Doctrinal Training: Miraculous Gifts

I have a hard stop tonight. There's a Part A and a Part B, potentially.

If I don't get to Part B, then so be it. So, in general, what we want to do is, over the course of time, so because they're once a month, it's not going to happen really fast, but over the course of time, what we want to do is to be able to just grow in kind of systematic theology, doctrines.

We'll catch stuff that is just not going to come around very often when it comes to doing sermons.

There will be stuff on eschatology at some point. There are certain books of the

Bible that you have to be there in order to really get in -depth and systematic on that, and we're not going there anytime soon.

So it gives us a chance to do that. It gives us a chance to look deeper into our confession and to see how it guardrails and what is inbounds from this pulpit, which is not the same as what's inbounds in other pulpits.

We are directed by confession, and so if it's outside of that, I have no right to preach it to you guys.

It's really that simple. I can't contradict the 1689, not because it's the Bible, but because it is the ground rules for the statement of beliefs of this church.

And so I'm going to begin not by reading Scripture, which really offends my Baptist sensibilities, but I'm going to read a couple of relevant passages out of our confession, and then we're going to get into Scripture.

So there are two paragraphs in the London Baptist Confession that deal specifically with gifts, one of them directly and one of them by implication.

So I'll do the by implication first. This is out of chapter 5, it's paragraph 3. It says, So means are the way that God accomplishes his purposes, and there are normal and natural means, and those are the things that happen in daily life.

It's the way that God has ordained nature to work. It's the way the laws of nature work. It's the way creation works out.

But God is able at times, I mean, he's able to do anything, but he does at times work outside of those means.

And for us, in our finite understanding, when he works outside of those means, we call that a miracle.

So a miracle is not difficult for God, but a miracle is outside of the normal means by which

God uses. And so we look at that, and it becomes very obvious to us that that is something that God did, okay?

There's a lot of, you know, and in doing that, by separating that stuff out, it is important for us to have the right categories, and that's what tonight is really about.

It's about talking about what's going on with some of the spiritual gifts that some of you have seen or might have seen, and some of you have never seen, and that's what we're going to talk about.

The second part, this is a lengthier one, but I think it's important and it's critical for us to understand where the argument's going tonight, okay?

Chapter 1, paragraph 1. This is a long one, so stick with me. The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience.

Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable, yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and His will which is necessary unto salvation.

Therefore it pleased the Lord at sundry times and in diversified manners to reveal Himself and to declare

His will unto His church, and afterward for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh and the malice of Satan and of the world to commit the same holy unto writing, which makes the

Holy Scriptures to be most necessary, those former ways of God's revealing

His will unto His people now completed. Okay. That last line, very important.

I'll read it again. The Holy Scriptures are the most necessary, comma, those former ways of God's revealing

His will unto His people being now completed. Now the scriptural reference for that would be

Hebrews 1 .1. If you guys don't know that one, it is at various times in the past, let me read it verbatim.

God having spoken long ago to the fathers and in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days spoke to us in His Son, whom

He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds. So the idea is this, and here's where we are going to get into different positions on spiritual gifts and that sort of thing, and that is that God spoke, there is nature.

No man has an excuse. Whether you've ever heard the gospel, read the Bible, or anything like that, there is no excuse before God for your sin because He has made obvious that He exists.

He has made obvious that He is in control of everything. He's made obvious that we have a

Creator that we owe allegiance to. That is what the stars show. It's what all creation shows.

However, because of His grace and His mercy, He has given us revelation through Scripture that shows us the things of faith.

Now that's important. The things of nature can be observed by anyone, and they should be observed and interpreted to point to God.

The things of faith are revealed through Scripture. They are not against nature, but they are not reasoned through nature.

No one reasons that Jesus died on the cross to take substitution for your sins, give you the righteousness of God, and accept you as heirs and inheritors.

No one can reason that from nature. That is a thing that had to be divinely revealed. Now, what does that have to do with gifts?

Well, it has a lot to do with gifts because there are three positions. One of them I'm not going to talk about very much, and that is the charismatic side.

Well, I will a little bit, but we're not going there very long. I think what you're going to do is, if you start to look at time, you're going to be scared for time as I start to talk about cessationism.

And the reason why is because most of the argument, I mean really just most of the argument, period, is between cessationism and continuationism because the charismatic camp doesn't really engage in the argument.

They don't write very much. They, like scholastically, they're not very scholastic.

If you're looking for a bunch of doctrine and theology from charismatic sources, it's very difficult to find.

They're very experience -driven. It gets confusing, and there are tremendous dangers in the charismatic camp, and we're going to talk a little bit about that.

The issue is that what we don't want to do is confuse the categories.

So we have cessationism, and cessation, it's not good branding, but the word basically means ceased, right?

And this is very particular. The cessation position says that the miraculous gifts have ceased.

So that would be tongues, interpretation of tongues, prophecy, healing, apostleship, and apostleship is really important, and then maybe where it gets into works of power, but there's going to be a lot of that in the sermon on Sunday, so I'm not going to talk much about works of power.

I think that gets really misinterpreted by every camp. I don't think that that's really talking about this.

Did I lose it? Yeah, there we go. Okay, so cessationism is based on a pretty simple argument, okay?

Here it is. Now, the problem, as with everything, there's camps within camps, okay?

So let me give you the two camps within cessationism, all right? You have what's called, if we're being nice, we would call it modern cessationism or neo -cessationism.

If we're being mean, we would call it hyper -cessationism, okay? Those words all get thrown around.

Modern cessationism is one of the camps, and the other camp would be historic cessationism.

So if you're reading, most of the reformers would call themselves historic cessationists, okay?

Now, I will explain a little bit later why I'm not that, and in some ways it can be interpreted as a distinction without a difference, so I'll help you make sense of that.

The modern cessation one is really easy to understand in its output. Modern cessationism says those miraculous gifts are over.

They don't happen ever. They're done. K .O. To the extent that you will hear something like, if a

Middle Eastern man has a vision of Christ, and then he goes and reads the scripture, you will hear modern cessationists say stuff like, well, that was a fake vision from a demon, and that's what you heard, okay?

There is no room. They don't happen. You can get impressions, and that's the closest that they get.

Like, maybe you felt something, and you went and did something, and they would call that having an impression or gaining some discernment from something you already knew, and it came to mind, and that's how it goes.

So modern cessationism is really easy to understand how it all works out. It's very clean. There's an appeal to it, because it silos this thing off, and it ends at 80 -70.

This is over. Anybody who's speaking in tongues is lying. Anybody who says they can interpret it is not.

There's no gifts of healing, although God still heals, but he doesn't use people to do that in the miraculous way, and there is no such thing as prophecy, because if you ever make a false prophecy, you should die.

Okay? That's the argument. Now, the argument for modern cessationism and historic cessationism is no different.

They use the same argument, but they get to a slightly different end result. So historic cessationism would say that the signed gifts are not normative, but will still occur at times of unrest or at times of persecution or in the formation of new churches.

So it is a pretty big difference. Modern says gone. Historic says they happen sometimes, but it's not normative, and that would actually be the position of the vast majority of reformers.

Now, here is the argument for cessationism. Number one, and it sounds great.

It is good. Scripture is closed. No further revelation will be given.

It is sufficient. So cessationism builds the cornerstone of its argument on the sufficiency of Scripture in saying there is no need for any of this other stuff because we have the written

Word. They didn't have it in the past, and so when the written Word was closed and the canon was closed, that ended the need for any of the other gifts.

That comes from Hebrews 1 and 2 and various other places. They would say this also.

This is pivotal. The signs and miracles were given to authenticate the apostles.

So this is the purpose of why all these things were happening during the first century when the church was being established.

And it will say, Hebrews 2, 3, and 4, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? That salvation first spoken by the

Lord was confirmed to us by those who heard, God also testifying with them both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the

Holy Spirit according to His own will. So it is without doubt true that there were attesting miracles of the apostles that they were given in the establishment of the church that identified them and set them apart as being the voices of God, many of whom wrote

Scripture, established the churches, and I don't believe that any camp argues against that point, that the signs were attesting signs.

The argument comes on whether they were only attesting signs. So the cessationist would say that these miracles, prophecy, healings, all of these sorts of things, that they were there to authenticate the messenger, and so once the messenger was authenticated, the church was established, and the

Scripture was written, then they ceased because there's no need for them anymore. There's no need for more apostles, capital

A. 2 Corinthians 2, 12, the signs of a true apostle were worked out among you with all perseverance by signs and wonders and miracles.

Okay, there it is, attesting miracles. The third argument for cessationism is that the foundations are laid once, talking about the church, and once the foundations are laid, there is no need for them anymore.

Ephesians 2, 19 -21, so then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and are of God's household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,

Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole building being joined together is growing into a holy sanctuary in the

Lord. All right, so big three, okay, big three, and then we're going to get into some stuff that you will often hear, okay, from cessationist arguments.

So the big three are canons closed, so there's no need for these things anymore. There's no need for revelatory miracles, okay?

Second, that the signs were given to authenticate the apostles, okay, and they're done, so we don't need it anymore.

And third is that they were given to lay the foundation of the church and once the foundation is laid, it's not needed anymore.

Now, you can see how there would be a distinction with historic or classic cessationists, where they would say, well, the foundation was laid in the first century, but there were other foundations that were laid later on as the church spread across the barbarian world, and so you would see an outpouring of these types of gifts as new churches were established in very hostile areas, okay?

So that's where a historic cessationist is going to give a little bit of room for these things can still happen in extraordinary circumstances.

You will hear this from the cessationist camp often, and I will just tell you flat out, some of these are okay and require some work.

Some of them are lazy, okay, really just simply. First one is if a prophecy is given and it is false, then you get the death penalty, okay?

That comes out of Durrani. I'm going to deal with that one a little bit more later. There is another idea in cessationism about early canon versus late canon, talking about the

New Testament. So in a sense, 1 Corinthians is a pretty early letter in the

New Testament, and we're seeing it right now. When you read 1 Corinthians, you're seeing all these gifts going on, right?

And the idea is that the reason you don't see them in the latest letters of the New Testament, namely the pastoral epistles like Timothy and Titus, is because they were already starting to wind down, okay?

And so you're not seeing Timothy being given instructions about how to handle tongues and prophecy in the church because they were winding down.

It's later, it's 10 years later, that sort of thing. The problem with that is,

A, that it's an argument from silence, okay? We don't gain biblical truth from what's not said, okay?

And the second problem with that is that, I mean, Paul basically heals the entire island of Malta well after,

I mean, it's at the very tail end of his ministry. So there is stuff going on. I have even said myself to my shame one time.

I even hate to repeat it, but I will. I said one time, well, if these gifts were still operative, why did

Paul tell Timothy to have wine for his stomach? Why didn't he just heal him? And I will just tell you flat out, that's flippant and ridiculous because even with the apostles, the gifts of healing were not, they were not walking around like witch doctors and calling up ambulance and being able to heal people.

It was always at the Lord's pleasure, right? It's working through a man at the Lord's pleasure. So you will hear lazy arguments today, and we should not engage in lazy arguments on either side, right?

So you'll hear things like about Bethel Church, who I'm not going to speak in favor of, but you will hear things like, well,

I mean, if Bethel's got all these miraculous gifts, why do they have to do doctor ministries?

Why are people wearing glasses in there? And that's just lazy, right? That is not a good argument for gifts ceasing.

It's just a thing people throw at the wall. Here's maybe, this is one that sounds really good, and you'll hear it a lot.

I've heard it from a lot of guys I respect a lot, and it would say this. Miracles were concentrated around Moses, and then around Elijah, and then around Jesus and the apostles.

So most of the miracles of the Bible were concentrated in these three time periods where these three time periods were where God was heralding a messenger who was going to usher in a new time, a new age.

One of the problems with that, one of the obvious problems, is Elijah doesn't really fit that bill.

He wasn't really ushering a new age in during his ministry. Now, for Moses and the apostles, that's obviously the case, but the other problem is it's just not true.

So Gideon famously had miracles during the time of the judges with fire consuming an altar in Judges 6, with fleece signs.

Samson had supernatural strength and was repeatedly empowered by the Spirit miraculously. Samuel sent a thunderstorm after a prayer during his ministry.

Jonathan defeated 20 Philistines after a sign from the Lord. He just ran at the

Philistine camp and slaughtered all of them. Pretty miraculous. Joshua, at one point the sun stopped or the world started spinning.

One of those things happened during that time. We also have the ministries of Daniel and Isaiah and Ezekiel.

So it's just simply not true that the miracles were occurring in these three specific times. I really don't know how the argument got legs, but it does, and you'll hear it a lot.

That's not their best stuff. So let's talk a little bit about, because we're going to focus on prophecy a little bit later, and I told you, don't get worried.

Cessationism is important because most of what I'm going to do with continuationism is basically answering their answers to the arguments.

So here's some problems. Some problems with modern cessationism is that that view ignores many examples of faithful brothers who have either been given prophecies or gifts of healing, notably

John Knox, Martin Luther, and John Wesley, but also Charles Spurgeon.

You'll hear some quotes on Sunday. Charles Spurgeon was said to have healed more people in the 19th century than all the doctors in London.

Another problem with modern cessationism is that missionaries commonly, and in my experience, missionaries universally will report seeing miraculous signs in their evangelistic missions and encounters.

I don't think that I've ever talked to a missionary who doesn't have stories of one or more of these types of miraculous things happening in ministry.

Modern cessationism holds no window for that. Now, classic cessationism does, right?

This view, like I said, it goes contra. Modern cessationism is a thing that has been, it's been pushed by very influential guys, once again, many of whom

I deeply respect, who have big microphones, okay? So this would be like John MacArthur, Phil Johnson, Justin Peters, Protestia, which used to be called

Pulpit and Pen, that would be J .D. Hall, and guys like that, and also the formerly prosperous

G3. These guys were militant modern cessationists. And probably of that list, if you really want to get an idea,

MacArthur did a lot of teaching on this, but also Justin Peters, I mean, it's basically what he does.

His stuff is always looking at this stuff and dealing with it.

And so that's why it came to prominence. The problem with modern cessationism is nobody is that until they've been convinced by these arguments, right?

No one reads the Bible and comes away with the idea that modern cessationism is true. It's just not the way it is.

You can be taught and convinced into it, and I'm not trying to convince you out of it, if that's what you are, but because every

Christian has had moments where things happen where they can't explain, right? So we do know that supernatural things are at work.

We know that demons are at work in the world, that sort of thing. All right, so I already explained the difference between classic and modern cessationism.

Most of the Reformed churches that you're going to find in America are going to be one of these two things.

There are notable exceptions, all right, but modern cessationism, probably less

Reformed churches, that really is more of the MacArthur orbit, and the guys that I read off are almost entirely in the

MacArthur orbit. Justin Peters, Phil Johnson, that sort of thing. The classic argument, though, lifts a lot of these difficulties, right?

Like, Christians have seen stuff. Things have happened. People that you love have had these experiences, and they tell you them, and classic cessationism will say, yeah, okay, that could happen.

I'm not de facto calling you a liar, deceived by a demon, that sort of thing, okay? And I don't make light of that.

It really is an issue with modern cessationism because it kind of goes against what people have seen.

All right, here's the problem, and here's where I'm going to make a difficult argument because the problem, okay, what's easy about modern cessationism and very attractive is it's very easy to understand, right?

Done. Done. Classic cessationism has a lot of those benefits, too, in the sense that it's like, hey, we don't really have to worry about this, right?

Like, you know, something may happen sometime, things get shaken up, and you start to see a lot of that stuff, and our system doesn't all fall apart because, hey, things are happening, and we see it, bless the

Lord, all that stuff. Now, continuationism has a broad spectrum, okay?

Broad, really broad, into where on one end of it, it really doesn't have a whole lot of difference from what we would just call charismatic, and on the other end of it, it has almost no difference from historic cessationism.

Now, by nature, I will tell you what I believe in the pit of my stomach, okay, all the way down.

I would have to call myself a continuationist, and I think the reason is because of the why, okay, the why.

So the classic cessationist will say that these gifts ceased in 70 except in these upheaval times, and the reason why is because that's the only times we see it, okay?

That's basically their argument. They're like, it must have ceased because we don't see it very much anymore.

That's like Tertullian. A lot of ancient church fathers would say that we're not seeing this stuff as much anymore, and so that became the doctrine.

Now, my difference would be that I would say that I don't think that that's a good reason to make a doctrine.

However functionally that may be happening, that's not what we make doctrinal distinctions based off is our experience and what we see.

So what I think is I would have to call myself a continuationist because I do believe that all of the spiritual gifts are operative, and that definitionally makes me a continuationist.

Now, do we jump off into the plunge, okay? So here's the idea. Continuationism says all of the gifts are still operative today, and then the disagreements arise within the camp around the normativity of the gifts, okay?

When should you see them? How often are you going to see them? Which ones do you see? Why do you see them?

That sort of stuff. And so continuationists vary widely. On one end, they'll be like, hey, I think they're still operative because they can happen and they bless the church and there's no reason to believe otherwise from Scripture.

All the way to the other end going, we need to find the one of you that speaks tongues in here because we're crippled without it, right?

So until I think you probably speak tongues, okay? So until you start speaking tongues, our church is fractured, right?

We're not operating with all the gifts. Now, you see how on that end of it, you are actually approaching that more charismatic side of it, which charismatic stuff where the real danger comes in is several fold.

But one of the biggest dangers of charismatic stuff is that they start to mix soteriology with these spiritual gifts.

It's not as much as if you don't have some of these gifts and they uplift some.

It's very much like the church at Corinth, right? There's an emphasis on certain gifts where if these are not happening, then you're just probably not as good a

Christian, if you're a Christian at all. So there will be tremendous pressure in a lot of these environments to use these gifts, which makes people feel a huge amount of social pressure to start saying yabba -dabba -doo, shoppa -socka -bocka -bocka in church, all right?

And the reason why is because I need to be part of the team, okay? I need to show the speaking gifts.

We obviously do not want to go there. So here's the argument for continuationism. I think their first one is the strongest, just like I think the first cessationist argument is the strongest, and that is the close of canon, right?

The argument for continuationism is that a plain reading of Scripture will never lead one to believe the gifts ceased or are inoperative.

It never will, okay? It has to be baked in with experience to get to the ceasing.

Okay, it has to be. Because you cannot tell me, you cannot tell me that if you had never been in church before and you just read

Ephesians 4, 1 Corinthians 12 -14, and Romans 12, you can't tell me that you would think for any reason that any of these gifts stop happening, okay?

You just wouldn't think that. So the best argument for continuationism is that a plain reading of Scripture for sure gives you that take.

Now, I also preached a sermon several weeks ago that said a plain reading of Scripture would tell you you need to cover your head, women.

But then I said the plain reading would also tell you when you're praying and prophesying, you need to cover your head, okay? So there was a different part of that and a different aspect to it.

Okay, so here's the second argument, is that apostles like Peter and Paul are done.

They have thrones, right? The Twelve are done. There's not going to be any more apostles like that ever.

But the word apostle means messenger, ambassador, or herald, or envoy.

And so no one that I've ever heard of in the continuationist camp is arguing for apostolic authority like Peter.

No one in the continuationist camp. Now, that does happen in the charismatic world, right? With the new apostolic reformation and stuff like that where what will happen is you will have people that claim apostolic authority to make decrees, just like the apostles.

I have never read a continuationist who holds to that. The two are much closer than you think.

The argument for continuationism on apostles is that there are other types of apostles, or that word means something different from Peter and Paul and John, okay?

A couple of references. 2 Corinthians 11, 13. This is kind of the negative argument.

It would say this. It says, For such men, these guys coming into the church, these men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.

Now, let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. And I'm not being facetious. This is how I read Scripture, and you try to make sense of difficult stuff, okay?

Do you think it would have been easy to impersonate Peter, John, James, Paul?

Like, would it have been easy to impersonate them? No, I don't think so. So when Paul is warning the church about people who are disguising themselves as apostles of Christ, there is an argument from implication there that there is a different kind of meaning for the word apostle that Paul is using than the apostle that he always calls himself at the start of every letter, right?

He is an apostle of Christ because he's spoken to God, that sort of thing.

Philippians 2, 25, same author. Paul writes, So epaphroditus was a messenger.

Also, the word used there is apostle. And so there is obviously a second meaning of the word apostle that's not an office, and I would say that it's obviously not an office because we're given no qualifications for apostle.

Apostle is better akin to our word for missionary or church planter today. So that is the second argument.

We don't have to fight about apostles. There's a lot of talking past each other between cessationists and continuationists.

We agree on much, much, much more than you would think from reading the polemics.

The third argument is these gifts are all mentioned alongside each other in Scripture all over the place.

We never take time out. The gift of prophecy is interspersed with other gifts when it's mentioned in Ephesians and in Romans.

Prophecy is actually mentioned every time in every list of gifts prophecy is mentioned. 1

Corinthians 12, 28 is one example. God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helps, administrations, various kinds of tongues.

So here's the problem. You're reading passages like that, and what

I was confronted with over and over again is when I read a verse like that, how do

I start highlighting and say, okay, so are the gifts of helps operative in the church?

Nobody's arguing that they're not, right? Is administration operative in the church? Yeah, nobody's arguing they're not, but it's placed right in sequence, just in a series with commas, with ones that make us much more uncomfortable, namely apostles, prophets, miracles, and various kinds of tongues.

And I wish he had said tongues instead of various kinds of tongues because that starts to get really confusing too.

And tongues is the most confusing of all of them. I promise you that. And it's no wonder because Paul talks about the confusion around tongues in the church.

So the problem with continuationism, the problem with continuationism is the governance of it.

And then they have to answer the question. We think we're a faithful church. We want to preach the gospel.

We want to minister to each other and love each other. So we have to answer the question, what does it mean when we don't see these gifts?

So if all the gifts are operative, what does it mean when you don't see them? Are we limping around?

Are we missing something? Because if you take the list to say, well, the church has many members, one body, and every person's given all these gifts, then what

Paul is implying there and what he will say very clearly in 1 Corinthians 12 is he's going to say every part of the body has a function to play.

And he should not despise the other parts of the body that have different functions. And this is all in line with the gifts.

So the implication would be that we're going to have various gifts that are spread around in different measures within members of the body.

And so if the gifts are not happening, what does that mean? And I think a continuationist, I think we have to ask that question.

When we don't see certain ones, if we hold that all of them are operative and we don't see prophecy or tongues or healing or whatever, if we don't see those, what does that mean?

Does it mean we're malnourished? And then we have to ask for continuations. Where does it fit in the local expression?

Where does it fit? What do we do? And so a pitfall of continuationism is that there is lots of confusion about prophecy, there's disagreement on the manifestation of tongues, and there definitely can be a slide into the excesses of charismatic practice.

There very well can be. Now, charismatic, I'll do it really quick. Here's a summary of charismatic.

All of the gifts are not only operative but normative in the church at all times. And that last part is important.

At all times. So the pitfall to charismatics, their argument is, very simply, they're going to talk about Pentecost all the time, they're going to talk about authority, and they're going to be emphasizing the gifts that you're going to read about in 1

Corinthians 12 -14, namely healings, tongues, and prophecies. And they're going to amplify those,

I think, committing the same error that the church at Corinth was committing. And so, by that definition, they should not be doing that.

You should not. If you've seen charismatic churches where you have people blasting out, speaking in tongues with babble, and no one says a single thing about it, they are definitionally out of order right off the bat.

And so it should stop. It should stop. So the pitfalls we've seen, and I don't want to spend a huge amount of time here, because what usually happens is that we don't actually progress the argument, and we just point at those guys, and they're like, those guys are insane.

Look what's going on over there. We don't want any of that. And if you read cessationist arguments, and again,

I'm not throwing the long knives, because there's huge, broad tenets of these people, and I respect and love and have read many of them.

Many, many. From every camp. Except the charismatics, because they don't write very much. But when you read, what you'll see is most of the arguments for cessationism immediately jump to looking at charismatics, and say, see all that?

This is what happens. But then you do have continuations that are going, well, that's not happening here.

Why don't we actually have the real argument? We don't need to talk about pastors jump -kicking people in the throat to heal them, and karate -chopping people, and knocking them down, and blowing gold dust out the vents, and stuff like that.

That's actually building a straw man when Christians who really care about doctrine and Scripture, we're trying to have a conversation over here.

And I think that we shouldn't do that. So the pitfalls of charismatic stuff, if you've not seen it before, it's a lot of out -of -order, wild behavior, confusion.

There's demigod cults of personality. There is the elevation of gifts into soteriology. You're not saved if you don't have them.

There is diminished emphasis on the power of the Word and teaching, and there is doctrinal starvation.

And you will see it. The charismatic church, if they have a fault, if they are characterized by something, it is starvation of doctrine.

There's just not doctrine, because it's experience -fueled. Now, will you see good things and real

Christians in charismatic churches? The answer is absolutely yes. The problem is, they have their weaknesses in the places we're out -of -order.

And that can be to a huge measure, right? But I've got to tell you, over here in the Stodgy Reform Camp, we have our excesses, too, in the ways that we're out -of -order.

And one of them is that we are very proud and we think that we are the be -all, end -all of the church.

And that all of the world's problems in the church would be solved if everybody was just like us. Okay?

I think that's an excess. I think that's a problem. So we don't want to just throw darts.

But I want to point out a couple of things. And this is where the talking pass goes. I hope this doesn't ring on me.

But what will happen is, we have this stuff, and the big deal is on this apostles, right?

So these guys will say, done. Right? These guys will say, yeah, we agree.

Okay? But then these guys will say, yeah, but if you had apostles and they set the foundation, then the

Scripture is always enough. And these guys say, yeah, the Scripture is enough. That's actually not really what the miraculous gifts are doing.

They're not revelatory in the sense that we're trying to appoint a new Moses. What they're doing is, is that God speaks in ways to edify and encourage the church by giving things that are not

Scripture. In fact, it should not be canon. Okay? So I did get done with point

A. I'm a little, I got about 10 minutes. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to just talk about prophecy.

Okay? I'm going to talk about prophecy because this is where it happens. If you want more tongues, we're going to get there. Chapter 14 deals tremendously with tongues.

I think one of the biggest issues we have in this argument is about prophecy, though. It really is about prophecy.

So what will happen is, in the cessationist, there's an idea that there's no prophecy because if you spoke a prophetic word, we should write it down because it's binding, it's canon, right?

God spoke. End of discussion. Here's the issue. That's really not exactly what

Scripture teaches. Okay? So I'm going to give you some examples. I'm going to do it really quick. There are two types of prophets in Scripture.

One of them you thought of immediately, right? There it is. They receive direct revelation that becomes the canon of Scripture.

Three camps definitionally agree that this has ceased. I will tell you all day long, this has ceased.

Our confession demands that I tell you that this type of prophet has ceased. We will never see one again until Jesus comes back to rule the heavens and the earth on his throne.

Okay? Now, having said that, the Charismatics hadn't written a new

Bible either. They just kind of like don't read it very much. Okay? But there's not extra books of the

Bible that have been written by Charismatics. So everyone in Protestantism basically agrees that the canon's closed.

Okay? So we're kind of talking about different things even with the Charismatics. Now I have to prove my point because this one takes a little bit more

Bible work. There are in Scripture lesser prophecies that are more distinct and less universal and therefore they are not canon and furthermore they are potentially fallible because of the fallibility of man, not because God is fallible.

God speaks and he always speaks infallibly. But man doesn't always hear right.

So let me give you a couple of examples. Okay? There are lesser prophecies. Genesis 20 verse 7.

Okay? This is about Abraham. So now return the man's wife, for he is a prophet and he will pray for you and you will live.

This is speaking of Abraham. But if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.

So this is the king of Malachites talking about Abraham and calling him a prophet.

Now the problem is Abraham didn't write any Scripture. Okay? So how did the king know that he was a prophet?

Right? It's because God obviously spoke to him and we don't know everything that Abraham said. Right? And we don't know why the king of the

Malachites thought that Abraham was a prophet. That's my weakest one. Okay? So just put that one in the back of your mind.

First Samuel 10, 10 through 13. And they came to the hill there and behold a group of prophets met him and the

Spirit of God came upon him, speaking of Saul, mightily so that he prophesied among them.

Now it happened that all who knew him previously saw and behold he was prophesying with the prophets. So the people said to one another,

What has happened to the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets? And a man there answered and said,

Now who is their father? Therefore it became a proverb. Is Saul also among the prophets? Then he finished prophesying and came to the high place.

We have no idea what he said. No idea. Okay? So Saul was prophesying.

The Spirit of God rushed on him and Saul gave prophets and he was among a school of prophets and we don't know anything that any of them said.

Okay? So there is room for people to give prophecies that are not Scripture. Not the canon of Scripture.

We're getting into focus. Now we're going to circle around the bullseye. Okay? There's this guy named

Agabus in Scripture. Acts 11. In those days some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch and one of them named

Agabus stood up and indicated by the Spirit that there was going to be a great famine all over the world. And this happened.

Okay? So Agabus recorded that there was going to be a famine. Now, we are given this record because it's important to the narrative of Acts.

But Agabus did not write a book of the Bible. He is reported here because of something that pushed the narrative and it moved what was going on through the story of Acts.

And this is the real one right here. This is the kill shot. In Acts 21, this same guy

Agabus, he gives a prophecy to Paul. He's among four virgin daughters who also prophesied.

Okay? And Agabus comes and he says to Paul, this is what the Holy Spirit says. That would make a lot of us have the heebie -jeebies today.

Okay? This is what the Holy Spirit says. In this way, the Jews at Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the

Gentiles. That's what Agabus tells Paul. If you go to Jerusalem, you're going to be bound by the

Jews and you are going to be delivered into the hands of the Gentiles. Now, here's what actually happened.

Okay? That's what Agabus said. And then here's what happens. Paul goes to Jerusalem and the

Jews from Asia, upon noticing him in the temple, began to throw all the crowd into confusion and they laid hands on him.

So far so good, right? They lay hands on him. Then all the city was stirred and the people rushed together and taking hold of Paul, they dragged him out of the temple.

And immediately the doors were shut. While they were seeking to kill him, a report came to the commander of the

Roman cohort that all Jerusalem was in confusion. At once he took along soldiers and centurions and ran down to them.

And when they saw the commander and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. Then the commander came and took hold of him and ordered him to be bound with two chains.

Okay, so did the Jews bind Paul? No, they did not.

They caused a ruckus and a mob. And then the Romans came, who would be the

Gentiles, right? The Romans came and they bound him. Did the Jews deliver

Paul to the Romans? No, the Romans knew that there was civil unrest and came and they took

Jesus out of there to protect him from the mob. Now, was Agabus a false prophet?

See, that's the question. Because Scripture would not treat it that way. Okay, so this is an instance, this is an instance where Agabus gives a prophecy that materially happens, right?

Like essentially what Agabus was told by the Holy Spirit was bad things are going to happen to you in Jerusalem, Paul.

And Paul is given a chance to show his faith and he says, I'm not going to be turned away. I'm going to go. If I die,

I die. And that's what Paul says, right? The issue is, what if Jesus had prophesied the way

Agabus did? Would we have a problem on our hands? Yeah, we would look at that and be going, who, man, right?

That's a real issue because Jesus is a different kind of prophet, right? Jesus is a prophet like Elijah and like Samuel and like Moses.

Every single thing that Jesus said was going to happen exactly the way he said it, precisely the way he said it.

And it always did. But Agabus is not a false prophet. I don't think he heard this from a demon.

I think that what happened here is that he is a fallible man who got it a little mixed up.

But he definitely wanted to come. But he had had prophecies before that were right. Now, the issue is,

Agabus' prophecy could be tested, couldn't it? We just did test it. We just looked back at it.

So prophecies are not things like, I have a feeling that in three years we will have prosperity.

That's not a prophecy. That can't be confirmed or denied. Who knows what prosperity means? And even three years, that gives you a little specificity.

What you'll hear with abuse of this kind of gift is you'll hear vague feelings. Things like,

I have a sense that life's going to get good for you. What do you do with that?

You can't really do anything with that. Now, this is where it gets into the mix. There is a different type of prophet from Deuteronomy 18.

You've probably heard it several times that if a prophet speaks in the name of Yahweh and the thing does not come about and come true, that is a thing the

Lord has not spoken. He has spoken it presumptuously, and he should be given the death penalty.

This is a type of prophet in Deuteronomy 18 that is like Moses, Samuel, Elijah, and John, which culminated in Jesus.

The reason that prophet is different is because that prophet is mediatorial. This is a prophet who is going to stand between God and the people.

And that's what all of those prophets did. Moses, Samuel, Elijah, John the

Baptist, and Jesus are all that type of prophet. Those types of prophecies are borrowed explicitly by our profession.

We cannot add or subtract from the Word of God, and everything that you think might be a prophecy has to be tested against the truth of the

Word of God, and it also has to be tested for its truth.

Now, I'm going to end with this, and I know it's probably a little bit unsatisfactory, but I've about used up my time.

I think that in summing this all up, modern cessationists will have a problem with me, for sure.

Now, does that mean that we have to hate each other? No. Look, I have a big problem with dispensationalism.

Does that mean that I'm lucking around hating dispensational churches? It does not mean that. Okay? I don't like the doctrine.

I don't see it there. However, I'm not throwing people out of the church. I'm not throwing people out of the kingdom.

I'm not throwing people out of fellowship and partnership. We have decisions to make on this stuff. Modern cessationism is going to see this position, and they're going to see it as loathsome, because what modern cessationists think is that if you open the door, this is where you're going.

Right? You're going to be right here. Okay? Now, what's between this?

Because the classic cessationists and the careful continuationists, they actually agree.

They just have a different reason for getting there. Right? The classic one will say, well, we don't see it.

And the continuationists will also say, well, we don't see it, but we don't really know why.

Okay? And the classic guy will say, well, it's because you've got to have tumultuous times, things happening.

So what should we do? I think that we're going to see it in 1 Corinthians, and the key thing, there's two things that are super important when we're talking about these gifts, whichever side you're on.

And I'm going to take, have I got like a hardcore, I won't point you out. If there's a hardcore modern cessationist in here, this is done, period.

If that's you, I want you to just think in your mind of something right here. Okay? I want you to think of your best friend who you've known your whole life.

Right? You trust them with your life. And they come up to you tomorrow, and they say,

I was praying yesterday, and something happened to my mouth, and some sounds came out of there, and I'm just telling you because I'm not really sure what happened.

And I think it was some kind of like praying in a tongue. And that's never happened before.

Okay, so you're a modern cessationist, and your doctrine has now hit against the grounds of relationship.

Right? Okay. I can tell you what I'm not going to think. I'm not going to think that my best friend who

I've known for 30 years is demon possessed and a liar. Okay? I'm not. So what

I'm going to do is I'm going to take that, and I'm in love, going to go, hmm, okay.

So that's a thing that I've heard now. All right? And I'll probably ask some questions.

Okay? Now, if I'm a continuationist, or even more notably, if I'm a historic cessationist,

I'm probably thinking something like, I wonder if something's about to happen.

Right? Like I wonder if we're coming into one of these times. Okay? Something along those lines.

And so this is principle number one of Corinthians. In fact, Paul stops right in the middle of his discussion on mainly prophecy and tongues.

He starts it in chapter 12, which you're going to see on Sunday. And then he takes a break in the middle of it to write the most beautifully crafted piece of scripture on love that there is.

And what he's doing is rebuking the Corinthians, and he's saying, you guys are so busy trying to be impressive that you've forgotten to love one another.

And so the key to understanding key number one to gifts in the church is that they always have to be subordinate and fall under love.

And the reason for that is because, A, miraculous gifts, if they happen, will make you feel really proud of yourself.

Right? And it will make other people start to want to listen to you. Okay? So if love gets lost, we lose the order and the hierarchy, but we also lose the gatekeeper on falseness.

Right? Because my best friend is not going to lie to me. All right? The person that I love and I trust very much, he's not going to lie to me just so that he can score points.

Okay? The second thing that's in place is that there is order. Now, order goes to the church service about when these things are expressed, but I'm going to leave you with this, and I think it was the key to me of this whole conversation, and that is church discipline.

I don't know how many of you guys have seen it play out right when it goes all the way to the last step, but there's a thing, right?

And it's when people abuse gifts, they have to be told to stop.

And if they won't stop, they have to be brought before the church with evidence presented, and if they don't repent, they get barred from communion for their showboating and for their lying.

And I think that if you're worried about what is the chasm between here and here, right?

And the chasm is church discipline because this can't exist with proper church discipline because it gets stopped in its tracks.

Hey, I just heard you speaking in tongues. No one interpreted that. Shut your mouth, and if you do it again, we're going to bring you up in front of everybody and we're going to chastise you, all right?

Because you're out of bounds. You are sinning against the body when you do that. Hey, you gave me a prophecy and you told me that this was going to happen in three months.

Three months have gone by, so whatever you did, you sinned against me and you tried to speak for the Lord and you didn't have that, so whatever you thought you did, don't do that anymore, okay?

This is the gap between the two because this is a free -for -all, right?

And many of you guys have been in that situation. It's a free -for -all. It's crazy. There's no order to anything, and what happens is the church discipline becomes the apostle at the top.

That's the discipline, right? And that guy's lopping everybody's heads off, or girl, all right? Because it's often females too, all right?

And so what I would tell you is as you're thinking through this, what would

I think, and this is where ultimately I wound up, and I don't mind tipping my hand. Corey has been challenging me on this for years, okay?

And we've had... I don't know. Kelsey, let me appeal to you. How many hours of conversation do you think we've had about gifts?

So many. And I don't say that as like an appeal to authority. What I'm saying is that this has been very slow coming, and what happened was

I think the difference between the historic and the continuations, and what I do, Gary, and what I always say is like I'm going to go where the

Scripture leads, and I think at the end of the day where I go is that the Scripture does not give me reason to believe that the gifts are inoperative.

The Scripture gives me rules and guidelines for how these things are to be handled. It's going to give me definitions for what they do look like when they happen, and how they are tested, and how the fruit of them has happened.

And so what it is on all of us to do is not to necessarily take a position, but to understand something. Because if you guys come in and you give me a prophecy, what

I'm going to do is I'm going to take you seriously because I know you, and I'm going to listen, and we're going to test, okay?

That's what we're going to do. And I think that's where I want to be. I have theories about why we don't see it.

I don't want to give you guys theories tonight. So that's what I got. I know. I went an hour.

I told you an hour. 59 minutes. All right. Done. Done.

One last thing. It's not part of this, so this doesn't count. Okay, it counts.

I do not have a desire to just completely... If something comes up that I think we need in the body of the church, that's going to be the topic that we do.

But also, if there's something that you guys are interested in and would want the deep dive, what I'm going to do is

I'm going to do the deep dive, okay? And if it takes multiple sessions, we can do that. We can spread it out. If there's follow -up questions and that kind of stuff, you can always find me, email me, or we can talk, that sort of thing.

What I'm doing here, there's going to be a lot of this. The reason for this is because I only have a few sermons.

There's just... I was trying to get into this. I knew I couldn't do it on a Sunday morning, and so I wanted to give you guys the positions and some of that.

There will be definitions of these gifts coming in the sermons. So that's what I've got for tonight. Like I said, if there's follow -up stuff,