63 - Church as an Institution, Part 2

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy. This is a ministry of striving for eternity.

We are in our School of Systematic Theology. We are in an introductory class.

This class we're going to be in is book four of the introductory class, which is

God's Program for the Ages, the Doctrine of the Church and the Doctrine of Last Things.

We are going to be looking at doctrines of the church. We're going to start in lesson one with an institution of the church.

We're going to look at the people of the church. We're going to look at the church's government. We're going to look at the ordinances of the church.

Then we'll start looking at things like end times and what is going to be the future.

I encourage you to go to the website at Striving for Eternity. Go to the store. Pick up a syllabus.

It's that way. That way. If you're actually watching on the video, you see we have a picture of the syllabus.

You can go to strivingforeternity .org. Pick up Systematic Theology book four to pick up that syllabus.

They're $25 each. Get that. With that said, we're going to do a short review from last week's class.

Then we'll pick up and continue on. If you have your syllabus, I encourage you to open that up, read it and make sure that you are following along there.

That would be good. All right. We started off last lesson.

This lesson is lesson number one, the church as an institution. What we dealt with was the origin of the church.

We looked at that. As we looked at the origin of church, we talked about the fact that the word church, ecclesia, is a term that we end up seeing in the scriptures to refer to a congregation and assembly.

We looked and took the time to look at how that word became more and more specific throughout history, to be more specified to when we refer to the church, not as a building, but the gathering of God's people.

We talked about the difference between the universal church and the local church. We talked about the function of the church, how that became part of that specifying definition.

We looked at the origin by looking at the word, what the word meant. We looked at the time of the church.

When did it start? We looked at the picture of the church, and when we looked at the picture, we talked about it being a bride.

We talked about it being a body of Christ. The different pictures that we see. Now, we've got a lot of verses to go through.

I don't know if we're going to get through all of them. This is where, if you have a syllabus, I'm just saying, it would be helpful.

It would be really helpful if you have a syllabus, because this is going to be one of those times where we're just not going to get to everything in the syllabus.

I want to encourage you to grab a syllabus. Let's start with the objections, the objectives of the church, the objectives of the church.

This is going to be now where we want to see that all that the church is responsible for may be seen in studying in three types of relationships.

Let's start with the first. The first area, when I'm saying a relationship, I'm talking a relationship between us and God, as you're going to see, us and other people.

When we look at the objective of the church, I believe, let me give you the three things off the top first, and then we'll look into each of them.

I believe that there's three areas that we, and at Striving for Eternity, we say we are training people for eternity to exalt

God, edify and equip the saints, and evangelize the lost.

Those are the three areas. The function of the church, I believe, is the same thing. The function of the church, the objective of the church is to exalt

God, to edify and equip the saints, and to evangelize the lost.

Do you see how that has all three different aspects? First and foremost is God. Our view of God, we lift

Him up, we exalt His name. Second is going to be how we relate to other believers. Well, how do we, well, we edify one another, we equip one another.

And then the third thing is how do we relate to the lost? Well, we evangelize them.

Now, we've literated that so it's easy for you to remember. Exalt God, edify and equip saints, evangelize lost, okay?

So as you look at that, that's basically it. So let's start with to exalt

God, to exalt God. There's a lot of different ways that we exalt

God. Let's just, if we could, let's put the scriptures up and we'll go through them.

First, to praise. To praise God, we see in Acts 2, 47, praising

God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who are being saved.

So what were they doing? They were praising God. So this is one way we exalt God in church. Another way is in 1

Timothy 2, 1 to 2. 1 Timothy 2, 1 to 2.

First of all, then, I urge the supplications and prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving be made for all people, for kings and all who are in the position that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

So there what you see is that we pray. As a church, we should be praying together.

That's an important element of church. And I understand that's a missing element. That's one of those things where,

I don't know about you, did you ever notice like in church, the prayer meeting? Now granted, they do, usually a lot of churches have prayer meetings on Wednesday night and so it's hard getting home from work.

But you know, I've often thought if you had a conference on prayer, no one would show up. You know, you talk end times and it's going to be packed.

You talk prophecy, it's going to be a packed house. But you talk about prayer and it's like, what are they going to do?

It's one of the things that you find at our conferences, the Spreading the Fire conferences, we actually have corporate prayer as part of it.

And I had someone that came to me and said, that's bizarre. Like, I've never been to a conference where they pray corporately as part of the conference.

That just seems weird. Yeah, well, we're weird. What can I say? We actually believe prayer is like an important thing and not just praying beforehand.

We do that, but we also pray at the event. Crazy, crazy idea, isn't it?

All right, proclamation. Proclamation, we see this in 1 Timothy 4 .13,

until I come, devote yourselves to the public reading of Scripture, to the exaltation to teaching.

So there's three things that the church should be devoting itself to, and that's the public reading of Scripture, the exaltation of Scripture, and the teaching.

Next is music. I'm not one of those musically talented people, but Colossians 3, 16 and 17 says,

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

And whatever you do, in word or deed, in everything, in the name of the

Lord Jesus, give thanks to God the Father through him. So here you see not only music, you also see thanksgiving.

That's something the church should be doing. To exalt God, we exalt God by praising him, by praying to him, by proclaiming him through his word, the explanation of it, the teaching of it, through music, through singing songs to him, through thanksgiving.

There's one more that sometimes surprises people, through giving. Yeah, giving. Giving is a way you honor

God, you exalt God. Look what it says in 1 Corinthians 16, 1 through 4. 1

Corinthians 16, 1 through 4. Now, concerning the collection for the saints as I directed the churches in Galatia, so you also are to do.

On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up as they may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when

I come. And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredited by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem.

If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me.

So you end up seeing there that there is giving as an element of the church in giving exaltation to God.

It's one of the ways that we worship God. Now, that's a relationship to God.

The church should be focused on God. Now, there's a reason I put these in this order.

If you don't have the exaltation of God first and foremost as primary importance of the church, if you put people in front of God as the focus in the ministry of the church, you start getting into problems.

What we see a lot in America is that what many churches have done is instead of putting God first, they put the lost first.

And they flip this. So instead of putting exalting God, equipping and edifying the saints, and evangelizing the lost, they say evangelizing the lost, fellowshipping with the saints because they don't really equip and they don't really, you know, edify because exalting

Christ is at the bottom. You see, if our focus is on winning the lost alone, we are going to do things that don't honor

God, and we won't be equipping the saints properly, we won't be edifying the saints properly, and we definitely won't be exalting

God. We must first exalt God. And in that, the rest of it works out.

But if we hold up our outreach to people, we start getting into messed up things, messed up, we start doing dramas instead of preaching.

We replace good, sound theology with things that make people, to reach people's felt needs.

We remove those hymns that have rich theology that made you think and meditate upon God with songs that talk all about me and how

God should be happy that He saved me. And I know I'm doing some broad strokes there.

It's clearly not every church. But it is a serious concern that I have with the churches when they don't put the exaltation of God first, when they put evangelizing the lost as the first and primary thing.

Now, I'm saying that as one who is an evangelist, okay? I am one who goes out regularly and evangelizes.

I don't think anyone could criticize me for not evangelizing and not having a concern for the lost.

But the issue is I have a greater concern for God's honor and glory than someone's salvation.

Did you hear that? That's important. You see, here's why. Because I'm more concerned with exalting

God than evangelizing the lost. I'm more concerned with how God is going to view things than how a lost person is going to view things.

You know, the reason why people water down the gospel is very simple. We don't water down the gospel because we love

Christ. No, we water down the gospel because we want people to love us.

We have to get over ourselves. We're not important. It doesn't matter whether that lost person likes us, loves us, hates us.

It matters whether they know Christ. It matters whether they're going to exalt God for all of eternity.

And so, therefore, I have to be more focused on what God wants me to do than what

I want them to do. I need to focus more on what God wants. God may have me proclaim the gospel to someone so that they're without excuse when they face him on judgment day.

And I have to accept that. I have to deliver that message the way God wants that message delivered.

This is the thing the church needs to do. We need to rise up. The reality is we have a lot of churches that are doing nothing more than being atheist factories.

That's right. Many of these churches are providing a false gospel, a watered down gospel, so that they can try to make a lot of decisions, get a lot of people who claim

Christ, get people that go to church, raise kids that go to church, but those kids don't believe in Christ.

Those youth groups and those junior churches never explaining the gospel, never explaining the theology.

These people go off to college, go off to high school, go off to school, and they hear evolution and they think this is real, this is science, and some

Sunday school teacher was telling Bible stories. And what do they do? They think the Bible's a bunch of stories and the evolution is real.

And they end up believing that stuff. And what ends up happening? These churches are nothing more than atheist factories.

They're producing a bunch of children, false converts, from parents that are false converts, to go out into the world.

And all these kids do when they get older is hate Christ. That's what they do.

It's like the guy who quit smoking. He is the guy that wants everyone to quit smoking, right?

Because he struggled with it and he wants everyone else to. Well, that person that grew up in church, that grows up to hate the church because they think they were deceived, because they, well, actually, in all honesty, they were deceived.

They weren't told the truth. They were told God loves them, but they weren't told how, that he died for them, because they were sinners.

They didn't want to say that part, so it's just God loves you. But the reality is, because they weren't given the full gospel message, they were given this watered down gospel message, they end up hating

Christ, hating church, because their flesh wants to do that anyway, and they want everyone else to as well.

And so what many churches are doing is producing future atheist factories. That's what it is, a future atheist factory.

If you don't start with the exaltation of God, we need to lift God up on high, not ourselves.

We need to be very low in recognizing how low we are compared to God. We need to look at God and realize he's awesome.

He's great. He is, there is no end that we will ever come to in naming the praises of who

God is. We need to exalt God first and foremost, and that, that exaltation of God needs to permeate, needs to work through our entire life.

Everything that we do, everywhere we go, everything we do, how we parent, how we handle our finances, how we handle, do things at church, our marriage, everything, exalting

God needs to come through all of that. It needs to work its way through every area of our life. You want a solution to your marriage?

You're having a rough marriage? Exalt God. Exalt God. If both you and your spouse are both looking to do nothing more than exalt

God in every area of your life, you're going to draw closer together because you're both going to the same source,

God. You're both headed in the same direction. You will come closer together. Now, if you want to exalt man, you want to exalt self, you want to exalt others and not

God, you're not going to draw closer. Okay? All right, I'll get off that soapbox.

All right, so let's look at, yeah, so I say to edify believers.

I've added since working on this, edify and equip believers because that's going to be one of the things that I think is the purpose of the church is the equipping of the saints.

So, and I'm going to go through this kind of quick because I want to spend a little bit of time with spiritual gifts.

Did I just mention the spiritual gift order? Oh, no, I thought,

Andrew, I thought you don't believe in the charismatic gifts. There are other spiritual gifts, by the way, right?

I mean, just, you know, it's funny you mentioned spiritual gifts and people act like, people have like the craziest notions with that.

Let's go, we'll go through it, all right? Don't think I'm going all charismatic. And for you charismatics that say, hey, hey, hey, whoa, you don't believe in tongues?

Yes, I do. I speak English. I believe in tongues. I even speak some Greek and Hebrew and Chinese. So, I speak a lot of different tongues, just saying, but we could disagree on that and still have, still agree on what the function of the church is, right?

So, let's look at edifying the believers. First, we must participate. Kind of hard to be in church and not participate, but let's look.

This one's going to have, this is Acts 2, 42. Acts 2, 42.

And in here, you're going to see several things. If you have your syllabus, you see them, but let's look at Acts 2, verse 42.

Are you there? Okay. So, Acts 2, 42 says, and they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the prayers.

Now, notice these. You have fellowship. You have the idea of, well, the idea of learning or teaching.

You have serving, or the prayers, which we mentioned earlier.

So, as you go through this, you see doctrine, by the way. The apostles' teaching means doctrine, means theology.

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. So, it's not just the, it's the theology and then teaching it, the fellowship.

The breaking of bread is, I think in here, is a fellowship. I don't think it's the Lord's Supper. I think this is one where it's fellowship.

There is, and the reason I say that is because in that text in Acts 2, you see breaking of bread, or sorry, in this one,

I think it's the Lord's Supper. You see that it says that they went from house to house breaking bread, and then this one is breaking bread in the connection of the service.

So, I believe that in that, there is a separation. So, he's saying here, I would also say would be the

Lord's Supper, as well as sharing meals together. Because I think there's both are included.

But Acts 2, you see a lot of the functioning of the church. Acts 4, verses 36 to 37, then

Joseph, who was called by the apostles Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, a

Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him, and he brought money and laid it at the apostles' feet.

So, you see that giving is actually a way. Now, this is different than the giving that we said earlier.

Before, it was exalting God in our giving, is giving God from our resources, that we give it to God by giving it to the church so the church can function to serve others.

But this is actually a case where Barnabas sold what he had so that he could give to others.

The purpose of it was to function to meeting other people's needs, okay, not the church's needs.

So, as we mentioned serving, Acts 6, 1 through 7, we see here what many think is the case of the first deacons.

Now, it was in those days that the disciples were increasing in number. A complaint by the

Hellenists, now let me stop there, the Hellenists are Jewish people that lived in a Greek culture, so they didn't live in, they weren't living in Jerusalem, okay?

So, you had Jews that lived in Jerusalem, Jews that didn't, and these were widows that were in a

Greek culture, they didn't speak Hebrew, and they were being treated differently, okay? The complaint by the Hellenists, the

Greek -speaking Jews, rose up against the Hebrews, so the Hebrew -speaking

Jews, because of their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.

So, here what you have is a case where they would take care of the widows, this is the first welfare system, right?

This was part of Christianity, not the government's role, the government didn't care for the widows, but the church did, and so they would have a daily distribution, no, actually the synagogues did,

I should say, because that's really where this came from. And the Hellenist Jews, the Greek -speaking Jews, were not being cared for within the church.

And the 12 were summoned, the full number of the disciples, and said it is not right that we should give up the preaching of the

Word of God to serve tables, and serving tables means to go out amongst all these people and basically provide their food, get food for them, and bring it to them, and all things like that.

Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the

Spirit and wisdom, whom we will appoint to this day, but we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the

Word, and what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith, and of the

Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parnimus, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch.

These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid hands on them, and the

Word of God continued to increase, and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests came to be obedient to the faith."

So you see there this element of service that was included in how they served one another.

You see that one of the things you see in this is, remember we talked about the picture last class of the church being a body, many members serving in different ways, but all being one body.

Here's where you see it. The apostles said, look, we need to focus on the proclaiming of God's Word.

If we're busy all day taking care of widows and these things, it becomes something that distracts us from what we should be focused on, and we need to be able to instruct you, and therefore we need to get some men, call out seven men to do this work.

Now, those men, whether they were the first deacons, some say yes, some say no, whether they were or not, what it is clear is that these men were serving one another.

They were serving the widows. They were also serving the apostles in freeing the apostles up from having to deal with these things.

Another is praying, Acts 12, 5. So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by who?

The church. So the church prayed with one another. So what we see there is the church participates together by fellowship, by giving, by learning or teaching, by serving, and by praying.

We also have relationships, and you can look at this by all the one another's in the Bible. There's many of them.

We're going to go through them. I'm not going to give you all the scripture verses, okay?

Because there's, well, all right, we have them. All right, so let's go through some of them. First, James 5.

James 5 is confessing faults one to another. Do you see that there? In James 5, 16, therefore confess your sins one to another and pray for one another that you may be healed.

The prayers of a righteous man may avail of much. So you see there, you see confess your sins, confessing faults or sins to one another.

You also see praying for one another. You see in 1

Thessalonians 5 .11, therefore encourage one another and build one another up.

So that build up is edify. So we should be encouraging one another. We should be edifying one another.

Galatians 6 .2, bear one another's burdens. So we should be bearing the burdens of one another.

James 5 .16, we already mentioned praying for one another. Ephesians 4 .32,

we should be kind to one another, tenderhearted. Forgive one another as another, just as Christ forgave you.

So we should be kind to one another, forgive one another. Ephesians 5 .21, submit to one another.

That's in the context, by the way, of wives submitting to their husbands. It's just before that, by the way.

So wives submit to your husbands, husbands love your wives. And what does it say before? We should all be submitting to one another.

So we submit to one another. 1 Peter 4 .10, showing hostility to one another as each has received a gift.

Use it to serve one another as good stewards of God. So we serve one another.

Galatians 5 .13, for you are called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

Then we have in 1 Thessalonians 4 .18, therefore encourage one another with these words.

Then we have 1 Thessalonians 5 .11, we already looked at that one, to encourage one another.

We have to restore one another, is part of Galatians 6 .1 that we looked at.

Brothers, if anyone is caught in a trespass, actually we didn't look at this one, sorry. It was

Galatians 6 .2 we looked at. Galatians 6 .1, brothers, if anyone of you is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in the spirit of gentleness.

Keep watch on yourselves lest you be tempted. So we should be restoring one another. We should be forgiving one another.

Ephesians 4 .32, Colossians 3 .16,

we should be admonishing one another. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing.

We have both, teaching and admonishing one another. Then we have Hebrews 3 .13,

but exalt one another every day. So we should be exalting one another.

And then lastly in Hebrews 10, not neglecting the meeting together as is the habit of some, but encourage one another.

So again, we should encourage. And then the last two is we should be loving one another. 1 Peter 1 .22, having purified your soul by obedience in truth for sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart.

We also see this in 1 John 3 .11. 1

John 3 .11 says this, for this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.

So you see all those one another's. This is the way the church should be relating to one another.

Let me go through them real quick, rapid fire. If you want, you can email us, just email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

If you want that list, I'll be happy to send it to you. academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

I'll send you the whole list. If you don't have the syllabus, that'd be the best way though. Get the syllabus and just look on page four, you know, but here it is.

Here's the list. I'll go rapid fire. Confessing your faults to one another, edify one another, bear one another's burdens, praying for one another, be kind to one another, submit to one another, show hospitality to one another, serve one another, comfort one another, restore one another, forgive one another, admonish one another, teach one another, exhorting one another, loving one another.

Those are the functions. This is how the church should function. Is your church functioning that way?

Well, before you blame others, look in the mirror. I mean, are you functioning that way?

You know what? If you function that way, maybe others will. So this is the way the church should be functioning.

To edify one another, to teach one another, right? The edifying and equipping of the saints. And then another one that I have is, so we have, we edify and equip the saints by participating with one another, by participation, by relationships, and the third is through serving one another.

Okay, through serving. So participation, relationships, serving. Those are the three areas that we edify the church.

Now what I want to do here is focus a bulk of our time in Romans chapter 12.

Before we turn there, you'll also see this in 1 Corinthians 12. It makes it really easy to remember.

1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12. Those are the passages. But let's read Romans 12, three to eight.

We're going to focus there, in those verses. So turn to Romans 12, and it says here,

Romans 12, three to eight. So we thought many are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us. Let us use them.

If prophecy, in proportion to our faith. If service, in our serving.

That one who teaches, in his teaching. The one who exhorts, in his exhortations.

The one who contributes, in generosity. The one who leads, with zeal.

The one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. So what you see there, is you see, and we're going to spend a little bit of time here, but we serve

Christ in a local church when we utilize the spiritual gifts as good stewards of God.

Let's look at what 1 Peter 4 .10 says. 1 Peter 4 .10 says, as we received a gift.

So okay, as each, sorry, as each has received a gift. So this tells us that each,

I believe this is very clear, that every believer, each of us that knows Christ, receives a gift.

We are to use it. We don't hide it. We use it. We're to use it according, to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace.

So here's what you end up seeing here. What is clear, and this is the issue that you see in some of the charismatic churches.

I'm not going to go into, you know, a whole thing on this. I just want to point out some differences because you can't talk about spiritual gifts without addressing this.

When some charismatic churches argue that everyone should have the same gift, everyone should speak in tongues.

What they're doing is saying that everyone should have a single gift. When what Romans, Romans 12 says, and 1

Corinthians 12 says, the emphasis of 1 Corinthians 12 is that we should be loving one another.

That's the primary thing. We're all going to have different gifts. Is everyone an eye? Is everyone an ear? Is everyone a head?

No, every part of the body is different, serves a different function. You saw that in Romans 12. Everyone, everyone.

If you are a believer in Christ, you have a gift to the faith. And this is what it says in Romans, which is why

I like reading that one. To whatever faith you have, serve with that gift. That's the point.

Will you gain more faith? Yes. Will you gain more experience? Yes. But you are to serve the church.

This is not this idea that you sit on the sidelines until you become more spiritual. God has gifted you, if you're a believer, serve.

Because every person serves in a specific way in the church. Everyone has their own function that God has put them in that church to serve.

That's why it's a unique functioning, a unique gifting. God gives each of us a unique amount.

Now, here's the thing with these spiritual gifts. Let me just make this really clear. When you look at the spiritual gifts, every one of us is commanded to teach.

But teaching will come more easily to those who are gifted to teach. Every one of us is commanded to exhort.

But those who are gifted, it's going to come easy, more easy. Every one of us is commanded to give.

But those that are gifted to do so, it's going to come a little bit easier. It's going to be more of a desire.

You have some who are commanded to leave. It's a giftedness, but we're all commanded to do that. We're all commanded to do all of these things.

Okay? Every gift is a command, except for some of those ones that were spiritual gifts that were for a period of time,

I believe. Okay? But all these gifts that are mentioned in this passage are ones that are commanded.

We should all do them, which is that some are going to come easier. Now, there is a difference between a spiritual gift and a talent.

I have a talent to be organized. I did it,

I mean, from youth, everything had to be in the right place. I mean, when I would go, I know, this is pathetic, and you're going to laugh at me.

And I understand that, but it's who I am. When I was like in first grade, I remember all the kids at recess would run out to go play after lunch, and they just dropped their lunch boxes.

Do you guys even know what lunch boxes are anymore? Yeah, we didn't have lunch served to us back in those days.

You brought lunch. If you didn't bring lunch, you didn't eat. You know, now, we had a lunch box. And it bugged me that everyone would drop their lunch box on the ground and run and play because they were just all over the place.

Everyone couldn't wait to play, they just dropped them. I would spend the entire recess organizing all the lunch boxes in size order.

Largest to the left, smallest to the right. Every day, that's what I did. I mean,

I just sat by myself. It had to be organized. My sister hated the fact that everything in my room was always put in the right place because my mother would always be like, why can't you keep your room nice and neat like Andrew, you know?

I had a friend of mine who came over once to help me move, and he's like, even his attic is organized. That is something that's just natural to me.

I had it at birth. That's a talent. Music's not a talent. But there are some people who are musically inclined.

They've had it all their life. That's a talent. A talent is something you're born with. A spiritual gift is something you're born again with.

It's something you get when you're born again, when you're regenerated. I did not have a desire to teach, far from it, until I got saved.

When I got saved, I had a desire to teach others the things that I was learning. That is a spiritual gift.

I didn't have it before. I had it at rebirth. Okay? So let's go through these kind of quickly, give some definitions of the ones listed, and then we'll get into the last point.

All right, so prophecy. And so I'm going to give some of my definitions here. Prophecy is the idea of...

And if you have a syllabus, by the way, you can look in the syllabus. It's all here. So that's one of the advantages of the syllabus.

You have all the notes right there. Prophecy, the idea of forth telling the Word of God, whether it is scripture already revealed or details of the future revelation.

Since we have a completed revelation, the gift is in connection with being able to stand before various groups of people and communicating the truth to them.

So there was a forth telling and a foretelling. Foretelling was telling the future. I don't believe we do that anymore, but I do believe we foretell.

We tell what God's Word has already said. All right? Ministry. The ability to do behind -the -scenes work.

This is the service, behind -the -scenes functions without a desire toward leadership, without a desire being seen, just wanting to be in the backgrounds.

This was me. I prefer... Now, this one's one where I don't know if this was a gifting or a talent.

I just like to serve kind of behind the scenes. I just always preferred being behind the scenes and organizing things for others.

My pastor used to call me Radar O'Malley, if those of you who know the reference to MASH, it was a

TV series. And Radar was this guy that always had organized everything for the colonel, had everything in order, took care of everything so that colonel never had to worry about everything.

This guy was just always behind the scenes. That was what my pastor called me because that was who I was. I was behind the scenes.

I was the guy that was cleaning the toilets and putting the hymnals out because we rented another seven -day

Adventist building. So, we would take all their stuff away and put all our stuff out. I enjoyed getting up early and going to church and doing that.

That's behind -the -scenes type of stuff. This gift is connected with the office of the deacon.

Why do I say that? Because the word for service is the same word used here, deaconess. Teaching. Teaching is the ability to present in clear fashion the meaning of the

Word of God. This gift is required of a pastor. Yet, the pastor is not the only one who should be gifted in the body with this gift.

So, teaching is not the ability to stand up and proclaim. That's the prophecy. To just stand up and declare what

God said. When we get out on a street corner and evangelize, we're proclaiming what God said.

We're prophesying. But that doesn't mean people are understanding it. The gift of teaching is more than just the ability to communicate it, to speak it.

It's the idea of speaking in such a way that people understand. That people can comprehend what you're saying.

That's a little harder. I mean, anyone can get up there and speak from ignorance. And, you know, when people say,

Wow, that was really deep. That was deep. Man, that guy was just so deep. You know what deep means to you typically? I had no idea what he said.

You know why most people think that someone's deep? The person speaking doesn't know what they said.

I like what Spurgeon said. Spurgeon spoke in the common language.

So what was said of Spurgeon was he was able to communicate in such a way that anyone can understand. And that's the goal.

One of the things that I am thrilled with these classes, this academy, is the fact we,

I know that we have pastors who go through these classes and learn things. And they contact us and they encourage us with emails letting us know how much these classes have helped them, not just in their hermeneutics, which is how to interpret the

Bible, but in their theology, things that help them to think through things. We are, we're glad.

I mean, that's the goal. The goal of these classes was to reach out really into all the world, other parts of the world where they don't have seminaries, and give them a level of training so that they can handle

God's Word and communicate it to the people in their churches. But what really, for me, what really gives me joy in my heart when

I hear people that use these classes for their homeschoolers, I just had a couple of weeks ago a father who emailed me,

I actually texted me because he's a personal friend, and he ended up texting me and saying, you know, my son was asking me about the

Trinity. And I was, at his level, I was having a hard time explaining to him how to communicate the

Trinity to him. So what I did was I went to, I think he said it was lesson eight, I forget which lesson it is, but he went to the lesson that we have in the systematic theology classes on the

Trinity, and he just played it for his eight -year -old. And he asked his eight -year -old afterwards, and he said his eight -year -old understood the

Trinity after watching these classes. To me, that gives me greater joy than the pastors.

Why? Speaking to adults, communicating to adults is easier because I can use illustrations that children wouldn't understand.

I can use illustrations that someone's not going to comprehend. I can use words they're not going to know.

Being deep, in other words, being misunderstood or not understood is easy. You just use really highfalutin words.

Those are words that are really big and over people's heads. But it sounds like a neat word that people don't understand, and you hear words that are highfalutin, and they don't understand the meaning.

But if I say words that are hard to understand, you understand that. See, that's the difference.

It's very easy to talk over people if you have the vocabulary. But what's really important is being able to communicate in such a way that people understand.

Speaking to children is harder because you lose their attention like that. That's why I'm so thrilled that these classes are being used for homeschoolers because people tell us how their junior high kids, their high school students are paying attention.

I think it's because my quirky humor, right? I don't know what it is. But what the parents are telling us is that the kids are understanding.

They're paying attention and they're understanding. I think a lot of that is because are we talking deep theological issues?

Yes. But we don't have to use the big words. We could bring it down a notch in words that we all understand.

That's what Spurgeon did. That's why everyone loves Spurgeon because people could understand him when he spoke the deep theology.

But he did it in such a way that people can understand. That's the gift of teaching. It's not being seen by people so everyone can see, oh, look at that guy.

He really knows his stuff. Teachers are not there to impress you. Someone that has a gift of teaching has to communicate that message.

In the church that I was at years ago, when people would ask me, I feel

I have the gift of teaching. You know what we used to do? Put them in with the kids. Oh, no, no, no. I want to teach adults.

First, teach the kids. If you can't teach the kids, you can't teach adults because the kids are harder. Children, if you don't have a gift of teaching, the children lose their attention span really quick.

You got to be able to communicate that lesson, keep their attention. But you have to know the material so that you can make it down to a level to be understood.

If you don't know your material, you're not going to communicate that material in a way that you understand. You see it sometimes, feel preached.

And there's something you could tell when they don't understand what they're teaching because you're not understanding it and they're not being coherent.

They're trying to figure it out themselves. All right. So teaching, I spent way too much time on that. Sorry. Exaltation, the ability to confront with truth those who need confronting.

This may also include giving direction as well. Giving, the ability to give to the ministry of the church or to those in need.

It is not dependent upon one's wealth. OK, it doesn't matter how much you have.

You could have a heart's desire to give to others. And it doesn't always have to be money. You could be giving of time, of other resources.

It's a matter of the heart, a surrendering of what you have to the

Lord. Ruling or leading, the ability to lead gently, to lead others in a servant mannerhood and direct ministry in the church.

The gift is in connection with the office of a pastor who has to be an overseer.

This is the idea of overseeing, but it's not exclusively to the pastor.

There's going to be people that have this gift and should be leading in church that may not be pastors. You might have women leading women's ministry.

You might have men leading different ministries in the church, but they're not pastors. Mercy is the last one.

The ability to forgive and express the same type of mercy of our Lord. So the idea of mercy, I think mercy and exhortation are, it's good to have both of them.

I find that people either have one or the other or stronger one, but we need to have all and we need to be doing all.

So I said that through serving, we also have this idea of discovering.

How do we discover these gifts? I want to know this, and I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but this is important.

People ask the question, how do I know what my spiritual gifts are? Here are some guidelines for realizing your spiritual gifts.

I want to include this in this so that you know how to determine what are your spiritual gifts, because we're all going to be different.

We all have different variations of these gifts and different levels, and that's what makes us unique to the body of Christ that he's put us in.

So first, read through this list that I gave you. Read it, pray about it, analyze them.

Think about which activities come more natural to you. Which activities didn't come natural before you were saved, but come more natural after you got saved?

Which ones are you naturally, have always been prone to? So I'm prone to the idea of organizing and ruling and things like that.

That's just something I've always done, but that's not something that I got when

I got saved. No, teaching was something that I, when I got saved. So that would be a difference. So analyze these things. Ask other godly

Christians that know you well what they think, what they think your gifts are. Once you have some ideas, ask the leadership of the church how you could use your gifts.

In other words, practice, try, you know, try all of them. There are now also some online things you could do.

There's spiritual gifts tests that you could take, and they're somewhat accurate a lot of times, but they're, again, that's a way of helping you.

And then lastly, as you utilize your gift in the church, ask people to evaluate your fruitfulness of them as a way to confirm whether you're gifted that way.

I never sought to teach. It was that others kind of put me in that position and said that I'm equipped in that way.

And I never really saw that in myself. It wasn't something I really thought I should be doing, but others had saw that, and that's where I started to see this.

So let's wrap up real quick on the last of these three, and that is evangelizing the lost. Evangelizing the lost.

Let's look at two verses of scripture. First, we want to talk in 1 Thessalonians 1, 9 to 10.

1 Thessalonians 1, 9 to 10, about a godly testimony. This is one way we evangelize.

For they themselves report concerning us the kind reception we had among you, and how you turned from God to God from idols to serve the living and true

God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead,

Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come. So this is the good report concerning us.

This is the idea that you see there of this idea of a good testimony.

That is one way that we speak. Now, I understand there's the idea of, you know, preach the gospel and sometimes use words.

The idea there is really, it's not that we avoid the words. That's not what it meant in the origin.

The idea is that if your words don't match your actions, people aren't going to take you seriously.

They're not going to believe the message because you undermine the message with your testimony. Quick example of this.

I remember we had an eight -year -old kid and a ten -year -old kid. What I used to do with my, well, junior high and younger even,

I used to take the kids out evangelizing. We'd go to the mall and we'd evangelize. It helped their spiritual growth tremendously because they started to realize that they needed to have a good testimony if they're going to share the gospel.

They started sharing the gospel with their classmates. That started affecting the way they behaved in class because they understood the need for the purity.

Well, we were in the mall once and we had a ten -year -old boy and he's trying to evangelize some kids that came up.

And they said, wait a minute, are you with him? And they pointed to an eight -year -old kid. It turned out to be this guy's cousin. And they said, yeah.

They said, well, we're not going to believe you. And he's like, well, why? That kid has the foulest mouth in school.

If he's a Christian, I don't want anything to do with Christianity. And what ended up happening is this ten -year -old went to his cousin and said, dude, you have to clean up your mouth in school because your mouth is affecting my testimony.

You're affecting my ability to share the gospel because people don't want to listen to me. And it is what a ten -year -old said.

If you're not going to clean up your mouth, you really shouldn't be out here evangelizing with us. A ten -year -old understands the importance of having a godly testimony when sharing the gospel.

But it's not just about having a good testimony. We also have to have words. Acts 8 .35,

And Philip opened his mouth, beginning with this scripture, told him all the good news.

It is not just about a godly testimony, but the spoken testimony as well.

That's why I like some people who change the phrase to, you know,

I just lost it. I can't believe to preach the gospel and sometimes use words.

Some people say open -air evangelists use the thing, preach the gospel and sometimes use amplification.

All right, so we went a little bit longer. But some important things really quick. If you have questions about this or anything else, before you go, make note.

All right, don't tune out quick. I got something to tell you. But if you have questions about this lesson or any others, email us at academyatstrivingforeturning .org.

You can pick up the syllabus or anything else at the store, store .strivingforreturning .org.

You can pick up my book there, What Do They Believe? Also, when you're on the site, you can go and you can get the

Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminar. You can host one of those. Real quick, there will be no class next week.

No class next week. Possibly no class the rest of this month if you're watching live.

I will be going out to the Ohio Fire next week. Ohio Fire next week is, if you're watching live,

April 8th and 9th, 2016. Phil Johnson, Thomas White will be preaching. Immediately following that,

I will be on an apologetics cruise. I will be doing that cruise with Matt Slick from CARM.

CARM is hosting it with Mormon Research Ministry. I will be delivering eight messages on this one -week cruise.

We come back late Sunday night. I don't know what condition I'll be in on Monday, but I plan to do so no class next week because I will be on the cruise of the

Ohio Fire. I'll be on the cruise. I don't know if I can get wireless on the cruise or cellular, but the following week, which will be the 18th of April, I will probably do a

Q &A. The following week, I will have to go out to Ohio and again, I come back late, so I will probably do a

Q &A then as well, if anything. We'll do some Google Hangouts for the next couple of weeks.

If you're thinking of your questions, be prepared to join us live, eight o 'clock, Monday nights, not next week, but the next two weeks.