Year 2, Day 82: 1 Corinthians 14

What Does It Mean to Prophesy

As we turn to 1 Corinthians 14, we get to hear Paul shift the focus from love to prophesying.  So let me take a paragraph and explain prophesying for a second.  In modernity, the word “prophet” has come to mean “someone who can know the future and make successful predictions about it.”  This is not the definition that the ancient church would have heard when they used the word prophet.  Someone who could predict the future was a seer or a magician, not a prophet.  To a person in Paul’s day, a prophet is a person who speaks a meaningful word from God to their contemporaries.  In most cases, a pastor who preaches and disciples the people around them is a pretty good analogy to what a person in Paul’s day would call a prophet.

Pay attention to what Paul is saying in this passage, then.  What does Paul say?  He wishes many people in their midst would have the gift of prophecy.  Paul knows that part of having a strong spiritual church is creating a place where people can come together and speak the Word of God to one another.  When we speak the Word of God to one another, we speak words of correction and rebuke as well as support and growth.  The Christian community is vitally dependent upon the people of God being able to speak an appropriate Word of God to each other!

From this perspective, the obscure point in verse 8 becomes much more dramatic.  Paul is speaking about the idea that people know how to get ready for a battle based on the warning they hear from a trumpet.  In the same way, Christians get ready for the spiritual work ahead of them by listening to the prophecy {Word of God proclaimed} in their midst.  Christians get ready to follow God through what they hear from God speaking through the Christians around them.

This makes me think about what we actually hear when we go to church functions.  I know what everyone is thinking.  When we go to worship, we hear the Word of God proclaimed in our midst.  Lord willing, I hope that is true!  But that is what, one hour a week?  1 hour out of the 168 hours in a week?  For math geeks like me, that’s all of 0.595%.  Less than 1 percent of our time!  Let’s say you go to Sunday School, too.  So there’s another hour.  That’s 1.19% of our time!  Then we might think about committee meetings, or potluck dinners, or other programs we might be involved in.  But I have to ask.  The last time you went to a potluck dinner – how much talk about God did you do?  Sure, there is nothing wrong with talking about the weather or the latest sporting event.  But did the conversation ever get around to praising God and talking about what He is doing in your midst?  Or perhaps you talk about work.  There is nothing wrong with talking about problems at work.  But did the conversation ever get around to how to display your faith through those problems?

See what I mean?  When Christians gather, we need to focus on proclaiming the Word of God into the lives of the people around us.  There is nothing wrong with talking about life, but when Christians gather our conversations should revolve around God and His work in our life.

When we get together outside of Sunday worship and intentional Bible Studies, are we really talking about God’s Word actually playing out in our life – prophecy – or are we talking about the stuff we really want to talk about until someone comes along and forces God into the conversation?  If hearing God’s Word applied to our life is how we get prepared to do the work of God, when we look at our typical “religious functions” is there any wonder that American Christianity is filled with people who simply aren’t prepared to take God out into the world?  If the only person who brings the Word of God into your life is your pastor – and if you’re lucky, also your spouse – how can any of us think that our churches are doing a good job of preparing us to do the work of the Lord?  Even if the pastor is a phenomenal speaker – how much influence can one person have on a whole community?  No, the proclamation of God’s Word into the lives of the believers is a communal effort.

Orderly Worship

This conversation leads us into Paul’s section on orderly worship.  But remember, just because something is orderly doesn’t mean that it should be done without emotion or without enthusiasm.  Worship should always be done with enthusiasm because we are in the presence of a Holy God and we are called by God to support others and be supported by others in the faith.  That alone is cause for celebration in our worship.

Yet, we must remain orderly.  There needs to be some kind of structure.  We don’t need people talking over one another.  We don’t need multiple conversations going on at once.  What we need is a plan for worship and an understanding among the people as to how that plan is going to be implemented.

I like how this binds with the earlier section.  The goal of speaking God’s Word into the life of someone else is to build them up.  But in order for that message to be meaningfully delivered, the recipient needs to be prepared that it is coming so that they can receive it.  Have you ever tried to listen to the television (or the radio) while someone is speaking loudly on the telephone?  It’s hard to focus on either because of the noise from the other.  Both conversations are lost and neither is productive.  So if we genuinely want to speak God’s Word into the lives of other people, we need to come together and have some orderly focus.  Whether it is worship, Sunday School, or even pot-luck dinners, we need there to be a communal understanding of what the event is about and how the meaning of the event will be conveyed to the attendees.

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