1 Corinthians 14:2-15 | Episode #999

August 7, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

1 Corinthians 14:2-15

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

If you would like to revisit today’s Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. 

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope.

Applying God's word to your daily life.

As we finish Faithful Finance, we want to produce our winter Bible study done at Lake Community Church on First Corinthians.

It'll be a fairly long Bible study.

We will break it up into different parts,

and so you will get a really good, really fast study through the book of First Corinthians before we move on to the book of Joshua.

He says, pursue love.

Meaning pursue what?

These three remain. Faith, hope, and love. So what is my pursuit?

What is my pursuit?

Charity.

Loving even when it's not necessary for me,

when it does nothing for me.

You need to hear that.

Good father gives good gifts to his children.

I'm not going to lie to you.

I love Naomi. I get a lot out of that love.

God would say to me, well, you. I'm not going to reward you a whole lot for that. I mean, you know, you just. You got a whole lot out of it.

But what if I love somebody that's not lovable,

that I have, that does nothing good for me to do?

Then I operate as God.

Then I operate in his agape love.

So he says, pursue that.

Pursue that and desire spiritual gifts. Or remember, some of y' all see, it's. You can just mark through the word desire, spiritual stuff,

whatever that means. Desire spiritual stuff.

By the way,

somebody just walked in the back door who's got a gift of helps or works.

He's the greatest gift of help or works person. By the way, those of you watching online, we don't have heat.

Our great. Our number one help, gift person in the whole church,

the one who can fix anything and make anything run.

Dr. Henry Moore just walked in the door.

Now, you tell me what kind of. That's an important gift tonight, isn't it?

Amen. Sunday morning, it'll be a real important gift.

Amen,

you say? Well, preacher, if we don't have the gift of helps, we're probably not going to have a whole lot of prophesying going on. Am I right?

I use that example. I think it's important because some would say his gift. Yes, yes.

It's not.

It's not.

We need it. You need it.

I don't as much because I'm up here talking, moving around, but y' all sitting there shivering.

He says, but especially that you may prophesy, which means he wants you to speak to other people spiritual truths,

which means you don't have to have the job of pastor to prophesy.

We all can speak spiritual truths to each other,

can't we?

And he says, I want you to desire the gift of being able to speak spiritual truths to people.

Desire that gift.

Seek after love and desire the gift of being able to tell somebody spiritual truths that enlighten them to spiritual things that they wouldn't be enlightened to anyway.

He says, for he who speaks in tongues does not speak to men, but to God.

All right, what he's saying is, you're speaking a language by your spirit to God. Now you go, well, which one is it, Pastor? Well, it just depends on context, and I don't know.

And remember, he says, there's all kinds of spiritual. Let me just give you real quick. If you go, well, can we go to any you. Yeah, we can go to Pentecost.

Okay. At Pentecost, tongues of fire came down on their heads because they remained. They. They were. They. They. They were obedient to God.

And 125 out of the 500, which is a quarter of them,

remained.

Okay.

And they is 120. 120. So it's roughly a little over hundreds. All right.

They remained.

And it was during the festival of Pentecost,

okay, 50 days after Passover.

And there were a lot of people from a lot of different countries there. And when the tongues of fire came on them, they began to prophesy.

Now, a lot of people think that they were all prophesying and people were just supernaturally interpreting them in their head.

Are you following me?

That's not what was going on. Any of y' all ever been to Disney World?

You've been a big crowd. You know, there's people from all over the world, and they just talking their own talks, you know what I'm saying?

And then you hear somebody speaking your language, and it just. Your ear's drawn to it because you understand it, right?

Well, there's a bunch of people there, and they were from all kinds of countries. And those 120 people started prophesying in a tongue that was unknown to them but known to the people around them,

and they heard the gospel.

That is one of the ways we have prophecy.

Does that make sense?

That's one of the ways we have a tongue that brings about prophecy. Meaning they spoken a tongue that was unknown to them, and it was heard by those around them,

and it gave them spiritual truth.

Makes sense.

But if I speak in. Let's say if I speak in a tongue of an angel,

well, is anybody going to know that here on Earth?

No,

they're not.

Might I speak in a tongue of an angel, I might.

But that would be in a total other sense. And it wouldn't be in that sense, because remember, he says there's different ways for this to work out. In fact, there's different ways that we get to miracles, right?

We get to healing.

I would say it's a miracle that somebody can take somebody else's heart out and put a. Somebody put another heart in and sew it up and for it to work.

Wouldn't you?

That is a miracle. It's a miracle given to us by God.

It would also be a miracle if you had a bad heart and somebody prayed over you and your heart was healed.

Would they both be miraculous?

Yeah,

they would be.

Should we pray that God manifest himself in all kinds of miracles?

Sure we should,

he says. But he who prophesies, he says, for he who prophesies speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men, meaning you, you. You grow them. You. You.

You exhort them, you encourage them, and then you comfort them. Because anytime you hear from God, it's a comforting of the Holy Spirit, right?

He says, he who speaks in tongues edifies who Himself. Now, I'm gonna tell you, that's mainly what my gift is about.

I do operate in that gift.

And by the way, I didn't want it.

No good Baptist preacher wanted that,

okay?

It messed up all my Baptist preacher plans,

okay?

All right?

But I was given. Given it to me. And I know what it's for. It's either for the purpose of praying for healing or it's for the purpose of preparing me spiritually to prophesy.

And you go, was that how it's used?

No. For me,

Remember, different gifts manifest differently for different people.

So I received the gift of tongues.

I remember the night.

Not very happy about it. Still kind of, you know.

But I told God several years before I didn't want it if it was true. I didn't want to get it. And that's just a sure way to get something, okay?

Just tell God you don't want something of his,

okay?

He'll give you that first before he gives you the stuff you do want.

He says, he who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church.

So which we want more to prophesy. I wish you all spoke with tongues.

Now, he's not saying that you need to. He's just saying,

I wish you had it.

But he's obviously saying, because this is to the church, that not all of them what got it,

you ain't got to have it.

He says,

look, if that's what you want, I wish you had it,

but you might not. And you go, well, how do you decide? What,

who decides? The Holy Spirit decides. By the way, people would say, well, there's just no way certain people can get it. Remember, you got the Holy Spirit inside of you,

which means all the gifts of the Holy Spirit are capable to you that you can have them. I mean, if God, if you were in a plane crash on an island and you were the only one to survive, and you need to preach the gospel to a tribe on that island,

you liable to get the gift of their tongue.

You might.

And you might not have a gift after that.

You might be in a situation where you are the only one that can pray for healing.

And so at that point in time, you're going to operate in that gift.

Remember, it manifests itself in all different ways.

Don't. Do not put the Holy Spirit in a box.

Those of you who try to, whether you're Pentecostal or mainline denominational, when you start putting the Holy Spirit in a box, he's like Superman. He's going to bust out.

He cannot be boxed.

He is going. And the minute you tell him you don't want something, watch out,

for he prophesies is greater than he who speaks with a tongue. Unless indeed he interprets that, the church may receive edification. Now, by the way,

God is a God of order.

He's also a God that verifies himself.

Okay,

so what do you mean by that? Well, if you're going to use the prophetic tongue in the way that a lot of Pentecostal churches like to use it, and he's going to talk about it, which means you.

Somebody stands up and speaks in a tongue, that person cannot interpret that tongue.

Why?

Because that's rife for manipulation.

So somebody else is going to have to interpret it.

And if you speak in an unknown tongue in front of the whole congregation publicly.

Are you following me?

Someone else has got to interpret what you said or you're out of order.

That's right.

It's the way it is.

He's going to explain that.

But now, brethren, if I come to you speaking with tongues, what shall I profit you? Unless I speak to you either by or revelation, by knowledge, by prophesying, or by teaching.

He's saying, I need you to be edified.

Even things without life, whether flutes or harps, when they make a sound, unless they make a distinction in the sound, how will it be known what was piped or played?

Meaning well, you've seen little kids just start put pushing the keys on a keyboard.

It doesn't have any.

It doesn't have any order to it.

So what value is that?

Am I right?

It's got to have the. The notes have got to be orderly so that you know what's being done being said.

He says, for if the trumpet makes an uncertain sound, who will prepare for battle?

Y' all have heard the trumpet, right?

When you're in a stadium,

blow the trumpet and everybody go charge.

Well, if the thumb just goes,

then everybody's going, what do we run? What? What was that for? Right?

He,

you. Unless you utter by the tongue words easy to understand, how will it be known what is spoken? For you will be speaking into the air.

Now, he's not saying don't do it. He's just saying you got to do it in the right context.

He says, therefore.

He says, there are, it may be so many kinds of languages in the world, and none of them is without significance, meaning every language has a significance to it.

Even heavenly languages do,

but we don't know know them here on earth.

He says, therefore, if I do not know the meaning of the language, I shall be a foreigner to him who speaks, and him who speaks will be a foreigner to me.

Even so, since you are zealous for spiritual gifts, now remember, they wanted all these spiritual gifts, okay? That was what they were into.

He says, since you are zealous for spiritual gifts, let it be for the dedication of the church that you seek to excel.

Meaning excel in gifts that build up the church.

And if you're going to excel in these miraculous gifts, it needs to be for the building up of the church.

It's not for your glorification.

Remember we started out the first argument he made is the Holy Spirit is for glorification of the Son,

and the Son is for glorification of the Father.

So if a person is operating a gift for their glorification,

well, that's bad.

It's out of order,

it's wrong.

Therefore, let him who speaks in a tongue pray that he may interpret.

For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays.

Uh oh, what did he just come up with there?

Uh oh, he done added something else to the list.

So I got tongues of angels and tongues of men. I got prophesying tongues and I got foretelling tongues.

Now I got what kind of tongues.

Pray in tongues.

Praying in the Spirit. By the way, that's generally what my gift is about.

Yeah, praying in the spirit.

I will also pray with my understanding.

Meaning I don't just. When I pray in the Spirit. I don't just pray in the Spirit.

I also pray that my own mind and heart might talk to God.

Remember, the Holy Spirit's inside of me and I have a new human spirit. And both of them know all the everything. They're perfect.

Okay.

For I pray in the tongue. My spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful.

What is the conclusion then?

I will pray with. With the Spirit. And I will also pray with understanding. I will sing with the Spirit and also sing with understanding.

Pastor, you mean they're singing in the Spirit?

Yeah, there is.

Do we do it publicly?

No, we'd have to have interpretation.

You'd have to sing a verse, and then they'd have to interpret it. No, that there's two. It's different manifestations.

Different. Different ways,

he says, and I will also sing with understanding as you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.