Book of Romans - Unity in the Church | Understanding Spiritual Gifts, Pt. 1 (10/03/2021)

All right, first thing I want to say before we get started, remember how we had an online fellowship a while back?

Brian Christopher led that for us, and he's willing to continue to do that, but I'm thinking we should plan one.

And I was looking at either Tuesday the 12th or the 19th. Both are

Tuesday nights. Anyone have a problem with the 12th? You could be online with us, and it's kind of fun.

He has some Bible games, different things we do, and then maybe we have a question -and -answer time for Bible questions and stuff like that, and it gives our online folks a chance to visit with us.

So we need you to be on there, too, and put your makeup on so you can turn your picture on so we can see you.

A lot of people don't do that, but why have it if we can't see each other, right? I'll have my makeup on, so make sure you have yours on, all right?

So how about the 12th? Anyone want to vote against the 12th? All right.

All in favor say aye. All right. All right, Brian. If you can hear me, we're going to pick the 12th.

That's a Tuesday night. Let me see if I can make that happen here.

Technology is awesome. There it is. 8 p .m.

That way it's not too early for the folks on the East Coast, and it's not terribly late for those on the

West Coast, so that'll work. All right. 8 p .m. We got it. What?

Did I say it backwards? It's not too late on the East Coast, and not too early on the West Coast. Right. Yeah. No, surely not.

They got the idea. Okay. So on the West Coast, we don't want it to be, like, earlier than 6, is that right?

So that'll work. East Coast, later than 9. No later than 9. Okay. Thanks, Dave. I thought

I said it right. Okay. Well, we're going to get started here, and I'm excited about this.

It's my favorite topic today in the whole Bible. It just happens to be right in the middle of Romans chapter 12, where we are.

I'm kidding about that a little bit, but my two daughters, Katie and Jenny, think this has always been my favorite topic, part of what we're talking about today.

So I don't think it is, but they think it is. But it is important, and you'll see when we get to it.

But basically, Romans chapter 12, I think the big idea is unity in the church.

How do you have a local church where you don't have a lot of fighting going on, like arguing over the color of the carpet? That's my favorite topic to argue about.

Things like that. All right. So that's kind of the overall idea.

And we've already talked about five steps to unity in the church. One of them popped up there early, didn't it?

That's funny. I don't know how that happened. So the first step was unity, have unity by being a people of prayer, and then have unity by walking in God's will.

How do you do that? You read the scripture. That's his reveal will, and you pray, and then you just take steps, and you're walking into his will, because that's called his secret will.

Third step, contemplate God's awesome nature and being. And we spent a lot of time on that one.

And that is one of the greatest things that we can do, is when you really contemplate the things in the Bible that God says about himself, and you figure out that you can't figure him out, like my favorite one is, how did he do that?

How did he exist when no one made him? How is he just there? And then the worst thought is, well, what if he hadn't been able to do that?

You wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be here. And there'd be no nothing. Bad grammar, good preaching, because he invented the idea of nothingness.

So you wouldn't even have that. Think about that. That's long enough. Don't think about that long.

All right. And the fourth step was get unconformed to the world by getting your brain transformed, because your mind is full of worldly stuff.

So we had to get in the word more, read the Bible more, contemplate the Bible, think about it more, and have our minds changed.

Of course, our new man doesn't have a problem with that, but the old man still does, right? And your brain is part of the old man.

So you got to control your mind. You got to think about what you're thinking about when you're a Christian and control it.

And the best verse I know is the one where it says, we have the mind of Christ. So when you get a thought that you know is not from him, just pray and say,

Lord, give me your mind to think about this like you would right now, and the bad thought will vanish, and you need to do that many times every day.

And then the fifth step was understand your place, your calling, and your measure of faith.

And we talked about that last time. So I'm kind of, I'm, I'm expanding that fifth one a little bit.

And as we expand it from the scripture actually expands it, not me, but I'm just following the scripture.

It's going to expand that fifth idea. It'll actually bring us to a sixth thought after that.

So that's kind of where we're headed. So now that fifth thought about understanding your place, it kind of has to do with this.

It talks about that the church is a body. It's like, it uses the human body as example, the human body has many parts, but they're all part of the same body.

And God says, that's how the church is. So like you may be, uh, an eyeball and you think you're really more important than your left toe until you hit the left toe with a hammer and then your eyeball hurts, everything hurts.

Right? So that's kind of the concept. So what we do tend to do in the church is you think your gift is more important than the other guy's gift.

And that since he doesn't have what you can do, he's weaker Christian. And you start talking about him and gossiping.

I don't mean you, but in the church. The especially bigger churches gossip.

It's just goes around everybody everywhere. And what it's about is like that guy over there just can't do what I'm doing. And this is what this chapter says.

Don't be like that. Realize that everyone is important and they all have different gifts because God gave us all different gifts and even different measure of faith.

See that right at the bottom. This passage, if you remember from last week, and if you weren't here, you can always go out to our archives at part metals, church .com

you'll find last week sermon, but it talks about how God gives us all a different measure of faith.

And Jesus is the only one that has faith without measure. All of us have it by measure, which means we have different amounts of faith on purpose because God gives us the faith.

We need to do our job, you see, and we shouldn't pick on the other person because he doesn't have that faith. Is that that's what the whole thing is talking about with regard to unity.

So that kind of reviews that a little bit, and this is that, sorry, that was fast. How do we go back?

All right. So verse three, chapter 12, verse three is kind of where we got all that stuff. Uh, don't think more highly of yourself than you ought.

Uh, but Eric, you know, God's dealt with every man, a measure of faith. So don't, don't get prideful and think you're higher than everybody else.

That's, that's what God is saying. And when we get that, it leads to better unity in the church.

Now, when we go move on down through scripture now, Verses five through seven, and we, we kind of covered part of this last week, and this is where I'm going to pick it up.

So we being many it's chapter 12, Romans verse five, we being many are one body in Christ and everyone members, one of another.

So not only is important to understand we have different gifts, but we're connected. The Holy spirit connects all of us to each other spiritually and to Jesus and to the father.

We're all connected all the time. And we need to keep that in mind because anytime one of us gets in the flesh and sins, it affects all of us.

It affects this local church makes us weaker. And yet we all sin. Don't we?

And the Bible says that God put this treasure in earthen vessels so that he would get the glory. So he did it that way on purpose.

He knows we're not perfect. He knows we tend to, you know, have certain problems.

We're all have, those are different to gifts are different, but so are the problems, right? And yet God put us here and wants us to struggle with that.

He wants us to try to get the place where sin habits are not. We're not bound by them anymore.

The apostle Paul was the most amazing Christian to me that ever lived because he said, you know, he said,

I've got these, uh, he said for one thing, we're not under the law. So all things are lawful for me to do now.

That's something the world doesn't know. The church sure doesn't know it nowadays. All churches tend toward legalism, but Paul said, all things are lawful for me because I'm not under the law.

But he said, yet not all things are expedient. So not all things are good for me to do, but they're all lawful.

But you know what he said right after that, he said something like this, but I won't be made captive to any of them. So think about that.

Like you got a sin habit. Paul said, okay, if I noticed that that's a habit, I will get rid of it. Cause I'm not going to let anything be, make me a captive other than Jesus Christ.

Isn't that cool? So we're, you know, we have this freedom, but we're supposed to work on it. Well, um, so everything we do affects everyone else is the point there.

Having been gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us. We're all different. We have different amounts of grace.

We have different amounts of faith on purpose because God made us that way. It doesn't mean we're not supposed to all be growing though.

We should have more of grace like two years from now than we do now. But as far as where you sit right here today, you're right where you're supposed to be.

As brother Otis would say, you're the perfect peach, even though that peach isn't ready for harvest. The farmer says it's perfect.

So you're right where you're supposed to be, but you're not where you're going to be. All right. Uh, I think

I could be a mega church preacher with little sayings like that. I need to come up with more of those in less Bible. Don't you think?

Yeah, that would do it. All right. So now see there where it says, having been gifts differing.

According to the grace, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith. So last time we started getting into these and we just got started right out of time.

So that's kind of where we are today. The first gift that's listed is prophecy. And that requires a lot of study today because people misunderstand this all over the globe.

And they have, you can go back, you know, to 300 AD. Between three and 400

AD. At that point, they were pretty clear on it. Oddly enough, you study her church history.

You learn lots of neat stuff. Church was clear on it. And then from there until now, you went through the dark ages from there up to the 1600s.

Right. It got all muddled up there because they wouldn't let people read Bibles because the Roman Catholics were in charge pretty much of the world.

They didn't like people reading the Bible. So since the average man could not read the Bible, the priest just interpreted and said, well, here's what it really means.

The Jews did the same thing for 300 years before Jesus Christ was born. And that's why the Jew missed their

Messiah because their teachers were saying, well, you don't need the scripture. Just let me tell you what I think it means. That's called a paraphrase.

Now here's a good rabbit trail stick with the King James version in English, because many of the other versions are paraphrases and you don't want that.

And they also come from the wrong Greek. You don't want that. I could prove it, but it took me two years to learn it.

Now I don't have two years to prove it to you today. So just think about it, but you don't want to paraphrase.

You want to know what the scripture actually says and let the Holy spirit teach you that not what some man thinks it means, right?

In fact, if I tell you something, I think it means you need to go check it out when you get home. You don't need to trust me.

You need to check it out when you get home. And the only place of authority that God has given you in this world is the

Bible, this thing right here. I know it's on your phone, but sometimes I miss this.

Any of you guys ever miss this, but I'm usually using it on my phone. Cause I can look up the Greek. I can do all that stuff in the push of a button, a little harder work with this, but this right here is the only thing in this world is perfect.

There's no other thing. That's perfect. Everything's imperfect because of the fall, except for that book.

Now think about that. So now we start talking about this first gift called prophecy. It's going to lift.

It's going to list seven gifts in this passage we're in. This is the first one, but first let's talk about what gifts means.

This word is charisma. How many of you think of an English word? It sounds kind of like that.

Charismatic charisma. What does charisma means? It means you've got a lot of enthusiasm and energy.

How many of you know, dr Myron golden never heard him preach. God, he's kind of enthusiastic.

And what most people don't know is I taught him everything. He knows I was his mentor. So all that enthusiasm, it, it came from me actually, but that's called charisma.

All right. And, uh, the Greek word means spiritual endowment or a miraculous facility or faculty.

And, um, what that means is, let me hit the button one more time. It is not referring to a natural talent or ability.

Like you may learn how to be a really good football player or tennis player, or better yet golfer.

You kind of learn that by practicing again and again and getting better at it. It's not talking about that.

You might be really good at business. You might be good at sewing. You might be good at whatever. Right.

It's not talking about that. These gifts are talking about something that God himself through Jesus Christ and the

Holy spirit literally gave you that you didn't, you weren't born with. Now you were ordained to have it.

Even in your mother's womb, God already knew you were going to have it because he's going to give it to you, but you weren't born with it.

And in a physical sense, it was a gift that was given to you at a point in either at your salvation or after it.

And you can be given more grace, your whole life. As you keep growing, you can, you can get more spiritual gifts.

The Bible even says you can pray for better gifts. Like you may have a gift you don't like. You can pray for a better gift.

All right. Now the gift that I, I want is prophecy. Now you're gonna laugh at that. I know, but I'll explain it as we go, but that's the gift that I think

God's actually given me that gift. And, um, and I like it because the

Bible indicates it's the best gift. So I'm very special to the Lord. So the rest of you have other gifts that are important.

You're part of the body. You're like the toe on the eyeball. No, I'm kidding. Now, um, there, there's also a gift called the gift of teaching.

It's close to the gift of prophecy, brother bill. And you have that one and, um, slightly different.

Um, you'll see, as we go, as we define what these terms are in the Greek, but some of you have all kinds of different gifts, there's seven mentioned in this passion, but this is not the only place.

There are other gifts. If you take all the areas in the new Testament, where it talks about gifts, put them all together.

Then you'd have all the gifts that God discussed, but that won't be all the gifts because he didn't discuss them all.

He just tells us about a bunch of them. Doesn't mean there's not other gifts he could give you that aren't listed in scripture, perhaps.

All right. So charisma is something God gives you spiritually that you can then do better than other people can do it.

You can do it to the amount of goodness that God wants you to be able to do it. Does that make sense? But you don't criticize someone who doesn't do it as well because he has the amount of faith and grace

God wanted him or her to have. Right. You see the point. Okay. So that's the context.

All this is found in. All right. Now that shouldn't, no, I guess we are still reviewing a little bit. I like reviewing better than preaching.

Y 'all ever figure that out. Prophecy. That was the first one. And, uh, if you remember last time, prophecy has two distinct meanings in the

Bible and yet one Greek word. Now I know there are many forms of the word, depending on how you rather you, how you use it, how you use the word in the grammar, but it's the same root word.

So there's one, let's just say there's just one word for it, but it can mean at least two distinctly different separate things.

And the only way you can tell which one it is is by the context. Everybody know what context means stuff around it.

Anytime you pull out a verse and you hear preachers pull a verse out, you should read four chapters before it, four chapters after it, you should read five books before five books after you need to find out what is the context it's found in, because that's how

God wrote the Bible. It's more like he wrote it more like a letter. So you can't just pull one little phrase out and not know what the person's talking about.

You might get it wrong. So we've got to take everything in context. So the first definition of prophecy, and I'm putting it in the order of importance and the way it's used the most often in the new

Testament. Now, if you included the old Testament, it'd obviously be a Hebrew word. So I'm just talking about the

Greek word right there. Profitea, profitea, talking about that Greek word, the most important use of it in the new

Testament is number one to say, or to speak or to specifically to speak forth

God's word. That's why I said, I like my gift. I have the gift of prophecy.

God's made me able to speak about God's word. That's what the word means. Now, let me ask you an honest question in the world that we live in today, with everything you've heard about religion, all the things you see on TV and all the different churches and all the different weird preachers, they'll do everything to slap you in the forehead or whatever they're going to do.

What is the word prophecy? Just what do you picture when you hear that word though? Do you, does that word, like, if I were to say,

I'm going to, I have the gift of speaking forth God's word. And I say that, or I come over here and I say,

I'm a prophet. I have the gift of prophecy. What do you picture? When I say I have the gift of prophecy,

I can tell you stuff. God told me that he didn't tell you. Right. And you couldn't possibly know it without me.

Right. Isn't that what you picture? Uh, don't you think it also includes like some, like, why would you believe me if I couldn't do some miraculous stuff?

Like if I say, okay, all right, Jeannie we're online. Okay. And I say,

I'm a prophet, but you should at least come back and say, okay, prove it. Yeah.

Right. So, okay. Um, I'm in Cincinnati. You're out here near course, kind of Texas.

See that cup on your table. I'm going to make it move from Cincinnati. And I think it's up, moves across and crashes into the sink.

What are you going to believe about me? No, don't say it. Cause I know what you'll believe. You believe I'm demonic. That's what she'll believe.

And she'll be absolutely correct. But, but in the old Testament, when we had stuff like that happening,

God would give them a supernatural ability to do things like Moses could cast his rod on the ground and turns into a serpent.

Now I would never do this, but only a prophet would he reached down and picked the snake up, turns back into a rod.

That'd be the hard part for me. Now, if I can do that, would you then think maybe if I said, Hey, God told me this, you need to hear it, that you might think

I'm right. So those gifts are called sign S I G H N sign gifts by theologians.

It's a gift that authenticates the speaker. Like if I claim to be an apostle or a prophet,

God must then authenticate that by letting me do things you can't do. Does that make sense?

Now in Hebrews chapter one, verses one through three in the new Testament, you will find that God himself, the

Holy spirit wrote the whole Bible. God himself said, I don't do that anymore. He said,

I used to do it a four time in many manners and many different ways. But in these last days, it implies the word, but implies that change.

Doesn't it? Don't you think that's what the word, but means that changed, but in the last days, he's speaking through his son.

That's the written word. That's the Canon. That's the entire Bible, both old and new Testament.

I got to fix my tape. It's coming on. I have spoken through his son.

That's the written word of God. And that could take some time to prove, which I could do, but it's beyond the scope of today's message.

But it's, it's referring to the written word. So in the old Testament time, and you have to remember,

Jesus lived in the old Testament, even though that's in the new Testament, I know that's weird, but the recording of his life is in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and, and yet the church didn't start until acts until Pentecost.

So Jesus was already in heaven by then. Right? So the new Testament, Jesus lived in the old

Testament. You have to remember that. All right. So there were still prophets when

Jesus was alive, there were actually still prophets and I'm talking about not this, but there's a second definition.

I guess I should go ahead and get to it. Shouldn't to predict the future.

So there's your two definitions. All right. You can only tell by the context. Uh, but let me go back one.

But, uh, in the early church for about 150 years after Jesus died and went to heaven, there were still prophets in, in the old

Testament sense, they could predict the future. They, God could reveal stuff to them that they wouldn't, the church wouldn't have known if God hadn't.

That type of prophecy still existed for roughly 150 some odd years.

I can't give you an exact, we don't know the exact amount, but I can tell you by when it stopped and I will show you that if we have time, this is a sermon

I need two hours, but we don't have it, but anyway, uh, so it still existed, that's called a new Testament prophet.

There's no difference between that and the old Testament prophet. It's the same. And so why do you think that might be?

Well, let me ask you this. If you took the early church, say 30 years after all the apostles were dead and in heaven, they're all dead now.

And now you have preachers like Polly Carp who was taught by John, but John has gone on to heaven. Polly Carp is he's a young man.

He's still the preacher, but he doesn't have, but one book of the new

Testament, he's got the whole old Testament, but he only has maybe the book of Colossians and he doesn't have the rest of the new

Testament yet. Cause it hadn't been all pinned. It hadn't been all canonized. It's not all put together in one book.

So he didn't have Ephesians two, eight, nine. Who can quote, who can kind of paraphrase that for me?

It's got to tell me what two fees and two, eight, nine says in your own words. All right.

Now, if we didn't have that book in our church, how would we have that knowledge unless we have a prophetess like Mrs.

Mitchell stand up and say that. Which the Holy spirit would have to give her that for her to know it.

Would you agree with me? That was called a word of knowledge. Have you ever heard that?

Because there's people that think you still have that in the church. You don't Hebrews one, one through three says you don't have that anymore.

God used to talk because it was needed. If you don't have Galatians two 20, anybody know what that one says?

Got those phones going. You can find it super quick. I am crucified in Christ.

Nevertheless, I live right. What if you didn't know that you wouldn't know the walk.

You wouldn't know how to walk the walk. You wouldn't know that you're saved by the faith of Christ, which that verse says you'd think it's in Christ, but it's you say by the faith of Christ, the

Holy spirit gives you Jesus's faith. That's what saves you. People don't know that today because they don't read the King James.

They read modern versions and they've all changed that word. It no longer says of it says in, but anyway, the point is you couldn't possibly know it unless someone stood up and the

Holy spirit gave him a word of knowledge and they said that verse to you, do you understand why it was needed in the early church?

Now you go another a hundred years, 150 years, all of a sudden. All of these have been pinned and they, and scribes began to put them all together and provide

Bibles to the churches. And at that point, the apostle Paul says those gifts ceased in the scripture, it says that the sign gifts ceased.

Now remind me what a sign gift is. What's the purpose of a sign gift.

It all verifies and authenticates the man or woman of God. If it's an apostle, he needs to be authenticated by science, like miraculous things he can do.

If it's a prophet that does the second kind here, the dude's claiming to tell you stuff that God didn't tell you.

And he knows the future he needs to be able to, that needs to be authenticated by God, or it could be demonic because demons can counterfeit anything.

The Holy spirit can do. Remember when Moses threw the rod down, what did the magicians do? Same thing, right?

When he picked that snake up, turned around, what did they do? Same thing. So God had to authenticate

Moses or they would say, well, he's just a magician like they are. Is that correct? So that's why those gifts exist.

That's why they've always existed. That is their purpose. It's their only purpose. I can prove in so many ways where you don't have so much time.

You don't have to listen to me, but don't forget. I have to get the prophecy so I can tell forth the word of God to you.

So you just need more time. I need more time. But you do realize that Jesus came under criticism because there was a time when he healed a person and asked him, why don't you heal all these persons, all these people, because you know what they thought they thought the gift of healing was to show

God's compassion and heal a bunch of people. And Jesus corrected him and said, no, that's not what the gifts for the gift is here to glorify

God. And God wanted me to heal him and he didn't tell me to heal any of them. So I'm not going to do it. And they wanted to stone him for that.

So the gifts are not a gift of compassion. So people can be healed. I mean, even oral

Roberts knew that when he built a hospital, you ever figure out why a dude that believes and preaches faith healing works and he builds a hospital made millions of dollars off that hospital.

Oh, maybe there's the answer. I'm just telling you history.

I mean, right. You're saying, okay, you're getting off the mark. No, I'm really not. Now let's look, let's go back here for a second.

Look at this first definition, speak forth. God's word. One must start with the combination of this little

Greek, like the, these Greek letters here, starting with PI that's pro see up there in the

English way to write it is pro pro PRO is the prefix on that word.

Can you say that up there? That's what the little Greek word there means. And any word that starts with that and then ends up with the rest of that Greek word, the other little word it puts together, those things really have no relation, look in the middle where it's underlined, they have no formal or material relation to telling the future.

The word profit in Greek does not mean telling the future in English because of false teachers that have been here for so many centuries and they teach while we still have profits and I can tell the future and I can do these miraculous things in our mind.

When we hear that word, that's what profit means. But to a Greek person, it does not mean that you get what I'm saying.

So to the Greek, if we hadn't used the word prophecy, we would have used a word that says if we had a word that meant this, which we don't, well, maybe preacher is a good word.

It means a preacher. I like that word that works. It's a person who speaks forth

God's word. It's a preacher. Now that makes sense in English, doesn't it? So for definition number one, instead of calling it a prophet, you call it a preacher, but the

Bible calls it a prophet and it means a preacher. The majority of the time in the New Testament when the word's used, the context shows that's what it's talking about.

So it really doesn't have any relation to telling the future in the actual use of the

Greek word, if you go all the way back to Socrates and Plato and the earliest written Greek works, the word is used many times and it doesn't mean that.

All right. So it usually means to declare openly, to make known something publicly.

That's a preacher, right? To proclaim something that's a preacher, to make public declaration of something that's a preacher.

So it's someone who proclaims it's a speaker or a preacher. That's what the word itself means. The only way you can get the

New Testament or Old Testament, of course that's Hebrew, but even in the early days of the New Testament, when they had a prophet, that means the second one here is the context would have to show you.

They just did something miraculous or they spoke about the future. Then that word means that because Greek, they don't have a different word for those two things.

Does that make sense? They just have one word. It means both. So the only way you can tell is by the context.

All right. So it goes on now and it says a second gift is listed.

So one of the gifts that the Holy Spirit gives in the church is the ability to preach. That's a little different than teaching.

Uh, there are some usages in first, second Timothy and Titus where it talks about what a minister should be like, what is qualification gifts were in the

Greek, it would be like in English. If we put a little dash and it's called a preacher dash teacher, a preacher teacher, so preachers should be able to teach really well, or they shouldn't be preaching, but they, they, the preach part adds a little bit more enthusiasm.

Like it's the difference between me and bill. Right. Bill teaches the

Bible. Like a physics professor would teach physics. Now to those of us who love physics, it's interesting.

Yeah. I was just good. I was on YouTube. You know how Daniel predicted 2 ,600 years ago that in the end times knowledge would exponentially grow.

I was on YouTube yesterday reminding myself how calculus works. Well, I could do that with physics.

Couldn't I build. And I was thinking about you the whole time. I'm watching this thing on calculus. I'll think, well, bill could explain this to me better than this guy's doing and same way to physics.

But now some of you in the room, would you have found that interesting to listen to that yesterday? How many would find it interesting?

Raise your hand three out of all the rest of us. Okay. So, so, so now how many though, if you heard bill talking about how to break down the

Bible and Greek and all this different stuff would find that interesting, almost everybody in the room. All right.

But if bill had the gift of preaching of prophecy, he could sing and dance while he did it.

Like I do. All right. Like, like you, like you walk, you get up and walk out in the middle of my thing.

I'm going to get up here and go tell you what I'm going to pluck your tail feathers because I'm going to immediately think you left.

Cause you disagree with me. That would be charisma. I'm teasing. That's an example.

I saw happen once where a preacher did that. And the guy found out the guy just went to the restroom. He was all behind the preacher, but he had to go to the restroom anyway.

All right. So now let's talk about this gift. What if your gift is ministry?

And some of you are going to say, well, I would rather have prophecy in the ministry because ministry looks like hard work where you should try preaching.

It's pretty hard ministry. Let us wait on our ministry. Are he that teaches on teaching?

So now mentions two in this one, but I just want to talk about them one at a time. So let's talk about ministry a minute. This is an

English, interesting Greek word, the Iconia. Can you think of an

English word? It sounds like the Iconia a little bit deacon.

The whole idea of a deacon in a new Testament church comes from this word.

But what's interesting. I grew up Southern Baptist university. If you grew up that way, bless you, bless you.

And my mom in the Southern Baptist church, who do you think runs the church? Jesus, Satan, no deacons.

All right. And who are the deacons in the big Southern Baptist church? Who are the deacons?

Yeah, but who, how did they choose? Who do they choose among themselves to be those successful, wealthy businessmen?

And how do you know they're successful? Cause they're wealthy. And so they run the church. Now, does that mean those men are spiritual?

No. And you run in, it could be, it could be spiritual, but they're not necessarily, but does the

Bible teach deacons are supposed to run a church nowhere? Because the word deacon itself means an attendant.

How many have ever pulled up to, um, I don't know, cheesecake factory, my favorite place to pull up to and, and says like a valet parking.

Okay. So you hop out, you throw them the keys and say Parker in the shade and you walk in, right. Just like, uh, like, uh, what was his name?

Um, Ernest, Ernest saved Christmas. You got to watch that if you hadn't seen it. So, um, so the attendant takes your car and parks, it comes back.

You give him a tip. Now, does that sound like a super wealthy, powerful person? Who's into the deepest things about cheesecake factory, or does he sound like an attendant?

What is he? He's a servant. He's an attendant. That's what this word means.

Okay. So this is what deacons are supposed to do is be servants taking care of the physical needs of the church.

And we have, we have great deacons in this church, brother Raymond's one. I'm thinking of, uh,

Dave Huber. I think Bobby he's a, does the work of a deacon. You ever been a deacon for in a church?

Okay. Then we need to take care of that and make him a deacon here. Cause he is one, right?

Because if he finds anything in this place, that's broken, he just comes and fixes it, no one asking to just fixes it right.

Raymond same way. He's for you, Raymond Sharon been here longer than anybody besides me and Charlotte been that way forever.

If it's broken, he'll just fix it. And this is the idea of a deacon. Doesn't mean it doesn't mean that that you're menial.

It just means you have a heart to make God's house is best. It can be right.

And, um, so Paul Davis has that heart as well.

He's an elder, but I mean, elders, elders should have a deacon's heart too, but he'll, if he finds it messed up, he'll just clean it, he'll fix it.

He'll, you know, whatever. That's what this word specifically means. It's a minister who does a service to help the whole church be better and to minister to everyone in the church.

And they does it for Jesus's sake. All right. It comes from a smaller Greek word, which means to run errands.

Is that interesting? Now, wouldn't that help Southern Baptist churches if they did this word study?

Okay. It doesn't, as there's no place in the new Testament where it says that a minute, someone has the gift of ministry is supposed to be running the church, making the major decisions on the direction of the church, especially the spiritual directions of the church.

It's an attendant, a waiter, a table, or an other menial duties.

That's the Greek definition of this word. Isn't it interesting? And the

Greek definition definition includes the idea of a Christian deacon. But, uh, isn't it interesting that God says that is a gift, a spiritual gift that God gives.

Now think about that. It's not the same as someone who just good at fixing stuff.

It's someone who is doing it because the Holy spirit made them want to do it and good at it.

Isn't that interesting? And, and, you know, we have that in this little bitty church.

All right. Now what about the next one? He that teaches it's just lift it's listing these gifts. Oh, I am so going to run out of time before I get to the fun part.

We'll have to come back next Sunday. The Lord willing. To get to the fun part, Jenny and Katie, that is good news for you.

I know you're on vacation. You'll be back. You won't miss dad's favorite doctor.

And that's what they think anyway. So what about teaching now? This is one, this is a spiritual gift.

We mentioned earlier, brother bill has that gift. There are others of you who have the ability to teach.

I'm kind of thinking Matt probably has it because Matt there's kind of a famous guy out there.

Who's who's a musician. He's a Trump supporter. He's a born again,

Christian, and he's a conservative. And, um, he said a little something on one of his blogs.

I don't know where Matt found it, where he felt like though, that he could fall away from the faith. He could lose his salvation.

And Matt questioned that with him. And the guy came back and forth in there, they're texting each other about that doctrinal issue.

And, uh, so I was impressed Matt with the stuff you sent the young man. Very good.

But I mean, like when you get that, where your desire is to study more than most people study and start breaking it down the words and the meanings of the words and, and teach that to other people, that is a spiritual gift and the rest of the church usually recognizes it before you do.

So Matt, the church is telling you, you have that gift probably. So I say probably cause you're still awfully young, but I mean that it will flourish if you have that gift.

So usually the church at large notices these among itself and points out to the person,

Hey, by the way, do you know you're really good at whatever. And so this one is breaking down the Bible.

It's not just reading it. It's not even like some preachers can get up and really get you motivated at more like, like you think of an evangelist, uh, or I think of brother

Ron, like Ron can get up here in two minutes. He can preach won't be a scripture in it necessarily.

He can use scripture if he wants to, but he can just say things to you. It makes you want to go do something. You ever noticed that about Ron?

All right. So, you know, that's more of the preacher type thing. The teacher though, is someone who's going to go to the word of God and break it down, see the difference.

Now a preacher is supposed to be able to do that too. So teaching comes from the

Greek word didosco, which means to teach. Aren't you glad, you know, the

Greek on that one now it's deep. All right. This is interesting though.

I read this and, um, put it all down there.

The theological dictionary of new Testament, which is, is not the little baby dictionary. It's like this thick, but it went on to say this about, uh, teaching.

The aim is the highest possible development of the talents of the pupil. Isn't that neat bill?

You like that? Uh, especially like you think of physics, you got some kids in there want to go to pre -med when they go to college, they have got to learn the physics because if they don't, when they get to college, they're going to get mashed.

All right. So the aim is the highest possible development of the talents of the pupil.

So the aim of teaching is not to show everybody how smart you are or how much, you know, it is to make them want to go study what you know a lot about.

It's make them want to know that much about the same thing. I dr. Rocky Freeman did that to me years ago when

I was in my twenties, I got saved the edge of 24. I saw this man preach and I said, golly, I want to be like that.

I want to be, I want to be able to explain the Bible to people like that man does it. And it, it changed my life just hearing him one time.

And then I got to hear him all week that week though, because he was doing a Bible conference. And, uh, so, you know, it's all about the people, but always in such a way that the personal aspect is both maintained and indeed strengthened or yes, strengthened.

Now, what does that mean? Like if I'm a good teacher and I teach you what I think a certain passage of scripture means.

I'm not going to take away from you how you color that or how the Holy spirit teaches you maybe some depths

I haven't even seen yet. Does that make sense? So I'm not trying to take away. I'm not trying to make you be me.

A good teacher is not trying to make the pupil be himself. He's trying to make the pupil learn how to learn.

Would that be a good way to say it? How to think, how to, how to break things down, how to use logic and not get duped by false teachers for one thing, right?

Uh, that's the good part. You gotta be back next Sunday. Cause I'm not going to get to it, but I will break that down for you next

Sunday, the Lord willing. And it's going to be stuff you have not seen before. You two have, cause you've been around me a lot.

Sharon says, I've heard you preach that before. I've heard you preach that. Well, you've heard me preach everything I can preach here. And so, but it's good.

Like the Paul said, let me remind you of these things, brethren. Let me be reminded of these things.

I just remind you of the stuff you already know, but most honestly, most people have never heard what I'm going to talk about when

I get to it, about the gifts, um, this, this little Greek word comes from a smaller

Greek word and there's an English word that comes from this Greek word called a didactic.

If you look that up in the dictionary, one educator defines it this way. A didactic is a certain way of teaching.

It spells you'll get a kick out of this. Okay. I know Charlotte will to spell things out explicitly, but perhaps a little too laboriously.

Oh, they're not laughing. Hmm. You're being kind today. Is that the deal? Be kind to brother

Mitchell day, uh, or to present a view of what's true or right or moral, but in a way that might at times seem a little dogmatic.

Who does that sound like? Y 'all are being so nice today. I mean, a little bit too laborious, you know,

I'm going to, I'm not going to just show the words. I'm going to show you the parts of the word that are in that word and the jots and the titles.

You know what that is? The dot of the I and the cross of the T those are important too.

All right. So, but now we kind of make fun of this, but let me point something out to you a little bit and brother bill, this is for you to make you feel better.

Anybody that's a teacher, we have others. Jeannie's a good teacher. There's others. I can't name everybody, but, uh, do you know that the modern way of teaching, especially the kind of church

I grew up in, my mom could testify to this. They'll go in there and they'll bill 45 rooms and say,

Oh, well, we got to have 45 teachers now. So they'll just go find anybody and throw them in that room. Say you're the

Sunday school teacher. And I grew up under that. So I quit going to church because it was so boring because none of those people that I had were gifted teachers.

They did not have the Holy spirit gift of teaching and they were boring. There was one I liked though. He's a terrible teacher, but we're on the third floor and he would let us as an all boys class.

He would let us make paper airplane and throw them out the window. So I went to that one, but when they graduated me, the next one,

I never went back, but so now the other thing you have is this, they'll put these teachers that are not gifted in a room with a whole bunch of intelligent people in some of these big churches.

All right. So they're sitting around these educated, intelligent people. You got a teacher who is not gifted. He hadn't been studying the

Bible all that much. And so he'll come to a passage that requires a lot of study to figure out what it even means.

Like this idea of prophecy is one of those. Okay. Well, he hasn't done that study. So what he'll do is he'll say, well, some people, some scholars think it means this and other scholars say that it means this, or it could mean this.

And sometimes I think it means this, and then it goes the next topic. Now, let me ask you a question about that.

If you have students in that room that don't know anything about the Bible or don't know that topic, how much confidence do you think they have when they leave that class that you taught them anything that's right?

If you don't even know what's right, does that make sense to you? That's the only kind of teachers

I had my whole life until I met Dr. Irwin Freeman, other than one exception was

Mrs. Sue riddle. And you're talking, you know, about dogmatic that won't, she's in heaven now, bless her heart.

She was like, when she taught it, she either did, she either didn't teach it or she flat knew what it was.

And she said, here's how it is. It's this way, right? That's the kind of teacher you want.

If the teacher can't say, this is how it is. He shouldn't be teaching on that topic today. He should wait till he can say, this is how it is.

It's okay. On some things to say, this is what I believe it is after my whole life of studying, but don't go tell what a

B and C think it means because it confuses the pupil. And that's what that means by dogmatic. It's appropriate.

If you have this gift, it comes from the Greek word, which means that you're somewhat didactic, which means you are supposed to be dogmatic.

Like dogma means, okay, this is not opinion. This is a fact. This is how it works.

We have laws of physics, right? I mean, you don't say, well, it could be this, or it could be that usually.

I mean, I know in chemistry, it's all a model, but still, at least we believe the model when we're teaching it, right?

It works. The model works. Here's how it works. We don't say, or you could do it this other way. Our magicians think it works this way.

Physicists think it works this way. You see my point. Dogma means here's a truth. Here's a fact, here's how it works.

And then you move to the next topic and the next, that's how a teacher should be to spell things out, perhaps a little too laboriously.

That's part of the definition of what a teacher should be. Not necessarily a preacher. So I'm, I'm probably a little off there because I'm, I'm a teacher.

I'm a preacher teacher, right? So some people don't like that. Thus, we don't have a mega church, right?

Some people don't like to get into every word and the 12th chapter of Romans.

And it takes four months, probably more than that to teach that one chapter. But that's just me.

That's the preacher God gave you. You know, there are plenty of people who have said, okay, that's nice. Love you, brother

David. And there's somewhere else now and that's okay. It truly is. Okay. Don't you think? Because God gives these gifts by different amounts, different people to fulfill his purpose in the life of people that need that thing.

So, but I'm telling you by definition, if you want to make a mistake, err on the side of thoroughness and teaching facts that you've studied enough to know.

That's the way it works. That makes sense. I mean, that would correct so much in so many churches. And I don't mean that, that we got that in the rest of the world.

Doesn't I'm talking about denominations where they just pull in people that don't have the gift of teaching. They don't.

And if you don't have the gift of teaching, guess what you don't study. You get up and you do a class because they gave you the class.

You don't study because you don't have a heart that wants to do it all week. Right. You don't have to do it all week, but you got to get in there.

You got to dig in there. Charlotte's a lot of times, if she would tell you about me, she would say, you know, there's like, if he starts to run out of material for like a pretty well preached through that part of chapter 12,

I'll go and see her around 10 o 'clock Saturday and say, well, I'm out of material. And what she knows is she will not see me till around maybe 10 o 'clock that night, which happens a lot because I'm going to sit in there.

I'm going to study that thing. I'll get four months worth of stuff out of it. I can keep you guys busy for four months.

Not really. I'm exaggerating like for four Sundays easily. Well, that's cause of the gift of teaching and a person who's gifted will, will lean that direction.

Does that make sense by definition, you don't want a teacher. Who's not that way. If you look at Webster's, a didactic is intended to convey instruction and information as well as pleasure and entertainment.

Thus we have to use humor from time to time. Keeps you awake. All right.

The next verse says, are he that exhort us on exhortation? So it starts to list more gifts, a person who exhorts that's another gift from God.

It's another gift to the church. Are he that gives, let him give with simplicity.

Did you know that we're all supposed to tithe and give love offerings, but did you know, that's easier for some than for others, because there are some who have the

Holy spirit gift of giving, and they will give just, just whatever they get, they're going to give to help people and there's others of us that don't have that gift and we give, cause we're supposed to, and we still do it.

But the person that has the gift of giving, he's going to find a way to give to someone who has a need. Isn't that a cool gift?

All right. And then let him do it with simplicity. You know, that's an interesting word. We'll look at that when we get to it right now, just giving you the overview and he that rules, let him rule with diligent.

Did you know, churches have rulers and it's not the deacons. It's a spiritual gift given to certain people in the church, and it is, has to be a male individual.

So you have to know if you're male or female for this to work, it's a male individual, and this person has been given a gift to manage the church.

All right. Paul Davis has that gift. He probably don't like me talking about it, but you just like, normally it's other people that recognize these things, but Katie, now she's not ruling a church, but she knows how to run a company, my daughter,

Katie. So that's a gift that you can have the gift for business too, but for churches. This is talking about church, but it's an ability to organize and manage.

Numbers that large numbers of people and things and make them all work together smoothly. Isn't that a cool gift? And we don't all have that one, do we?

I don't have that one. And I sure love people who do though, cause it's such a benefit.

So if you have that, you're supposed to do it with diligence. All right, take care of business and he that shows mercy, let him do it with cheerfulness.

That's sort of a peacemaker in the church. Isn't that cool? All these different gifts.

So there are seven gifts here. Speaking forth God's word, ministering to others, teaching, exhorting, giving with simplicity, ruling with diligence and showing mercy with cheerfulness.

Is that cool or what? So we'll talk we're out of time, unfortunately, but we will sort of expand a little bit.

I'm not going to go as much into some of these as others, but, um, the exhorting and the giving and the ruling,

I'm just going to give you the Greek definition of the words that take five minutes and so you know exactly what those gifts mean.

And, uh, then I'm going to go back into a prophecy because that's the one that is so misunderstood.

We're going to talk about that in more detail next Sunday. All right, let's stand and have prayer together. I honestly think if you're not exposed to what

I'm going to teach next Sunday, you never have been, I think it could be one of the more interesting things you've ever learned facts you've ever learned about Bible and church history, and, um, it'll be something you can use too, that will help you someday in the future when, when you have family members or friends that don't get this, they get it wrong and you'll be able to teach them the right way because you'll know about the church history and about the scripture on it.

And that is on the gift of prophecy. Let's pray, Lord. Thank you so much for your word and for how you use it in our lives.

And you say it is truth and it's spirit and it's life. It comes to live, it comes alive in our lives.

As we read it, we thank you that you teach us that the Holy spirit is our teacher, and then we have not need that any man teach us that if we had a

Bible and we're saved and we have you, you can teach us everything we need to know about it, the

Lord, we are thankful that you give gifts to the church. You give us teachers that can help us learn faster than we would on our own.

And we thank you for that. And Lord, we ask you to go with us into our time of fellowship.

Now bless the meal we're about to have and the time we have together. And we ask it in Jesus name.