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Bible Notes - Tabernacle Commentaries
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1 Corinthians 14:20
Comments
Children love colour and movement and spectacle. They do not know how to evaluate things. They cannot see beyond what lies on the surface. It is children who don’t reason very well and think very well, and who are drawn to what is more dramatic or attractive for the moment. Corinthians, you are erring in that direction. With all your love of wisdom, especially you leaders of the church, how is it that tongues speaking is being exercised when there is no benefit to the understanding? You think it is more important to do the showy thing and speak in the language, than it is to have a message and to have meaning. You love to hear speaking in unknown languages, the phenomenal things. You are taken up with the spectacle of the gift and do not think why God has given the gifts. That is the way children think. Don’t be like children! That is foolishness. That is just what a child would do – go for the sweet rather than for the money. Be adults: adults are all about sense and message. That is what matters.
Application
Sadly many today read this chapter like children. In spite of the apostle’s great effort to explain these things, they still fail to understand his meaning. In an effort to defend the practices of the charismatic and Pentecostal churches, they take statements intended to illustrate what should not be done, and treat them as if he was advocating those very things. They will speak not unto men but unto God (verse 2) as if Paul said this was right, and completely fail to catch the drift of his argument. They will speak what they think are ecstatic languages spoken nowhere on earth, and even though no one is edified by doctrine, exhortation or comfort, they will think that the gift has been exercised properly.
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