1497 - Q & A “The Supernatural Gift of Tongues, Explained. Introduction” Acts 2

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1497. Well, it's Friday, and I'm going to answer a question. As a matter of fact, I hope I answer many questions. Because for the next few days, I'm going to be dealing with one of the most controversial and divisive subjects in all of Christianity. I want to deal with answering a question that I'm asked over and over and over again about what is the New Testament gift of tongues? And the concomitant question is always, is it still for today or has tongues ceased? Well, we will get to that second part of that in about three or four podcasts from now. So just hold on before you cut me off, because I know that people who believe one way, they won't even listen to anyone if they don't come to the same conclusion 100% that they do, and that's part of the issue. I grew up, just some background, I grew up heathen. I didn't grow up in church. When I did go to church, I went to a Methodist church because the pastor came and got us for the first time, and we fell in love with him, and he loved us and we loved him. I didn't know what Methodist was, I didn't know what Baptist was, I didn't know what Church of God was. You must understand, I grew up the county just north, a border county with Bradley County, which is the county where Cleveland, Tennessee is. Cleveland, Tennessee was about 15 miles from where I grew up. Now Cleveland, Tennessee is a headquarters for two Pentecostal denominations. One is the Church of God, and the other is the Church of God of Prophecy, world headquarters. And I grew up when I did go to church, I went to a Methodist church, went to a Southern Baptist church, went to an independent Baptist church because there were churches on every corner in that part of the country. It's the buckle of the Bible belt. And so there were all different kinds of offshoots of those that I just mentioned. There were conservative, there were liberal, there were those that believed this way and that way, or emphasize this that way, that way. And it is a place where if you don't like what is in one church, you don't just peacefully go to another. You tear that church all to pieces and go start another one. So there's little churches everywhere all over Tennessee, and most of them were started by splits. Somebody went to seed on this doctrine or that doctrine. So I grew up and I really didn't know any of that. I usually went to church based on whether there was a pretty girl there or whether somebody had invited me. I wasn't saved till I was 19 years old, and I was radically saved then, and God changed my life. And let me tell you, I didn't I didn't have any access to grind. I just wanted to learn the word of God because three months after God saved me, I knew God was calling me to preach, and I answered that call. But when I answered the call, I answered the call not only to preach, but to study. And I was discouraged by the people in my area from going to school because I can't even tell you how many preachers told me. Pastors told me, now Tony, don't you go to school they'll learn you. They'll ruin you. They're liberal and they don't even believe the Bible's the word of God. And there were schools like that. There was a Southern Baptist school that was very liberal. They didn't believe the Bible was the word of God, and any drunk on the street of the little town that I grew up near would fight you if you said the Bible wasn't the word of God. Now they weren't living in obedience to it. Many of them were not saved, but they believed the Bible was the word of God. At least they gave intellectual assent to that. And then there were those that were independent, fundamental, premillennial, fifteen other adjectives on the front, and if you didn't strike every one of them, they weren't gonna have anything to do with you. And some of those were my friends. I had friends in all of these, and so I I couldn't figure out why everybody's just mad at one another all the time and cutting one another down. I had hair down on my back and shoulders, and all they could say to me, they didn't tell me about Jesus, they just told me to get my old hair cut, quit smoking, quit drinking, quit cussing, quit running around with people who do. But they failed to tell me that I could straighten up, fly right, I could get my hair cut, quit smoking, start smelling good, go to church, and still die and go to hell. What I needed was Jesus, and Jesus did more to clean me up in five seconds, five minutes, one day, than all that do this, do that, don't do this, don't do that crowd ever taught me. And so this is very important. You just need to know my background because I didn't have an axe to grind. I didn't have a theological axe grind. I just said, God, teach me your word, and I needed help. And so I took off to Texas, and the reason was I didn't need boot camp in school, I needed Bible. I didn't need to be told how the Bible is only inspired in spots, and some PhD or THD could tell me what spots were inspired. I didn't know much, but I knew that was uh just ignorance and pride and arrogance. And so I wanted to learn the word of God. I wanted to learn the languages. I wanted to learn Hebrew, I wanted to learn Greek, I wanted to understand those and how to do them because I didn't know English. And so I I had to teach myself English before I could learn Hebrew, which was the first foreign language I learned besides English. Then I learned Greek, and it actually seemed easy to me because Hebrew it looks like a different thing altogether. Uh Greek has letters that look much like ours. After all, that's where alphabeta came from, our alphabet. But Hebrew looks like to me that you cut off a chicken's head and then you daubed its feet in an ink blotter, and then it took off across paper, and that's what it looks like, just a chicken with its head cut off. It's what I thought. That's the way I described it then, that's the way I describe it now, because that is the way that the people that I deal with many times in Southern Appalachia, that's what the language they understand, especially older people. I'm telling you all this to say, yes, every man has their biases, but my biases are based upon a hermeneutical principle, a method of discovery, and I'm gonna tell you right up front how I do that. I boil that down to five. Those of you who know me, you've heard this over and over again, but remember, repetition is the mother of learning. I learned that from the Jewish people, not from anybody around here, but from the Jewish people that truly repetition is the mother of learning. That's how they learn the word of God. Uh, that's how great scholars learn it and it becomes a part of their life. I just have five uh things I'm gonna share with you because this is the basis of how I get where I am as far as a template for interpreting scripture. Now there's a lot more to it, but I'm just gonna give it to you really quickly. Number one, every person who is saved has the Spirit of God living in their heart. The Bible says in the book of Romans, if any man does not have the Spirit of God, he doesn't belong to God. He's none of his. We were all baptized into one body by the Spirit of God. We were baptized by one Spirit into the body. 1 Corinthians chapter 12 and verse 13. There's other passages, but you get the idea. I believe, based upon the teaching of Scripture, confluent throughout the New Testament, that if any man belongs to God, the Spirit of God lives in his heart. And we'll find out that's the great miracle of Pentecost. There were three miraculous manifestations at Pentecost. We'll see this in the coming podcast, but I'll tell you now. In verse 2, there was the manifestation of Sam. Verse 3, there was the manifestation, miraculous manifestation of sight. And verse 4 of chapter 2, there is the miraculous manifestation of speech. And so God came to live in the life of every believer. That is how they were enabled to do what they did as apostles and as everyday people that love Jesus, and the promise came, the promise, and we'll talk about that in the next podcast. But the promise is a big deal. Isaiah talked about it, Ezekiel talked about it, the uh prophet Zechariah spoke about it. And uh then uh Joel the prophet spoke about it and spoke about this day that was the day on God's calendar called Shabu, the feast of weeks. In the New Testament, the word is Pentecost, which means fiftieth day, the fiftieth. And so this is what I want you to understand. Every person who belongs to Jesus has the Spirit of God living in them. They may not be filled with the Spirit, but they have the Spirit of God or they don't belong to Him. And if you have the Spirit of God, the Spirit of God is the one who inspired all of the Bible to be written, inspired the writers of the Bible. But he is the only one that can illumine the scripture and help us illuminate in our minds and help us to understand what it means. And he does that to the weakest believer. This is why anybody can understand the word of God if they have the Spirit of God living in them, but they have to learn how to discover truth. So I have put four things with that initial truth, that the Spirit of God lives within you and don't believe the lie of the enemy that says you can't understand the word of God. Anybody who has a spirit of God, if they apply themselves, seek the face of God, ask God to help them to understand it, yes, you may need a teacher, you may need a human to guide you, but the spirit of God will guide you into all truth once you understand these basic principles. That's the first thing. Secondly, if you're reading a passage of scripture, if it's historical narrative, take it as historical narrative. If it is allegory, take it as allegory. But you do not have, and I do not have the authority or the right to say, okay, this is historical narrative, either written as history or prophecy is nothing more than history written in advance. Because if God says it's going to happen a certain way, it's going to happen that way, whether you understand it, whether you feel like it makes sense, or any of that. Because you see, the word of God is a final authority of what happened in the past and the proper interpretation of that and what is going to happen in the future. And what God says is going to happen is going to happen. And that's how he inspired people to write and the prophets to write. Many things were to put in perspective what's happened in the past and what he says is going to happen in the future. And that's prophecy. It's called prophecy. It's speaking forth the word of God. And sometimes that's of events that hadn't happened yet, but they're going to. So just take the Bible as it's written. And I put that in a little sentence that helps people to understand it. If you come to a passage and you read it, then take it as it is. If the plain sense makes sense, let that be the sense lest it all become nonsense. That means if you're reading Genesis chapter one, chapter two, that's historical narrative. Yes, it's just like what God said it is, the way He said it was, and God brought everything that is now in existence. God brought that into existence out of nothing. And that's what Genesis chapter one talks about. Genesis chapter two, God supernaturally created man and everything on earth. Everything that is created, God created it. And the one who did that was the person of Jesus, according to John chapter one. He's called the Word of God. This is very important. We're talking about a triune God, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. One yet uh three distinct persons. You say, Well, uh, that just blows my mind. I I can't understand that. Well, welcome to the human race. Nobody can. We accept it as it is presented by God, and he shows that that is true all the way through scripture. So if it's historical narrative, take it as historical narrative. If it's allegory, take it as allegory, or whatever the method of speech and the element of speech that God's using. Don't get them mixed up. Number three, always interpret a passage within context. There is an immediate context, that is the verses all around it. There is an intermediate context, there's a book context, that is who wrote it. And some men wrote more than one book. They have a certain style. In the Old Testament, like Ezra, he wrote the book of Ezra, he wrote Nehemiah. So he he has a certain style and has a way of writing. John. John wrote in a certain way. If you've taken first year Greek, you study the Gospel of John more than likely because it's some of the easiest Greek to understand. He writes in a certain way. Luke, on the other hand, writes as a physician. He's scholarly. The Apostle Paul writes in a scholarly way. He was a rabbi. He's very analytical in his writing. He's very, very much has depth in his writing. Peter writes in a certain way. And all of the writers, they have their own style. And there's nothing that's unspiritual about that. That's just the way God made us, because you see, God prepared the person to write just as much as he did what was written. And so God prepared the people. You see, God doesn't just come up and go, oh, I think I'll use this man. No, God knows all of this before it ever happens. You have the Spirit of God living in you. You can understand the scripture. You need to take it as it's written, historical narrative or allegory or whatever the element of speech that's being used, you take it that way, and that'll be very clear to you, by the way, 95% of the time. And you always interpret it in context. These next two are very important. You always, always interpret your experiences by the word of God, never the word of God by your experiences. What does that mean? It's very important when you're dealing with tongues and you're dealing with supernatural reality. You don't get to interpret scripture according to what you've experienced. People say, Well, I know this is of God because I experienced it. Well, uh there may be a lot of things, but if it's not in the word of God that this is of God and it is this certain way, this tells you, for instance, one of the things that we're going to study over the next few podcasts is this. God told us what the gift of tongues is. He told us what it is, and it's very specific. And in every passage in the book of Acts where tongues is mentioned, it is the same gift of Pentecost. You say, well, how do you know that? Because Peter in Acts chapter 10 says it's the same gift we received. When you look at Acts 19 at Ephesus when they uh spoke in tongues there, it was the same gift that was in Acts chapter 10, it was the same gift in Acts chapter 2. All you have to do is just read the text. But we get our own ideas about it and say, Well, I know I did this, I know I did that, because this is what uh mama taught me, this is what my preacher told me, and he's the godliest man I ever knew, he's the greatest Bible scholar I ever knew. It doesn't matter if it's your preacher, your mom, your dad, whoever it is, if it's me, if it's you, if the word of God teaches something and you veer away from that, it doesn't matter who you are, how spiritual you think you are. That's not what God doesn't start something new with every person. And he doesn't give new revelation with every person. You won't find that anywhere in the Word of God. God wrote the Word of God, and it is the final authority to which we make our appeal in any doctrine, no matter what it is. And so finally, the last thing is we always interpret an unclear passage with a clear one. That means an unclear passage is one that can genuinely, by grammar, by syntax, linguistically, it can be interpreted more than one way. This verse can be interpreted this way or this way, and both, it could go either way. But there is teaching in the Word of God somewhere else that will clarify that. And I will give you the clearest couple of examples of that in the New Testament when we get to that podcast. And we'll get to it in Acts chapter two and verse 38. But I'm going to over the next few podcasts, I'm going to deal with this matter of tongues, and I pray that you will have your Bible and you'll follow along. You don't have to agree with me, but I'm going to give you fifty years of study. Not just my study, but men of God from every walk of life, every denomination. Listen, I have friends that I've studied with. I have taught Church of God bishops. I have taught with the elite of the Assembly of God, with the Church of God and Cleveland, the Assembly of God. I have been to Springfield, Missouri. I met with Dr. Woods. I talked with the scholarship there. I have done this at the highest level. And I want to tell you what I have gleaned after 50 years of studying the Word of God about tongues. And if you'll hang with me, we're going to get through this thing. And you can love me, hate me. That's between you and God, but I love you. And I've worked, preached in Church of God, uh prophecy churches, church of God churches, Pentecostal churches, assembly of God churches. I have preached in Independent Baptist, Fundamental Baptist with Southern Baptist, you name it. Methodist, I preached on the Methodist Circuit after I first got saved. I preached on the Methodist Circuit, not as a Methodist pastor, but just someone who was filling in for a friend who at that time was a Methodist pastor. And so we're going to have a good time together. I hope you'll stick with me. For on the way, this is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org. Then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at Tony C R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.