First Corinthians 14:1-5
1 Corinthians 14:1-5 · Mike Doyle · Jun 20, 2021
Letters to the Corinthians, No. 62
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926192317904

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

This morning, dive into chapter 14, and really what goes on there is kind of what we're gonna see is that God has a order in the church of how his gifts should be displayed. And gifts, as we've talked about in the last couple of chapters, are distributed by the Holy Spirit, just like gifted men. In 1 Corinthians 12, 7, we talk about that each one is given a manifestation, of the spirit for the common good.

So it's not enough, however, to have just received a gift. It has to profit others. It must be divinely regulated if it is gonna profit others. So in this chapter, the body is seen as come together in one place. Verse 23 and other verses. And we're instructed how the gift should be exercised on such occasions according to the order that God has proposed for one purpose and that purpose is edification. We come together also for the application of God's love. blessed as it always and everywhere and his energy and the new nature it is in the church of God that it finds its largest and deepest exercise as far as we're concerned.

I think we certainly have experienced that with the ending of COVID and we're having not been able to get together for a long time as we come back together. There's a energy of love there that's just, I really missed it. And I think a lot of us did. So I would say that nowhere else is the application of love demanded so continually and in such various forms. So without the love of believers, the point is that no matter what the church is doing, if there's no love in it, it's gonna get shipwrecked pretty fast. With love, the bitterest rivalries turn into the happiest testimony on the grace of God. But so far the saints of Corinth had really failed in this area. They had not learned the issue.

So there are two ways in which God can order, God's order can be set aside. How do you set aside God's order? Well, the Corinthians demonstrated the first way and that is with disorder. We've gone through the chapters that talked about what a great or terrible job they were doing in the Lord's table and other places. They were drinking and that kind of thing. And here's the second way, which is really subtle and I don't think a lot of times we realize it. The second way God's disorder is set aside, or the disorder of the church is set aside, is by the adoption of man's order. The Corinthian believers had clearly set aside God's order by the allowance of the flagrant disorder that was in the church.

There had been drunkenness, there had been all kinds of stuff going on, but they were the most gifted church in the New Testament. They had all the sign gifts going on. They had all the gifts that were mentioned in the places that they're mentioned were all active in Corinth. but they did it all without references to God's will. And they made the means of exalting, the gifts were used as a means for exalting believers and for believers to become self-important rather than for the edification of the whole church.

I gotta say, I think in today's, I use the term denominational Christendom, We may seldom see such violence and disorder as you saw in the Corinthian church, but you certainly have, you certainly can see man's hand in the order of professing Christians.

You can see the principles that have been brought entirely on board that are not God's direction, that they are man's idea on how to fix it. There's not so much, as I said, human disorder, but rather there's a lot of human order. We made up the rules. We think we know how God ought to run his church. And that's an equally serious problem, I think, to get away from God's order and to adopt something that is the order that we came up with a plan to fix this problem.

Disgusting conduct will offend even the natural conscience of most believers. But human order may quietly find its way in and it won't affect your conscience. And it just allows the evil to be detected. So it's a serious evil, I think, in the church today.

And we must remember that the very early church history, the great distinguishing truths of the stewardships were given up by the professing mass of believers, such as they gave up most entirely the presence of Christ in glory as the head of the church. the presence of the Holy Spirit on earth. The fact that the Holy Spirit is the one who decides how the church is gonna get formed and who's gonna be in it and who's gonna be gifted. The Holy Spirit is in charge of forming a church and calling of a church. The other big problem is that Christianity got leavened with Judaism. with the result that even though these are sincere people who did this back in 100, 200, 300 AD, they were ignorant men and they attempted to maintain order by setting up a priestly class as distinguished from the laity after the pattern of the Jewish priesthood.

Human order by means of a clergy was adopted. and still prevails in all the great religions of Christendom. Almost all of them have a clergy of some kind. So the seriousness of adopting human order lies in the fact that it ignores the presence and the leading of the Holy Spirit.

A great example is in the two and a half years since Roger and I have been Privileged to serve is the best way to say it. Almost everybody in this church at one point or another has come up to me and said, when are you guys gonna get a preacher? What does that say to me? It says, we need some order around here. We need to have somebody who's trained out of a seminary and get in here and to set this place right. Well, Roger and I have prayed about this issue every week for the whole time.

And what's interesting is we've come to the conclusion that the Holy Spirit's the one who's gonna bring the next person that's gonna stand up here. And it isn't gonna be because we ran a good ad. Or because we made a lot of phone calls. Or because we contacted everybody we knew. Not that we don't do that, we do.

But it's the spirit's job. It's his job to put in a body of believers who he wants there and to gift every one of those people for the edification of everybody. So, we're kind of slow to accept the fact that about these great fundamentals of how a church is to be run, run by the Spirit of God. We're living in a time where a divine person, the Holy Spirit, is present on earth on behalf of the interests of Christ to comfort, to teach, to guide, to show all the things and to lead us in the exercise of gifts and prayer. That's what he does. And we don't ever hardly think about that.

But if you want to see where that is, it's in John 14 and 16 and 1 Corinthians 12 and Jude 20. So, if, however, the uneasiness of the body of Christ and the presence of the Holy Spirit we have separated from every man-made system, which in practice denies the great truths, we may ask, does scripture afford any light as to the way believers should act when they come together for the ministry of the word. Yeah, it does, it does. So chapter 14 of 1 Corinthians is gonna show clearly that God has given us every explicit direction for the exercise of ministry in the church when his people come and are gathered together.

And gathered together is a critical part. He lays down these principles in this chapter not to be carried out in a religious system of Christendom because they couldn't be. It only condemns those systems and makes it clear that they're not dependent on God's order.

So, starting with the exercise of gifts, the Holy Spirit gives us three great principles in this first verse. The first one is, is to pursue love. The second one is that the gifts are to be used for edification. Edification, I can't say that word enough. And thirdly, the gifts are to be exercised according to the divine order. And when we get to verse 26 through 40, we'll talk about the divine order.

So, pursue love. Pursue is an imperative, which means that it's a command. It's present tense, which means it's do it right now. And it's active voice, you do it. Pursue love. By implication to, notice the word persecute is in there. The reason it's in there is because if you look at how the Jews went after the Apostle Paul, they pursued him. They persecuted him. Well, it's the same way that Paul went after Christians before he was saved. He was zealous. He pursued them day and night. That's all he ever thought about.

And so the number one thing is to pursue love. And love should be the motive for every gift that we have, every gift, because the gift is designed for the whole body. And the other cool thing that love does is it leads to the renunciation of self. Boy, we have all these methods and we have all these discussions about how am I gonna get rid of this in my personality that's self? And it's love that does it because love is from God.

So the exhortation to pursue love precedes the exhortation to desire spiritual gifts. Notice it's first. and the instructions for its use. The word desire earnestly is a really strong word, but not as strong as pursue. Desire is, we get the word zealous from.

The preservation of love, edification, and divine order in the church entirely depends upon the free action of the Holy Spirit. That's where the dependency is. The apostle already, Paul, had insisted upon the rights of the Holy Spirit in the church in 1 Corinthians 12. He insisted on the Spirit's rights. And he has unfolded to us the blessed qualities of love, which Roger covered in chapter 13. So he starts this new segment, which speaks of the exercise of gift and the exhortation to pursue. Love is the thing that will keep the motives pure. If you get self out of it and you abide in the love of God, your motive is pure.

Both in the desire for spiritual gifts as well as the use of gifts. What I find interesting in the church today is that People don't think gifts are important, or they don't think they have one, or they don't think that, well, we don't wanna get going too much about these gifts.

We might get a little charismatic and carried away. We don't wanna do that. Every single person sitting in this church today has been gifted by the Holy Spirit to be here and to edify the rest of the people sitting around you. Every single one of us has that. So the Spirit of God has to energize by gifting us to carry out the purpose of the body of Christ, which is edification.

If you have any experience in dealing with anybody with any kind of problems, you know that you can't, outside of love and outside of dependency on the Spirit of God, you might as well be a psychiatrist, and you know how effective they are. So love thinks not about itself, but it thinks about the good of others. Gee, what a really simple concept that is. If we lack in love, the believers at Corinth had been using assigned gifts of healing and tongues to do what?

To exalt themselves. If you've ever met a really strong charismatic, it's all about them and their gift. There's nothing about edifying the body. To meet this tendency, to meet this problem, what does Paul do? He exhorts them to seek prophecy, to prophesy rather than, he says that's the most significant gift, that's the number one gift. Well think about what's going on.

This is before the canon of scripture is put together. There is revelation, there is prophecy through gifted men, and women about the truths that will eventually find their way in the canon. So you, in an early church, you were dependent upon the people in your congregation to reveal what God's will was. And he did that, he took care of that. Now today, we have God's word complete. So prophecy is not about revealing something that's new and different, although if you turn on the, Christian television stations, these guys are always saying, well, I got a word from the Lord that's somehow different than what the word of God says, but it somehow benefits them. So, it's an interesting thing that's happening. Now, so I finished my sermon, got all the contents of it done on Thursday, which is early for me.

So I put it away and I keep thinking about this pursue love as though the pursuit of love is the pursuit of a concept. And I got to thinking, what is it to pursue love? What exactly is that? And I came up with the idea, I shouldn't say I came up with the idea, the idea showed up in my head. You can't have love without the lover. Love is not a concept, it's a person.

So I went back in my archives and I got this thing out. I love this, it's called the Grace Circle. And this really explains, in a really short way, how I become a lover. In 1 John 4, it says, by God's grace, he loved me. He loved us. So you have to start there. And you have to start not only with what he does, but who he is. If he's anything, he's a lover. So God loved me. So what does that translate for me in response to that?

Our love for him is because he first loved me. That's why I love him, and that's why I love anybody else, because I was first loved by him. If you look at, as a result of his love and his grace, we love him, 1 John 4, 19. So stay with me as we go around the circle. Then we get to the point of our obedience to him as a result of I love him, so I obey him. And why do I obey him and why do I love him? Because he first loved me. He first loved me, 1 John 14, 21. And then, of all surprises, he's gonna reward us. He's gonna reward us for obeying him and for loving him. Why? Because he first loved us.

You have to complete the circle. So the pursuit of love is really the pursuit of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's really where it is. It would be one thing to have a marriage where you really loved your wife, but it was all based on the fact that you had the perfect rule book. It's personal, it's human. God is a lover, and he built us to respond to him that way. So the pursuit of love underlies everything else that happens within the body of Christ.

Now, in terms of prophecy. If you think about the Old Testament prophets, we're inclined to limit the prophecy to foretelling of future events. This, however, was limited in part by the prophet's work, even in the Old Testament days. His highest mission, an Old Testament prophet, was to apply the word of God to the conscience and the heart for edification.

That was really his job. His job wasn't to go around predicting future events, necessarily. And you know what? It still applies today. In the surface of a prophet, Now in Christian times, and in a sense, the gift continues that way. The gift today of prophecy is to apply God's word to a person's conscience and his heart to edify him. Verse two. For one who speaks in tongues does not speak to men, but to God. For no one understands, but in his spirit he speaks mysteries. So what is the nature of tongues? What is it?

In Acts 2.4 through 11, it's the first historical occasion of the manifestation of tongues.

And it says, to speak with tongues as the spirit was giving them utterance. In other words, the spirit gave them a language to speak. Each of them was hearing them speak in his own language. They hear them in his own tongue speaking mighty deeds of God. What's interesting is that these people didn't have the gift of hearing. It was the gift of language that the apostles had of languages they never heard. And what was the purpose of the language? To teach them, to show them the mighty deeds of God.

Acts 2.6. that uses the word, which is a synonym for language, hearing them speak in their own language. And the word for language is the word dialectos, which obviously we get our word dialect from that.

And these people that were in Jerusalem at the time came from the whole Mediterranean basin. and he gives a list of somewhere in Acts, he gives a list of where they were from and the languages were really different. So notice the specific identification were Parthians and Medes and Elamites Residents from Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, they're all listed there. So the apostles could just speak the truths of God, and if you were from one of those areas and didn't understand, say, Hebrew or Greek, you heard the works of God in your own language.

If you go then to the second part where tongues is talked about is Acts 10, 44. And here tongues are mentioned but not defined. For they were hearing them speaking with tongues and exalting God. Good interpretation would understand them to be the same activity as Acts 2 where there is no question as to the nature of what they were doing. So, so far we have two things. We have a known language and we have persons speaking that language that didn't learn it.

The final occurrence is in Acts 19.6 where tongues are mentioned but not explained. And when Paul laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them and they began speaking with tongues and prophesying. So outside of First Corinthians, one, this is all the information we have about tongues. Well, in contemporary Christianity, we've made a lot more about tongues than really is put in the scripture. So it's used to edify. That's the whole idea of it, and it's used in love.

Paul boldly maintained that the lack of speaking to men demonstrates the inferiority of speaking in a tongue to prophesy. He that speaks is not burdened with speaking unintelligibly or unintelligible things. On the contrary, he's presumed to be speaking the truth to God in this verse. He speaks mysteries. Well, that's all well and good, not from a selfie standpoint, but if I'm sitting in the pew and you're over there speaking in tongues and we don't understand it, well, how does that help the rest of us? God didn't intend for tongues to be that way. He didn't intend for tongues to be not edifying everybody else.

No one hears it, he says, and all you're speaking is mystery. Well, I can see in Corinth where someone in a church situation starts speaking in tongues and all of a sudden everybody looks at him, oh, that guy's really spiritual. Listen to what he, what is he saying? I don't know what he's saying, but it sounds cool. So why does Paul say tongues are spoken to God? Because he's the only one in that circumstance that would know what was being said. Nobody else would.

So if you don't have a translator, and we'll find out later in this chapter, that he actually, in terms of order in the body, he said, you can't speak in tongues unless you have a translator. He set that rule down as a principle. So, because unintelligible language doesn't edify anybody. And sometimes the person that was speaking in tongues didn't understand what he was saying. He was just talking. So to repeat myself, if someone spoke in an unknown language and no one could interpret what he was saying, the person speaking, he wasn't speaking to man. God knew what he was saying even though no one else did, including the person doing the speaking. His human spirit, the speaker was uttering mysteries. Mysteries are things that are hidden or secrets from understanding of those listening.

So what good would that do in the church? Imagine in Corinth having a church where all these guys are gibbering and nobody's understanding, why do it? So Paul's concern primarily and always is the edification of the church. But notice he didn't criticize the gift of tongues itself, but he put it in its rightful place.

Now, one last comment about this. In contemporary books and things on tongues, there's this word I don't know if I can pronounce it right, glasolilia. And that's what charismatics will tell you they're doing. Well, if you look up the definition of that word, it means incomprehensible speech in an imaginary language, sometimes occurring in a trance state, an episode of religious ecstasy or schizophrenia. I'm not sure I'd be really hot to have that gift.

Verse three, but one who prophesies speaks to men for edification, for exhortation, and for consolation. Why is prophecy so important? Here's the reason. It is the great evidence of the presence of God amongst his people. Think about this. How does God communicate with us? How did he communicate with the early church? He did it through prophets. What does that tell you?

That God is here. That he's edifying us through this person and that person. He's here to give his mind to those believers so that they would understand. We should not be content to be walking in the path of separation from the evils of the world. or beholding the precious truths that have come to us, we should surely be concerned that we show evidence that God is among us, because he is. Question, would prophecy suggest present living communications direct from God? Answer, yes. Yes, it suggests that God is near. God is indeed amongst you. In prophecy, man was addressed by God through the prophet. Prophecy was the power to comprehend and make known the will of God. That's what prophecy really is. When this is done, there are widespread spiritual benefits. In verse three it tells us, when these prophets spoke, it did three things. It edified, it encouraged, and it consoled. So if you take a look at those three words, really interesting words.

Edification is the word oikodome. I think I said that right. Everybody here knows what oikos means, house. And actually what it talks about is the building of a house. And in this case, we're talking about the building or the edification or the promotion of spiritual growth within the house. We're the house. We're the building.

Exhortation is the word parakaleo, and to call to a person, to call them to the side, to admonish, to exhort them, to urge them to pursue some course of conduct. Always perspective, looking to the future in contrast to the meaning, to comfort with retrospective to having had a trial or experience. If you look at Romans 12, eight, it says the gift of exhortation may be exercised by itself or more usually incorporated with the gifts of teaching and pastoring. Exhortation embodies the thought of encouragement, comfort, admonishment, and entreaty.

And all such ministry is according to Ephesians 4.15, speaking the truth in love. And the last one is consolation. It combines encouragement with the alleviation of grief. It's interesting how one who prophesies, this is the work. This describes what the work is. It's edification, exhortation, and consolation.

Boy, I can see why Paul would say, go after this gift, because this is really a good one within the body of believers. If everybody in this room had the gift of exhortation, we would have a short prayer list. because we'd be helping each other every second of every day and understanding. So, verse five is gonna say, when we get there, that the assembly may receive edification. Verse 12, which we'll talk about next week, that you may be abound for the edification of the assembly. Let all things be done to edify.

Verse 26, he who speaks in an unknown tongue may speak to God of mysteries, but if no one understands, there's no edification, there's no exhortation, there's no consolation, unless there be an interpreter. So both love and edification are included in the use of tongues. In contrast to tongues, the one that prophesies speaks to men for edification and encouragement.

Now what's interesting here is that this is not a definition of prophecy, but rather a result of prophesying. I hope that's clear. Just to repeat again, thinking in the Old Testament, we may be inclined to think about prophets as being foretellers of future events.

However, that's a limited part of the work that they did, even in the Old Testament days. The great mission is to apply the word of God to the conscience and heart for edification. That's what it is. And there is just tremendous need within the body of Christ for someone who can apply God's word to the conscience and to the heart.

We had a new guy in our Bible study on Wednesday night, and his issue was, I'm not quite sure I'm saved. I've been a Christian a long time, but I'm just not persuaded, okay? And I'm looking around the room for the guy that has prophecy, because that guy could go to this guy, and what could he do? He could apply the word of God to that man's conscience and his heart to edify him.

Isn't that cool? That's why prophecy is so important. This still applies, I think, today in the service of a prophet in Christian times. And in a sense, this gift still abides. It hasn't gone away. The fact that a prophecy speaks to men of edification and comfort testifies, the testimony flows in blessings to souls.

Paul was not impressed with the Corinthians as the Corinthians were when they Let me start over. Paul was not impressed, as the Corinthians were then, and many since, in their yearnings after and displaying of power and show gifts. But he unqualifiedly sets prophecy beyond such display. For it brings not the power merely, but it brings God into the equation. It brings his word there. and God in his building up of souls, encouraging them and counseling them. It doesn't cast a halo around the man, but it really brings in God in grace and gives a consciousness of his presence. From the perspective that Paul gives a gift, in this passage we may gather that it is the greatest of all gifts, that remains to the church and the one most desired. I think that's right. It's the greatest gift. Because it means, how do I say this?

It's almost like every believer, to some extent, can, with dependence on the spirit of God, console, edify, and help another believer. We all have that. especially if we are students of God's word. We know, we know things. One of the things we talked about in Sunday school this morning is ignorance to God's word makes a believer, especially a young believer, susceptible to all kinds of doubts about everything in his salvation. But if you're well informed, and if you are, of all of the events, of all of the things, Courtney and I have taught a couple of times, there are 33 things that happen to you at the cross. If you know those things, the doubt that would come into your head, there's at least, every doubt has at least three things that counteract that, that God has said about your salvation. Verse four, the one who speaks in tongues edifies himself, but no one but the one who prophesies edifies the church.

Edification, the great end in the use of gift, that's why you have them. So the exhortation to covet the gift of prophecy leads Paul to show the great end of the exercise of a gift, and that was exhortation. His instructions, he keeps this before us all the time. It's important, I think, also to observe how it is insisted on that all be done in the body should be done in the spirit.

For the idea is not that he who spoke in the tongues didn't understand what he said, yet it's never supposed that he would communicate unless he had an interpreter around. but his own knowledge of what is spoken is not the same as this interpretation, and unless he could interpret, there's no thought of his communicating to the church what he was saying. The church is the sphere, not for man's ability, but for the spirit of God. Interpretation must always be there if a gift is manifested, not by human power, to be available there. You know, think about that. If tongues is a known language, do you pull out your cell phone, go to the translator app, and, oh, I know what he's saying. I don't think the translator app on my phone does Mesopotamian. Maybe it does.

Among those prophesying has the foremost place in the superiority over which much of the signed gifts of speaking. Paul rules, is provided by this, that such a speaker speak not to men but to God. For none hears or understands while the Spirit who speaks mysteries, whereas the prophet speaks to men of edification and encouragement and comfort. Verse five, now I wish that you all spoke in tongues, but even more than you would prophesy. Greater is the one who prophesies than the one who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets, so that the church may receive edifying. As I said before, tongues does have its place. But Paul says, what profit would it be if the tongues were without an interpreter? In the days of the apostle, there were still those who spoke by revelation.

Now that the word of God is complete, we have the gift of revelation preserved in scripture. The Holy Spirit's job is to reveal, as you look at the word of God, what he's saying. Knowledge would imply imparting to believers that which has already been revealed. The word of God is the already have been revealed word of God. Prophesying is rather the application of the truth to the conscience. While doctrine or teaching is instruction in a particular truth. So, love then should be the main and constant object. And when I say love, I mean focus on the Lord Jesus Christ.

In Philippians, Paul's great line was that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed unto his death. What was interesting about that is that the first time you read that or the first couple times you read it, you think to yourself, well, didn't Paul know the Lord? He said that I may know him. What do you think he was really after there? He understood that there's a growing intimacy fostered by the work and the power of the Holy Spirit of an intimate personal relationship between you, Paul, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Because the Lord Jesus said when he was here that the Spirit's job was to reveal me to you. And so that's his job, and Paul wanted to grow in that one thing all the time. He never wanted that to ever stop, because he had a personal intimacy growing all the time.

Well, that's what pursuing after love is, and that's what the constant object is. But there were spiritual manifestations which took place The spiritual manifestations that took place should be subordinate to the pursuit of love. That's number one. And the pursuit of the person who is the lover.

Prophesying, again, has no necessary connection with the future as some suppose. It's not, therefore, that the apostles slighted the gifted tongues. So, question. Is it more important for God to speak to us than for us to speak to God? Think about that. Is it more important for God to speak to us than it is for us to speak to God? I've had people tell me, you know, I pray and it's like the words go up and hit the ceiling and come back. And God never says anything. Well, he's got this whole book. And he's got these guys around that are prophets, and he's got people that exhort. What do you mean he doesn't say anything?

I would say the answer to that question is yes, it's more important for God to speak to us than us to speak to him. Because the Lord dwells in holy places. And he says, I will dwell among them and walk with them. You and I as saints are in that holy place. where God walks. And know what? We're priests. The priest is the one that gets to go into the Holy of Holies, and we're in there, and that's where we get to hang out with God.

Another question. Is there nothing said about the Spirit in this chapter, and why is that? That's true. In chapter 14, the Holy Spirit is not mentioned. Why? Because it's a contrast between chapter 12 And 14, in chapter 12, we get the manifestation of the spirit. In chapter 14, you get a manifestation of the spirit through believers.

That's the difference. And so, if you don't really grasp what I think he means there, is that spiritual manifestations can only be among spiritual people. We don't know the things of God unless we're spiritual. Well, positionally, we all are. So we do know the things of God. And now, in chapter 14, it's through the medium of gifted people in the body of Christ. That's how we know. That's how we're persuaded. That's how we live. That's how we walk. That's why we're together so much.

There is a real exercising underlying all of chapter 14 that there should be priestly conditions. And by priestly conditions, I mean suitable, holy environment where God exists. And what did he do? If you read or study in Hebrews on Wednesday night, we were encouraged, commanded to boldly enter into the holy of holies.

Now what's interesting about that verse, after that, there's no verse that says, well, leave when you want. Or you gotta come out when the smoke runs out of the thing that puts the smoke out. Or when you get done sprinkling the blood around, you gotta get out. There's no back door. You get to stay there. And that's where God dwells. That's the cool thing. So it's the priest himself who draws near to God.

The whole chapter is governed by the thought of spirituality. Not a word is said in the chapter about the Holy Spirit. There is a good bit said about the spirits of prophets, but nothing about the Holy Spirit. It's supposed that there are spiritual men who can voice the mind of God intelligently.

And I think that's true. And I think the church should be built like that. That it should be a group where there are spiritually gifted people who can voice the mind of God intelligently. That's what we do in all the classes we teach. That's what we do in every Bible study we do. We stick with the word of God, because that's where the speaking comes from. So, in closing again, I would say, every one of us has a spiritual gift, and that gift is designed for one purpose, and that's to edify.

Look to your left and look to your right. There they are. Edify them. Trust the Spirit of God and understand that above all of that is the pursuit of the lover, who's the Lord Jesus Christ. So let's close. Father, how we thank you for your word. Thank you for your dear son, the Lord Jesus, and we thank you for the way you have put things together so that we may continually grow in the knowledge and grace, and I would say love, of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray in his precious name, amen.