The Effects Of False And True Worship

14:20-25 Brothers, don't be childish in your judgment. True, you must be innocent babes as far as evil goes, but in your judgments you must be mature men. In the law it stands written, "With people of a foreign tongue and with the lips of aliens I will speak to this people, and not even so will they listen to me, says the Lord." So you see tongues are meant for a sign not to believers but to unbelievers.

Suppose, then, the whole Christian congregation meets together, and suppose all speak with tongues, and suppose some simple folk or some pagans come in, will they not say that you are raving mad? But suppose all forthtell the truth, and then suppose some pagan or some simple person comes in, his sin will be brought home to him by all, he will be brought to judgment by all, the hidden things of his heart will be brought to light, and so, falling upon his face, he will worship God, and will tell all men that God is really among you.

Paul is still dealing with this question of speaking with tongues. He begins with an appeal to the Corinthians not to be childish. This passion for and over-evaluation of speaking with tongues is really a kind of childish ostentation.

Paul then finds an argument in the Old Testament. We have seen over and over again how Rabbinic exegesis--and Paul was a trained Rabbi--can find in the Old Testament hidden meanings which were certainly not originally there. He goes back to Isaiah 28:9-12 . God, through his prophet, is threatening the people. Isaiah has preached to them in their own Hebrew language and they have not listened. Because of their disobedience, the Assyrians will come and conquer them and occupy their cities and then they will have to listen to language which they cannot understand. They will have to listen to the foreign tongues of their conquerors speaking unintelligible things; and not even that terrible experience will make an unbelieving people turn to God. So Paul uses the argument that tongues were meant for a hard-hearted and unbelieving people and were, in the end, ineffective to them.

Then he uses a very practical argument. If any stranger, or any simple person, came into a Christian assembly where everyone was pouring out a flood of unintelligible sounds, he would think that the place was a madhouse. But if the truth of God was being soberly and intelligibly proclaimed, the result would be very different. He would be brought face to face with himself and with God.

1 Corinthians 14:24-25 give us a vivid summary of what happens when the truth of God is intelligibly proclaimed.

(i) It convicts a man of his sin. He sees what he is and is appalled. Alcibiades, the spoilt darling of Athens, was the friend of Socrates, and sometimes he used to say to him, "Socrates, I hate you, for every time I meet you you make me see what I am." "Come," said the woman of Samaria in shamed amazement, "see a man who told me all that I ever did." ( John 4:29 ). The first thing the message of God does is to make a man realize that he is a sinner.

(ii) It brings a man under judgment. He sees that he must answer for what he has done. So far he may have lived life with no thought of its end. He may have followed the impulses of the day and seized its pleasures. But now he sees that the day has an ending, and there stands God.

(iii) It shows a man the secrets of his own heart. The last thing we face is our own hearts. As the proverb has it, "There are none so blind as those who will not see." The Christian message compels a man to that searing, humiliating honesty which will face himself.

(iv) It brings a man to his knees before God. All Christianity begins with a man on his knees in God's presence. The gateway to that presence is so low that we can enter it only upon our knees. When a man has faced God and faced himself, all that is left for him to do is to kneel and to pray, "God be merciful to me a sinner."

The test of any act of worship is, "Does it make us feel the presence of God?" Joseph Twitchell tells how he went to visit Horace Bushnell when Bushnell was an old man. At night Bushnell took him out for a walk on the hillside. As they walked in the dark, suddenly Bushnell said, "Let us kneel and pray," and they did. Twitchell, telling of it afterwards, said, "I was afraid to stretch out my hand in the darkness in case I should touch God." When we feel as near to God as that, we have really and truly shared in an act of worship.