Avoiding Chaos in the Church

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Well, we’re going to continue our study of 1 Corinthians this morning. I hate chaos. I just, I hate it.

Sometimes I have trouble even shopping for groceries because of the chaos. You go in there and it’s a little crowded, that’s fine. But people don’t look where they’re going.

They just back up with their cart like there’s nobody else on the planet, let alone that aisle. And it always frustrates me because I’m trying to teach my kids, watch where you’re going. And then it’s all these adults, don’t watch where they’re going.

And after about the 17th time, I have to dodge somebody and their cart full of stuff and they’re not paying attention. They’re going way too fast for the grocery store. I’ll just get so frustrated, I’ll start putting items back and leave.

And we don’t need groceries this week. It’s fine. Because I can’t deal with the chaos.

That was one thing that I kind of enjoyed about the pandemic, was when they started making the aisles at the grocery store one way. Because at least it brought some semblance of order, and then we couldn’t even handle that. But I don’t like the chaos of the store sometimes.

I don’t like the chaos of large crowds. I’d say it was, I’m getting old, but I was this way when I was a teenager. And we would go with the youth group to concerts, and I would think, this is just too many people and too much noise.

I can’t. So I guess I was born old. Chaos at the dinner table, we have to try to keep a lid on that because all of our kids are loud.

And then to be heard, they try to out loud each other. And it just gets, why are you screaming at me? I’m sitting next to you.

And it just, my nerves can’t take it. Some of you are looking at me like, what is wrong with you? And others of you are looking at me like, I totally get it.

Okay. I guess I’m talking to those of you who are sane and don’t like chaos too. I cannot stand chaos.

And I think that’s a little bit where the Apostle Paul was when he was writing to the church at Corinth, saying, can you just knock off the chaos for a minute? I saw something online this week that said the Apostle Paul in his letters to the churches really had two speeds. One, I love you in the Lord.

You’re great. I praise God for you. And the other one says, can you people just act normal for five minutes?

He’s in that ladder mode in 1 Corinthians most of the time. Can you just calm down? Because as we look at what’s going on in 1 Corinthians 14, if you’re just joining us today, I didn’t pick this passage at random, we’ve been doing a study piece by piece all the way through the book of 1 Corinthians.

And as we get to this piece, this part of chapter 14, we see that the church at Corinth was absolute chaos. when they came together. And it’s not chaos in the sense that everything has to be scripted, and if we deviate from the script, then it’s not okay.

I mean, we try to plan things out up here, but we also try to leave opportunity for other things that need to happen, and especially if the Holy Spirit moves, we try to leave opportunities for that. So this is not saying that everything has to be scripted, but the problem with their chaos was that it got so chaotic that the church wasn’t getting anything out of their worship gatherings. So turn with me, if you haven’t already, to 1 Corinthians chapter 14.

And we’re going to be in the latter half of the chapter. And we’re going to look at this together, some of the issues that were going on, some of the things that created chaos in the church, and the ways Paul said to deal with them. Because we can take these and apply these to the way that we do church as well.

1 Corinthians chapter 14. And once you find it, if you’ll stand with me as we read from God’s Word together. If you don’t have your Bible with you today or can’t find 1 Corinthians 14, it’s all right.

It will be on the screen for you. But if you have it, follow along with me. Starting in verse 20, he says, Brethren, do not be children in your thinking.

Yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature. In the law it is written, by men of strange tongues and by the lips of strangers, I will speak to this people, and even so they will not listen to me, says the Lord. So then tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe, but to unbelievers.

But prophecy is for a sign, not to unbelievers, but to those who believe. Therefore, if the whole church assembles together, and all speak in tongues, and ungifted men or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are mad? So he says if unbelievers come to the church and everybody come to the service and everybody in there is speaking in tongues and they’re talking over each other, he said unbelievers and people who are new in the faith and people who don’t have that gift, they’re going to look at you and think you’re crazy.

Verse 24, but if all prophesy and an unbeliever or an ungifted man enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, The secrets of his heart are disclosed, so he will fall on his face and worship God, declaring that God is certainly among you. What is the outcome then, brethren? When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation.

Let all things be done for edification. If anyone speaks in a tongue, it should be done by two or at the most three, and each in turn, and one must interpret. But if there is no interpreter, he must keep silent in the church and let him speak to himself and to God.

Let two or three prophets speak and let the others pass judgment. But if a revelation is made to another who is seated, the first one must keep silent. For you can all prophesy one by one so that all may learn and all may be exhorted.

And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. I don’t want to forget to come back to that in verse 32. the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets, means if you’re acting crazy in church, don’t blame it on the Holy Spirit.

You’re still supposed to be in control of yourself, even as you’re being led by the Holy Spirit. For God, verse 33, for God is not a God of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. Verses 34 and 35, don’t cringe when you hear them.

We’re going to talk about what it means. Some people act like these are the only two verses in this whole chapter, but they’re just a small part of the bigger meaning here. Verse 34, The women are to keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves, just as the law also says.

If they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home, for it is improper for a woman to speak in church. Was it from you that the word of God first went forth, or has it come to you only? If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, let him recognize that the things which I write to you are the Lord’s commandment.

But if anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. Therefore, my brethren, desire earnestly to prophesy and do not forbid to speak in tongues. But all things must be done properly and in an orderly manner.

And you may be seated. So what we see here is a church that is in chaos. Absolute chaos.

You go back to. . .

I’ve lost the verse here. He gives a list of the things that are going on. the Psalms, the prophecies, everyone comes together and everybody has somebody to add.

Verse 26, each one has a Psalm, each one has a teaching, each has a revelation, each has a tongue, each has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification. So he says they’re coming together and everybody wants to get up and sing, which is fine.

From the earliest days of Christian worship, we’ve come together and we’ve sung songs of praise to the Lord. But everybody wants to be heard, and everybody stands up in every corner of the church, and they start singing their solos, and they’re singing over each other, because I want to be heard, and you want to be heard, and he wants to be heard. And on top of that, everyone has a teaching.

And so someone says, I’m going to start my lesson. They won’t shut up singing, I’m just going to start my lesson. Well, I’ve got something to share too, and people are standing up all over the room and beginning to teach while people are singing.

this is already stressing me out just in the description someone has a revelation somebody stands up and says I have a message from the lord oh yeah well I have a message from the lord too well I have a message from the lord three and it’s better than either of your messages and they all stand up and start spouting some then somebody gets up and speaks in tongues and things really get exciting multiple people get up and speak in tongues and multiple people get up and start interpreting. This is what this means. No, this is what this means.

And suddenly you have a hundred people all doing their own thing, presumably for the purpose of building up the church and instructing people in the faith, and yet nobody’s being instructed because it’s chaos. It’s like when two of my children start trying to talk to me at the same time. Tell them, I can’t hear either of you.

I mean, you would think that I would be able to get some of what you’re saying and some of what. . .

Charla is great at that, but there’s an easy way to tell mama versus daddy. We look nothing alike. And if two of you are talking to me at the same time, I’m not getting what either of you are saying.

I cannot multitask. That’s what was going on in the church. They all had something to say, and nobody was being heard because it was chaos.

And so Paul’s entire point through this section of the text is that when a church is plagued by chaos, it will inevitably distract us from our mission. This was chaos, and the mission of them coming together was to worship Jesus Christ, glorify Him, and build one another up in the faith. Jesus is not really glorified by chaos.

I mean, He has the glory He has, regardless. But we’re not doing anything to bring Him glory if we’re just acting like crazy people. And we’re certainly not accomplishing the second part as we’re all doing our own thing, which is to build each other up in the faith.

Because at that point, when we say, I don’t care that he’s talking and she’s singing, he’s jabbering something over here, but I’m going to go ahead and say my piece, and I’m going to try to talk over them. At that point, it’s no longer about building up the body and edifying the listeners. It’s about I have a right to be heard.

And it becomes very self-centered. And suddenly, we’re no longer focused on what we’re here to do. We’re focused on what we want to get out of it.

And ultimately, as we go to verse 20, which is the very first verse we looked at this morning, we see that spiritual immaturity is at the root of the chaos. When there’s chaos, it’s not just a spiritual matter. When there’s chaos, very often immaturity is somewhere there in the mix.

Why do my children run around and act crazy? Because they’re still growing and maturing. We’re having to work through part of that.

But certainly in spiritual matter, spiritual immaturity is at the root of the chaos. Paul addresses this right off the bat and says that their problem is that they were thinking childishly. When we look at verse 20, he says, brethren, do not be children in your thinking.

Don’t think like children, at least in spiritual matters. Don’t think childishly. Don’t think about, well, it’s mine, or I have the right to do this.

He says, when you are, in terms of evil, yeah, think like children. Actually, think like infants. Now, we know that we’re born sinners, but at the same time, infants don’t really plot evil, as far as I can tell.

You might think they are. Never mind. Anyway.

You might think. You might think they are. But he actually uses a different word here, not just children.

It is the word for infant. It’s the word newborn. Newborns aren’t plotting anything.

So he says in terms of your morality, yes, be pure, be innocent, be infant-like in your morality, but in your thinking, he says you’re supposed to be like wise old people. In your thinking, be mature. In our thinking, in our reasoning, that’s not a place to be childish.

He said if you want to be childish somewhere, be childish in your malice, in this tendency that they had to plot against one another and plan how they were going to one-up each other. He said that’s where you need to be childlike, infantile even. And the spiritual immaturity of this church is a recurring theme throughout 1 Corinthians.

This is not the first time you’ve heard this, that they were spiritually immature and that was their problem. And what is spiritual immaturity? I mean, this should come as no surprise, but it’s the opposite of spiritual maturity.

Spiritual maturity means that we are continuing to grow. We’re not just stagnating. It means that we are becoming more like Jesus Christ in the way that we live, in the way that we react to things.

It means there’s some wisdom. Spiritual maturity shows up as obedience to God. And spiritual immaturity is the opposite of those things.

We’re not growing. We’re not acting like Jesus. We’re not showing any wisdom.

And we certainly are not going to be obedient. That’s what spiritual immaturity looks like. And it leads to chaos.

Now, the chaos in the church can come in many forms. And I don’t pretend that what I’m going to outline for you is that these are the only ways that chaos can show up. Nor do I think these are the only ways they showed up at Corinth, but these are just some of the ones that Paul outlined that were the big problems he saw at the moment. One of those is that they were self-focused.

Part of the chaos in their church that distracted them from what they were supposed to be doing was that they were self-focused, and we see this in verses 21 through 25. He says, you know, tongues were given to you. God said back in the law that he was going to speak to his people through tongues, but they’re assigned to the unbelievers.

And we talked about that a little bit last week. At Corinth, Paul never said that speaking in tongues was an evil thing for them. He just said you’re supposed to use it in the proper way.

You’re supposed to use it in an effective way. And going out and there’s an unbeliever in front of you who can suddenly have the opportunity to hear Jesus preached in His language, that’s going to be something that gets His attention. That’s a good use for that.

But to just stand up and chatter in a language that nobody in the church speaks, and there’s no interpreter. I mean, it makes you feel good and it makes you feel spiritual, but He’s saying there’s been no benefit to anybody else. Whatever you were saying is understood only to God, and God already knew it.

I think if God’s really in it, he’s going to provide an interpreter to them. That’s why Paul said you’ve got to have an interpreter. He’s putting the brakes on some of that right there, because some of them were just standing up.

Because at Corinth, they thought that was the ultimate spiritual gift. If you were a believer, if you were a spiritual believer, you had to have that gift. And if you didn’t have that gift, you weren’t as good as the rest of us.

So of course, there were going to be people in that assembly that stood up and said, Me too! And started to chatter in languages they didn’t even know what they were saying. They were overemphasizing these things to show how spiritual they were.

But Paul said, this is a sign for unbelievers. And so he says in verse 23, again, if the whole church assembles and they’re all speaking in tongues, you’re all talking over each other, the unbeliever walks in and says, you people are crazy. And they already kind of thought that about Christians.

We wouldn’t worship the gods of Rome. They called each other brother and sister. And so the Romans were looking at that, saying, you’re marrying your brothers and sisters?

And let’s give the Romans a little credit. That creeped them out just as it creeps us out. They didn’t understand the whole brother and sister thing, that it’s a spiritual. Anyway, they didn’t understand the this is my body that is broken for you, this is my blood that is poured out for many for the remission of sins.

They didn’t understand that. Thought Christians were cannibals, or at least accused them of that, whether they really believed it or not, They accused him of that. There was already plenty of opportunity for people to malign the church and say, you people are crazy.

Paul says, you don’t need to give them another excuse where they walk into your worship gathering and see you all up jabbering and chattering and talking over each other, and it’s chaos, and they say, I want no part of this. He said, but they walk in, and if you’re not focused on what you want to do and what builds you up, and instead you’re focused on building up the other person, then prophecy is a great way to do that. If God gives that to you or if God gives that to somebody else, sit down and give way to that so that the Word can be proclaimed in languages people understand so that the unbeliever who comes in amid the congregation hears the Word of God and is convicted and is called to repentance and he says, falls down on his face to worship God.

That’s what we want to see happen. We want to see believers strengthened. And when we come together, we are speaking first and foremost to believers to build one another up to help them understand the Word and help them walk with Jesus.

but we do that with the understanding that the unbelieving are always within hearing and we want them to hear the gospel and turn to Jesus Christ and be changed and that’s not going to happen if we’re focused on ourselves and what we want people to see about us and what we want to accomplish and how we want to feel and some of you are probably thinking is this a problem that goes on here is it I’ve not seen this chaos a great time to to deal with these questions is before they become questions before they become issues, is to deal with these things before they become issues. Where we would do this today is to take our other spiritual gifts. I don’t see anybody jumping up and speaking in tongues and running all over each other, but we can get very self-focused in the exercise of our spiritual gifts.

And say, I don’t care what they need to hear. I don’t care what the others around me need. This is what I want to do.

This is how I’m going to get noticed. It’s very easy for us to do. It’s just today it comes in a lot quieter package.

But they were self-focused. And he said, if you just take your attention off of yourself for a moment and put it on what we’re trying to accomplish here, it would cut down on the chaos and it would bring everybody’s attention back to what the Lord is doing. Then we see in the next few verses that not only were they self-focused, they were competitive.

They had this unfortunate habit of talking over one another and interrupting and kind of jockeying for position in order to bring something to the body of Christ, as we read about in verse 26. That they’re all doing these things, they’re talking over each other, they’re trying to. .

. Yesterday, I went out to the chicken coop with a bag of mealworms, which is much less appetizing than it sounds, but the chickens love it. They do not smell great.

But I took out a bag of mealworms that Charla had bought, grabbed a handful, tossed it in there, and those chickens tried to beat each other to death to try to get to those mealworms. I saw that and I thought, that’s kind of how the church at Corinth did. Everybody’s trying to get to their place and what they want and trying to out-compete one another. So they stand up and do all these things that we talked about in verse 26, where the chaos comes from.

And so Paul gives them some instructions on how to curb that competitive impulse and bring in line. He says, if anybody speaks in a tongue, it should be two or three. Two or at the most three.

If God’s given you something, stand up and do it. But we’re not going to have 500 people all talking over each other. He says, one or two, maybe three in extenuating circumstances, but each in turn.

So Paul repeats the kindergarten lesson and says, take your turn, Wait your turn. And somebody needs to interpret. And if nobody interprets, sit down.

This is not something that is familiar for me from my upbringing. One time I was in a church service, not in a Baptist church. I was visiting a church with a friend.

And somebody behind me got up and began to say things that I didn’t understand. And it just, it really, okay, it freaked me out. Because I was not used to that.

I had read this. I knew somebody was supposed to interpret. So they let this person talk for two or three minutes.

And the person on stage, yes, yes, yes, is somebody here to interpret? Nobody stood up to interpret, and they let this person go for another three minutes, another five minutes. They kept going.

Even as a kid in high school, I’m sitting there thinking, I’m pretty sure he said you’re supposed to sit down if there’s not an interpreter because this is not accomplishing anything. So he says, only a couple. You know, y’all are wanting to make this the focus of everything.

Just let a couple people go. It’s not a bad thing, but let a couple of people go. Let them take their turns.

Let somebody interpret or put a stop to it and let him speak to himself and to God. He says, let two or three prophets speak. Now, this was back in the day when God was giving new revelation because the New Testament wasn’t finished yet.

Let the prophets speak and let the others pass judgment. But if a revelation is made to another who is seated, the first must keep silent. So if God has given somebody a word of revelation, and they’ve spoken it, and now they’re explaining it, and somebody else gets a word of revelation, that first one needs to sit down so that the word of revelation can go forward.

Again, these are things that I believe were for the early church that are foreign to us today. And he says, the first one must keep silent so that they’re not arguing over each other. For you can all prophesy one by one so that all may learn and all may be exhorted.

He’s saying, do these things in an orderly way. Stop trying to compete. Stop trying to make your voice be the one that’s heard over everybody else.

Everybody take your turn because if God’s given something to be said, it needs to be said in an orderly way so that everybody can hear it and everybody can learn. Now, again, I don’t believe God is still revealing authoritative information to us today. I think He speaks to us through what He’s revealed in the words of the New Testament.

But this still applies to us in the sense that as we exercise any of our gifts, we can become competitive and we can try to outdo somebody else. And it creates chaos and it distracts us from what our focus should be. And then we come to the next part of this passage.

Part of the chaos came because they rejected proper authority. Now bear with me on these two verses, because there’s a lot of confusion and a lot of argument on these first two verses. And I think sometimes the arguments and the confusion are because there are things that we don’t understand.

There are things all throughout 1 Corinthians that I’m thinking, I have a good guess, but I wasn’t there. And so there are things that I’m not 100% sure what Paul was talking about. And I think in some cases it’s okay that we disagree on things.

I think there are other places where the argument is because we know what Paul was saying and people just don’t like the answer. And that’s a problem. We can go to extremes in interpreting these verses here.

And I have heard people say when Paul talks about the women in church, well, that was 2,000 years ago. To say you’re basing your argument on this was 2,000 years ago so it no longer applies, quit pretending you’re a Bible teacher. Just admit that you don’t like what the Bible says and you’re going to use it as it’s convenient.

And just admit you’re a motivational speaker who uses Bible verses. If you’re going to tell me that we’re going to pick and choose because it’s 2,000 years old, it doesn’t apply. That’s one extreme that people go to.

Another extreme, and I have friends who are in this camp, of saying women can’t open their mouths at all on church property. I have a friend who will not ask questions in Sunday school because I’m not supposed to talk at church. Here’s my problem with that.

And it’s not that, oh, that’s 2,000 years ago. My problem with that is interpreting the Bible in light of itself, and we go back to 1 Corinthians 11, which we’ve already talked about, when Paul gave instructions for how the women were supposed to pray and prophesy in the church. And I’m going, I don’t believe there are contradictions in the Scriptures.

So how do we resolve this that Paul on one hand says, when the women are praying and prophesying in the church, here’s how it’s supposed to work. And then on the other hand, he says in chapter 14, y’all need to sit down and be quiet. It could be that he’s talking about two different things.

And I have read, I have studied, I’ve gone back and forth on this, not just in preparation for this message, but with some of the things going on in our convention of trying to understand what is Paul talking about here. And I think it goes back to understanding the role of the pastor and the elder. Paul is very clear elsewhere that he has called, that God has ordained the role of pastor or elder to be a position for men.

Now, people don’t have to like that. We don’t have to understand. There’s lots of things that God says I don’t understand why he said it, but he said it, and so I go with it.

And it sounds as though what he’s talking about here is what comes after the prophecy, what comes after the tongues, when you’ve got the elders of the church who are making application, who are teaching on the basis of those things, being the ones that speak and expound the doctrines for the church. And I read this week something that Warren Wiersbe wrote that I think is probably the best explanation of this that I’ve ever come across. When he talks about the women not speaking in the church, he says, and this is what caught my attention because this is the problem I’ve had all along.

Paul had already permitted the women to pray and prophesy in 1 Corinthians 11, so this instruction must apply to the immediate context of evaluating prophetic messages. It would appear that the major responsibility for doctrinal purity in the early church rested on the shoulders of the elders in particular. And he cites 1 Timothy chapter 2 there.

The context of this prohibition would indicate that some of the women of the assembly were creating problems by asking questions and perhaps even generating arguments. And I don’t think the asking of questions is necessarily always a problem. It’s the way it’s approached.

I think there were some women at Corinth who were trying to cause problems. Paul reminded these women to get their questions answered at home. We assume that the unmarried women could counsel with the elders or with the men in their own families. And he ends by saying, sad to say, too, in too many Christian homes today, it is the wife who has to answer the questions for the husband because she’s better taught in the Word.

So I think what’s going on here in 1 Corinthians 14 is not saying women can’t ever say anything in church, because again, he said, you can pray, you can prophesy. Is it wrong to have Christy and Marilyn and Aaliyah and Cindy reading Bible verses? I don’t think it is.

Is it wrong when I was having Charlie make announcements? I don’t think it is. But there’s a difference between that and being the one who preaches and brings the Word.

And in this case, the elders were taking the Word as it was revealed in the prophecies and the tongues, and they were making application for the people. They were speaking on behalf of the church. And God, for reasons known to him, has said that that position belongs to the elders, and he’s called the elders to be men.

Now, some people will look at that today and say, well, you’re treating women as second class. That’s only the case if you think that everybody in the church is second class to the pastor. I don’t happen to believe that, that the pastor is more valuable than anybody else in the church.

I fall under the heading of what they call a complementarian. that I believe God has created men and women differently. I think society all used to agree on that.

He’s created us differently, and He’s given us different roles in the family and the church. And that doesn’t always look exactly the same from household to household or church to church, but He’s given us different roles so that everything gets accomplished. And I think that fits with what He’s taught all throughout 1 Corinthians, that there are complementary roles for everybody in the church.

We don’t all have the same role. We don’t all have the same gifts. We don’t all have the same ministry, regardless of gender.

And I think to say that, well, if a woman can’t be an elder, then she’s a second-class citizen, is to say that all the men who aren’t elders are also not as good. I think it’s to set up a first-class, second-class system that’s foreign to the Bible. We just are fulfilling different roles.

And so he was telling these women, basically, this group of women at Corinth that we’re creating problems, he’s telling them, stop trying to take the place that I’ve given the elders. Stop trying to do their job for them. And it can also be a warning too, because in many cases women have had to step in and take roles because the men don’t, because the men won’t.

And that’s also a problem in the next couple of verses. See, this portion on proper authority is not just limited to the women. He gets after the men in verses 36, 37, and 38.

Th

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