Sunday School at 9 am | worship at 10 am

Building Up the Body

One day it happened.  During a break in the song service someone began speaking in tongues.  And it wasn’t just some mumbling that was barely audible, either.  The tongues speaker intended for everyone to hear this unintelligible message as well as his English interpretation which followed.  When he was through, I looked at the elders for help and they looked right back at me.  I didn’t know whether this message was a specific message from God to our congregation or not.  All I knew was that in a public worship service where I was the pastor, someone had spoken in tongues and the burden to respond with great wisdom and discernment was upon me.  As you might guess, I was mighty nervous.

Some people love speaking in tongues.  The church at Corinth apparently had a lot of people like that in their congregation.  For the Corinthians, speaking in tongues was the premier gift.  Nothing was more desirable than the ability to speak in tongues.  That’s because they measured their spirituality and their giftedness according to their tongue-speaking ability.  But God does not measure our spirituality according to our gifts.  Love is a far greater measure of spirituality than giftedness.  What difference does it make if you speak in tongues but don’t have love?  We saw that last week in chapter 13. In chapter 14, Paul returns to the issue of tongues.  Since we are not a congregation of tongues speakers, we might think this chapter doesn’t really apply to us.  But that would be a mistake.  There are some underlying principles here that are very relevant to us.

 

  1. The true measure of a gift in worship is its ability to edify, to build up the church body.

 

  1. Therefore, when you come to worship, do what you can to build up the whole church body.  There are a number of ways you can build up the entire body.  Come with an attitude of worship.  Worshiping together builds up the body.  When we all sing together, that builds up the whole body.  And when we fellowship together, that also builds up the entire body. 

 

  1. Edification, not emotional experience, is what matters in worship.  Music can move us. Many a preacher with charisma can move a congregation with his communication skills and make them believe they have heard a powerful sermon.  But the edification is not in the technique or the presentation.  The edification is in the substance.  That’s why we place a strong emphasis on expository preaching and teaching.

 Every church needs to be edified, to be built up.  We need to be built up. The church at Corinth certainly needed to be built up.  They had problems.  Lots of problems.  Church members were suing one another.  Factions were developing under the names of star church leaders.  The well-to-do in society were showing contempt for the less affluent.  In essence they were coming to church with this attitude:  What’s in it for me?  This kind of attitude does not build a body up.  It tears it down.  When you see the church only through the lens of what it can do for you, you have fallen into the same self-serving trap that the Corinthians fell into. “Look,” Paul is saying, “you need to be in the business of building up, not tearing down Christ’s church.”   That’s what the message of chapter 14 is all about.  And it’s the message God wants us to pay careful attention to.