In Isaiah 28, the portion that I wanted to focus on is beginning in verse number 9,
where the Bible reads,
Whom shall he teach knowledge, and whom shall he make to understand doctrine?
Them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breast,
for precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line,
here a little and there a little, for with stammering lips and another tongue
will he speak to this people.
What I want to preach about tonight is the subject of languages or tongues in the Bible.
Now this is a subject that's found in many, many scriptures throughout the Bible.
In fact, in the New Testament, there's a whole chapter dealing with this subject in 1 Corinthians 14.
It's mentioned all throughout the book of Acts, it's mentioned in the Gospels.
All throughout the Old Testament, you'll find multiple language and tongue references.
Go back to Genesis 10.
I want to start at the beginning here in Genesis.
We'll be back to Isaiah 28.
That scripture I read for you in Isaiah 28 is actually very significant
because it's quoted from in 1 Corinthians 14.
And if you compare the two, it has a really important thing to teach.
I'm going to come back to that later.
But let's start out by going to Genesis 10
and understanding just some basics about language in the Bible.
This is the first time God mentions languages is in Genesis chapter 10.
He says in verse 20,
These are the sons of Ham,
after their families, after their what?
Tongues in their countries and in their nations.
And then he says in verse 31,
These are the sons of Shem,
after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations.
Now in Genesis chapter 10, he's given a genealogy
and he's explaining where all the different nations came from,
the different sons of Noah and their children and all different families of the earth.
He explains all that in Genesis chapter 10.
But in Genesis chapter 11,
he goes back and explains to us how it came to pass that there even were foreign languages.
And that's explained in Genesis 11.1, the Bible reads,
And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech.
So originally when God created the earth,
he created Adam and Eve and they had all their descendants before the flood.
They all spoke the same language.
Everybody who got on the ark,
Noah, his wife, his three sons and their three wives,
they all spoke the same language.
And so therefore the whole earth, when he got off the ark, they started having children,
the whole earth was of one language.
Now eventually, according to chapter 10,
they'd be divided into different nations and different languages.
And their languages corresponded to their nations.
But we're not there yet, he's going to explain how that happened.
It says in verse 2,
And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east,
that is the people who dwelt upon the earth, those who got off the ark,
that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and they dwelt there.
And they said one to another,
Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly.
And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.
And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower,
whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name,
lest we be scabbed abroad on the face of the whole earth.
Now God had told them to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth,
to overspread the earth.
And basically they're not doing that.
They want to just all stay united, they want to all be together,
they want to all live in one place, they do not want to be separated.
And it says, The Lord came down to see the city and the tower,
which the children of men buildeth.
And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language.
And this they begin to do, and
now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do.
Go to, let us go down and there confound or confuse their language,
that they may not understand one another's speech.
So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth,
and they leapt off to build the city.
Therefore is the name of it called Babel,
because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth.
And from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
So the Bible's teaching here that everybody spoke the same language, and
therefore they were all united, they were all joined together.
They're trying to build a tower whose top may reach into heaven, and
God looks down, he's not pleased with that.
He does not want the whole earth to be united, and he wants them to be separated.
And so therefore, he comes down and he confounds their languages so
that they may not understand one another.
And as a result, they're not able to understand one another, and
as a result, they split up.
They part separate ways.
You see, it's hard to be unified when you don't speak the same language as someone,
when you can't understand each other.
And you can imagine as they're working on the Tower of Babel, they're building, and
all of a sudden, just from one moment to the next, they speak different languages.
And all of a sudden, the supervisor can't tell his workers what to do.
And one guy's asking for a hammer, and next thing you know,
he doesn't even know what he's asking for,
because it's a completely different language.
And when you hear somebody speaking Chinese, or speaking Swahili, or
speaking German, or speaking Spanish, you don't know what they're saying.
You don't have a clue.
Now maybe if you know a little Spanish, you can pick it up.
But if you take somebody who knows no Spanish, and they hear Spanish,
it's just complete gibberish.
There's nothing, there's nothing there.
I remember when I was a little kid,
I didn't start learning Spanish until I was an older teenager.
And when I was a little kid, we'd turn on the TV and flip to the Spanish channel, and
we'd just hear like, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla,
ampers, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla,
bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, Disney, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla.
You're like, wow, I've understood something.
Yeah, it's because it was in English.
And so, foreign languages are an insurmountable obstacle for
someone who has not studied those languages.
I mean, if you just come across something, you say, well,
I'm a pretty sharp guy.
No, it doesn't matter how smart you are.
If you haven't learned the language, and you go somewhere, and
they're speaking, you're not gonna know what they're saying,
unless you know a really similar language.
You're not gonna understand any of it.
If it's Chinese, or Japanese, or if you went to Germany,
you wouldn't understand a word of it, okay?
Why? Because foreign languages are unintelligible to one another.
Now, people in England and Australia, they're not speaking a foreign language.
They just have a different dialect or a different accent.
A foreign language is something you cannot understand unless you've studied it,
and unless you've learned it, and tried to learn it.
So, why did I point that out?
Go to Acts chapter two.
Why did I point that out in Genesis?
Because it's very important that you understand that God is the one
who created foreign languages and separated out the languages.
That is a result of God's work.
It didn't just happen naturally, it doesn't just happen that way.
No, God made a specific point to purposely divide the languages of mankind.
Why do foreign languages exist?
Because God wants them to exist.
And because God purposely created them.
It is not God's will and God's desire
that every single person on this earth speak the same language.
That is not something that God wants.
It's never been something that he wanted.
Now, look at Acts chapter two.
This is a key passage about speaking with other tongues
or speaking in another language.
Here's a miracle that took place that God did in Acts chapter two.
Let's read it together.
It says, and when the day of Pentecost was fully come,
verse one, they were all with one accord in one place.
And suddenly there came a sound from heaven
as of a rushing mighty wind,
and it filled all the house where they were sitting.
And there appeared unto them cloak and tongues
like as a fire, and it sat upon each of them.
And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost
and began to speak, watch this, with other tongues
as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Now, let me first of all say this.
You'll notice he doesn't say speaking in tongues.
And in fact, you'll never find the term
speaking in tongues in the King James Bible.
When somebody's talking about speaking in tongues,
that tells you right there,
they're using the NIV or some other version,
because the Bible talks about speaking with tongues.
It talks about speaking in an unknown tongue
or speaking in another tongue.
It never uses the word speaking in tongues, plural, ever.
That's a man-made term that the Pentecostals have made up
or got from some phony version of the Bible.
But it says they began to speak with other tongues
as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Now, what does the word tongue mean?
When it says they spoke with other tongues,
it doesn't mean that somebody removed their tongue
and gave them a different tongue.
Because the word tongues means languages, okay?
And we saw that in Genesis 10 and 11, he used both words.
He used tongues and he used languages.
But let's keep reading, because the Bible defines itself.
It says in verse number five,
and there were dwelling at Jerusalem,
Jews, devout men, and here's the key phrase,
out of every nation under heaven.
Remember, tongues are associated with nations,
all the way back to Genesis 10 and 11,
the first time they're mentioned.
Now, when this was noised abroad,
the multitude came together and were confounded,
were confused, because that every man heard them speak
in his own language.
So when they're speaking in another tongue,
it says they're speaking in another language.
These men that are from all these foreign nations,
they're confused, they don't get it.
When they look at somebody who's a Galilean,
they're speaking to them in their own language.
And look what they say.
They were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another,
behold, are not all these which speak Galileans?
And how here we, every man in our own tongue,
and watch this, wherein we were born.
I mean, this is our home native language
from a foreign country.
Parthians and Medes and Elamites
and the dwellers in Mesopotamia and in Judea
and Cappadocia and Pontus and Asia,
Phrygia and Pamphylia.
And he said, why does God tell us this whole list
of places that we don't understand?
A lot of people look at things in the Bible
and they say, why does he say so much?
Why is he so boring?
Why does he list all these genealogies?
Why does he list all these countries?
There's a reason why he's trying to make a point here,
that these are real foreign languages.
They aren't just gibberish or special heavenly language
or something like that.
Right there, he's saying,
let me give you the examples of the foreigners
that were there that heard them speak
in the language wherein they were born,
their native home language.
Phrygia and Pamphylia and Egypt and the parts of Libya
about Cyrene and strangers of Rome,
Jews and proselytes, Crete and Arabians.
We do hear them speak in our tongues,
the wonderful works of God.
Notice the words tongue and language
are used interchangeably.
It says, we hear every man in our own tongue, verse eight.
At the end of verse six, it says,
every man heard them speak in his own language.
These words mean exactly the same thing,
your tongue or your language.
It's called your mother tongue.
What's your mother tongue?
That's the language wherein you were born.
It's known as your mother tongue.
It says, and they were all amazed and were in doubt
saying one to another, what meaneth this?
What does this mean?
What is going on here?
How is this happening?
Others mocking said these men are full of new wine.
So, what was so confusing or amazing?
The words amazed were used and confounded were used.
What was so confusing or amazing about this miracle?
Was it what they didn't understand
or was it what they did understand?
Yeah, so if somebody's speaking a language
that nobody understands, is that similar
to the miracle that took place in Acts two?
If somebody speaks a language
and you don't understand what they're saying,
is that a manifestation of what happened in Acts chapter two?
No, what happened in Acts chapter two
is that people were supernaturally allowed
to speak a language that was understood by someone
that they were trying to talk to.
Someone was trying to give the gospel unto a foreigner
and miraculously, something that they had not studied,
something that they had not learned,
they were able to speak.
Now, what caused people to be able to speak
a foreign language that they had never studied?
What caused them?
Well, the Bible tells us in verse number four, doesn't it?
It says, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost
and began to speak with other tongues
as the Spirit gave them utterance.
So who is it that's basically speaking through them?
The Holy Spirit.
So the words that they're speaking in a foreign language
are being prompted by whom?
The Holy Spirit.
They're speaking as the Holy Spirit gives them utterance.
They're filled with the Spirit and the Spirit of God
is using them in order to speak His word.
So they're doing the talking, but they're speaking God's word
and they're speaking it in a foreign language miraculously
that they've never learned.
They're able to do it.
It's a miracle.
This is not a natural event that took place.
This is a supernatural event.
Now, the first thing I want to point out about this,
remember who's the one who divided up the languages
in the first place?
God.
God, okay?
God is able to speak His word in a foreign language.
Now, a lot of people think, well, in order to get God's word
you've got to go to the source in which He gave it.
And you've got to go to the Hebrew,
you've got to go to the Greek,
you've got to go to the Aramaic.
You've got to go to these original languages
in order to get exactly what God said.
And if you're getting a translation, they say,
hey, that's not God's word.
It's inferior because it's got to be in the Hebrew.
It's got to be in the Greek.
But wait a minute, in Acts chapter two
we see God's word being preached.
The Holy Spirit is the one doing the translating.
I mean, we've got the apostles, they're ready to preach.
The disciples, the people of the church,
and the Bible says there's men and women.
Those who are preaching the gospel,
they're ready to preach the gospel.
But wait a minute,
they're not ready to do it in a foreign language.
So who's the translator?
The Holy Spirit's the translator.
They're ready to speak God's word.
But wait a minute, a translator is needed.
The Holy Spirit miraculously translates
and gives them utterance in a foreign language.
That tells me that it is possible,
and this should go without saying, this should be obvious,
but that it is possible that God can speak his word
in any language.
Because here you have men out of every nation under heaven.
Just because it lists certain nationalities,
that doesn't mean that that's the only nationalities
who were there.
God says there were people present
from every nation under heaven,
and the Holy Spirit of God was translating his word
into those languages.
And yet people will tell you,
will you always lose something in the translation?
Well, did you lose something in the translation here,
you think?
Do you think that the Parthians were getting
some kind of a sub-par,
some kind of a second-class rendition of God's word
when the Holy Spirit's the one doing the translating?
No.
And just the very fact that God gave us
the Old Testament in Hebrew
and the New Testament in Greek
should show you that God is not limited
to only speak one language.
He can speak his word in any language.
Now, if he couldn't,
then it wouldn't make any sense
for him to confuse up everybody's language,
confound the languages,
and then only give his word in one language,
and say, sorry, you have to learn that language
in order to get God's word,
because it cannot be put into your own language.
Tough, you know?
Sorry.
You know, you weren't born special.
You weren't born speaking Hebrew or speaking Greek.
That isn't true.
And think about this for a moment.
What if God would have given us the whole Bible
in one language?
Hebrew.
What if he would have just given it
by inspiration of the Holy Spirit,
holy men of God,
spake as they were moved by the lowest,
and it was all in one language, all in Hebrew?
Then people would think,
well, that language, it's gotta be in that language.
That's a special language.
And if we really wanna understand it,
we gotta go to that language.
They already say that.
But imagine if he would have given it all in one language.
Okay?
Then the next thing to believe would be,
well, those people are special people.
And in fact, they must know more
about what the Bible means than I do.
So I'm gonna have to go to them
and find out what it really means,
because they were born with that language.
And that's what a lot of people think.
But I think that the reason why God gave us the Bible
in two or three languages
is so that he could show us
it doesn't have to be a special language.
I can do it in Hebrew.
I can do it in Greek.
I can do it in Arabic.
I can speak it in your own language to you.
Okay?
Faith cometh by hearing,
and hearing by the word of God.
Man did not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
And look, we need God's word as English speakers today.
And there are people all over the world
that do not speak English.
They need God's word in their language
in order to fully grow as they should, as believers.
You know, it doesn't take much to get saved.
I mean, somebody could get you saved with John 3.16.
You know, it doesn't take the whole Bible
to get somebody saved.
You know, you start in Genesis 1,
finish up in Revelation point two,
and say, all right, you know,
would you like to receive Christ as Savior?
Okay?
You need the whole Bible to get saved.
But you know what?
To really grow and thrive as a Christian,
you do need the whole Bible.
Yep.
Don't you?
You need the whole thing.
I mean, the more you get, the better.
The more you read, the better.
And if you really want to reach your potential
and serve God to the fullest,
you're gonna need to read the whole Bible.
Okay?
But to get saved, you don't need the whole Bible.
But you do need God's word to be saved.
You do need some portion of God's word,
because faith comes by hearing,
and hearing by the word of God.
The so are so with the word.
He that soweth the good seed is the son of man.
And the Bible says very clearly in many places,
of his own will, begat ye us with the word of truth,
that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
We're begotten again, we're born again.
Not a corruptible seed, but an incorruptible
by the word of God that liveth and abideth forever.
So God's word can and should be preached in all languages.
Here he had to do it supernaturally.
Why?
Because he had just risen from the dead.
All these people are gathered there.
He wanted immediately the gospel
to go out to the whole world.
And it would have taken a long time to get it there.
By the time everybody learns the languages,
and for it to spread, he wanted to spread it quickly.
So he decided that at this gathering,
at the day of Pentecost,
when all these foreigners were there,
it would be a great opportunity
to give the gospel to the foreigners that were there.
Why?
So they could bring it back to their own country.
Now wait a minute.
Don't we live in the United States of America,
which is a melting pot of all nationalities?
Apply that.
We could get the gospel around the world.
We can reach people in all parts of the world,
in all nations, simply by going soul winning here
in the United States.
Simply by knocking doors in the United States,
without even getting on a plane,
and having to deal with the TSA,
and having to be abused.
You can reach people from all over the world,
and they might even be people who speak English
as a second language.
And you can just go out soul winning
and do a ton of soul winning.
You're gonna run into people who speak English
as a second language that you could win to Christ,
that God could use them to get others saved.
Or if you speak a foreign language,
especially Spanish, that you speak any foreign language,
you can get people saved in that language.
And if you wanna go soul winning in Tempe and Phoenix
in this area, if you go long enough,
you'll meet people of all nationalities.
I promise you that.
Because I go soul winning in South Tempe,
and I run into people from India constantly.
A lot of people from India live in South Tempe,
and I run into them over and over and over again,
people who are from India.
And I mean, some of them look like
they just got here from India.
And some of them are even just visiting from India.
I talk to them and they say,
I'm visiting my relatives who live here in Tempe
from India, and I mean, you wouldn't really think
of a lot of people from India living in Tempe,
but guess what they do, because I've knocked on their doors
in Southern Tempe.
You can go up here, like Brother Segura and I did
a while back, and knock all the doors in these apartments
that are filled with people from East Africa.
They're all from Somalia and Kenya and that area,
and you feel like you're in Africa.
I mean, after several hours of soul winning there,
we got in the car and we felt like we were coming back
into the United States.
And I mean, they were speaking Swahili,
they were speaking Somali, they were talking on the phone
to people in Africa while we were talking to them.
And I mean, that's an opportunity to get the gospel
to the world.
It's good.
Say, well, we gotta go to these places.
Now, I'm all for going to those places, but you know what,
not everybody can travel to this places.
And right here is an opportunity, just like the day
of Pentecost, you know, the city of Phoenix is a type
of Pentecost here, because we have all different languages
and all different nations that are here.
I mean, I've run into people out so many, literally,
and you wouldn't think so, but I've even run into people
who spoke French or German or Norwegian,
and those are pretty rare to run into,
but you run into them.
And there are huge communities of other nationalities
living in this area that you can win the Christ,
and it could be a way that you could get the gospel
around the world to other people.
It is possible for that to take place.
But we see God's word can be translated into any language.
Matthew chapter four, when Jesus said,
Jesus said, man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
He was quoting from the Old Testament there,
and he's bringing it into a different language.
And then it's being written down in Greek,
and yet God says it's every word of God.
It can be translated.
And so I don't believe for one second
that my King James Bible is somehow just, you know,
you lose something in the translation,
it's kind of what God said, but if you really want to know
what God said, you better learn Greek and Hebrew.
And let me tell you something, if I believed that,
man, I would not rest until I learned Greek and Hebrew,
because I want to know what it really says.
But I believe that nothing could be more accurate.
Nothing could be more accurate
than what I'm holding in my hand.
And if I didn't believe it, I'd go read something else.
I think there's less confusion about this book in my hand
when you start going into the Greek and Hebrew.
There's so many different manuscripts,
and you know, it's hard to decipher
one manuscript from another.
And if somebody tells me,
well, this is the one that's accurate, or this,
you know, I'm not an archaeologist.
And I don't know if I trust an archaeologist
or a scientist to tell me.
So it's confusing to even know.
People say, well, just go back to the Greek.
Well, okay, which one?
You know, which Hebrew?
This I know is God's word.
You know, I'll start there.
And I don't want to delve into all that confusion.
Now, when we saw that in Acts 2,
I don't think there's any question about it.
Let's look at some other references
to speaking with other tongues.
Go to Acts chapter 10.
Acts chapter number 10.
And there's another reference to this in Mark 16
that I'll quickly read for you.
But you're turning to Acts 10.
The Bible says in Mark 16,
these signs, and these signs shall follow them that believe.
In my name shall they cast out devils.
They shall speak with new tongues.
So he's talking about signs.
He's talking about miracles.
And he says that the believers will speak with new tongues.
They will speak in another language.
We saw that fulfilled, didn't we, in Acts chapter two.
Acts chapter 10, we see the same thing in verse 46.
This is when Peter goes, he's preaching to Italians.
And he's preaching to a Roman centurion.
And these people that he's preaching to,
look what it says in verse one of chapter 10.
There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius,
a centurion of a band called what?
The band called what?
The Italian band.
So these people are Italians, right?
So isn't it interesting that when you get down to verse 46,
it says, for they heard them speak with tongues
and magnified God, then answered Peter.
So isn't it interesting that tongues speaking
with another tongue shows up again
in a chapter about Italians?
Because you see there's another nationality involved.
That's why you see speaking with another tongue,
speaking with tongues in that chapter,
dealing with Jews giving the gospel to Italians.
You have two different nations represented there.
And go to chapter 19, Acts chapter 19.
It says in Acts chapter 19, Paul is going through,
he's at Corinth, and it says Paul,
having, Paul says at Corinth, and it says,
having passed through the upper coast came to Ephesus.
And finding certain disciples, look at verse two,
he said to them, have you received the Holy Ghost
since you believe?
So this is again Paul, and he comes into Ephesus,
which is a city in Asia, is what the Bible calls it.
And he is speaking to these people,
and it says in verse five, when they heard this,
they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
And when Paul had laid his hands upon them,
the Holy Ghost came on them, and they spake with tongues
and prophesied.
So again, same type of thing.
The Holy Ghost comes upon them,
and they speak in a foreign language.
You say, that's not a foreign language.
They were rolling around and talking in a language
that no one understood.
But see, notice, it's always really clear, okay,
when the Bible is talking here in Acts chapter two,
Acts chapter 10.
In Acts chapter two, everybody understood
what they were saying in their own language.
In Acts chapter 10, it says they heard them
speak with tongues, because they understood it.
That's how they knew they were speaking
a different language.
It got their attention,
because they heard it in their own tongue.
Okay, now go to 1 Corinthians chapter number 12.
1 Corinthians chapter number 12.
So what I'm trying to say is that modern day,
what they call tongue speaking is not biblical.
Where someone basically just talks gibberish or like a,
you know, and basically nobody understands this.
Oh, praise God.
You know, somebody will just burst out with it,
and then it's just, oh, hallelujah.
Someone's speaking in tongues.
They don't say that,
because they understood what was being said.
They say hallelujah,
because they didn't understand what was being said.
Now, the thing about this is that
other people will also say, well, you know,
when I'm by myself and praying,
I pray in tongues.
It's my special prayer language.
And it's just something that just helps me pray
when I speak in this other tongue.
It's just like, I don't know what to say,
and I'm just like,
hallelujah.
It's just, oh wow, I feel better now.
I don't even know what I said.
But it must have been good,
because it's the Holy Spirit.
But hold on a second.
You'll never find that in the Bible.
Now, does the Bible talk about praying in an unknown tongue?
Yes, it does, but let me tell you something.
It talks about praying in church publicly
in an unknown tongue.
It doesn't say, never will you find in the Bible,
you know, when thou prayest,
enter into thy closet,
and when thou hast shut thy door,
pray in another tongue.
You're never gonna find that.
Any mention of speaking with another tongue
or praying with another tongue
always is coupled with soul ending,
with people being saved.
Just like in Acts chapter two,
they're giving the gospel to foreigners.
In Acts chapter 10, they're giving the gospel to foreigners.
The foreigners talk back to them in another tongue.
In Acts 19, he's talking to foreigners.
They answer him back in the tongue wherein he's born.
No mention of people privately by themselves
praying in an unknown tongue.
No mention of it.
Only mention in the context of talking about in the church,
people speaking publicly, okay?
And he's saying if you pray publicly in an unknown language,
nobody's gonna understand what you're saying,
and they're not gonna be able to say amen
because they don't even know what you said.
He's saying do that somewhere else.
So you can pray out loud in a group or by yourself,
but if you're praying by yourself in a tongue
that's unknown to the church,
it doesn't mean that it's unknown to you.
It's unknown to the church,
but if you're praying in it, you know it,
and you're praying in it on your own,
but it's not unknown to you.
It's your language that you were born.
Okay, so it's not that complicated.
I don't think there's anything complicated about it.
First Corinthians, step number 12,
the Bible's talking about different gifts that people have
or different talents and abilities.
Some of these are just talents that people have.
Some of them can even have to do
with being able to work a miracle,
and of course, the apostles did special signs and wonders
that only they could do.
So there were special miracles were wrought by the apostles.
Other people that were not apostles in the Bible
did miracles in the Bible.
Throughout the Old Testament, we see miracles.
Now, the Bible does not record in the Old Testament
people just constantly doing miracles every day.
Guys like Elijah, I think it records in the Bible about,
I don't have the number,
I didn't prepare this for the sermon,
but I believe he did seven miracles
or something of that nature.
I think Elijah did approximately seven miracles.
We're talking about a great man of God,
a powerful man of God in his whole life
and his whole ministry,
we read about him performing seven miracles.
So it's not like just every day he says,
oh, you're healed, you're healed, you're healed,
healing everybody everywhere he goes.
You know, it's a rare thing when he did a miracle.
And in the Bible, there are hundreds of years
that go by where no miracles are being done.
Because you're reading about thousands of years of history.
When you get into the New Testament, Jesus comes along,
he's doing more miracles than anybody's ever seen.
I mean, Jesus did way more miracles than Elijah
or Elisha or Moses, right?
I mean, he's doing a ton of miracles.
And then he gives his,
he lays hands on the apostles specifically,
just 12 gods.
Later, another 70.
Just a small group that he lays hands on.
And he gave them power against unclean spirits
to cast them out.
He gives them power to perform miracles.
He gives them power to lay hands on sick folk
and that they'll be healed.
He gives that power not to every believer,
not to every disciple,
not to all the 5,000 that he fed.
And so he gives them power to do special miracles
as apostles.
The Bible talks about Peter and Paul in the book of Acts
doing special miracles that others could not duplicate.
And so everyone does not have the ability to just,
if you're saved, you're automatically gonna perform
all the miracles in the Bible.
And if you're not, you just don't have enough faith.
That's not what the Bible teaches.
And the Bible clearly teaches in 1 Corinthians 12
that not everybody has the ability to perform miracles.
The Bible clearly states that
because he says that some people
will have the ability to perform miracles.
And that that gift is given unto some.
Let's look at that in chapter 12.
And the reason I bring that up is because
what happened in Acts chapter two,
speaking in a foreign language, was definitely a miracle.
Okay.
But he talks about how everybody has different gifts.
And he says in verse seven,
but the manifestation of the Spirit
is given to every man, the prophet with all.
For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom,
to another the word of knowledge by the same prophecy,
to another faith by the same Spirit,
to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit,
to another the working of miracles,
to another, that's what we're talking about, miracles,
to another prophecy and to another discerning of spirits,
to another diverse kinds of tongues,
to another the interpretation of tongues.
But all these work at that one and the self-same Spirit
dividing to every man separately as he will.
And so the Bible talks about
people having these different abilities,
maybe a supernatural ability like performing a miracle,
but he also talks about in Romans 12,
you don't have to turn there,
but in Romans 12 when he talks about spiritual gifts,
he mentions these gifts.
He says in verse six of Romans 12,
having then gifts differing according to the grace
that is given to us, whether prophecy,
let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith.
So one of the gifts mentioned is prophecy.
Prophecy means preaching.
You say, well, prophecy means predicting the future.
Not always.
Usually when the Bible says prophecy,
it's usually just talking about preaching.
Now if you're preaching God's word,
the Bible talks about future events.
Some of that is predicting the future
because if I preached on the book of Revelation,
for example, I'm predicting the future
by talking about things that are gonna happen.
But the Bible says in Proverbs 31,
the words of King Lemuel,
the prophecy that his mother taught him,
you won't find any future predictions in Proverbs 31.
You'll just find preaching.
And so prophecy means preaching.
He says, you know, one of the gifts is preaching.
One of the gifts is ministry in verse seven.
One of the gifts is exhortation.
One of the gifts is giving.
Okay, is that a miraculous thing that you're doing
because you're giving?
He says that one of the gifts is he that ruleth.
That's not a miracle.
He says one of the gifts is he that showeth mercy.
And so there are all these different gifts
listed in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12.
Some of them are miraculous.
Some of them are just talents that people have.
The talent and ability to preach.
Not everyone has the ability to get up and preach.
Not even if they practiced and worked at it,
they're just not a public speaker.
God didn't create everybody like that.
Not everybody has the ability to rule or to lead
or to be a manager is the type of thing that that's saying.
Not everybody has the ability to heal or to do miracles.
Not everybody has the ability to speak
or to teach God's word.
The Bible talks about certain people are apt to teach,
meaning that others are not apt to teach.
So there are all these abilities and talents
that people have.
One of those abilities is being able to speak
in diversities of tongues.
Now, this doesn't necessarily mean
that God's gonna perform a miracle
and you can just speak in a foreign language
because God performed a miracle.
It could just be talking about somebody who has a talent
or an ability for speaking in various foreign languages.
As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14, he said,
I thank my God that I speak with tongues more than you all.
Paul was a man who had an ability
of speaking in foreign languages.
Now, it doesn't appear to be a miracle with him.
It appears to be something that he just knew how to do.
He was a very highly educated man.
And he grew up at the feet of Gamaliel, highly educated.
And if you remember, he's speaking all different languages
in the book of Acts.
The guard, the soldier was surprised
when he started to speak to him in Greek.
He said, canst thou speak Greek?
He's talking to him in Greek.
Next thing you know, he's preaching in Hebrew.
He spoke several languages.
He goes to all these different countries as a missionary.
He speaks the language.
Why?
Because he was very educated.
And there are many people who speak lots of languages.
There have been people throughout,
some of the people who translated the King James Bible
literally were fluent in 18, 19, 20 languages.
You say, that's impossible.
It's not impossible.
I'm fluent in several languages.
Now, I'm not fluent in 18 languages,
but I'm fluent in several languages.
And I used to speak other languages that I've forgotten
because I haven't used them in a long time.
Because if you don't keep speaking a language,
you're going to forget it.
And it sounds silly, but literally,
if you were gone for long enough from the United States,
you will begin to forget how to speak English.
And it sounds silly, but it's true.
There were people who were in Vietnam as POW,
prisoners of war, POW,
and they literally were rusty on their English
because they've been there so long.
It does happen.
My wife is a great example of that.
She was born in East Germany,
but she grew up in Hungary
from the time that she was six months old
to the time she was eight years old.
She grew up in Hungary speaking only Hungarian,
but today she's not fluent in Hungarian.
She can speak in and pick it up and understand most of it
and speak it a little bit,
but honestly, she has forgotten a lot of it.
And it does not come to her fluently
because of the fact that she didn't speak it
since she was eight years old.
Even though that's all she spoke,
that's literally her first language, her mother tongue.
It's hard to believe,
but if you don't speak that language, you'll forget it.
But there have been educated people throughout history
who knew a lot of languages,
and Paul was one of those people.
I mean, he knew a lot of foreign languages.
He grew up and learned those languages
and had that education.
And he also had that gift and that talent and that ability.
Some people have that talent and some don't.
Some people struggle and work really hard
to learn a language.
Others just pick it up.
I remember Brother Victor.
Most of you probably know Brother Victor
that was here with us.
He's in Australia now.
Brother Victor, man, he had a talent for learning languages.
You know, he spoke Chinese and he spoke English.
And when he was here, I took him out solely.
He'd only been in town for a day or two.
And I took him solely, and he was picking up the words.
He'd never been really exposed to Spanish much in Australia.
But when he was out here,
he was picking up a lot of what I was saying.
He was like, oh, I bet this word means that.
I'm like, yeah, this is what it means.
And he was picking it up, picking it up at an airport.
It really came in handy for him
when he ended up moving down to Mexico
and having to speak Spanish.
And he picked it up down there.
He learned it fast.
Why?
Because he had that talent.
He had that ability.
Other people would have struggled a lot more
than he did with language.
It's a gift that people have.
Go to 1 Corinthians 14.
Now, I've already proven to you in Acts chapter two
that speaking in tongues, or as the Pentecostals called,
of course, what is the Bible called speaking what?
With tongues.
That's how you can differentiate between those
who are preaching a false doctrine
and those who are preaching biblical doctrine
is because they're using the Bible's words.
In Acts chapter two, I told you, or I showed you, rather,
that the only biblical speaking with tongues
was foreign languages.
We saw it that way defined in Genesis,
all the way in Acts, all the way through.
Nothing different.
Now, in 1 Corinthians 14,
I don't think God's just gonna throw us a curve ball
and it's gonna mean something completely different
in 1 Corinthians 14 as what it's meant all along.
And so let's look at it.
He says in verse one,
and remember, he already talked about it in chapter 12
about having a gift of being able to speak
in diverse tongues or interpreting diverse tongues.
He says in verse one of chapter 14,
follow after charity and desire spiritual gifts,
but rather that you may prophesy.
He's saying, look, it's great to wanna have spiritual gifts,
but he says, you know what?
Rather, or more importantly, is that you preach,
that you prophesy.
That's the main thing.
He says, for he that speaketh in an unknown tongue
speaketh not unto men, but unto God,
for no man understandeth them,
howbeit in the Spirit he speaketh mysteries.
Now, people will take that verse and they'll say,
see, no one understand, no man understands.
Okay, but what they think
is that he doesn't even understand himself.
That is not biblical.
Let's keep reading.
He says, but he that prophesyeth speaketh unto men.
So notice, this is who the audience is.
Who is understanding?
If I get up and prophesy, who am I speaking unto?
I'm speaking unto men, I'm speaking unto people,
and people are understanding me, right?
But it says, he that speaketh in an unknown tongue
edifyeth himself.
So if I'm speaking a language that no one understands,
am I speaking to you or am I speaking to myself up here?
Yourself.
Yourself, myself, right?
So if I said,
omich veg bonyirvah, hodmich enchok edge egos ish.
Nobody knows what I said, do you?
That means nothing.
Was I saying that for your benefit?
Am I speaking unto you?
No, I'm speaking to myself up here.
I'm speaking into the air.
Nobody knows what I'm, that was a Bible birth, by the way.
But nobody knows what I'm saying.
Does that help you grow?
Does that help you learn and be a better Christian?
No, it's a waste of everybody's tongue.
And that's why God is saying here,
if I come to church and I speak in an unknown tongue,
I'm not edifying you, I'm not building you up.
I might be edifying myself.
I'm gonna be blessed by God's word, but no one else is.
So what's the point of coming to church
and speaking in a foreign language?
There's no point to it.
And so he says, I would rather, I'm sorry, verse five.
I would that you all speak with tongues,
but rather that you prophesy.
For greater is he that prophesyeth
than he that speaketh with tongues,
except he interpret that the church may receive edification.
Now notice, it says except he interpret.
Who's the he?
The guy who's speaking in the foreign language.
So does he not even understand what he's saying?
So is this a guy coming to church and saying stuff
where he doesn't even know what he's saying?
No.
He knows because the Bible says he could interpret it.
Basically, if I came in and speak in an unknown tongue
and I said,
And then I interpreted that for you.
As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one.
Now you understand what I said.
Now you say, why would anyone do that?
Well, I've been to churches
where there were more than one language
represented in the congregation
and the pastor got up and he brings
the whole sermon like that.
Who's ever been in a service like that before?
And you say, was there a translator?
No, there was no translator.
He was basically translating it for himself as he went.
Sit up straight here.
He was translating it for himself as he went.
He spoke it in English.
Then he said it in Spanish.
He said, the next sentence in English,
you know, the sermon took twice as long.
Because he said it twice, okay?
But it gave you a minute to kind of digest
what he just said, you know, let it sink in.
But anyway, so in 1 Corinthians 14, let's keep reading.
It says, now brethren, if I come unto you
speaking with tongues,
he said, if I come unto you speaking
in a bunch of foreign languages,
what shall I profit you,
except I shall speak to you either by revelation
or by knowledge or by prophesying or by doctrine,
and even things without life-giving sound,
whether pipe or harp,
except they give it a distinction in the sounds,
how shall it be known what is pipe or harp?
He said it basically, you know, hey, I know this song.
I know this one.
It's meaningless, okay?
That doesn't mean anything.
Nobody knows that song.
You know, what if I went like this?
See, now there's a distinction in the sound,
and you can say, hey, I know that song.
I know what you're playing, Joy to the World.
But you didn't know when there's this blathering of just,
this is musical, you know, the Pentecostal tongue speaking.
Here's a musical version of tongue speaking.
Oh, praise the Lord, hallelujah.
He's building the spirit of the piano.
Somebody interpret that.
That's, you say, Pastor Ashley, this is ridiculous.
This is how kids do it.
Kids sit at the piano, don't they?
They do that.
What a piano.
And you say, Pastor Ashley, that's ridiculous.
But you know what?
It's also ridiculous when people do this,
when they're, they're just doing this.
They're just doing it with their mouth.
Yeah, that's right.
Nah, nah, nah, I'm doing it.
It's the same thing.
There's no meaning, there's no distinction in the sound.
It's not anything that anyone understands.
It's pointless, it's worthless.
You say, well, it's God's spirit moving.
And you notice that when God does things in the Bible,
he does them for a reason?
Yeah.
God doesn't just do things for no reason.
When he did it in Acts 2, there was a reason.
Because foreigners needed to hear the gospel.
But it's not just something to be done for no point.
He says, what is it prompted to speak in a foreign language?
Unless it's either a revelation or knowledge
or prophesying or doctrine, there's gotta be some purpose.
Why would you speak in a foreign language
just for the sake of speaking in a foreign language?
It means nothing, it's no sense.
Like, oh, I'm gonna pray in this other language.
Is it gonna change something?
Whether you're saying it in English or Spanish
or some other language, it's meaningless.
It's what you're saying that's important,
not what language you're saying it in.
The language that you should say things in
is the language of the listener.
I mean, it's not that complicated,
but doesn't that make sense?
That I speak in order to be understood.
My purpose when speaking a foreign language
is to be understood.
Sometimes I'll say something and people will say,
oh, you didn't pronounce that just exactly right
like a native.
Well, I'm never gonna sound like a native
because I didn't start speaking foreign languages
until I was an adult.
But my point is not to fool people
that I'm from another country.
My point is to make myself understood.
My point is to get the point across, okay?
That's the purpose of a language.
You may not sound like you're from Mexico,
but if you can speak Spanish to give the gospel,
that's the whole point.
And so let's just keep going.
I don't wanna spend all night on this part of the sermon,
but I just wanna blow through this.
But he says, you know, if the trumpet give an uncertain sound
who shall prepare himself to battle?
So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue
words easy to be understood,
how shall it be known what is spoken
for ye shall speak into the air?
There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world
and none of them is without signification.
He's saying every language has meaning.
Therefore, if I know not the meaning of the voice,
I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian.
And he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me.
Even so ye, for as much as ye are zealous
of spiritual gifts, seek that ye may excel
to the edifying of the church.
Wherefore, let him that speaketh in an unknown tongue
pray that he may interpret.
For if I pray in an unknown tongue,
my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful.
Now a lot of people will take that,
my understanding is unfruitful,
and say, see, he doesn't understand what he's praying.
No.
Class, my understanding, that means I do understand.
But my understanding, translation,
the fact that I understand is not bringing forth any fruit
because nobody else understands.
He's saying my understanding is unfruitful
if I'm speaking in an unknown tongue.
Because I'm the only one who understands,
that's not bringing, look,
what does it mean to bring forth fruit?
I mean, look, bringing forth fruit is a product.
There's some kind of a production taking place.
There's some kind of a reproduction
or multiplication that's taking place.
Look, if I go out and preach the Gospel of the Lost,
I'm gonna bring forth fruit.
If I go out preaching in a foreign language
that nobody understands,
I'm not gonna bring forth any fruit.
And if I stand behind the pulpit and preach
in a foreign language, my understanding is there,
but it's not fruit, it's unfruitful.
What does it mean to be unfruitful?
It means you don't bring forth fruit, that's what it means.
And so I don't think this is complicated,
but let me just prove this to you even further.
Keep your finger in 1 Corinthians 14,
go back to Isaiah 28 where we were,
remember where we started the sermon, Isaiah 28.
And keep one finger in 1 Corinthians 14
and then go back to Isaiah 28.
Now, here's a great tip on studying your Bible.
Whenever you're reading in the New Testament
and the Bible quotes the Old Testament,
you'll be reading along to the New Testament
and he'll say as it is written
and he'll bring out something from the Old Testament,
a great tip for understanding the Bible
is to go back and look it up in the Old Testament
and get the context.
Whenever the New Testament,
and sometimes there are passages that people misunderstand,
but if they would just go back and look it up,
it would really help them understand more.
I mean, I could think of a ton of examples right now
where I was a little bit confused about something,
then I went back and looked it up
and then it made perfect sense.
Here's one of those passages
where you can learn in that way.
Because in 1 Corinthians 14, look at verse 21.
The Bible reads, in the law it is written.
So is this gonna be an Old Testament quote or what?
In the law it is written.
With men of other tongues and other lips
will I speak unto this people.
And yet for all that, they will not hear me,
saith the Lord.
Wherefore tongues are assigned, not to them that believe,
but to them that believe not.
Doesn't that jive with what I was saying earlier
about how it's always involved with soul winning?
People are always getting saved
whenever speaking with another tongue is mentioned in Acts.
It's always people getting saved.
Why?
Because they're assigned not to them that believe,
but to them that believe not.
But prophesied serveth not for them that believe not,
but for them which believe.
So in verse 22 he's saying that preaching
isn't really gonna do any good.
Prophesying, like the preaching that takes place in church,
isn't really gonna do unsaved people a lot of good.
A lot of unsaved people will come to church,
they'll hear prophesying,
and they're not necessarily gonna understand
what's being said.
And it's definitely not geared toward them.
It's serving the people who are saved.
Speaking in an unknown tongue is he's saying
was to serve those who are not saved.
For example, I speak an unknown tongue to many.
I speak Spanish.
And when I go out, what do I use my Spanish for?
Do I use it to minister to the saved or the unsaved?
The unsaved.
Because when I'm with the saved in church here,
I'm using English.
And I'm prophesying in English.
But I use Spanish to the unsaved
because I'm going out there to the lost,
reaching them in their own language.
Others who speak Spanish in our church.
Let's look up that quote because look what it said again.
Chapter 14 verse 21.
In the law it is written with men of other tongues
and other lips will I speak unto this people.
And yet for all that they will not hear me say the Lord.
God is saying here that this Old Testament quote
about speaking in another tongue
is relevant to what he's talking about
in 1 Corinthians 14, right?
Or else why would he be bringing it up?
He's saying this quote from the book of Isaiah
about speaking in another tongue
is relevant to 1 Corinthians 14.
Let me bring it up.
Look at Isaiah 28 and get the relevance.
It says this.
Whom shall he teach knowledge
and whom shall he make to understand doctrine?
Then they're weaned from the milk
and drawn from the breasts.
For precept must be upon precept,
precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line,
here a little and there a little.
Watch this.
For with stammering lips and another tongue
will he speak to this people.
You say what's the significance?
He's gonna speak to this people
with stammering lips and with another tongue.
What does it mean?
Go forward to Isaiah 33, just a few chapters later.
Find the exact same phrase.
Stammering lips and another tongue,
find the same thing.
Watch what he says.
In Isaiah 33 verse 18,
thy heart shall meditate terror.
Now, the word meditate means to dwell upon or think about.
He's talking about the fact
that there's gonna come a day someday
when there'll be no more terror.
They'll think back about terror
and I don't have time to preach it.
You can give my sermon on Isaiah 33
where I went into this in great detail.
We went verse by verse through the whole chapter.
But that's what he's saying.
And he says thy heart shall meditate or think about terror.
Where is the scribe?
Where is the receiver?
Where is he that counted the towers?
Watch this.
Thou shalt not see a fierce people.
Now, let me ask you,
do you wanna see a fierce people
invading your land with terror?
No.
He says, thou shalt not see a fierce people, comma.
He's gonna tell us more about these people.
A people of a deeper speech that thou canst not perceive,
of a stammering tongue that thou canst not understand.
Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities.
Thine eyes shall see Jerusalem, a quiet habitation.
See, that's the opposite of being invaded
by a fierce people with terror.
He says, a quiet habitation,
a tabernacle that shall not be taken down.
Not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed,
neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken.
What's the point?
The stammering tongue,
the unknown tongue and stammering lips
of Isaiah 28 and Isaiah 33.
The only two-place stammering is ever mentioned there.
Isaiah 28 and Isaiah 33.
Is it talking about a prayer language
or is it talking about a foreign country?
Foreign country.
Clearly.
Is it not clearly talking about a foreign country?
Because in Isaiah 33, he's saying,
people of a foreign nation, a fierce nation,
a fierce people that are speaking with stammering tongue.
He's not saying that they have a speech impediment, folks.
He's saying that it sounds like stammering
to those who don't know the language.
It's a language that sounds different.
It's stammering tongue.
It's an unknown tongue.
It's another tongue.
He's saying these people, as a judgment,
are gonna be invading the land.
There's gonna be terror.
They're gonna be a fierce people.
But he's saying, wait a minute,
there's coming a day when you will not meditate terror
and when you'll have a quiet Jerusalem and a quiet city.
And he said, you will not be invaded by a foreign army
of fierce people with a stammering tongue.
As he said in Isaiah 28,
then you would use people of another tongue
to speak unto his people in Isaiah 28, verse 11.
Back to Isaiah 28, if you're there.
He said, but with stammering lips and another tongue,
we speak to this people.
Speak about what?
He's gonna teach them doctrine, it says in verse nine.
People of a foreign tongue, a stammering lips
and another tongue will teach them doctrine,
will speak unto them God's word.
Why do you turn there, pastor?
Why do you take us back to Isaiah?
Because if he's talking about a foreign language
in Isaiah 28 and he's talking about a foreign language
clearly in Isaiah 33, then he quotes it
and uses the same exact terminology and says,
as it is written in the law,
with men of other tongues and other lips
will I speak unto this people.
And it's clearly a reference to Isaiah 28, 11.
Then that tells you right now
that if he's quoting a verse about foreign languages,
he's talking about foreign languages
in 1 Corinthians 14.
As if we didn't already know that from Acts chapter two.
As if we didn't already know that from Genesis 10 and 11.
So without a doubt, that's what he's talking about.
So what's the application?
One more place we're gonna turn, Matthew 28.
What's the application?
What can we learn from all this, Pastor Anderson?
What do we need to know this for about these languages?
Well, first of all, you need to know
that what a crock these Pentecostals believe in
with their so-called tongue speaking.
It's such a crock.
They didn't read Isaiah 28 and Isaiah 33
when he's talking about foreign invading armies
speaking with another tongue
and having stammering lips and an unknown tongue.
And then he quotes that exact passage in the New Testament.
You gotta compare scripture with scripture.
If stammering's only used two times in the whole Bible,
okay, and it's both talking about a foreign language,
then he quotes one of the stammering passages
in the New Testament under tongues.
Chapter 1 Corinthians 14, it's clear.
It's clear, it's a foreigner, it's another nation.
Every time, it's foreigners, it's soul-winning,
it's getting people saved.
So what should we take from this message?
Go to Matthew 28 and look at the famous passage
of the Great Commission.
Now this is kind of the one that we quote the most
right here, and for good reason, it's a great passage,
the one that's up above my head here,
where it says, go ye into all the world
and preach the gospel to every creature.
That's talking about getting the gospel to the individual,
is it not?
Every person needs to hear the gospel
on an individual basis.
But in Matthew 28, he says it in more of a grouping way,
where it says in verse 18,
Jesus came and spake unto them, saying,
all power is given unto me in heaven and earth.
Go ye therefore and teach all nations.
So here he's not talking about the individual,
he's talking about nations.
He's saying, you need to get the gospel to all nations.
You need to teach all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son of the Holy Ghost.
Why did he say nations?
Why not say creature?
Why not say give it to every person?
Why, because God is trying to make a point here
that he wants the gospel to go to all nations.
God never intended the gospel to be something limited
to a certain group.
It's an American thing, or it's a white man's thing,
or it's an English people thing.
He always intended it to go to all nations.
That's why he did what he did in Acts 2.
That's why Paul spoke with so many other tongues.
That's why God even did this miracle.
Now some people will say, well that was a miracle back then,
but we're in a different dispensation,
or that was a different miracle back then,
but we're, you know.
Look, it's not that God can't perform a miracle.
Would it be possible for God today to cause someone
to speak in a foreign language,
and somebody else could hear it and understand it?
It'd be possible.
If it were necessary, God could do that miracle.
If it were necessary, God could part the Red Sea today.
He's gonna do a lot of miracles
in the book of Revelation still to come.
So it's not that God can't perform miracles.
It's that God doesn't just perform miracles for no reason.
That's what it is.
When God performs miracles, the Bible had a purpose.
He doesn't just do a bunch of unnecessary miracles.
I think the best example is the manna.
When God gave the manna, they were able to eat that
and survive in the wilderness.
There was a purpose for that miracle.
As soon as they got into the Promised Land,
they could get their own food.
The manna ceased because they had their own natural food.
They didn't eat supernatural food.
They had natural food.
And they never had manna again, never again.
So obviously, God gave this miracle
because he needed to get the gospel into some languages
that nobody spoke, that could have gone
and preached effectively like the apostles could have.
So he did that miracle to get the gospel moving
to speed things up.
Today, we have believers in every nation.
We have the ability to learn languages.
We have books and CDs and cassettes and ways
that you can study and learn languages fairly easily.
And we have people that have that talent and ability
in missionaries and airplanes and cars and ways to do it.
He's not gonna do it for you.
He's not gonna just miraculously allow you to speak Spanish
so that you can give the gospel to people in Phoenix.
It's gonna take a lot of work to learn how to speak Spanish.
And God's saying, I want the gospel to go to all nations.
That means that we ought to have that same desire
and same focus to get the gospel to all nations.
How are we gonna do it?
Number one, soul winning right here in America.
Soul winning right here in Phoenix
to people who speak English.
You will give the gospel to other nations in that way.
People who are bilingual and speak more than one language.
Not only that, we could send missionaries to places
and they can go preach the gospel in other places
and start churches over there and so forth.
That's another way.
You know what?
I believe that learning a foreign language is a way
that you could be used by God to win people in Christ
that you would not normally be able to win in Christ.
And if you have that talent and ability,
that is a worthwhile thing to do with your time and ability.
To learn, you say, why do you have a Spanish class?
What's the gear toward?
Getting people saved.
The reason that we have a Spanish class
is because we want to be able to help people
who have the ability to learn
to be able to give the gospel onto people here in Phoenix
and win Spanish because of the Lord.
You say, well, they need to learn how to speak English.
Now look, number one, I don't believe that every person
in this world needs to speak English
because God divided it up.
But number two, I do believe that people should not
bring a foreign language and then expect everybody
to cater to them in our nation.
I don't think that people should come up here
and demand that everything be done in their language.
If you're coming to our country,
this is an English-speaking country.
That's what we speak here.
Speak our language if you want to be a part of our society.
Now look, if they want to come here and speak Spanish,
that's fine, but they just can't expect everybody
to cater to them and to do it for,
they want to come here and everything to be done in Spanish
and the government to provide everything in Spanish.
I don't believe in that for one second.
I think if they're gonna come up here
and expect everything to be handed unto them,
they need to go back home.
If they want to come up here and be a part of our society,
then come up here and speak English
because your country is where they speak Spanish
and your country's not doing very well.
So let's not turn our country into Mexico
because Mexico's not where you wanted to live for a reason.
That's why you came here because America,
United States is a better place to live.
That's why you came up here, okay?
But at the same time, I don't believe
that they should go to hell
because they don't speak English.
I want to give the gospel to everybody.
And here's the thing, minority languages
across the world are going away.
Have you ever heard of a dead language?
There are a lot of dead languages.
For example, I promise you, and I'll ask my expert here,
but I don't know that much about it,
but I'm sure that there are probably less people
speaking Navajo now than there were 30 years ago.
Is that true?
Yeah, now that's not good.
I don't think it should die out.
That language should survive, okay?
And the same thing with, you say, yeah, but it's easier
because if we all speak English, we can all get the gospel.
That's your understanding.
God's the one who divided it, okay?
So there's nothing wrong with there being a Navajo language.
Or for example, in the UK, there's Gaelic and Welsh
and languages like that.
Those languages are dying out.
Now we're taught our whole lives that that's a good thing.
Let them die.
But that's not really biblical, though.
Because part of that is just a one-world government
that wants everybody united
and everybody speaking the same language.
They would love more than anything
for everybody in the world to speak English.
I don't believe it's God's will.
You say, well, it'd be great if they could all read
the King James Bible.
No, you know what?
God's will is, look, and you may not agree
with what I'm preaching right now,
but I'm here to tell you tonight
that what I'm preaching is biblical.
God looked down on the earth all one language.
He said, that's a bad thing when it's divided.
So you say, but Pastor Anderson, wait.
Don't we want everybody to hear the gospel?
Don't we want everybody to hear the word of God?
No, God's plan was not for everybody to switch to English.
God's plan was for people who speak English
to learn how to speak a foreign language
and preach the gospel in that language.
Now that sounds like a lot of work,
but that's what his plan was.
And I even heard missionaries say,
well, you know what we need to do to get people saved?
These people just need to learn how to speak English.
I even heard a missionary say, I'm sorry,
but these people need the King James Version
and they need to learn English
and that's how we're gonna get them saved.
Come on, folks, that's ridiculous.
First of all, not everyone even has the ability
to learn a foreign language.
It could be very hard.
You can't tell me that God expects people
to learn English to get saved.
That is nonsense, okay?
What God expects is for soul-winning English speakers
to learn a foreign language and bring them the gospel
to them in a language wherein they were born.
Because look, yeah, a lot of people speak English
as a second language, but what do you think
they're gonna understand the gospel better in?
A second language or the language wherein they were born?
See what I mean?
God's plan is not for everybody in the world
to speak English and it's not biblical.
God's plan is for us to learn foreign languages
and bring them the gospel and for Christians
to translate the Bible into their language
and to preach unto them in their own language.
Now, let me ask you this, Brother Sosim.
I don't know how much about,
I know most Navajos that speak Navajo,
they also speak English.
How many, aren't there a lot of Navajos
who only speak Navajo, though?
You ever run into people who just only speak Navajo?
The olders, the older folks.
So there are, though, the older folks.
So there are people that are older,
obviously the language is dying.
Just like a lot of languages across the world are dying
and then languages come and go.
The Bible says, whether there be prophecies,
they shall fail.
Whether there be tongues, they shall cease, right?
Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away,
1 Corinthians 13.
There are languages on this earth that have ceased to exist.
You know, eventually Navajo will probably cease to exist.
But as he said, the older folks,
there are older folks that only speak Navajo.
Do you think that those older folks
are gonna just learn English tomorrow for the Sosim?
No.
Do you think they're ever gonna learn English?
They probably could understand it.
But do you think they're ever gonna take the time
to learn English enough for us to open a King James Bible
and give them the gospel?
No, so there's only one way
that those older Navajos are gonna get the gospel.
And that's if somebody who speaks both
or somebody who is a saved Navajo
or somebody who speaks both English and Navajo
is gonna go to them and preach them the gospel
in their own language.
That's how they're gonna get saved.
Can you see another way that they're gonna get saved?
That's how they're gonna get saved.
Not by just demanding for a 70-year-old to learn English
or a 60-year-old who's never mastered English
to learn English.
No, it's gonna be to take it to them in their own language.
That's how you're gonna get them saved.
Or get somebody saved who speaks both
and then they can take it to them in Navajo,
take it to them in their own language.
He said, I just have a couple people.
Yeah, but this is what you don't understand.
God cares about a couple people.
That's what you're missing.
If the sermon's not clicking, maybe that'll help it click.
Oh, that country where there's only three million people
that speak that language, that's three million people.
God cares about every nation.
He said, go teach all nations.
And God cares about people that don't necessarily
speak English.
And God wants us to give the gospel
to everybody in the world,
not just people who speak English
and not just people in the United States.
He wants us to teach all nations.
You may not have that ability,
but you can get people saved that are bilingual.
You can get a Navajo saved that speaks
both English and Navajo.
They can take the gospel to those elderly people
and get them saved and give them a chance
to hear the word of God.
So you see that in Revelation five and seven,
we're gonna get to heaven.
There's gonna be people of all nations,
of all languages, and the Bible says
all tongues will be there.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, thank you so much for your word, dear God,
and for the clear teaching of your word.
Help us not to be sucked in by this false doctrine
of Pentecostalism and tongue-speaking so-called.
But Father, help us to love people.
Help us to love the white man and also to love
the black man and to love the Oriental man.
Help us to love all nations and try to get
the gospel to all nations.
Father, most of us are not able to speak other languages.
Some of us are able to speak other languages.
But we can all do something to help reach the world
with the gospel, whether it's soul-winning here in Phoenix,
in the English language, I know it'll reach,
I've seen it reach out to other nations.
But Father, please just help all of us
to be filled with your spirit and to preach your word,
to win souls, and Father, maybe somebody here tonight
could consider perhaps learning a foreign language
and consider getting the gospel to some group of people
that is maybe overlooked or maybe a group
that hasn't heard the gospel as much as those
who speak English have heard it.
Help us to get on your program and your philosophy
of reaching people in the tongue wherein they were born
and not expecting everyone to learn a second language.
I thank God we don't have to learn a second language
to understand the Bible.
Thank you for giving us the Bible in English
so we don't have to go to Greek and Hebrew
and in a foreign language.
And Jesus' name we pray, amen.
All right, let's go ahead and sing a song before we go.
You know, that's why I just thought of this
while I was praying, but it's funny
because people tell you if you go to the Greek,
you're gonna understand the Bible more.
But Greek's not the language wherein you were born.
And I'll tell you right now, you're never gonna,
even if you're really good at learning languages,
you're never gonna understand it as well
as somebody who was born there, right?
Even if you learn it really well,
somebody who was born there, the native speaker,
is gonna always know it better than you.
And so I don't care how much Greek you learn and Hebrew,
you're never gonna understand it
as much as you understand English.
Because you were born speaking English,
you're always gonna understand the English
better than the Greek and Hebrew.
It's not gonna make you understand it more,
it's gonna make you understand it less
when you're doing it in a foreign language.
You know, I'm gonna stammer and stutter
and speak to people in a foreign language
and get them saved.
But when it comes to understanding God's word,
it's a lot easier in the language I was born in.
So that's why this is my final authority right here.