I was an MK when I was five-years-old to when I was nine-years-old.

Some of you may understand what that means, but since MK is a term used among a relatively small portion of the English-speaking population, I should, in keeping with our passage this morning, define it for you. An MK is a child of Missionaries—a “Missionary Kid”: MK.

Actually that is not quite true. Jennifer and I have a friend who lives in Florida. His parents are now overseas in Irian Jai. They have become missionaries and he is their son so, by definition, he would seem to be an MK, a missionary kid. Except he’s not. You see, you can virtually never determine the definition of a term by it’s constituent parts. You can’t say that because the kid of a person is the child of a person that thus all children of missionaries are Missionary Kids. That is not how language works. Terms are defined according to their use in a society. You can’t learn what MK means by taking what the letters stand for, Missionary Kid, and then making a deduction from what the two words mean independently of one another. You have to at least get a rather lengthy explanation from someone who has been part of a group who has used the term–say, for example, a preacher trying to begin his sermon with an illustration–or else (and this would be much better) you have to be part of a society that uses the term.

Learning a language is like learning a game. Not like learning chess where you can get a rule book and figure out the game and then play it, but more like being shoved into an area with a bunch of people with a ball and being told you will pick it up if as you go along. We learn how words are used by being shoved into a way of life.

That, incidentally, is why this passage is all about what we say in worship, as well as about what we do. The two are inextricably entangled with one another. Words and deeds are both meaningless apart from one another. I was asked by someone who was quite perceptive about the implications of what Pastor Shade was saying, “Isn’t the Word primary over the sacraments?” Well, I didn’t want to immediately answer, “Well, yes. Of course it is!” That may be justified in an ecclesiastical situation, where the ordinances of the church are done in a foreign tongue which not even the one speaking can understand. That was not an uncommon situation in the late medieval church—where even the priests were ignorant of Latin but simply had it memorized. But in our modern context what that question usually means is: “Isn’t the end all and be all of the Christian life the communication and acceptance of propositional information?” And the answer to that is no. Propositions are never intelligible apart from a context in life. We learn to speak by being brought up in a certain way of life in which words are used in a certain way. Jesus did not simply proclaim a unique verbal message, he instituted a unique covenantal community in history in which that message could be truly understood and applied. Indeed, it is just as true to say that the better we apply the Gospel, the better we understand it as it is to say the better we understand the Gospel, the better we apply it. Language and life go hand in hand.

This by the way was extremely important for Israel’s identity. Israel was a nation among other nations with both a way of life and a language. In fact, when Moses warns them of divine judgment should they depart from the faith he not only warns of foreign invaders but specifically refers to the fact that they will speak an incomprehensible language. Deuteronomy 28.49:

The LORD will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as the eagle swoops down, a nation whose language your shall not understand.

Centuries later, when Moses’ prediction is about to be carried out, Isaiah repeats this threat of an incomprehensible language when he predicts the exile in Babylon. Isaiah 28.11:

Indeed He [God] will speak to this people [Israel]
Through stammering lips and a foreign tongue.

And again when Isaiah predicts the return from exile in chapter 33, verse 19:

You will no longer see a fierce people,
A people of unintelligible speech which no one comprehends,
of a stammering tongue which no one understands.

Jeremiah, in predicting the exile, picks up on the language of Moses and Isaiah:

Behold, I am bringing a nation against you from afar, O house of Israel, declares the LORD.
It is an enduring nation,
It is an ancient nation,
A nation whose language you do not know.

The confusion of differing languages is listed as one important feature of God’s judgment on Israel. And it is an element which the Apostle Paul refers to in his explanation of the meaning (!) of the gift of tongues. Look at verses, 21 through 25:

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. If therefore the whole church should assemble together and all speak in tongues, and ungifted men or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are mad? 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; and so he will fall on his face and worship God, declaring that God is certainly among you.

Now notice the seeming contradiction: Paul says in verse 22 that tongues are for unbelievers and prophecy is for believers. But then he reasons from that to what seems like the opposite position: That the unbelievers need to hear people speaking in a known language so that they can know that God is in their midst. What is going on here?

The answer is in verse 21, which explains the purpose the New Testament gift of tongues. The Holy Spirit enabling people to praise God in other tongues meant that Israel with its unique language and unique standing among the nations was no longer so unique. Tongues were a sign of judgment for unbelieving Jews. It meant the word of God was now being spoken among the nations.

That, by the way, would explain why the church in Corinth might have had a special place for tongues which we don’t find in any of the other cities. Acts 18.7 tells us that the first Corinthian congregation was next door to the synagogue. Tongues would have been then, for unbelievers, Israelite unbelievers.

But Paul is concerned about both other kinds of unbelievers—gentile unbelievers—and even other kinds of Christians—those not versed in the Corinthian view of Spiritual gifts. Remember, in verse 16 Paul wants the “ungifted” person to say “Amen” to the “thanksgiving” he or she hears in the worship service. Obviously, only a Christian can sincerely answer “Amen” to the giving of thanks to the true God. This could simply refer to anyone in the congregation who doesn’t understand the message. But the Apostle Paul seems to have more in mind. In verse 23, as I just read, he points out that both the ungifted and the unbelievers will respond to a typical Corinthian worship service by thinking that the Corinthians are insane.

The kind of person to whom Paul is probably referring here is a Christian from some other church, such as Ephesus, or Galatia, or somewhere who, because he’s in town on the Lord’s day, looks up the local Corinthian assembly in order to worship God. Apparently Corinthian worship would be nothing like what he expected. In fact, it would look like madness. Thus, Paul’s explanation and implied exhortation in verse 33, where he gives his reasoning for demanding order and intelligibility in church worship: “for God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.”

I BEGAN THIS SERMON mentioning that I was an MK in Liberia, West Africa, but I never really finished my thought. In Liberia, there was no real point in leaning the native language. Even though it was a very small country it contained many many languages. In some places, you could literally find a different language spoken every two miles. Why? Because tribalism and tribal warfare gave rise to differing ways of life and thus differing languages. Idiosyncratic societies maintain and increase their isolation by developing their own language and culture. That is what was going on in Corinth both in its worship and speech and even apart from miraculous gifts that is what can still go on today.

Paul is exhorting the Corinthians to decide how they will speak and how they will worship with an eye to how these things will affect other Christians and unbelievers. Will they build up the Church or will they tear it down? He doesn’t want the Christians in Corinth becoming fragmented from the rest of the Christian world. He doesn’t want the Corinthian Church to become isolated from the Church universal.

This occurs on an individual level as well in the context of public worship. If public worship is simply an occasion for each person to engage in what personally satisfies his own perceived needs, then he is cut off from all the rest. He is like a child with his own private babbling. Thus Paul’s rebuke in verse 20, which must have been quite a blow to the Corinthians who thought of themselves as so spiritually advanced: “Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be babes, but in your thinking be mature.”

WHAT I THINK IS most surprising about this passage is the basic criticism which the Apostle Paul levels against tongue-speaking as opposed to prophecy. Look at verse 2:

For one who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God, for no one understands, but in his spirit he speaks mysteries. But one who prophesies speaks to me for edification and exhortation and consolation.

Do you get that? The problem with tongue-speaking is that it is too God-centered! For public worship that’s not enough. Corporate worship involves building up the body–edifying the church. If you don’t do that you’re not worshiping the right way.

This really shouldn’t surprise us, if you think about it. Consider how the Apostle Paul has reasoned with the Corinthians throughout this letter. A couple of chapters earlier, Paul quite deliberately called the Church, Christ. That is a breathtaking use of the Lord’s name and it entails that serving our Lord Jesus Christ entails in that very act serving the Church–serving one another.

And remember, the Apostle Paul has pretty much said that. When he introduces the topic of eating meat offered to idols in chapter 8, Paul appeals to the traditional Hebrew confession of monotheism but redefines so that Christ is included as Lord and God. And then he moves from Christ to the brother for whom Christ died. If we all know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified, then we will realize that our loyalty to God demands service to one another.

He concludes his discussion of idol-meat at the end of chapter 10 on the same note. Doing all to the glory of God means giving no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the Church of God. It means pleasing all men in all things, not seeking one’s own profit, but the profit of the many.

And here we have the same principle applied to a different issue. Appropriate corporate worship involves speaking not only to God, but to the edification to all present. Appropriate corporate worship involves even restraining your own gifts for the sake of good order and decency for others.

BUT THAT IS NOT enough. Paul doesn’t stop with a concern for the ungifted but he actually tells us that we must be concerned for the unbeliever. Our words and actions need to be intelligible to non-Christians.

Now, at one level, this shouldn’t surprise us that much. After all, God edifies the church–builds up the church–by changing unbelievers into proper bricks for the edifice. But while that concern would tell us about the need for evangelism, it wouldn’t give us a mandate for how we do worship.

But there is another reason why worship has to be aimed at the benefit of the unbeliever. It can be found in Paul’s paraphrase of Isaiah 28.11:

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.

Do you understand the incredible point being made? God says that in the mouths of foreign invaders coming to destroy Israel, his word is being sent forth. That’s what happened in the exile. It happened literally in the book of Daniel, a great portion of which is not written in Hebrew but in Aramaic. It was also happening during the New Testament period. It happened in the Gospels when men from Galilee, a backwater area which was almost Gentile itself, claimed to have the keys of the kingdom which the Judeans and the Jerusalemites and the Priests thought belonged to them. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus wept because Jerusalem would not recognize that in him they were being visited by God. And it happened all over the Mediterranean world when Gentiles would embrace the Gospel and the Jews would not. They were visited by God from the outside. That’s always the problem with covenant community: Judgment begins in the House of God. And when it comes, it comes from the outside. God plays the part of a thief in the night.

All this does not only apply to Old Testament Israel; it applies to the church in Corinth. They need to realize that just as God was speaking through the pagans to the Hebrews, so God may be approaching them through the unbelievers around them. If they are content to prevent themselves from being understood by simply pleasing themselves and their own ideas of spirituality, if they a self-referential language and culture which no one else can break into, then they are quite possibly spurning God himself. Paul does not hesitate to identify himself with the weak because that is the pattern of Jesus Christ and him crucified. It is no great leap to realize that God identifies himself with the ungifted and even the unbeliever. God is the outsider. When we keep others out we can be keeping him out.

And we don’t necessarily do it intentionally. It can happen gradually. We become slightly isolated and we begin developing in relation to no one but ourselves. We begin speaking our own terminology and manifesting a distinctive culture which increases our isolation–increases the difficulty for outsiders to approach us. And then we become slightly more isolated. And the change continues.

And if God loves us, he will visit us. He will not allow that cycle to continue. He will destroy all the things that have become so comfortable to us, and our hopes and dreams of that continued comfort, which we are so sure is the measure of true spirituality, and he will force us into the company of people we would never have considered allowing into our cozy community. Sanctification requires strange bedfellows.

This incidentally, applies to entire broad traditions. Go study the Bible with a knowledgeable Roman Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox believer, or a dispensationalist or a Lutheran. You will get quite perplexed out how he understands Scripture. He knows all your prooftexts. He knows the Bible. But he has been using the passages differently and been among a people who use the passages differently. Actually, disproving a believer in another tradition is much more difficult than you realize.

Let me ask you something? What would happen if we gained enough new converts in the next year to add half or double the size of the congregation? What would happen? What would our “community” look like? I promise you–it won’t look like anything you have been used to.