Another one of my friends is going to be getting married sometime in the next month. And in looking at this, as I started thinking about some of the weddings that I've done before, what was funny is that before coming to Christ Memorial, I don't know that I had ever actually conducted a wedding in a church before. I had done a wedding on a mountain, I had done a wedding in a bar, I had done a wedding on a ranch, you know, in a box with a box with socks, I mean, whatever it may be.
But one of the things with the different weddings is that 99 times out of 100, you can almost guarantee that they're going to want one specific passage read in the wedding, which would be 1 Corinthians 13. And you've got to have the love is patient, love is kind, love keeps no record of wrongs and some of the couples that are out there are saying, I think we may have to go revisit those a little bit there.
But in thinking about it is the funny part about 1 Corinthians 13 is that it has absolutely nothing to do with weddings. And in reality, it has actually nothing to do with couples whatsoever.
is that it actually is trying to explain a little bit more about what we're speaking about the unity of the church from 1 Corinthians 12. Now, I'm not going to be the jerk pastor who tells a married couple, you can't use that passage. It's not technically about weddings. And then everybody goes to find somebody else to do their wedding for them. But with it though, is when we think of some of those parts of that chapter,
When we think, what is before the wedding scripture of 1 Corinthians 13, we realize why all those random parts are in there because it seems so out of context when all we know of it is the wedding scripture. So for example, when it says, if I speak in the tongues of angels and of men but have not loved, you know, I'm a sounding gong, clanging symbol,
Because we're looking at 1 Corinthians 12 talking about having gifts of speaking in tongues of angels. And he's trying to put it in context. Or to realize that it's not just you can do it. That's great. But are you loving your neighbor as you do so? Or if I have a gift of prophecy and I can fathom all mysteries.
What does that have to do with married couples? Well, no, is that realizing is that in chapter 12, some people had a gift of being able to speak the truth of the present or the future, and others were able to give wisdom and knowledge. So they're trying to explain, yes, but whatever gift you have, are you doing so with love for your neighbor, not just trying to be puffed up and prove something to other people?
If I have a faith that can move mountains because in chapter 12, it had said for those who have faith, who have the gift of faith, and it sounds strange because we may be thinking, well, wait a minute, shouldn't we all have the gift of faith? Yes, but it's specifying the idea of faith that can do miraculous things. And then on top of it says, love does not dishonor.
And this idea of being able to point out that oftentimes, in especially in the early church, but we still see it sometimes today, is that people might try to prove themselves to be more spiritual than somebody else. And it's almost like trying to honor yourself by shaming somebody else.
And it says, when I was a child, I thought like a child, I spoke like a child, I reasoned like a child, but when I became a man, you know, I put away childish things and you're like, okay, now you just lost me, Paul. And that's because in chapter 12, he's trying to let them know that they need to become more mature. They need to think through what it is they're doing and not just try to be excited and try to just have everything be whatever seems like fun at the moment.
and he's trying to get them to think through things. So trying to understand chapter 13, today's passage is needed. But today's passage has a lot to it. And one of the things that always struck me whenever I would read chapter 12 was the idea when it says, no one who says Jesus be cursed has the spirit of God.
And that's one of the things about this is this idea of, can Christians say Jesus be cursed? And you know, that's something that's interesting is how often
Do you feel like you are genuinely being asked by somebody to curse Jesus? That's not like a normal thing. You don't go to Starbucks and give them your Starbucks points and they say, thank you. Would you like whipped cream? Great. Would you like to curse Jesus? No. Okay. That would be fine. That'll be seven dollars. But we think about what in the world is the understanding that's happening here? What are they trying to get across?
Now what you have to realize is that there actually were times where people were being interrogated about whether or not they were actually Christian and there was a test. Later on, so this was later after Paul was writing here, but it gives a context, is that Emperor Trajan, the Roman Empire,
If he wondered if someone was following this Christian sect would actually have a person in front of him and say, okay, curse Jesus. And if a person could curse Jesus in front of him and give a sacrifice to the gods, he would let them go because no one who is a Christian can do that. But if they couldn't, and if they still had to proclaim Jesus as Lord,
It kind of proves who they truly are. But you see, there's also a lot more to this context, too. See, there were also different cults at the time that might try to combine Christianity into what they were teaching and doing at the time. Dionysus, or Bacchus, or basically the God of partying and revelry, there was a cult.
And with it was that they would oftentimes have these like strange worship times where they were in these ecstatic movements and everything where they were just experiencing whatever was overwhelming them at the moment. And in their ecstasy, they would say all sorts of random things. And some Christian believers at the time speaking to Corinth
Some of them were tempted to listen to some of them and what may come from these particular priests and priestesses. The thing is, though, that you never knew whether they would or wouldn't bless or curse Jesus. And to be able to say that whatever you're hearing from people around you
It should never be, if it's the Spirit of God, the Spirit of God is not going to fill somebody, and then they go and curse Jesus. But third, is to remember that whatever we do to the least of these, we have done unto Christ. We oftentimes love the idea of blessing Jesus' name.
But are we willing to do so by blessing the people he loves? And that's something that we have to remember is that whether we have blessed or cursed our neighbor is also indicative of whether we are blessing or cursing Jesus. Because as much as we in the world, we have to make difficult life decisions. We don't have to do so hurtfully
or without compassion. We can always pause whether it be our family, our friends, our business, our home, the world around us and always say, can I do this with compassion and understanding in my heart? But it then goes from this idea of
those who follow Jesus, his Spirit cannot say Jesus be cursed. And it starts going into the different gifts of God's Spirit. The thing is is that there are different places in Scripture that actually list out what are the gifts of God's Spirit. And there are some that are listed here in 1 Corinthians 12. It talks about
Sorry, it talks about being able to give wisdom, as well as those who can give knowledge, talks about those who have faith, and those who can do healing, miraculous powers, those who can have prophecy, distinguish between spirits, speak in different kinds of tongues, and interpret the tongues. We're going to notice that the two in regard to tongues are last in this list.
And we know that Paul is trying to help explain to the people what they're supposed to do with those tongues. But you see this list.
This is not the only place for time where we see a similar list. It's it says in here about wisdom and knowledge. Let's be honest. There are a lot of times where somebody may have a lot of book learning, but they don't seem to be very wise. So maybe they are able to teach physics to a high school class, but they're not quite sure what to do with the breaker box outside of their home.
Or oftentimes, wherever somebody may be able to be really intelligent about knowing all these completely flowery things to speak, maybe they majored in communication, but then in person, they seem to get on everybody's nerves. And there can be knowledge, but not always wisdom. And at the same time, there can be wisdom and not knowledge, where maybe a person is always trying to somehow balance things out, but doesn't have enough input to do so.
But comparing this list with Romans 12, where it says, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them, if prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts like you are urging people to things, then in his exhortation, the one who contributes
In generosity, the one who leads in zeal and the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. Or in Ephesians 4, it says, he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ. All of these lists are supposed to be similar.
They're not exhaustive. It's not like you can't say, well, you know, I have a particular gift from God and I'm glad to use it, but it's not listed here. So therefore I have to ignore it. Now granted, I believe that the spirit of God has given me the gift of terrible jokes. But for some reason, Paul forgot to include it in here because I don't think he knew the Greek word for it. But with these is that we realize that the other passages
Notice that they don't specify speaking in tongues. And that's because speaking in tongues was not supposed to be something so special and set apart that it missed the point of all the other gifts. It's not supposed to be something for its own sake, not something where that goes beyond speaking the gospel, teaching.
bringing people to know one another and to know God more clearly. And that's something that we need to at least understand a bit before we can ask this question about speaking in tongues, huh? And let's just be honest, Lutherans have a rough time with passages like this. We really do.
And, you know, if somebody all of a sudden were to over often the fellowship hall, start speaking in tongues, we probably go check to see if the security guard is still here in the narthex. And that's a thing with it though, is what even is it? What is the speaking in tongues? Because there are discussions about whether or not there are two different things happening between Acts 2
where the people at Pentecost were speaking in different languages in different tongues versus 1 Corinthians 12, where they are the speaking of tongues and the interpreting of tongues. Now, oftentimes we may be looking at this idea of whether or not those are two separate types of things. If you look at reading the chapters on their own,
if you look at them in their context, because what we see in Acts 2 is that you have people that are all of a sudden speaking languages to people in front of them that they can understand, whereas you may normally have people that are speaking Aramaic, maybe Greek, maybe Hebrew. Remember Aramaic was kind of a common language. It's like what English has become for us today.
But for business, you would speak Greek for religious purposes. You had Hebrew, but now all the different people that might be coming through Jerusalem and the Roman Empire speaking all these other languages and all of a sudden you're explaining the gospel to them, but it's coming out in completely different and strange words. It was like
When I was in China, and I was trying to learn Chinese, and I was trying to pick up some things, and sometimes whenever you've learned, you're trying to learn a different language, but maybe you had tried a different one before, and you realize I never learned that word. But I had never learned the word sandwich in Spanish, and here I was trying to learn sandwich in Chinese.
And so I could say, well, y'all saw meza. I want a sandwich. But the problem was that I never learned what it was in Spanish. The problem is that nowadays I keep trying to say, yo quiero un sandwich. And all I come out with is yo quiero un son meza. And the poor lady at the taqueria has no idea what I'm trying to see to her. Now, in my mind, I'm trying to say sandwich.
And I'm trying to do it as bilingual-y as I can. But the word coming out is completely wrong or different from what I'm expecting. But could you imagine that now at this moment, they're not just doing this as bilingual or trilingual people who accidentally slip up and fall into their other language, but now they're doing it with languages that they never actually knew. Their brain is trying to say one thing and it comes out differently.
But now, if you look at 1 Corinthians 12, it seems completely different, a ton of angels. As if it's some other type of language that nobody actually speaks on Earth. And the only way to try to understand it, if somebody else is standing there saying, OK, I think this is what the angels would understand you to say, they might call it holy mumbling in some ways.
I do have to mention is that we believe that God could very well utilize tongues again as needed to spread the gospel. It is always possible for God to do His work. What's been interesting is the cessationists, the ones who say that there are no more gifts of the Spirit today. What they will say is that
At that time, 1 Corinthians 12 did not mean anything other than speaking in human languages that other people understood at the time. And they believe, many of them, that only until the Pentecostal movement became a thing 18th, 19th century,
that all of a sudden commentaries started adding this angel language in there to meet what was being taught by that particular church body. The reason why they would say this, number one, because many of them are uncomfortable with the concept of tongues, but also when they look at the word tongues is that it's the same word between the two passages.
But if you look at the context in verse Corinthians 12, and it speaks to there are the tongues of angels. We also know that there were many early church fathers when they were speaking and talking at different times that would reference this idea of there being a different language that somehow came from heaven, Ignatius and Tertullian and Augustine, even to the point where there was even
monotonous who even had a heretical sect based out of it. Or even during the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, if you will, where they would be different monks or nuns who would speak to the idea of having a heavenly language and ecstatic speech. So ever since the time of Paul, there have always been those who have felt like they were able to have some time
of speaking in some other language that no human would understand. But is there something to it? To be fair, it has actually been studied to actually measure the brain waves, is that when a person is speaking in tongues at a time like that, it actually shows that it's not using the same part of the brain
that you would normally use to communicate when talking to people. So whatever is happening, they genuinely believe that they are speaking in a heavenly language. In their mind, they're not thinking it. But that doesn't mean that we should just always accept it no matter what comes from it. Why is that?
because of the purpose of gifts, because the purpose of gifts is always to proclaim Christ. Because that's the thing about this, is that if somebody is wishing to have a time where they are speaking something that they feel is mystical or grabs attention and somehow people are going to listen more,
is that we have to be careful at those times. Even for those who feel themselves gifted in this particular area, many of them are trained to start by doing it by just mumbling and hoping that the Spirit will take it from there. Or others where they know that they have just been caught up in a community that was doing the same.
But even more than that is even asking what was the purpose. Because Paul tells us that tongues were only meant for unbelievers. The purpose behind it was going to the Gentiles, was going to people who were speaking other languages and making sure that they could hear the gospel. So if you are in a worship setting with believers,
The gift God desires is prophecy, speaking truth. And that's the thing that we have to be careful about. We are in a world where people have many different perspectives on what faith may be. But whatever that perspective may be, is that it is always meant for the same purpose to proclaim Christ Jesus.
It's not about trying to do something for ourselves. But more than that is to also be able to point out that many of us have many different gifts. We are all sorts of different gifted types of people. There are those who are teaching. There are those who are preaching. There are those who are comforting and caring for one another.
There are those who are getting out there to make sure that they share the gospel and those who are going out to plant new churches. There are many people doing many different things, but we're all meant to be sharing in the same spirit of God. Whatever it is that we feel called to by God, we should still be learning who He is in spirit and in truth.
And we should still be asking, is this bearing the fruit that God desires of us? Because whatever your gifts may be, they will always be to share love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Whatever someone may tell you is from God, if it is not to proclaim his gospel and to bear the fruits of his spirit, then run away. Because all of these are meant for one spirit and for one Lord. So as we continue in this world around us, and we see that there are so many things that we may pursue in faith,
People may come to you with things that they declare to be of the Spirit of God. But you must always pause and ask, is this proclaiming Christ Jesus to the world in a way they can understand? And is it helping us to grow in humility and truth in the fruits of God's Spirit? Because nothing from God will ever contradict that.