Paul's 'No. 1 for Worst Behavior'

The reason the people at Corinth were seeking the gift of tongues is "that gift is a sensational thing that makes you look real spiritual,” said Jordan in a recent study. “You see, the spiritual gifts (I Cor. 12:7) were the outward manifestations of the working of the Spirit of God in you.

“I look at you guys (sitting here today) and I don’t see the Spirit of God working in you. You don’t see Him working in me. He’s inside. You don’t see that. You don’t feel it, you don’t sense it. It’s a non-experiential reality. But when they have those gifts, they start to ‘ffttooo’ and it’s ‘bloo-hoo-hoo-hoo,’ and you can see the manifestation.

“In the Scripture, the people who had the biggest manifestation of the tongue-talking are the worst assembly Paul wrote to. It was not a sign of spirituality; it was a sign of carnality. The Corinthians were the most carnal church Paul wrote to. And they were the ones seeking the spiritual gifts. They were seeking the sensational stuff.

“Notice In I Corinthians 12:14 what Paul says you’re supposed to do: ‘Even so ye, forasmuch as ye are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek that ye may excel to the edifying of the church.’

“You see, they were trying to get the spectacular. Paul says, ‘Everything related to what goes on in the church is for one purpose: edifying, building up an internal structure in the Believers that causes you to become mature.’

“He says in verse 26, ‘How is it then, brethren? when ye come together, everyone of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying.’

*****

“Everything in a local church, in connection with worshipping God, is to be done for the purpose of edification. Think about that.

“You need to understand, a lot of stuff we do here people don’t do in other places. People come here and say, ‘Why don’t you all do that?’ It’s because what we DO do is for the purpose of edification.

“What the church today, evangelicalism, calls ‘worship’ we used to call the ‘song service.’ We still do. Back when I was coming up, you called the Sunday morning preaching service the ‘worship service.’ Some people still call it that but not very many. I used to complain, ‘Well, we don’t worship God just one hour on Sunday morning; we worship Him 24/7.’ Now the worship service is only 20 minutes of that hour. It’s a song service.

“But everything, whether it’s the singing, the preaching, the cleaning up of the place, everything is to be done with an eye to the edification of the Believer. That issue of the communication of sound doctrine for the purpose of providing the edification and stability of a person’s inner man--not just teaching the information, but having it be able to go hands-on into the operation of the life. Not just knowing it, but the ability to value and esteem it with that renewed mind and put it into operation--put it into action to bring a person to the place of fully functioning properly.

“By the way, that’s one of the reasons we use this song book. That’s the reason we don’t have a band. I know churches have bands, guitars, drums, etc., and that’s not because we don’t like music; I love music. It’s because the purpose of the music is not just to entertain you and make you think you’re still out at a party on Saturday night.

“The purpose is to communicate to you some doctrine and communicate it to you in a way that your inner man can receive it.

*****

“If you remember the studies in Colossians, I went through with you how music’s constructed and put together and how there’s certain parts of music that are meant to affect your flesh (your outer man) and some parts meant to affect your inner man (your soul) and some parts are meant to affect your spirit.

“I played for you one song, ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus,’ five different ways and I had some of you ready to dance in the aisle and some of you ready to pray. If you play it with a boogie beat, or a rock beat, or a calypso beat, or a church beat (4/4 time) it makes a difference. It’s all your flesh.

“I’m not interested in entertaining your flesh. And I know your flesh can get in the way of receiving things unto your spirit.  Behind everything we do in the assembly is designed and focused and should be aimed at the issue of communicating sound doctrine for the purpose of providing the edification of the soul of the Believer.”

(new article tomorrow)