"Building Up the Church" (1 Corinthians 14:12b-20)

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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Amen! Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

“Since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church (1 Corinthians 14:12b).

 

For everyone who attended the adult Bible Study on 1 Corinthians, you know that the Corinthian Church was a deeply troubled congregation. They had a lot of problems. And one of those problems was a sense of superiority on the part of some of the flock of this church. Some thought of themselves as better than others. And in particular, today St. Paul is talking about speaking in tongues.

 

Evidently, those who spoke in tongues were convinced that they were better than those who could not speak in tongues. The tongue speakers were convinced that they had an increased value over the non-tongue speakers. This was causing conflict within the church as they were not building up the body of Christ.

 

And even today, there are some Christian churches that teach that if you do not have the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues then you haven’t truly been baptized. But the thing is, St. Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote previously that there are many spiritual gifts, and none is greater than the other. He wrote: “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone” (1 Corinthians 12:4-6). 

 

Paul tells of spiritual gifts of wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, distinguishing between spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpretation of tongues. Paul goes on teaching that just as the body is one and has many members, all the members are one body with Christ.

 

But for some reason, many in the Church in Corinth were hung up on speaking in tongues. In fact, many of the tongue-speakers may have been “showing off” their spiritual gift as many others in the congregation could make no sense of what was being said.

 

As wonderful of a spiritual gift as tongues may be, speaking in tongues does not edify, or build up the church since tongues are not intelligible to others without an interpreter. A tongue speaker prays, sings, blesses and gives thanks to God well enough, but if there is no one to interpret, those utterances are merely “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1). So, if there is no interpretation, then the tongue speaking is worthless. It’s just filling the church with noise. It isn’t edifying the church. It isn’t building up the body of Christ.

 

“Nevertheless,” Paul writes, “in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue” (1 Corinthians 14:19). So, a short time of instruction is much better than a longer time of confusion with tongues.

 

Now, speaking in tongues is clearly not a pressing issue at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church. I haven’t heard of any utterances here that need to be interpreted, but we should follow St. Paul’s advice in always striving in building up the body of Christ, the church. So, how do we do that? How do we build up the church?

 

Unfortunately, our attempts in building up the church often leads to confusion and disunity. As some focus on this and some focus on that and before long, we become like Corinth in this situation with so much conflict. So, how do we build up the church? Well, we can’t. You see, Christ alone builds up the church and we receive His instruction. He builds us up. He instructs us. So, where does Christ build up the church? Well, He does it in many ways. But let’s focus on the primary way He builds up the church!

 

The primary way Jesus builds up the church is through worship. In Corinth, worshipers speaking in tongues failed to build up the others present. They thought they had to do something. They wanted to impress each other by their worship. Now, what they forgot and what Paul was leading them toward is that true worship isn’t about impressing each other. 

 

You see, Jesus is more interested in serving you than what you can do for Him. And this is why church services are arranged as they are. The goal of the church service is not to serve God, to thank Him and praise Him. Now, all those things do happen, but that is not the real reason God gathers His people. The goal is for Him to serve us. 

 

Paul’s goal for Corinth and for us is for everyone to understand the Lord’s truth spoken to them. This is why we have our services in the vernacular, so that we are able to understand the words in our worship service.

 

In speaking of the worship service, we call it “Divine Service,” which comes from the German word “Gottesdienst.” That word “Gottesdienst” confesses what is actually going on as the Church gathers together week after week. Week after week, Jesus gathers His people to serve them. He gathers us around His Means of Grace. Our whole service is for instructing and forming us into the Word of God.

 

We begin with Confession and Absolution. We confess our sins to God our Father and with repentant hearts, we receive the forgiveness Jesus won for us upon the cross. Being absolved of our sins of thought, word, and deed against God and our neighbor, we then praise Him as we say the Introit, which is a selected psalm. The word “Introit” comes from Latin meaning “enter,” since this is when the pastor would traditionally enter the chancel.

 

The service then moves from praise to a request for mercy from God in the Kyrie. “Kyrie eleison” comes from the Greek phrase meaning “Lord have mercy.” This prayer for divine mercy is not only a corporate confession, but an individual confession as we stand before God.

 

And when God’s people ask for His mercy, His response should not be doubted as He always answers the cries of His people. In recognition of His mercy, we again offer thanks and praise as we sing the hymn of praise known as the Gloria in Excelsis which means “Glory be to God on high.” Another hymn of praise is “This is the Feast.”

 

From there, we hear God’s Word in the Scripture readings and later proclaimed in the sermon as you are hearing right now. Preaching is central to Christian worship. Sin is revealed through God’s Law (Romans 3:20), and deliverance is revealed in the Gospel (Romans 1:16-17). And not every sermon will follow the first, Law and then Gospel structure, but both are always present and distinguished in sermons. Along with the proclamation of judgment and deliverance, the sermon is to also instruct the hearer, you, in Christian living (Titus 2:1-13). The forgiveness of sins that is delivered in the Gospel equips God’s people for good works for their neighbor. Also, the sermon is the place for catechesis. So, I am called by Christ to teach and equip you in Christian doctrine. So, along with promoting true doctrine, I am also to rebuke false doctrine, especially in a day when false teaching is so prominent in this fallen world.

 

Upon hearing God’s Word preached, the comfortable are afflicted and the afflicted are comforted, and so with King David we ask for clean hearts in the offertory. The thing is, we cannot clean our own hearts. So, again, God serves us by restoring our hearts.

 

But prior to the offertory, we give thanks to God for His gracious provision by confessing our trust in Him by providing an offering to the church. By offering up the money He has given us, we confess that we are giving thanks to the One who has provided the offering to us and trust that He will continue to provide. Those offerings allow the church to pay for expenses, missionary efforts and other worthwhile aspects of the church, including preparing for a new furnace.

 

Following the Offertory, we bring our prayer petitions before God. We pray for the whole Church of God in Christ Jesus and for all people according to their needs. We pray for the congregation and the broader community. We pray for the sick. We pray for all those in authority. We pray that God’s will would be done.

 

And then God continues to serve us through the Service of the Sacrament where we change our focus from the lectern and pulpit to the altar. We now prepare ourselves for the reception of Christ’s true body and blood under bread and wine. We now focus on the altar, where Christ’s gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation are given. In the Service of the Sacrament, we give thanksgiving to God along with the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. Heaven and earth are joined at this table.

 

Following the reception of Christ’s true body and blood given to us for our salvation, we join Simeon as we sing the Nunc Dimittis. We can now depart in peace with our sins forgiven by grace through faith in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

 

In this Divine Service, we have peaks and valleys. God instructs us as we receive His grace at each peak, and we come to repentant hearts at each valley. But we always end each Divine Service receiving His grace. So, the real role of the Christian is to be served by Him with His gifts of forgiveness and mercy, which He delivers through His Church in the Divine Service, so that the Christian is free to serve their neighbor. 

 

Here, God serves us His Word of forgiveness, earned when Jesus served us by dying for us. God serves us, giving us new birth in Holy Baptism. God serves us, feeding our faith with His own body and blood under bread and wine. God serves us and He loves us. God serves us, setting us free to love Him, setting us free to serve the ones He has given to us, our neighbor. Here, God serves us by strengthening your faith as He builds up the church. Amen.

 

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,

 keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.  

+ SOLI DEO GLORIA +

Why Do We Confess the Creeds?

 

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

In everything, Christians are to adorn and teach the doctrine of God our Savior (Titus 2:1-10; 2 Timothy 3-4). This is what the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write to Timothy and Titus, as well as to you and me. In everything, we are to adorn the doctrine of Jesus Christ.

Some decades ago, the seemingly innocent phrase “No Creed but the Bible” became popular among many Christians, especially among Baptists and Pentecostals. But they were not the only ones with this idea. This phrase seems innocent since Christians are to revere God’s Written Word, after all, this is where God speaks to us. But there is some irony here, “No Creed but the Bible” is in fact a creed, since a creed is a statement that expresses what people believe and teach.

Shortly after Christ bodily ascended into heaven (from whence He came and will one day return from), false teaching arose. Many of these false teachings were taught against immediately by Christ’s apostles Paul, Peter, and John in their epistles, since they were taught by Christ who is Himself the Truth (John 14:6). One of the earliest Creeds was in fact written by Paul: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). As the Apostles all eventually died, their teachings did not die. It was due to the Holy Spirit’s work that the apostolic teaching has survived all these centuries even as this one holy Christian and apostolic Church had to combat false teaching after false teaching. Now, most of these false teachings dealt with the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. In order to confess the truth and avoid errors, the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed were written to defend the truth of what the Bible teaches about the triune God. Every word from each of the creeds is taken directly from Scripture.

Each Creed was written to protect the Christian Church – and each individual Christian – from false doctrine, since only sound doctrine has the power to save.

Even better yet – with possibly the exception of the Athanasian Creed – each Creed was written in a way that they would be easily memorized. This is certainly a comfort to remember God’s saving work through the Creeds. So, when we have a question about the Christian faith, we can always remember what we have been taught in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds.

In Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms, the Creed immediately follows the Ten Commandments. This is all on purpose. The Ten Commandments are written on the hearts of all people by virtue of their creation. They reveal our sin and prepare us to receive the gifts of salvation confessed in the Creed. Luther teaches in the Large Catechism that “the Commandments teach what we ought to do. But the Creed tells what God does for us and gives to us.”

In each Creed, we recite a summary of all of God’s work in creation and human history as taught in the Bible.

Ultimately, we need the Creeds. Although we can believe in a god through what we see and touch in nature, we cannot fully know the one true God by nature alone. Nature cannot reveal God’s identity and His name. The Creed and its source – God’s inerrant Scriptures – however, gives us as Paul Harvey famously used to say: “the rest of the story.” The Creeds teach us to know God more fully and about how all of humanity was saved and how God continually provides for His people through Word and Sacrament in the one holy Christian and apostolic Church:

I believe in one God,
the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth
and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only-begotten Son of God,
begotten of His Father before all worlds,
God of God, Light of Light,
very God of very God,
begotten, not made,
being of one substance with the Father,
by whom all things were made;
who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven
and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary
and was made man;
and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.
He suffered and was buried.
And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures
and ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of the Father.
And He will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead,
whose kingdom will have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord and giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified,
who spoke by the prophets.
And I believe in one holy Christian and apostolic Church,
I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins,
and I look for the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

In Christ,

Pastor Adelsen