How Spiritual are you? (Part 1)

Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Avendroff. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the Scriptures, verse by verse, with No Compromise.

Spiritual Gifts and the Question of Christian Maturity

Just how spiritual are you? Do you speak in tongues? Do you interpret tongues? Do you have the gift of healing? How spiritual are you? Does God still heal today? What is prophecy? How do I know if I'm in the spiritual crowd or I'm not?

I've been waiting for 1 Corinthians chapter 12, 13, and 14 and we have arrived. Please open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 12. In the next several weeks, we'll deal with all these issues of charismatics, charismatic gifts.

Does God heal today? How can I know if I'm really a Christian? How can I know the epitome of spiritual growth and health? Am I really spiritual? Now compared to some of the things you see on TV, maybe you're feeling pretty small right about now with your spirituality.

I was reading a book just the other day called The Father's Blessings. Something like this ever happened to you? A delightful woman came to Toronto from Europe. She came from an extremely theological and intellectual background.

Too much thinking, she said. While under God's power, she had a vision. Much to her surprise, Jesus took her through the events of her childhood and they relived them together. This woman used to play soccer and Jesus told her gently, I'm going to laugh if I don't focus, that she took the glory for herself.

So she wept and repented and Jesus and the lady played soccer together. She laughed and laughed at his long robe and then she asked him to be the goalkeeper. He was so strong, he knocked away all the balls and didn't let one goal in.

But then at the end, he let her have a goal and she laughed some more. Then Jesus took her away and said to her, why have you always acted like a boy? She said her father wanted a boy and it hurt her, but Jesus showed her that he wanted her to be a girl.

She explained that she saw like a movie before her eyes, the yard she used to play in as a child. She had a pretty flower dress on and they danced together and her hair blew in the wind. Jesus said to her, you know, forever I wanted you as a girl.

Ever happened to you? I guess you're not in. I guess you're not spiritual. What is spirituality? Do we have everything we need? Is the Holy Spirit enough who points to Christ Jesus? Is there something more?

Do you feel dry and parched in your Christianity and you say, if I just had that little bit extra? Well, today we're going to look at 1 Corinthians chapter 12. We're trying to hit a pretty good pace in 1 Corinthians, but we might slow down a little bit today.

And we're going to ask and answer the question, what are spiritual gifts? How can I know if I'm spiritual? Now 1 Corinthians chapter 12, 13 and 14 all go together in a big segment. And Paul, by the way, is very pastoral.

The church of Corinth has questions. How can I know if I'm spiritual? It's the exact same question we asked today. And Paul, with three chapters, pastorally, patiently, kindly answers those questions.

Can you imagine if you write me an email, sometimes I just give you a one sentence blurb. And Paul, Ferdie's shaking his head. That's not true. That was just rhetoric. And Paul, for, excuse me, chapter 12, 13 and 14, he answers the question.

What is spiritual gifts? And he wants them to know. He wants them to know the issues. The underlying theme since chapter 8 has been the edification of the church. He wants the church to be built up. He wants the church to grow.

He wants a church like Colossians chapter 1 to say that you might mature in the fullness of Christ. So today we'll begin a series that will cover through 13 and 14, beginning in chapter 12, what is spirituality?

And so we'll just entitle this Spiritual Gifts 101. And I'd like to give you several truths that we can use for outline points. The outline will be the same through all three chapters. Spiritual truths, maybe I could call them objective facts about spiritual gifts so that you can know what the Bible teaches.

Knowing the Truth About Spiritual Gifts from Scripture

All right? Chapter 12, verses 1 and following, truth number one, objective fact number one. Even though there is a lot of confusion regarding spiritual gifts and charismatic issues, you can know the truth from the Bible.

You can know. Everyone who's sitting here today can know what the Bible teaches about tongues, healings, interpretations, spirituality, what is a spiritual gift, what is a manifestation of the gift, what is a baptism of the Spirit, what is the filling of the Spirit.

You can know. Aren't you glad? You get to know. And Paul wants the church of Corinth to know. Let's take a look at verse 1 and 2. And you can just see Paul's pastoral heart. Remember the Corinthians? They thought they knew it all.

It's like that kid down the street who thought he knew it all and he really didn't know much of anything. And remember the Corinthians are so prideful and puffed up. And remember that word for puffed up in the Greek, fusio, just puffed up like a balloon is puffed up.

They didn't know. And so Paul is going to teach them. Now concerning spiritual gifts, doesn't that sound familiar? He talks that way when there's a new answer to a question that they had. Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed, and they in fact were.

And many today in the church and in the world are uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. Now, Paul, you can even hear him with the brothers talk just very, very kindly.

This is the church issue pastorally. Let's talk about spirituals and the Greek doesn't say spiritual gifts. It says spirituals. Now you say, well, is this a gift with the language or is this the people?

Well, only people have the gifts. And so it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. He said to them now concerning spirituals, I don't want you to be uninformed. He's not talking about hymns or something around the fireplace in the 1800s.

He's talking about people who have spiritual gifts. See, they're talking about gifts are people with gifts and we'll take it as spiritual gifts that people have. I don't want you to be uninformed. I don't want you to be ignorant about this.

The Corinthians were ignorant. What is spirituality? How spiritual should I be? These other people are running around going crazy. And by the way, the pagan people in Corinth did that frenzied, weird, wild, crazy, exhilarating paganism.

And now the church has been carved out by God through the work of the spirit. Do we act that way? Is that the good thing to do? Should we restrain? Should we refrain? What's a spiritual gift? What's the highest spiritual gift?

And just like the Corinthians, you know, they would say, we've got the good gifts. Some of the people at church, you've got lower gifts. We are the ones with tongues. We are the ones with prophecy. And they were looked down on other people.

And Paul wants to say, I don't want you to be ignorant. Sometime this week, if you'd like, count how many times the word tongues are used in chapter 12, 13, and 14. I think you'll find about 21, 21 times the word tongues is used.

And that was their problem. I speak in tongues. You set up chairs. It was that kind of thing. It didn't go over so well. The other issue is, they have been led around in the past. Don't be led around again.

Look at verse 2. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols. However, you were led. Your past spiritual experience, Corinth, got you where? Nowhere. Following some piece of wood or piece of stone or piece of metal.

And you were just led around like someone put a big hook in your nose and pulled you all around. Translation, it's good for you to know. It's urgent for you to know. If you've lived your life in charismatic confusion, it would be good for you to be sat down and just taught the truth.

It'd be good. Don't be led around anymore. You can just hear Paul's empathy for them. You were pagans. You need to know. Remember the Corinthians? Oh, we know, we know, we know. And he says here, you know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to the dumb idols.

Wasn't that good today when Scott was reading Habakkuk? You make a little idol and you say, speak to me, begging. And what would they end up doing? They would cut themselves and they would do all kinds of crazy things.

As Al Mohler would say, we get to worship a God that you can't see, but he talks. They were worshiping a God that you could see, but was mute. Corinthians were experience-oriented, self-oriented, and they were worshiping dumb idols.

And it would be good for you, Corinthians, Paul says, to stop looking at untrustworthy guides to get to know God. Don't you want to know the real way to worship God and the real way to experience God without ignorance?

Of course. The Corinthians were proud of what they were. Paul said, no, you think you're confident, but you're not. Now let me just say this for a moment. If you have been living in America or in the West for the last 20 years or even a year, there is all kinds of craziness when it comes to spiritual gifts and charismatic issues.

But I want you to know you can know for sure what the Bible teaches. I'll say something to kind of shock you. Maybe for some it's not shocking, and then we'll reel it in a little bit. I think that the modern-day charismatic movement has done more to undermine the authority of Scripture than any other movement since the New Testament church.

The Bible says we need to know, and the charismatic church has come along, and now we don't know, and it's subjective and it's experience-oriented. I know you're probably saying, yes, I know a good, solid charismatic.

I'm talking about generally, the charismatic movement has done more to damage evangelicalism's view of the sufficiency of the Scripture than anything else I know. Now you say, well, that just sounds like you hate charismatics.

I don't hate charismatics at all. By the way, my background is I grew up listening to Jimmy Swaggart in the car on the way to school, thinking about Batman but listening to Jimmy Swaggart on the way to school.

My Lutheran church that I attended when I was growing up, the pastor spoke in tongues and tried to get us to speak in tongues. When I got saved, my pastor, to this day I love my pastor, my first pastor of Calvary Chapel, he was a conservative charismatic.

I don't hate charismatics. As MacArthur said, I don't hate charismatics, I married one, right? So it has nothing to do with hate, it has to do with truth. You say, well, what you just said earlier isn't very loving.

I think love and truth can go together. It's possible for us to speak the truth in love. Actually, 1 Corinthians 13 says, love does not rejoice in unrighteousness but rejoices with the truth. Here's where I'm coming from.

Paul says, Church of Corinth, I don't want you to have ignorance regarding spiritual gifts. BBC, I don't want you to be ignorant either. And if you listen to charismatics and their theology, you are going to be very, very, very confused.

Why? Because they are focusing on subjective experience rather than the objective Word of God. That's why. Now, the first thing that'll happen as we're going through these passages in the next few weeks, if I say speaking in tongues is a language and it isn't for today, then the common retort, the common rebuttal is, yes, but I know a friend in Argentina and she speaks in tongues.

Well, I know someone in Madagascar and they've healed someone. That's exactly the kind of confusion that the charismatic things bring because experience doesn't validate truth. Truth validates experience.

Calvin called people who want inner words fanatics. I want to get away from this external word and I'll just go by my experience. And if I experience something, it's true. That was Corinth. If you experience something, it might not be true.

You might be having a hallucination. You might be having some kind of demon working in your brain if you're not a Christian. The issue has to do with religious enthusiasts going back to the Word of God.

If the Bible teaches that speaking in tongues isn't for today, friends, it's not for today. I don't care how many people say, well, you know what, it's happened to me, therefore it's true. Autobiography is not theology.

I could prove it very simply. If you say speaking in tongues is for today because you've done it and then I say speaking in tongues isn't today because I haven't done it, how do we break the tie? Well, you might say, well, since you haven't experienced it, you don't know.

But that's poor argument. That's a poor logic. I've experienced it, therefore it must be true. I haven't experienced it, therefore it must not be true. What do we end up doing? We have to go back to the Word of God.

What does the Bible teach? Paul doesn't want them to be ignorant, and I don't want you to be ignorant either. I want you to believe as a church the sufficiency of the Scriptures, sola scriptura, that everything we need, God's final, absolute, sufficient authority is found in Scripture.

Do I want you to have lots of experiences? I hope you have lots, all in light of what God says. And when people run around saying, I've had a vision, God talks to me outside the Word, I know God's speaking to me through my feelings and inner voices and impressions, any kind of direct knowledge of God outside the Word and outside of creation, it's going to just confuse you.

I don't want you to be confused. Now, I'll say it again because I just know people and I know me, I'm not saying I think every charismatic is a heretic. There are some very solid charismatic theologians these days, but even the most solid struggle with this idea of, does God still speak today?

How does he speak? Are prophecies inerrant? Are they errant? Of course we, on our side, on my side, have problems because some of the charismatics look at us and just say, you're dead when it comes to orthodoxy, no life, I don't want that either.

Arthur Johnson said, the evangelical commitment to the Scripture is the sole source of revelation and it has become undermined. If you think God speaks to you in any way outside the Word, then you are going to be confused about God and what he says.

And here's the big reason, you can't trust yourself. If you start looking to the inside person, the problem is the fall has happened. What does the Bible say? He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but he who walks wisely will be delivered.

Two religions in the world, the religion where Jesus did it all and the religion where we have to do things. But Warfield expanded it, he said, in context of this, there's two religions, B .B. Warfield.

Two religions, religion A, God speaks to us from outside, revealed Word, he speaks to us from the outside, not tainted, not influenced by the fall, he speaks to us. Religion 2, maybe through the Word, but also he speaks to us through the inside, through feelings and intuition and everything else.

Two religions. So the question is, if you're, or the statement is, if you're looking to the inside for experience, for truth, you're looking in the wrong place. Now, many of us here would say, we believe in Sola Scriptura, it's the Bible alone is a sufficient rule for our life.

And so when Roman Catholics add a little bit of tradition, they add some magisterium, we say, no, we don't do that, we're Protestants and it's the scriptures alone, we don't have any other tradition, any other magisterium, we have nothing but the Bible alone.

But you know the interesting thing, Christians that say that are the same kind of Christians that'll say, it's the Bible alone, and then they'll add experiences, intuitions, feelings, God told me, mysticism passing the mind, and just going inside ourselves.

True or false, the Bible never commands you to tune in to your inner voice. It never does, it says to meditate on scripture, to study scripture. G .I. Packer said in his great book, Knowing God, their basic mistake is to think of guidance as essentially inward, prompting by the Holy Spirit apart from the written word.

I probably have your attention, but I'll just even get your attention more. If you need special signs to rely on God directing you in your life, of course I love you, of course I want to be kind to you, but it is not the mark of spirituality, it's the mark of immaturity.

The immature person says, it's not scripture, I need a sign, God give me a fleece, God give me a feeling, God give me a peace, God open the doors, God close the doors. Reliance on special signs, Bruce Waltke said, is the mark of an immature person, someone who cannot simply believe the truth as presented.

But he must have a special miraculous sign as a symbol of the authority of God. Turn with me if you would to 2 Peter, just for a moment. You know the passage very well, I know you know it because I know you, but I want to remind you, the desire for more turns into less very often.

So 2 Peter chapter 1, what am I doing all this for? I'm trying to remind you that the Word of God is living, active, authoritative, sufficient, and everything that you need. Do I want you to experience life from that?

Yes, but I don't want you to live your life outside the Word or the Bible, plus these things, you're going to be confused. 2 Peter chapter 1, verse 16 and following, my point here is that the Bible trumps experience.

You can experience the most wonderful things, but you need the Bible to interpret it and the Bible to trump it if need be. 2 Peter chapter 1, verse 16,. For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. What's he talking about there, remember? Transfiguration. Can you imagine being there? That'd be pretty interesting. That'd be flooring. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was born to him by majestic glory, not just eyewitnessing, but earwitnessing, this is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.

Can you imagine Peter, James, and John, they're there, they're listening, they're seeing. Are they experiencing it? Is it in their gizzard? Is it in their gut? Is it in their mind? Is it made up? This is external, outside of themselves, real experience.

For we ourselves, emphatically, heard this very voice born from heaven. For we were with him on the holy mountain. What made the mountain holy? Jesus was there. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, or the more sure word.

What is it more fully confirmed? Against what is it more fully confirmed? What's it more sure than? The experience. The word is more than the experience of actually seeing Jesus on the mountain. One writer said Peter's point is precisely the issue that many charismatics fail to understand.

The pilgrimage from experience to experience, and more and more spectacular, is not only frustrating, it is counterproductive spiritually. Peter says, I had an experience, a real one, but I have a more sure word than my own senses.

I can't even trust my own senses in a real experience of seeing the glory of Christ. That's why it says at the end of verse 19, do you see it in 2 Peter 1? To which you do well to pay attention. Talking about the word.

As to a shining lamp in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your heart. To study the scriptures, to be governed by them, to meditate on them. Yes, but you just haven't experienced the gift, Mike, therefore you don't know.

Faulty hermeneutics, Fred Zaspel said without exception. Each time I have endeavored to show that the one who believes that miraculous and revelatory gifts are for today, that the word of God teaches these gifts are no longer given to the church, the response is, but I've seen it happen, but it happened to me.

How can you deny that? How can sincere Christians be wrong? The fact of the matter is someone is wrong. Whether or not he is sincere, he may be sincerely wrong, but wrong nonetheless. This is what I have tried to point out to the man with my reply.

What saith the scriptures? Let's just give you another one right off the top of my head. Heaven is for real. Who believes heaven is for real? I believe heaven is for real. Why do you believe heaven is real?

Because in the little yellow book it says it. Some kid was oxygen deprived and he went up to heaven and talked to God and did a bunch of stuff that the Bible says is contradictory to his word, but it happened, it's for real, and for $35 you can go to the auditorium in Nebraska and meet that young man.

I just was in Nebraska a while ago. Right down the street almost, actually they don't have streets in this part of Nebraska, it was like a country road, where this young boy was. Heaven is for real. He's talking about things that aren't true about heaven.

And he said, I've experienced it, therefore it must be true. I reject all that. He didn't go to heaven. You go, boy, that doesn't sell a lot of books. Well, that's true, it doesn't sell a lot of books, but you can't say I've gone to heaven and describe things about heaven that aren't in the Bible or actually anti-Bible.

You say, well he experienced it, how can it be wrong? You can experience all kinds of things. Just turn down the oxygen a little bit and you'll experience a lot of things. I'm not kidding. Isn't it funny when you preach, and earlier I thought you might giggle a little bit, but I wasn't expecting giggling there at all.

You're giggling in the Spirit now. Wait until the word gets out. 2 Corinthians makes it clear, this is what the Bible teaches about heaven, and Paul said, I can't even talk about it, because it's so wild.

Yet some kid in Nebraska with a charismatic father says, oh yeah, that's what it is, let's write a book, and it's a million seller. People are saying God is using it. Well God uses donkeys too, that doesn't make any difference at all.

How do I know anything? The Bible teaches it. And the more you dabble with watching TBN and all this other crazy stuff, I'm not talking about some solid scholars whom I respect, whether it's Gordon Fee or Wayne Grudem, but you're over here on the fringe, and you're dabbling with that, you are just going to become more and more confused, because the authority doesn't go back to what the Bible says, the authority goes back to, I need to have an experience.

If you want to be confused, read wild charismatic stuff, and watch wild charismatic stuff, and you'll be very confused.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 8 .30 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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