, whether wise or foolish.  Christ is the ultimate King, Prophet, and Priest.  However, we are to be learning to become more like him.  Therefore, there is a lesser sense in which we have a priestly, prophetic, and kingly duty to lead a lost world to the LORD!

Judging righteously and helping the needy:  Verses 8 and 9 give the true purpose of anyone who is in a position to affect others, whether a parent to a child, or a king to the people.  We should be a voice for those who are about to die before those who care not for their death, and may be even causing it.  This death may be literal or metaphorical.  Christ pleaded the cause of the lost before the religious leaders of his day.  With the woman caught in adultery, Christ reminds them of the gravity of executing someone for sin when you have sin in your own life.  Yet, Christ was not promoting adultery, or any fornication for that matter.  He tells her to go and sin no more. 

Nobody was righteous there that day, but Jesus.  The woman wasn’t righteous and the religious leaders were not righteous.  However, she was the one that no one was speaking up for.  God loved her and didn’t want her to die and go into eternity lost.  Open your mouth is repeated twice.  We cannot be silent, even when powers may attempt to silence us. 

Yet, we should not be shouting our truth to power out of self-serving motivations.  Rather, we are reminded to make righteous judgments.  In John 7:24, Jesus said, “Do not judge according to appearance but judge with a righteous judgment.”  It is not enough to plead the natural cause of the natural poor and needy.  Even greater is the problem of being in spiritual poverty, and being held in bondage by the powers of this world and our own sin.  May all Christian men aspire to be such a man as Jesus was because this is precisely the kind of man that Lemuel’s mother was instructing him to be.

Proverbs-31 Man audio

The Acts of the Apostles 5

Subtitle: Peter Preaches to the Crowd

Acts 2:14-21.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on June 12, 2022.

Today, we pick up at the Day of Pentecost and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Jesus.  As the Law was given at Mt. Sinai, so the Spirit of God was given in Jerusalem, or Mt. Zion.

A crowd had gathered due to the commotion caused by about 120 people speaking in foreign languages about the wonders of God.

Luke doesn’t clearly describe exactly what the scene looks like.  Are they still in the room with Peter speaking through a window?  Have they come out onto an open balcony?  Have they walked out into the outer courtyard around the Temple?  In the end, we have a large crowd that has gathered and Peter is given an opportunity to speak to the crowd, but now he is filled with the Holy Spirit.

We should be careful to recognize that the Holy Spirit does not take over people and control their body or speech.  There is a cooperation between the Spirit and the person He fills.

Let’s look into the passage.

The Holy Spirit speaks through Peter

Peter starts out by telling the crowd to “heed my words” (vs. 14).  The Holy Spirit had been giving the people languages to speak that many in the crowd had overheard and understood.  We can think of this as a particular way that the Holy Spirit can speak to people through believers.  Even more important, the activity itself is symbolic of things that would have meaning to those with eyes to see and minds to understand.

However, the event of mass speaking in tongues appears to be more about getting the attention of people in Jerusalem so that the Holy Spirit could speak to them in the regular language that would have been spoken in Jerusalem.  Peter is speaking by the Holy Spirit, but this time he is not speaking in a language unknown to him.  He is speaking with understanding of what he is saying.

How important it is for us to pay attention, to understand, and to properly respond when the Holy Spirit is speaking.  That may be in the occurrence of things that we do not understand, or when another person who isn’t perfect speaks to us.  In fact, sometimes the Spirit of God may speak to us through the unwitting words of sinners.  We must always be open and listening for what the Spirit is saying in the midst of what others say.

In John 16:14-15, Jesus said, “He [the Holy Spirit] will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.  All things that the Father has are Mine.”  (NKJV).  When the Holy Spirit is speaking, He is giving to us what Jesus is saying, and Jesus is giving Him what the Father is saying.  These are not merely words to hear and use for our own inspiration.  God has a purpose in those words and we should not co-opt His words for our purposes.

Thus, it is not enough to merely hear the words of God.  We should so thirst for the word of the Lord that we treat it all as precious.  I must understand these things!  Even then, it is not enough to merely understand the words.  I must live wisely in the counsel of those words.  In this life, we should put our faith completely in those words through willing obedience to the Spirit of God.

Now, we can get to Peter’s message.  He first counters the mockers who are saying that they are drunk.  Wherever God is moving, there will be mockers to ridicule it and put it down.  Don’t doubt that the devil and his spirits weren’t recognizing that this event of the Holy Spirit could really wreck their control on Jerusalem.  In this crowd, they find willing accomplices and assets that they can stir up and depend upon to do their will.  In fact, it is the opposite of what Peter is doing.  He is surrendering to the Holy Spirit, but the mockers are surrendering to the work of an evil spirit that seeks to thwart the good work of God.  We see this same spirit at work today, whether through false-believers, or non-Christians, whenever God is speaking.

Peter rejects the accusation that they are drunk.  He points out that it is the third hour.  In Hebrew reckoning, 6:00 AM would begin the morning hours, thus it was about 9:00 AM (+3 hours).  People who get drunk generally do so at night.  Of course, there are some who do get drunk in the day, but usually they are not up at 9:00 AM.

Those who give themselves to alcohol to the point of drunkenness are not following the Spirit of God.  Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:18, “do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit.” (NKJV).  Drunkenness, or better intoxication, leads to the oppose of a life that is being saved, fixed, and healed.  The phrase in Ephesians, “in which is dissipation,” actually uses the word for saving something and then fixes a “not” in front of it.  Instead of leading to a life that is filled with healing and life, it is a life that is falling apart and leading others around them to do the same.

Let me just speak to a fad in some parts of the Church that act like and teach that being filled with the Holy Spirit is just like being drunk.  This passage is saying the exact opposite.  It is not a God thing for Christians to appear to be completely out of control and stumbling over themselves.  There is a contrast between being filled with alcohol and what it leads to, and being filled with the Holy Spirit and what it leads to.  When a person is truly filled with the Holy Spirit, they will be a spring of life, a spring of salvation, healing and restoration, and they will be all those things the people around them.  The mockers are the wicked ones in this setting, but they are trying to slander this righteous remnant of Israel that was following God.

Peter then points us to Joel 2:28-32.  This is the first of three Old Testament Scriptures (the only ones at that time) that illuminate what God has been doing in Jerusalem for the last 2 months.  This is a small part of a larger prophecy about God’s dealings with Israel and the nations.

Joel opens up in chapter 1 talking about a locust army that seems to have literally destroyed the crops of Israel in his day.  This then turns into a prophecy about the Day of the Lord.  It is called the Great and Awesome Day of the Lord in Joel 2:31. The literal locusts of Joel’s day were a portend of a spiritual locust army that will come in the last days.  We don’t have time to deal with it today, but suffice it to say that the wording and imagery of Joel 2 is all throughout Revelation 9 and the locust army that comes out of the Bottomless Pit.  Remember that the Bottomless Pit is a prison for rebellious spirit-beings who were so bad that God had them locked up until the Day of the Lord’s judgment on heaven and earth would come.  There is a recurring theme of a supernatural army of evil beings coming on the earth out of the north, really a spiritual or cosmic north.  They come to torment mankind, and they come to destroy God’s people, even Israel.  Only God can rebuke this supernatural army and save His people.

In the middle of this terrible vision and prophecy of the Day of the Lord, God calls Israel to repentance.  Yes, the Day of the Lord is coming, but what you are doing today sets the table for what you will be eating then.  Israel is called to repentance and is told of the good that God has for them when they do.  So, Joel 2:28-32 is God’s promise that He will pour His Spirit out upon all those who repent and turn towards Him.  This contrast of God pouring His wrath out upon some and pouring His Spirit out upon others is an important understanding of all prophecy.

Notice in Acts 2:17 that this pouring out of the Holy Spirit takes place in the last days.  We have technically been in the last days since that day 1,990 years ago (give or take a few years).  We are in the last age of God’s work before He brings in His kingdom under the Lord Jesus Christ.  The Day of the Lord is the conclusion to this age and the transition into the Kingdom Age.

Some may ridicule (mock) that if the last days last for almost 2,000 years then the phrase is meaningless.  That is not true.  It is a harbinger to every generation that we must make our decision because God is getting ready to wrap things up.  The Day of the Lord is a day of judgment upon all nations, and upon the spiritual powers that deceive the nations.  In fact, when Jesus the Messiah was rejected, God has him sit at His right hand until the day that He makes the enemies of Jesus his footstool (i.e., Revelation 19 and the Second Coming).  Meanwhile, we are in a time of harvest (the feast of Pentecost was a feast of harvest).

Yes, Jerusalem would be destroyed and Israel taken into exile completely, but God’s judgment was not complete then.  God put pause on continuing to pour out his judgment on the nations, and instead sent His terms of peace to anyone on the side of His enemies who wish to switch sides.  Can you imagine playing a game where it is almost over and a Champion walks on the court or field for the other team that spells your doom?  Then, imagine that time-out is called and it is announced over the loud speaker that any team member that wants to switch sides can do so and they will be considered a true member of the other team?  This is the grace of God.

The pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon whosoever would choose the side of Jesus, the side of God the Father, is pictured as having no barriers.  Both men and women, old and young, free and slave would be full recipients of God’s Holy Spirit.  This Spirit would cause them to prophesy, and to have dreams and visions from God.  Everyone of God’s people would become prophets.  If all of God’s people would be prophets than who would they prophesy to?  They would be God’s voice to the nations of the earth.

O Christian, we must be filled with the Holy Spirit in these last days so that our mouths, hands, and lives will be full of the eternal life of God, so that it will flow out upon a dry and thirsty world that is lost under the power of the darkness of the devil and those humans who are in league with him.  We are closer to the Day of the Lord than they were in the first century.  Instead of asking how much longer is God going to offer terms of peace, we must be faithful to be His voice, His emissaries, holding out life to the lost saying, “Don’t die; choose life!”

Verses 19 and 20 of Acts chapter 2 speak of signs and wonders that will come before the Day of the Lord.   Some of these will be in the heavens and some will be on the earth.  Let’s be clear that the Day of the Lord culminates with the Second Coming of Jesus to literally reign on this earth as God’s King.

Now, there were signs and wonders that occurred at the birth of Jesus.  The magi came out of the East having seen a star that portended a special king in Israel.  Also, a glorious band of angels appeared to shepherd in the fields of Bethlehem.  The life of Jesus was full of signs and wonders as he did the miraculous over and over again.  At his death, a darkness filled the land that cannot be explained by a solar eclipse due to it lasting too long.  All of these are signs pointing us to the reality that the Day of the Lord is near, but so too that the promise of pouring out the Spirit is even now here.

There are still signs to occur.  Zechariah 14 is a prophesy about the Second Coming of Jesus.  Jerusalem will be nearly destroyed and Jesus will break the clouds and deliver them.  In verses 6-7 of that chapter, he speaks of a unique day.  During the day it will be dark and at evening time it will be light.  It is also described as “neither day nor night.”  It appears that the light of the sun will be diminished to the point that throughout the day there is darkness, but at evening time it will be light.  This light presumably coincides with the return of Christ to deliver Israel.  I would assume that all of this is in relation to Jerusalem time.  It is worth noting that Revelation 16 also speaks of the 5^th bowl being a darkness on the kingdom of the beast that causes pain.

Thus, the tribulation period will see these signs of blood, fire, vapors of smoke, the sun turned to darkness and the moon to blood.  Those will be signs to those who are alive at that time just as the signs surrounding the life, death and resurrection of Jesus were signs to those alive back then.  The strange events of darkness and an earthquake that ripped the temple curtain had no doubt circulated among the visitors of Jerusalem.  They had been prepared to hear what the Spirit of God had to say, what Jesus had to say, through Peter on that day.

The key point of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit in Joel 2 and quoted here in Acts 2 is that it will introduce a time where everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.  The Hebrew word for “saved” can be translated as delivered, or even escaped.  Remember the context is about this looming judgment of the Day of the Lord.  Those who call upon the Lord will be delivered from that judgment and escape it.  This is what Jesus was saying in Luke 21:36, “Watch, therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass and to stand before the Son of Man.”  (NKJV).

Listen, friend.  God doesn’t just want to give you a golden ticket into heaven, or a badge of honor saying, “I’m saved!”  He wants you to escape that horrible day of judgment that is coming upon this world.  His promise is that all who put their faith in Jesus will prove worthy to escape that awful day.  No, we won’t escape persecutions and suffering in this life.  But we will escape the destruction that the powers of this age are orchestrating for humanity.  And, we will escape the destruction that God has determined upon them and those who stand with them as His wrath is poured out.

It is important to remain humble and understand the tension between being the survivors of this age and also being the overcomers.  Both concepts are critical for us as believers.  We are not victims.  We are those who will survive the most devastating things that will ever come upon the earth, and even more, we will be those who overcame the powers of the devil and his angels, and the kings and powers of this earth.  Amen!

Peter Preaches audio

Grieving the Holy Spirit

Ephesians 4:25-32.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on June 05, 2022, Pentecost Sunday.

We talked about the gifts of the Holy Spirit last week.  One thing we know about the Corinthian Church is that they were very busy exercising spiritual gifts, especially speaking in tongues.  It is important to note that Paul does not question that their spiritual gifts are genuine, just that they were not treating one another in the way that the Holy Spirit wanted them to do.

This disconnect can happen when we focus on the gifts of the Holy Spirit instead of the purpose for which they are given.  We must never treat the spiritual gifts as a badge of honor that cries out, “Look at me!”  They are a means to an end.  They serve a holy purpose and that purpose is to help one another become like Jesus.  Yes, the whole purpose of spiritual gifts is to help everyone become like Jesus, i.e., fight sin in our life and live out his righteousness.

It is a sad condition that many who appear to be operating spiritual gifts are not becoming like Christ, but harm themselves and others.

Let’s look at our passage.

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit

Ephesians chapter 4 opens with six verses that point Christians to work in order to keep the unity of the Holy Spirit in the bond of peace.  Always remember that it is the unity of the Holy Spirit that we are to keep, and not just unity around a leader, or leaders, who are not following the Holy Spirit.  There is a spirit of this world that attempts to bring us under its false and perverse unity.

In verses 7-16. Paul shows that the whole purpose of spiritual gifts is that we may all take on the image of Christ, which should exhibit as unity of the Holy Spirit in our midst.

Ephesians 4:17-24 has Paul speaking about our need to put off the old man and put on the new.  We can see this as putting off the image of fallen Adam and putting on the image of Christ.  We can also see it as putting of the old me that followed the flesh, and putting on the new me that is co-laboring with the Holy Spirit to become like Christ (following the Spirit).

This brings us to our text where Paul lists out concrete issues that we must deal with in becoming like Christ and thereby coming into a unity of the Holy Spirit.  In the middle of this list, Paul points us to the necessity of working with the Holy Spirit.  When we neglect, even refuse, to follow and listen to Him, it grieves Him (vs. 30).  I want to look at this issue of grieving the Holy Spirit first, and then, we will walk through the list of issues that Paul points out.

The idea of grieving the Holy Spirit was talked about by the prophet Isaiah nearly 800 years before Paul in Isaiah 63:9-19. 

“9 In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the Angel of His Presence saved them; in His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bore them and carried them all the days of old.  10 But they rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit; so He turned Himself against them as an enemy, and He fought against them.”

In Isaiah, we are being pointed back to those days of Israel’s affliction in Egypt, and the salvation of God leading them by the Angel of His Presence.  This parallels the Christian experience today.  We are being led out of the spiritual Egypt of this world and over the top of the impotent resistance of the Pharaoh of this world.  Jesus is leading us to an eternity dwelling with God in a universe flowing with milk and honey.  This is our ultimate inheritance.

There is another parallel to the inheritance that God has for us in this life.  He is giving us our territory, our own mind, heart, and soul (“possess your soul”).  There are giants of sin and bondage to fight, even evil spirits that war against our soul.  However, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can gain victory in this life and take possession of our inheritance.

Yet, in Isaiah 63, we see that Israel rebelled and grieved the Holy Spirit, which led to the Assyrian exile for the northern ten tribes, and eventually the Babylonian exile for Judah and Benjamin.  Paul is essentially calling us back from that path of grieving the Holy Spirit and coming under God’s discipline.

There appears to be two aspects of God’s heart for us.  He hurt for Israel when they were in bondage, and so He delivered them.  However, after centuries of rebelling against Him, He was grieved by their willful desire to sin and reject Him.

In a similar way, it is possible for Christians to be so willful in sin, and so inattentive to the love of the Lord, that we grieve the Holy Spirit.  Of course, He will faithfully discipline us as any good Father would with His children.

We should note that the Holy Spirit is grieved partially because we are working at odds to His purpose.  However, Spurgeon points out that the Holy Spirit grieves over us because He knows the misery that sin will cause for those sinned against, and also those who do the sin.  The Holy Spirit also knows the correction from the Father we must receive that wouldn’t be necessary if we just listened.  Any parent can identify with that let-down feeling one gets when they realize that they are going to have to discipline their child, when they were hoping that they were past that.  The Holy Spirit also knows how much communion, fellowship, peace and joy that we lose along the way because we persist in our rebellion.

Christian, don’t fight with the Holy Spirit.  Let Him empower you to fight against sin, both in knowing what to fight, and how to fight.

Paul reminds us that we have been sealed in the Holy Spirit.  Actually, back in Ephesians 1:13, Paul says that we are sealed “with the Holy Spirit.”  Because He is God, the Holy Spirit can be both the thing that we are sealed inside of, and the seal itself.

A seal typically has two purposes in the Bible.  It protects the contents that are inside, and it identifies, or authenticates, the contents.  The presence of the Holy Spirit in our life is a sign to all evil things around us that we belong to God.  As long as we stay in the Spirit, the enemy cannot truly take away our victory.  The Holy Spirit is also the sign that we are genuine believers and not just people hanging to the edges of the group.

Paul states that this sealing of the Holy Spirit is to protect and identify us until the Day of Redemption.  In both Ephesians chapter 1 and 4, Paul ties this sealing work of the Holy Spirit to the Day of Redemption.  Of course, salvation is a day of redemption, but it is not the completion of our redemption.  Redemption is the getting back of something that has been lost.  At salvation, we are redeemed spiritually as fellowship with God is restored.  However, we are still dying beings and our bodies are not redeemed.  Scripture always connects the Day of Redemption to the ultimate redemption of our bodies.  Note Romans 8:23.

“…but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.”

We are saved in the hope that there is a day of resurrection for us, along with all of the people of God.  The Holy Spirit is our guarantee that God will keep His word!

Sin versus the life of Christ

This brings us back to our everyday lives.  In some ways, they may seem mundane, repetitive, even a chore.  However, as a believer in Jesus who is sealed by His Holy Spirit, we are on a journey of becoming like Jesus.  The things that you face every day that tempt you to sin are the giants that you are meant to take on and fight in the power of the Holy Spirit.  He gives us power to say, “No,” to sin.

Paul walks through several sins that so easily trip up the work of the Spirit in our life and the unity that we are supposed to have with one another.  These things grieve the Holy Spirit.

Paul tells us not to lie, but to speak the truth instead.  People lie to each other for various reasons, but they all are rooted in fear.  The Holy Spirit is leading us to speak the truth in love, rather than lying to one another.  Lying becomes the cop-out, the easy way that isn’t really the easy way.  It seems easy at first, but in the end, you will be stuck in a quagmire of lie after lie that you must tell to protect earlier lies.

Sometimes it would be better if we said nothing at all.  Leaving room for the Holy Spirit is better than giving in to sin.  However, sometimes we are silent because we are afraid of what will happen if we raise our concerns.  Remember that just because I am angered by something, it doesn’t mean that I am right.  The key is hearing from the Holy Spirit whether we should be silent or speak the truth in love.

Paul then tells us that we must not let our anger lead us to sin, and we should deal with it today.  Anger is not our problem.  Our problem is that anger often motivates us to sin.  Fight or flight are often motivated by anger.

Now, anger is good in that it is that internal alarm system that lets us know when we have allowed something to continue too long without doing something about it.  When it goes off, we know that we need to do something.  However, we often do not think well when we are angry. 

Scripture says to be angry and not sin.  This does not mean that we simply eat the anger and keep quiet.  I need to deal with what angers me today.  This doesn’t mean we have to resolve the issue before we go to sleep.  However, we do need to start the work of dealing with our anger today.  Don’t put it off.

Sometimes I will find that I shouldn’t have been angry, or that I am angry out of selfish reasons.  However, sometimes God is using my anger to wake up others who are being insensitive to the Holy Spirit and others.  He sometimes speaks to us through others, and I don’t just mean through holy prophets.  God can speak to us even through sinners, if we are listening for His Spirit.  Don’t pick apart criticism looking for any little error so that you can disregard it.  Instead, pray and hear what the Spirit of the Lord is saying.

In verse 27, we are told to not give place to the devil in our lives.  Only Christ through the Holy Spirit should have a place in our life, but we can give territory to the devil.  Giving him a place in your life gives him an area from which to attack your faith.  It might be a little sin that you don’t want to give up, or it might be a pet lie that he keeps whispering in your ear that you won’t let go of.  Jesus said in John 14, “the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in me.”  This is true of Jesus, but it is not necessarily true for us.  We must work hard to press the devil out of our hearts and minds, and keep him out.  Like a little wedge, the devil will use any place of sin that we give him to tap and tap until he topples our faith.  True repentance is the only way to take back territory from the devil.

Paul then moves to stealing.  We must not steal, but labor in order to be a benefit to others.  Just because you work doesn’t mean that you won’t need help yourself.  The intention is that you will get to a place where God can use you to help others.  Don’t take the path of the life-sucking leech.  Instead, take the path of Jesus, which is being a life-giving person.  Too many people today justify theft because they feel like society is not giving them what they deserve, or are owed.  Christians should reject such an attitude.  God is our source and supply.  He knows exactly what I need, and I should be thankful whether little or much.  Both of them are a test of our faith in different ways.

Verse 29 moves to our speech.  Don’t speak rotten words, but rather words that edify others.  Rotten words are at best useless words.  Words that give no benefit to the other person.  However, rotten words can also be harmful to others.  A life-giving source, a person who is like Jesus, should speak only those words that will help others to become more like him.  Yes, I know.  Only a perfect man can tame the tongue.  That only means that you will have trouble in this area.  Welcome to discipleship.  It isn’t easy.

Paul ends with a summation of the character of Christ in verse 32.  None of us are perfect at all times in all of these things, yet.  We will need to walk in the kindness and tenderness of the Lord Jesus Christ as we learn to forgive one another.

It is not good enough to be exercising spiritual gifts, while all along grieving the Holy Spirit through the way that we mistreat one another.  May God help us to pursue love AND desire the spiritual gifts!

Grieving the Holy Spirit audio

The Gifts of the Spirit

1 Corinthians 14:1-5.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on May 29, 2022.

Last week, we talked about the Day of Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2.  I want to pause on our walk through the Acts of the Apostles and focus this week and next on issues of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.  In fact, next week, June 5, is Pentecost Sunday.

The Day of Pentecost nearly 2,000 years ago was a significant day, which opened the door for a whole new way of God’s working among His people.  From that day onward, each one of God’s people would have a spiritual gift or gifts by which they could strengthen and build up one another as the Holy Spirit leads us.

Let’s get into our passage.

The impact of love on spiritual gifts

Let’s refresh our minds regarding the context of this chapter.  Paul is writing to the Church at Corinth, Greece, in order to correct their errors regarding spiritual gifts.  In chapter 12, he broaches the subject, but then, in chapter 13, he shows them the more excellent way of love.  Chapter 14 calls Christians to a balance.  Love is not more excellent in the sense that we would choose it to the exclusion of spiritual gifts, but rather that it would be the moral imperative behind why and how we use spiritual gifts.

Verse 1 gives us the command to pursue love and to desire spiritual gifts.  It makes sense that he puts love first as it is the “more excellent way.”  He also uses the word pursue.  Of course, it is not a love relationship with another person that we are pursuing now, but a love itself.  The foundation of having love in my relationship with others is having a relationship with love itself.  Better yet, when we understand that “God is love,” this is a call for us to pursue God Himself, His character, His image.

Paul clearly is not trying to nix spiritual gifts.  We should continue to desire them, but for the purpose of demonstrating the image of God and His love for others.  Any expression of spiritual gifts should be to fulfill the imperative of love.  Love always works for the good of others, as defined by God, and not their harm.

Paul uses the example of two gifts, speaking in tongues and prophecy, because this is where their erroneous thinking was most obvious.  Speaking in tongues was the spiritual gift that many of the Corinthian Christians saw as the most desirable, even to the point of ignoring others.  The Greek culture saw intelligible language as a higher stamp of the divine than prophecy in an understood language.  Those closest to the divine would not be understood.  Their church assemblies had devolved into large numbers of people speaking in tongues and not wanting to do much else.  They had become so hung up on it that it was harming the value of the Christian gatherings.

The root of this problem is that they are thinking about God’s things with the mindset of the world around them.  Their Corinthian culture was dominating how they used these spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit.  This is not just a Corinthian problem.  All people are in danger of letting their own culture overwhelm how they approach the Bible, the Church, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

In verse 2, Paul begins to explain the purpose for both speaking in tongues and prophecy.  He does so by highlighting two issues: who is being addressed and who is being edified by it.  Let’s deal with them one at a time.

When a person speaks in tongues (an unknown language that they have not naturally learned), they are talking to God and not to others.  One might object by pointing to the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2.  They were understood by others, but it does not in anyway give the idea that those speaking in tongues were speaking to the crowds.  Peter later addresses the crowds in a language that they understand.  In essence, the crowds are overhearing this group of about 120 individuals who are all speaking in languages that they did not naturally know.

It is also important to understand that this initial outpouring of the Holy Spirit is unique to later outpourings.  God had orchestrated it to happen on a feast day in which Jews from many different nations would be there to overhear what He does.  Why?  We talked about this last week.  At the Tower of Babel event, God had confused their languages so that they couldn’t understand one another.  This was a sign of His judgment as He disowned the nations.  Also, in Isaiah 28, especially verse 11, God is explaining to the northern kingdom, which was led by the tribe of Ephraim, that He was casting them out of the land.  They had not listened to His prophets who spoke to them in a language they could understand, so God would speak to them through a language they don’t understand.  Ultimately, it was a reference to foreign invaders (the Assyrians) who would destroy Samaria and cart the people of Israel off into exile, where they would be forced to learn foreign languages to survive.  Again, unknown tongues, or languages, is a sign of God’s judgment throughout the Old Testament.

So, why would God have the Apostles and the disciples speaking in tongues?  Notice that the languages are unknown to the Galileans, but not to these Jews who were from every nation under the Roman Empire, even beyond.  God is letting these Jews who had been dispersed know that He is reversing the judgment of the northern kingdom of Israel, and He is reversing the judgment of the Tower of Babel.

I know that we have taken a big detour, but it is to establish Paul’s point.  Speaking in tongues addresses God.  Whether others overhearing understand it or not is immaterial. 

In verse 4, Paul states that a person edifies themselves when they speak in tongues.  This verb is the idea of building something up, strengthening it, completing it so that it is finished.  Many of the Corinthians were not even thinking about these distinctions because they were more concerned with distinguishing themselves as spiritual in their meetings.  Speaking in tongues is not a spiritual badge of honor that we get from the Holy Spirit.  It is for the purpose of speaking to God and building ourselves up so that we look more like God, like Jesus.

Someone may ask, “How in the world does speaking in tongues edify a person when it isn’t understandable?”  There are several ways.  First, speaking in tongues is a tangible gift from God.  You know for sure whether you are speaking a language you know or not.  You also know if you are just mimicking someone else, or really letting the Holy Spirit give you words to say that you don’t know.  Such a tangible gift lets me personally know that God is keeping His word to believers by giving spiritual gifts to us.

Second and more importantly, willingly surrendering yourself to speak what you don’t understand strengthens our faith for those times when the Spirit of God prompts us to speak something that we can understand.  It becomes an exercising of our ability to trust God and just do what He gives me to do.  Of course, there are people through the years who have done all manner of unbiblical things in the name of God, but they were lying.  The Holy Spirit will not contradict God’s Word since He was the One who inspired the prophets to speak those words and write them down.

Even when God gives us something to say to another person, we don’t always understand why He would have us say it, or how it can help them.  Speaking in tongues builds our confidence in God and helps us to grow in our relationship of learning to be obedient to the Holy Spirit.

There is a third reason.  We are told that the Holy Spirit intercedes on our behalf and through us to God. He can put into words what we struggle to say.  This is part of His helping ministry.

Thus, we can see that speaking in tongues is more of a personal thing that is intended for me to use for my benefit.  I will point out Paul’s words in verses 18-19.  Paul basically says that he speaks in tongues more than any of the Corinthians.  However, in a church meeting, he would rather speak 5 words in a known language than 10,000 in an unknown language.  The whole purpose of gathering together is to build each other up. 

All of this teaching about speaking in tongues is qualified by the statement in verse 5 “unless indeed he interprets…”  Here, Paul recognizes that there is another spiritual gift, the gift of interpretation.  If a person is going to speak to the assembly in tongues, they should be ready to interpret it, or know that someone else in the assembly has the gift of interpretation (see 1 Corinthians 14:27-28.  In the case when speaking in tongues is interpreted, it then functions essentially like prophecy and can now help others in the group. 

In conclusion, speaking in tongues is generally for personal use.  There are times in a corporate meeting where we may all be privately praying, i.e., we are not leading prayer for the group.  I think that speaking in tongues would be fine even though you are in a group.  However, one should not raise their voice to the point of sounding like you want everyone to listen to you.  The key is understanding the purpose of the moment we are in, and the purpose of the gift we exercise.

Let’s look at the comparison of prophecy and its particular purpose.  With the gift of prophecy, a person is addressing other people.  The prophet speaks on behalf of God to people.  In this setting, they would be speaking to God’s people in a church service.  God may speak about something in the past, something in the present, or something in the future.  Some things about the future may even disclose something that God says will happen (predictive prophecy).  Regardless, God intends the person receiving the prophetic word from the Holy Spirit to share it with another person, or group.  This requires a prophet to be careful to hear from the Holy Spirit about the content of a message and the timing of disclosure. 

Paul even adds some words that describe the purpose of prophecy.  It is to build up the people of God (in order to be like Jesus), to exhort them (stirring them up to Godly action), and to comfort them in difficult times.  God’s purpose is not to show who in the assembly He favors.  The purpose of the prophecy is about strengthening the whole church.  It takes faith in God, and a true spiritual gift from God and operating in love, in order to speak to others on His behalf.  No other motivation is acceptable.

There are many in the Church today who think they are making the Church stronger by casting off clear teaching of Christ and His Apostles.  They may even do so under the guise of speaking on behalf of God, i.e., prophesying.  A prophetic word will always be in harmony with the whole counsel of Scripture.  It will strengthen us in ways that God wants, as opposed to what we want and what the world wants.  Those who compromise the Word of God often believe that more lost people will listen to us if we “fix” the Gospel.  However, this is a self-delusion.

In verse 5, Paul makes it clear that prophecy is the greater gift and not speaking in tongues.  This would be a surprise to some of the Corinthians.  It is the greater gift because it impacts a greater number of people.  His emphasis is on the primary benefit.  We could say that if every single person in the Church was being personally edified through the proper use of speaking in tongues, then they would be more able to exercise the other spiritual gifts, like prophecy.  These gifts should not be in contention with one another, but rather dovetail together in their complementary purposes.

The American culture is like the Corinthian culture in some ways and not in other ways.  Speaking in tongues in prayer is not something you would “brag” about with the world or even some believers.  We are more likely to “hide” it or “run” from it than they would have been.  Speaking in tongues is not something to be feared, yet neither is it something to be publicized.  These are God’s holy gifts among His holy people.  We should not prostitute such things by promoting it before the world.  I’ve seen secular shows done on speaking in tongues, or videos on YouTube.  This is not something that we should treat lightly.  It is an intimate thing between believers and the Holy Spirit of God.

Let us build the foundation of unconditionally loving each other, not because the other person is doing it too, but because that’s what Christ asks us to do!  Then, let us desire spiritual gifts by praying for God to enable us in the ways that He desires to do, so that we can be a blessing to His people on His behalf.  It was always His intention that we would need one another, and especially that we would need one another operating properly in those spiritual gifts that He supplies.

Gifts of the Spirit audio