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Pastor David Mitchell
Good morning, everyone. Brother Paul's out today, so we'll just get started here. If you want to leave an offering, the plates are in the back. You can put that back there after the service, or you can go online and just empty your credit card, or your debit card would even be better.
Empty that. So anyway, good to see you. Boy, that was fantastic. It's so cool to sit back in the back and listen as our new gospel group plays. When are you going to start touring the country again, Brother Bobby?
You got you some folks now. Soon. As long as you're back here on Sunday, that'll be a-OK, right? Anyway, what a blessing. And Kenner with the group today, good job as usual. Well, that sounded great.
And we could hear a little harmony going on today. Did you catch that? That sounded really good. And Zach, you got a voice, man. I didn't know that. You don't even need a mic. I can hear you really well from back there, and you sound great.
Well, what a blessing. Thank you, guys. I know the work that it takes to put that together. We really appreciate it. Let's go to Lord and prayer. Father, thank you so much for a day of rest and a day to come together and worship you together and to be right next to one another and encourage one another and lift each other up.
And Lord, thank you that you give us this opportunity still in America. We pray for our country. And Lord, we don't know your plan out into the future. If we go far enough into the future, we kind of know your plan for the whole world, but we don't know your specific plan for America.
But we know right now she protects Israel. And so keep us strong for that very reason. And we ask you to bless our study time together now and uplift us. And as we read your word, may your Holy Spirit make us realize that that is you talking to us today.
And you have a special message for us. And we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Have any of you watched the volcano eruption that just happened today or yesterday, I think? If you don't know about YouTube yet, you might want to check it out.
Type in there volcano eruption when you get home. It's quite amazing. It's in Indonesia, which is in the ring of fire where they have more earthquakes and volcanoes anywhere in the world. And you see God's power there.
I mean, it's amazing. This volcano just sitting there quietly. All of a sudden, that thing just came alive. And it was over a mile high. Well, it's on a mountain. It's already half a mile high. So it's like almost two miles into the air, this smoke.
And it looks like just gray smoke. But it's really extremely hot steam and smoke and brimstone. And Dave reminded me of that reading the scripture in his Sunday school lesson this morning where he said that he hates the workers of iniquity.
And he rains brimstone upon them. Man, you can see it. And you could see trucks fleeing. And you could see it coming down the mountain kind of fast. And there are trucks coming this way trying to get out of there before it hits right where they are.
Pretty creepy. So if you got YouTube on your, I know you have it on your computer, but I've got it on my TV. It's pretty cool. If you have an Apple TV, you can do that. How else can you get YouTube on television, you techie guys?
Anybody know? Probably wait. What's that? What's the thing you use at your house? We just have Roku. Roku will do. You'll get YouTube with that, right? So there's a few ways. But it's quite amazing. You know, the prophet Daniel said that Indian times that knowledge would multiply.
And he also said that people would go to and fro around the world. And so the jet airplane and the internet made that happen. So we know that we're in the end times. Daniel talked about it. But what's interesting is you take the internet as a whole and you take just YouTube as far as knowledge exploding.
You can learn to do anything on YouTube. I mean, if you want to learn how to play any song on the guitar, you can put that in there. It'll show you how to play it. Or on the piano. I see Maddie doing that a lot.
But if you want to learn how to build a house, it'll show you how to do that. Or fix your septic system, it'll show you how to do that. You might not want to watch that one. But if you know that there are world events happening, you can just type that in the search thing and it will show it to you.
Because you've got people, just everyday people with their phones running up that street showing that mountain with that stuff coming down towards them. And you're wondering, why aren't you running the other way?
But it's on YouTube. It's live. It's better than live reporting. So it reminds me, I did a study back in, I think, somewhere around 2010-ish, maybe 2012, where I went into the US Geological website and did a statistical research on earthquakes.
And I found that they, of course, you've always had earthquakes, right? But what I found that did show up is that there weren't more of them necessarily, but they were stronger and more human beings were killed by them each year, each decade as you came forward in time.
And certainly true of volcanoes, this one, the same one went off about, I think, six months ago, maybe nine months ago, and killed about 308 people. So far, last night, this one hadn't killed anybody.
But I saw it coming towards those trucks. So we get up this morning and read it. You're going to have a death toll from this one. So things are happening that Jesus talked about in Matthew 24. You can see it all the time.
All you got to do is pick up the news, however you get it, and read it. And you're reading pages from scripture, practically. So that's pretty exciting. We should never fear it. We should be prepared for it.
But it's a joy because the great prayer of the saints is, come quickly, Lord Jesus, right? And the apostle Paul said, he's not coming until the Antichrist appears. And he's not coming until there's a great falling away from the truth.
And that's happening now. If you don't believe it, go out to YouTube and see what people are preaching in churches around the country. It's just, or find a great teacher. Like I did this, I wish I could give you his name.
I'll figure it out and how to get you information on him. But I want to check him out further. I've only listened to two things. But I do know that he believes God is sovereign. I can just tell that. And people, the other side of that thing, they are hateful to him on the, what do you call it? A little chat thing where they send little notes.
They're just brutal. So I'll come in there and defend him. I'll click on theirs and rebuke them or something. It's fun. Thing is, it can take all day if you want to do it all the time, right, Jeannie?
So anyway, you have to, you can't do it forever. And you're not changing most of them anyway. But it's great to hear somebody that really has a grip on the Greek and peeling back some of these verses that we teach here in this church.
And the two that I've listened to so far, one was on Ephesians 2 .8 and the other one was on, where were we? Let's see. Oh, John 3 .16. And I taught a lesson on that a few years back called the most misunderstood verse in the Bible.
And it was John 3 .16. And he taught the same thing I taught except he went even deeper into the Greek and proved it even better. So now I've got more ammunition on that one than I used to have because of this guy.
So it's amazing the knowledge that we can gain from our house, just like Daniel said. And what, 2 ,600 years ago? Brother Music, you probably know about how long ago Daniel wrote. Is that about right, 2 ,600?
Or would it be 800, somewhere in there? It's almost 3 ,000 years ago, right? Isn't that phenomenal? All right, well, let's go into Romans chapter 15. And we had made our way down to verse 16. And then we covered a couple of things about that.
The first point we covered in verse 17 was that Paul did not preach with poems or little stories or things to make people feel good. It says he preached the word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit.
We talked about that. That's Romans 15 .16 and through verse, about verse 19, had some information on that as well. Second thing we talked about was he said that he did not like to build on the work of others.
And we talked a little bit about the fact that Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Pentecostals and Charismatics love for you to go out and lead someone to Christ. And then before you can disciple them, they'll grab them and bring them into their group while they're still baby Christians.
That's what they love to do. And Paul said, I don't ever do that. He said in verse 20, Romans 15 .20, I strive to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named, lest I should build on another man's foundation.
So Paul did not do that. So that's what we talked about last time. Today, I want us to look at verse 25. In fact, verses 20 through 24 were where Paul was talking about how he did not build on the work of others.
So we covered that last time. So that brings us to verse 25 today. Let's read it together. It says, but now I go unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints. And you have to remember historically, we know that, and even biblically, we know that the church at Jerusalem was very poor.
It was impoverished. And it's because the Jews hated Christianity and they would do everything they could. Like if one of their workers was a Jewish person and they became a Christian, they'd fire them.
So they couldn't make a living. And so they were very, very poor. And so Paul quite often would take up love offerings in some of the Gentile churches, like in Corinth, where they had lots of money, and he would take that back to the saints in Jerusalem because they needed money.
And they would take up love offerings like that. So you see that going on throughout this part of the book of Romans in chapter 15, especially. So let's look at verse 25. But now I go unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints.
You might as well put in your Bible, they're poor saints, impoverished saints. For it has pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints. Oh, look, even Paul said it.
Poor saints, which are at Jerusalem. So he took up a love offering, didn't he? And these churches in Macedonia and Achaia had more money and they took up a love offering. And by the time Paul got there, he collected it and took it back.
So we see here that churches were doing that sort of thing. Now, what's interesting about it as we keep reading through this material, we start to look at Paul himself as a preacher of the gospel, even an apostle.
And back in those days, the church at Jerusalem, of course, is where Peter was and James and some of those guys. And they were full-time servants of the Lord. So the churches would pay them a salary.
The question is, did Paul ever take one? And I think it's kind of interesting as we take a look at that. But so from time to time, Paul would take up love offerings from one church to give to another.
But if we look at, just kind of flip over there to Acts chapter 18, verse two, we see something really important about the apostle Paul. And it says, and found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy with his wife, Priscilla, because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome and came to them.
So Paul came to visit this godly couple and the leader at Rome had cast out all the Christians and especially if they were Jewish believers and made them leave the city. So Paul went to visit these godly people.
Then look at verse three. And because he was of the same craft, so that's why he knew them. They were in the same business. He abode with them and wrought for by their occupation, they were tent makers.
Now wrought, it's an old English word, it just means worked. He worked with them and built some tents to make some money. So Paul was an entrepreneur. He had a skill with his hands that his parents and his dad in particular had taught him.
And the best I can tell from research I've done, before a young man could study to be a rabbi back in those days, he had to prove that he had a skillset where he could work with his hands and make money because none of them started out full time.
And the Jewish people would pay their ministers some money too, but sometimes it was part time. So they wanted to make sure they knew how to make a living before they preached. I think that had been such a great idea for the church, especially the American church, is to require that young men go out and learn how to make a living before they go to seminary.
But one thing that would help is then they would be more like 40 when they got there, about Dave's age, almost exactly to the day or week anyway. So that they would be wise enough not to just believe everything that's taught at the seminary.
That would be so helpful if they knew a little bit about how the world worked already and knew how to make a living, maybe even owned a business like Paul did here. And then they go and they listen and say, yeah, that's probably true.
And they say, nah, I don't buy into that. It'd be so much better. But as it is, so many of our preachers, their mama called them to preach when they were little, they went to college, went straight to seminary, went straight to the pulpit.
And there you end up with churches where the women like them and the men don't respect them. And that's something. If they can tell stories really well, the women will like the preacher, but the men won't listen to them very much because they don't think they know how to do much.
Well, in the old days, they had to learn to work with their hands. So Paul's choice that his family chose to teach him was tent making. And he was there working with Aquila and Priscilla, making tents, making some money so he could make the next trip that he wanted to make.
So we see that very clearly in Acts 18, verses two and three. All right, so the most famous rabbinic declaration on education comes from the Talmud. Now that's not inspired scripture, but it's a book that the Jewish people hold very high, a religious book.
You might call it like a commentary, only it's more than that. But it's like we have commentaries where men of God, women sometimes will write books and men of God will write commentaries on what they think the Bible means.
It's kind of like that, only it's full of wise sayings and things too. It's not inspired, but they go to it even today. And there's a book called Kiddushin 29a is how you would look it up if you wanted to look this up.
And in this passage, it enjoins Jewish parents to teach their children Torah, which that's the Bible, Torah, the Old Testament, and especially the first five books to teach them that, but also to teach them a trade, which means a way to make a living with their hands.
In addition, they should get their firstborn sons circumcised and find them a spouse and teach them to swim. Isn't that interesting? Those are the things that were listed. So a wife, let's see what order they put this in.
It's interesting. So the first thing is, get them in the Torah, teach them to make a living. Then after they're making a living and can build a house, then they can marry. So usually they were in their forties before they got married and the wife would be around 15, 16.
That's just how that worked. And so they taught them these things, especially to learn to swim, I think is excellent. And later in the same Talmudic passage, there is a warning to parents who fail to provide their children with such tools, such as how to make a living.
It says, quote, anyone who does not teach his son a skill or profession may be regarded as if he is teaching him to rob, to be a thief. Isn't that interesting? That's in their holy books. So they expected the young men to be taught a trade, even if they were going to be a rabbi.
So I've found a little historical proof. I've said that for years and believed it was true. And I based it on Paul because I knew that he studied under Gamaliel and here in scripture, we know for a fact Paul had a skill with his hand.
So I've always believed that they probably required that of all the young men that studied under Gamaliel or any other way that they studied. And here we see some historic support for it as well. So now let me get you to go to 2 Corinthians 11 for a second.
I want to show you some more things about Paul. So now we know he was an entrepreneur. And we know that he would go around and take up love offerings, but he didn't use it for himself. He gave it to poor churches, at least in this parts we've studied so far this morning.
So now in 2 Corinthians 11, verse seven, and following we find information about the apostle Paul. He says, I have committed an offense in abasing myself that you might be exalted. No, he said, he's asking the question, have I committed an offense?
It's a rhetorical question. Obviously he doesn't believe he's committed an offense, but he's asking them, have I offended you guys and that I abase myself so that you can be exalted. In other words, I'm not getting rich off of you guys.
I'm not taking up love offerings and getting rich. I'm actually living somewhat in difficulty. I don't have quite enough money left, but I'm good with that because I want you to be exalted. Because I have preached to you the gospel of God freely.
He said, does that offend you that I don't take money from you? I remember when I first met brother Otis and he sat right there in front of me, right there, always every time and Miss B right next to him.
And after I started having coffee with him, maybe three weeks after I met him, he found out. I said, I don't take money from the church. You know that, don't you? He said, no, brother David, I didn't know that.
And about a week later we had coffee. And he said, you know, brother David, when you told me that it bothered me a little bit. I've never seen a pastor that didn't take money from the church. Usually about the same pay as a doctor, which was telling me they pay him too much.
I think that's what he meant by that. But he didn't say it exactly like that, but that was kind of the gist of it. And he said, but I thought it through for a week and I like it. I think it's great. In fact, brother David, I think every preacher should do that way.
They should have a job or build a business. They should not take money from the church. In one week, he changed his whole view. So I think there's a balance there. I mean, you look at Pastor Criswell at First Baptist Dallas all the years he was there.
He didn't have time to go out and build a business. He was the CEO of that huge church and he wrote a study Bible. So he deserved to be paid a full salary. But a lot of the young guys coming out of seminary, I kind of wonder what they're doing all day with their time because I spent a lot of time preparing for messages and doing different ministries in the church and still have plenty of time to do other stuff too.
So you just wonder, but this is a fairly small church. So it's okay to pay the pastor. The Bible teaches that, but my point is Paul wouldn't take their money. Even when it made him where he was abasing himself and going without things, he wouldn't take their money.
All right, so there is a place that we find in 2 Corinthians 11, verse eight, where Paul took a meal allowance, but you have to get into the Greek to understand, in English, it doesn't sound like that, but you have to get into the Greek to understand that's what it was.
In fact, you got to get into one of the thick dictionary, Greek dictionary, where it gives all the history of the word and you'll figure out what this is talking about. So look at it, 2 Corinthians 11, eight, I robbed other churches, taking wages of them to do you service.
Now, let me put this in perspective. He's at the church of Corinth and all they've ever seen are false gods being worshiped with a lot of money passing hands and a lot of illicit things happening. And then there were what Paul called false apostles coming in and they wanted lots of money to preach.
And Paul knew about this. We have false apostles nowadays because now there cannot be biblical apostles because the Bible says one of the qualifications of being an apostle is you had to have physically walked with Jesus.
That's very difficult for people to do now, 2000 years after he ascended into heaven. So they do not exist. And if there are whole denominations that say they have apostles, so they are false apostles.
They had them in Paul's day too. And one of the things they were known for is they want to make lots of money off the gospel. So when Paul went into this church, he knew they were having problems with false apostles.
And so he decided, I'm not taking any of their money and I'm gonna make sure they notice it. And that's what he's telling them. Does it offend you that I don't take your money? Things like that. He's making clear, sure that they know that he's not like the others, that he's willing to take no money, but I'm gonna teach you the truth of the Bible.
So listen to me, that's kind of what's going on here. Now, this is interesting where he said that he robbed other churches and it's a figure of speech. He's trying to make, he's using a figure of speech to emphasize a point, doesn't mean he robbed them.
But what he meant was he took money from other churches when he didn't need it. The reason he's saying he robbed is because he sold tents and made a living. He did not need their money, but he took their money so he could come to the church at Corinth.
Apparently he planned before he got there and make sure that he didn't run out of money because he didn't want to take any of the Corinthian church money because he wanted to show them, I'm not here to preach for money.
So he took some money from a previous church. Now, what's interesting here, it says taking wages of them to do you service. That means I took the money that they gave me, I'm using it, some of it to live on now so that I don't take any money from you.
All right, so what is this word wages here though? That's very important. So if you look that word up in a pretty good, you know, a very good Greek dictionary, apsoneon is the word. And literally what it means is rations for a soldier.
So back in that day, when a Roman soldier would come and become a soldier, the government paid him, just made sure he had food to eat. It doesn't mean he got any money necessarily, but he had food to eat.
They gave him rations, food and clothing. And that's what the word literally means. So, or sometimes it's translated that which is appointed for buying food. And in the use of the word throughout history, if you go back and look at the Greek all the way back to Aristotle, which is what these dictionaries do, it was mostly used as a military allowance.
So it wasn't like Paul took money from another church for himself. He took just enough so that he could have food and not use up his tent making money so that he could save that to use when he went to Corinth.
Does that make sense? So he was planning. That's why he said he robbed him. He said, cause he didn't like taking money from that church either, but it was a wealthy church and they offered him some. And he thought, okay, I'll use it to buy food while I'm with the wealthy church and save my money so that when I go to Corinth, I won't take a penny.
You see, this is what's happening. So this is how the apostle Paul was. Now, verse nine in the second Corinthians 11. And when I was present with you and wanted, which means he didn't have enough money, his clothing was perhaps tattered a little bit.
He wasn't getting enough food to eat. So I was with you and I wanted, or lacked is another way to say it. I was chargeable to no man. I didn't owe any man any money, right? For that which was lacking to me, the brethren which came from Macedonia So now we know the church that gave him the military ration money, right?
So he was wanting, he didn't have enough to do what he was doing and also do it for no money in Corinth. And so they gave him some food ration money. And in all things, I have kept myself from being burdensome to you at Corinth.
And so will I keep myself from being a burden to you at Corinth? So he's making a big point that when these false apostles come in and want all your money, I'm not like them. You see the point? All right, now the reason Paul would not take money from the church at Corinth, look at verse 12.
But what I do, that I will do, that I may cut off occasion from them which desire occasion that wherein they glory, they may be found even as we. So these false apostles were bad mouthing Paul and saying, he's not, you know, he doesn't teach the truth.
Don't listen to Paul, he doesn't teach the truth. And so he didn't wanna give them occasion to say, see, he just there to take your money. That's his point. He wasn't gonna let his enemies be able to say, he came to Corinth just to take your money and get rich.
And this is what this whole thing is talking about. From them which desire occasion, he didn't allow it. Now, verse 13 says, for such as are false apostles, deceitful workers. Now, I want you to apply this to today.
Now, I have close friends, many of whom I met through Tradeway around the country and who grew up Pentecostal in some cases, maybe who had a father or grandfather, something that was a preacher among the Pentecostals.
And they just grew up believing some things that are very difficult to let loose of. Would you say that's true, Ron? I mean, like God almost has to just let you see it because a human's not gonna argue you out of it, right?
I'm sure you probably had a few people attacked and you said, nah, you're wrong. But then all of a sudden you change your mind. But there's a lot of them that it just takes time. And I've got a really close friend now that he's been texting me, asking me questions.
And I know what he's getting at. I guess he thinks I don't know, but I know what he's getting at. And I answer his questions the best I can biblically. But he's in a place where they believe there are apostles.
So one of the key questions they will ask you is, do you believe in the Holy Spirit? And do you believe that the book of Acts is a model for how the church ought to operate today? Now, that's a trick question that they will ask you because they want you to either say, no, I don't believe in the Holy Spirit.
Then they can abase you like Paul's talking about. They can talk bad about you. Or if you say, no, I don't believe in the book of Acts, that sounds bad, right? So you have to understand that, you know, they honestly don't believe that we believe in the Holy Spirit.
And it's interesting, because this was from, you know, this started out from, where is it? Let me find it. I may have left it back there because part of a previous sermon, here it is. I didn't necessarily bring up here today, but all my notes are together.
So I have to, I pull some of them off the top and leave them in the back pew. But actually I brought this one, because this was from a couple of Sundays ago. Let me just read it to remind you this. Because they ask you, do you believe in the Holy Spirit?
Because they don't think you do, if you don't speak in tongues and if you don't believe in faith healing. And when I say faith healing, I mean where you can, someone among us has power to put our hands on a person and heal them from cancer by speaking it out of their body.
Or getting a demon out of them by speaking that, by rebuking the demon and saying, leave this person. Which is what apostles could do those things, right? Apostles did them like a, remember the kid that fell out of the second floor and it killed him when Paul was preaching a long sermon.
Reminds me of myself sometimes. I wonder how many kids we've lost in the history of this church, but that's why we put padding on the floor. But so he goes downstairs, goes outside, lays on top of this kid.
Now picture this, these people, like my friends that want to debate me, do they really think that they're still doing this sort of thing where they would go outside and lay on top of the person and bring them back to life?
I mean, if what they're wanting me to believe is true, they should be able to do that, would you agree? So what they were doing in the book of Acts, they should be able to do that. I've never seen one do that, have you?
Not even on television. So it's really interesting how they try to believe that the book of Acts is the model for the church. And if you're not always, did you, I don't know if you watched any stuff on YouTube about that.
How do you say that revival? I may not even be saying it right. How do you pronounce the town or the school? With a Z? Okay, so I've been saying it wrong, not on purpose. I call it Asbury, but not on purpose.
So I don't know how you pronounce it, but they've been talking about this revival. And if you really look into it, what you had was you had women preaching and speaking in tongues down at the front and laying hands and cast and commanding demons to come out of people, which only an apostle can do that.
We can't do that. So they believe that there are apostles, even female apostles in which, I don't know of any, we had some female disciples, but not apostles. So they believe in that stuff. And when you listen to them interview the young people and they're college age kids, tell me about the experience.
It's always, I just felt the Holy Spirit everywhere. Every single one, I never heard anybody mention Jesus. Not one time, I'm not saying they didn't, but the ones I listened to, there was an emphasis on the Holy Spirit.
I felt the fullness of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was all over the place, stuff like that. And I'm thinking, okay, so if we don't talk like that, does that mean we don't believe in the Holy Spirit is how they question you.
So let me read this to you in John chapter, this is review for you guys, we already talked about it. John 16, 13, how be it, just Jesus Christ is speaking, okay? The Lord Jesus is speaking. And he says, how be it when he, the spirit of truth, that's the Holy Spirit, when he is come, he will guide you into all truth for he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak and he will show you things to come.
He will glorify me, Jesus, he will glorify Jesus for he shall receive of what the father's given me, Jesus, and will show it to you. So he does not show people of himself, he shows people Jesus. If it's the Holy Spirit that comes down on the room, you will learn more about Jesus Christ who will teach you more about the father and you won't learn much about the Holy Spirit.
Am I right, Ron? Even in scripture, there's not a lot of teaching about the person of the Holy Spirit. He does not like to talk about himself. He is the third person of the Trinity, not the first person, not the second person.
But if you don't lift him to the top, you don't believe in the Holy Spirit, apparently. Now we know that that's not true. We understand the Holy Spirit. When we got saved, he indwelt our bodies and our bodies became the temple of the living God and that part of God called the Holy Spirit is who lives in us.
The father doesn't live in us in and of himself. We would blow up. I sprayed that word, wow. That's why you don't sit on the front row. But anyway, like we would blow up. Jesus isn't in us because he literally is seated at the right hand of God in the third heaven, which is a place.
He's there. So it's God, the Holy Spirit. But as I've said so many times, I don't know where I read this, but I've always loved it. It's not even true, but it's a model. If God could be particles, he'd be everywhere.
And every particle would be all of God, but that's not how it works. But think about that, it helps. So if you have the Holy Spirit living in your body, you have all of God, but it's not really the father or Jesus.
It's the Holy Spirit, but it's all of God. So how can you be born again and not believe in the Holy Spirit? It's just a ridiculous question, but they get it from their seminaries. All of, I can't, I should stop using the word all.
A lot of seminaries, what they do is teach you how to attack the other denominations. They don't even really know what the other denomination believes because they read a book about it written by a person that hates the denomination.
I've done, I've read those books and I have come to know people from even Mormon. I had a Mormon friend for a while. The stuff he said they believe was not like what I read in the book. Now they had some major problems, like they believe there's multiple gods.
And that's enough for me to know that's a cult. But some of the stuff they say about on this kind of mean spirit is not even true. It's called, what's it called? A straw man argument, where if you can't beat the logic, you just attack the person.
Seminaries do that. So apparently where Pentecostals go to school, they are taught what they think Baptists believe. Now we have Baptist background, our Bible church, same, it's very similar as far as these doctrines go.
And they are taught that we don't believe in the Holy Spirit because we don't speak in tongues. Paul asked the question once, he said, do all speak in tongues? Well, doesn't that imply that all people that are saved do not speak in tongues?
Would you agree with that? Do all prophesy? He asked those questions. So everyone has different gifts, different portions of faith given by the Holy Spirit as a gift to do the job you're supposed to do.
And yet they teach, if you don't do that stuff, you're not, you don't know the Holy Spirit. You don't believe in him. It's hogwash, but that's what goes on. So we see there in John that if it is the Holy Spirit that comes down on this place, you're not gonna leave here talking about the Holy Spirit.
Now you might mention, you know, the Holy Spirit blessed and taught us the word of God in a way we hadn't seen it before. And it was amazing. And, but you're gonna be talking about, you're gonna be praising Jesus and God.
You're not gonna be praising the Holy Spirit. You see, if it's true, that's just how it works. It's how it has always worked for 2000 years of church history, but they don't like to read church history either.
Because if you go back in church history, you'll find a guy named Chrysostom who wrote a commentary on 1 Corinthians and where it comes to tongue speaking. He said, I don't even know what this is because it no longer happens in the church.
And this was like 300 AD, not very long after the apostle John died. So it goes way back when that stopped. The apostle Paul said, these things will cease. And Katie, I know I'm on my favorite topic. I'll get off of it.
All right, so here you have, so here's what I'm gonna get to, all of that to get to this. 2 Corinthians 11, 13. If your friends are talking about apostles who can stretch arms out, crippled arms, and I saw people on YouTube saying that this Asbury revival that arms and legs were growing out.
That's a real sign of false stuff. That's not happening. Well, anyway, so they feel that they have apostolic gifts. And look what Paul said about it 2000 years ago. For such are false apostles. Now I want you to see what, see, we're not like this.
You know, we talk about it a lot. We will try to not hurt people. We talked about it at Sunday school. We would rather say, well, God loves us with a greater love than the non-elect. And the Bible actually says he hates the non-elect.
We're talking about that. I do it too. If I'm in a crowd of tradeway people that I know go to churches where they don't talk about the sovereignty of God, I don't wanna say God hates some people because they're just not gonna get that in five minutes, right?
But he does hate some people. He hates the workers of iniquity. That's one group we know he hates. So anyway, we're careful how we talk to people. But next time somebody wants to tell you that they can grow limbs out or they can speak with tongues or do any of the sign gifts that God did allow the apostles to do, then you need to know this information about what Paul would say about them because they're a false apostle.
Now, before I read this, I want to go over this in case you haven't heard me say it before or you forgot. Why did God give the apostles sign gifts? S-I-G-N, and why do we call them that? That's not in the Bible, but it's a theological concept.
And it's talking about kind of like when Moses could take a rod and throw it down and turn into a snake. And he could pick the snake up, which that's where I would tell the Lord, I don't want that job.
But he would pick the snake up and turn back into the rod. He could raise that rod up and God would part the Red Sea. You see, those are sign gifts. If you go back in the history of the Bible from the very first page of the Bible all the way through the end, you will find that there have been certain places and we call them dispensational changes.
Those are places in history where God's changed, where God changed the way he deals with human beings. You know, the greatest dispensational change was the cross where it changed from Old Testament to New Testament.
Everyone knows that one. But there's about seven other places. Like right after the flood was a dispensational change. Right before Moses and the law, that was a dispensational change. All right, you didn't have the law before that.
And now you have it. And so what God does every time there's a dispensational change is he knows that his believers that have lived in the old system are not gonna believe you if you tell them, hey, that system's not how it works.
It works like this. They're gonna think you're a cult leader or a false religion, aren't they? What if someone walked in today and said, hey, Jesus doesn't save by grace anymore. He saves by you have to learn to ride a horse and join a cowboy church.
Okay, would you believe that? All right, but what if he got on that horse and the horse flew across town and came back and landed right there? And he says, I'm telling you, God's changed this. How's it works now?
I'd get me a horse, wouldn't you? Absolutely. That's called a sign gift, okay? So God, Sharon and Raymond are going, I like that, let's do it. So God will authenticate the messenger that's bringing new information that the world never had about God.
He will authenticate them with sign gifts every time. So when you get to Jesus, picture it, you got a bunch of Jews that believe you're saved by keeping the law and they're not even keeping it right. I mean, they've turned it to the place where they don't even know God anymore.
They just love the stuff. Like they love the things God put there for them to do. How many hundreds of them are there? I don't even remember how many hundred laws there are. Somebody in here knows that.
610. You got to keep all those to go to heaven apparently. So this is what they had gotten to the place where they're teaching. And so here comes John the Baptist kind of calls them murderers and whoremongers and tells them they're terrible.
And so then after him, you're gonna introduce Jesus Christ and the apostles who are telling these Jews, guess what? If you don't keep all of the law, you're going to hell. Guess what? Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything but faith in Christ.
And they're gonna say, the whole thing is about circumcision because see, they focused on the physical. They weren't even thinking about what it pictured in the heart. They had forgotten that. So here you have this whole new message of grace.
Why would they believe them? The Bible says a Jew requires the sign. That's why you see this very sweet man that was texting me these questions after I gave him this, like he sends me a question. Dave was saying, isn't it funny how a short question can take all day to answer.
Isn't that weird? You've dealt with that. Like they can throw three points in a question takes you this much to answer it. Well, that's just how it is. So what was I going to tell you that he asked me?
Oh man, it was so good. What was it? I just forgot that idea because I thought about our conversation. Maybe I'll think of it in a minute. Anyway, sorry. I just had a senior moment there. Man, I wanted to tell you that, it's so juicy.
It was something he asked me after I answered him. So maybe I'll remember the sequence here in a minute. It's way back there, way down in there. And unless the, one of those calcium deposits you start, unless they eliminated it, whatever that stuff is you get when you have Alzheimer's.
All right, I think it eliminated it. So, oh man, I don't remember. Anyway, maybe it'll come back in a minute. Well, let's go to verse 13 and needless to say, oh, well, okay, it was something, it was something about healing and all that.
And that's where I told him, okay, no, we don't believe that still happens. Oh yeah, he was talking about casting out demons. And I said, no, we don't believe that I, David Mitchell, can command a demon to come out.
I believe I can ask Jesus to bind them and remove them. But I don't say come out of him like the apostles because I'm not an apostle. And that's what I told him. So we don't have apostles today and blah, blah, blah.
Now I know he's gonna come back and say what we do, but he hadn't done that yet. But my point is he has to believe there's still apostles. And look what Paul says. If the Bible says there are none and they say there are, then they have to be false apostles.
Would you agree with that logic? So for such are false apostles. And I guess what I'm saying today as your pastor is that when you see people and they may be your friends and they believe you can grow arms out and that you can speak in a heavenly language, which the Bible nowhere talks, if you understand the Greek and the context, nowhere talks about a heavenly language that humans are supposed to use, all of that stuff.
If they're talking about that stuff, they are false. Now, their teachers that taught them that stuff are the false apostles. So I'm not talking about your friends here. I'm not saying that what I'm about to read may or may not apply to your friends, but to their teachers, it absolutely applies.
All right, and here's what Paul said about them. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, for such are false apostles, number one, they are deceitful workers. So they look like they're servants of God, doing God's work, but it's deceitful.
They're really not serving God, they're serving Satan. Secondly, they transform themselves into the apostles of Christ, which means they are not apostles, but they turn themselves into apostles by calling themselves an apostle.
The greatest place I saw that in the New Testament is when a person tried to cast demons out of it because they saw Peter, maybe, and John, I remember who they saw, casting demons out because they were apostles, and this guy that wasn't one tried to do it, and the demon said, you know, we know Paul, and we know whoever the other, what was the other name?
Peter, we know Peter, and we know Paul, but you, we don't know, and they came out of that man and ripped him to pieces, almost killed him. And that's what can happen if you start pretending you're an apostle, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.
Now look at verse 14, and no marvel, it should not surprise you that there are people all around you doing this stuff because they did it 2 ,000 years ago. We know Paul's writing about it, but they're still doing it, and it says, even then, you shouldn't marvel at it because Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
That's something we could spend a whole Sunday on. People think that if they hear a voice, or they see a miracle, that that's always God. When Moses threw that stick down, it turned to a snake, what did the magicians of Pharaoh do immediately after that?
They threw their sticks down and they turned to snakes. I don't remember if they picked them back up or not, but they mimicked it, didn't they? Threw magic, dark practices, satanic things. So Satan himself does this, he transforms himself into an angel of light.
Do you think he came to Eve as an angel of darkness? She would have been running and hiding, but he looked like an angel of light. I'm gonna give you more light about truth and everything in the world, and you're gonna be a lot happier if you listen to me.
So that's how he does, so does it surprise you if his servants do that? The people that are serving him, acting like they're Christian teachers, asking like they have the power of God who came down on the place and talked about the Holy Ghost the whole time, who doesn't do that?
And you say, okay, don't marvel at it. Verse 15 says, therefore it is no great thing if Satan's ministers. So now he's calling these false apostles Satan's ministers. Do we call them that? No, we try to be nice to them.
We try to just delicately argue against what they believe and show them a few scriptures. And Paul calls them, well, you're like Satan. You're just like Satan, you're Satan's minister. So you're acting like him, and I'm not surprised, that's how Paul would talk to them.
And it says, it's no great thing if his ministers, Satan's ministers also be transformed as ministers of righteousness. So they look like these marvelous men of God and women of God. They're on a stage in front of 30 ,000 people stretching arms out miraculously and looking like ministers of God and they're actually ministers of Satan.
And we shouldn't even marvel at it. It's been going on for 2000 years, but it is repugnant, isn't it? Now look at the last phrase talking about these false apostles, whose end shall be according to their works.
Now, how would you like to be judged by works, by a holy, perfect God someday? You're not, you're judged by grace. God looks at you and knows that you're in Christ and he loves you. Doesn't even have to ask you a question.
You know, I've preached this myself because I heard a cool old preacher say it one time. He said, all that has to happen when you get to the great wide thrown judgment is he looks at you and says, what'd you do with Jesus?
And if you say, I didn't accept him, he says, depart from me into hell, right? He doesn't ask that. He doesn't ask what'd you do with Jesus. He's known you before the foundation of the world. He knows you have Jesus.
He sees Jesus within you. He sees Jesus around you. He sees Jesus in your countenance. God the Father knows who you are. But look at this, you're not judged by works. You're judged by Jesus being in you because you received him as your personal Lord and Savior because the Holy Spirit turned your mind on and changed your want to and showed you how to do that and regenerated you where you would want to do that.
And yet these people are gonna be judged by their works. So these false apostles will be judged by every deed and thought they ever had. And I remember one of them in my lifetime and there's probably many, Jimmy Swagger, one of the greatest faith healers of all time.
They pulled him over and he had a stack this big of Playboy magazines in the back of his car. And that got on all the news, remember that? And so he'll be judged for that. That's the works that he did.
He probably did some good things too. But if you have one bad thing, you go to hell. Just takes one. You have a thousand good things, one bad thing, you go to hell unless you're in Christ. Jude 12 says this, talking about these false apostles.
These are spots in your feast of charity, your love feast. So like when we have fellowship, if our church was three times this size, you'd have a few tears in here and we wouldn't know who they were. You would even have some who say, brother David, would you give me like a youth class?
Or give, I don't wanna scare any of you out asking to teach the Bible. But I mean, I will get to know you for a while first, but they'll always want a class. Or could I start a home Bible study and have some of your congregation come to my home?
And then they start teaching how to speak in tongues at their house. And I don't know that's going on. See, of course you would tell me, but that's how they do it. And so they're like spots in your love feast.
So that's your fellowship. If they come in and they're sitting out there from God's viewpoint, looking down, they're like dark spots and everyone else is white and just glorious to God. And he sees them, little devil people sitting in there, devil people.
And they're gonna try to grab you and teach you corruption and put that in your heart and mind and try to pull you and draw you away so that you focus on that stuff rather than what God wants you doing.
And here's what they are, they're spots in your love feast. And he says, when they feast with you, they're feeding themselves without fear. They may full well think they're a Christian. I don't know what they think.
I know they think they're a good Bible teacher. Who knows what they're thinking, but they're doing it without fear of God. And God says what they actually are is they are clouds without water. Now I think about that when you get in Texas, remember August, how we needed water, July, June, July, August, we got very little rain, didn't we?
Everything was drying up, the stock tanks were drying up. If you're listening out there, a stock tank means a pond, okay? Only Texans call it a tank. Maybe Oklahoma, I don't know, probably not, just Texans.
So we're totally without water and these dark clouds would come up and you're going, oh, praise the Lord, it's gonna rain. And they just keep going right over and it never rains. That's a picture of a false prophet.
You're thinking, oh, they're gonna teach us something true about God. And they come up here and they're all dark like a cloud full of rain and they teach you a bunch of stuff and none of it is water. And what is the water picture?
The water of the word, they don't give you that. They just give you stories and poems and make you feel good. And that's how they do it. So they are pictured as clouds without water carried about by winds.
Doesn't the Bible talk about winds of doctrine? Lots of false doctrine and you'll believe that if you're not in the word, right? So they're carried about by winds. They are like a tree whose fruit is withered.
So you have a tree with bad fruit on it. That's another allegory of these people. They are like trees where the fruit is withered without fruit twice dead. Do you know what that means? What do you think twice dead means?
Well, it could mean they died physically and they died spiritually, which is hell. And they're twice dead people teaching you the Bible. Or it could be talking about this tree saying that the fruit withered and then the leaves withered and then the tree died.
So the fruit was dead and the tree's dead. I don't know, but it's twice dead. Double death coming from these people. And they're like a tree that's been plucked up by the roots and Jesus is the root. So there's no root feeding these people.
They're just giving you satanic information. They're like raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame, wandering stars to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. That's who false apostles are.
And I've got friends telling me that they got them all around them in their churches. Oh yeah, we have apostles. I guess you do. And I'm not amazed by it. They make themselves appear as ministers of God but they're actually ministers of Satan.
And the mark of it is when they say they can do things that the Holy Ghost says he doesn't do anymore. Let me just end with this, okay? Turn to Hebrew chapter one in the New Testament. I know that sounds like an Old Testament book but Hebrews chapter one and verse one.
It's kind of in a prominent place. Verse one and two. So I'm gonna show you what the Holy Spirit himself wrote in the Bible. And I want you to compare that to what some of your friends say that the Holy Spirit is still doing today.
And then you have to ask yourself the question, if the Holy Spirit says, I don't do that anymore and then people say, well, he's doing it, who's lying? The Holy Spirit or the person saying he's doing it?
You see my point? He can't lie. He won't do something that he says he won't do. So let's read this together. God, who at sundry times, that means like once upon a time, long time ago, and in diverse manners, many different ways.
So a long time ago, now this is in the New Testament talking about the Old Testament times where you had the law and the prophets, right? He said, God, who in different times and in many different ways used to speak, it says spake, that means used to speak to in time past, used to doesn't that imply, but not now.
Okay, he used to in time past speak to the fathers by the prophets. So now you have to ask yourself, go back and read the whole Old Testament and tell me every way in which prophets spoke to the people and all of those ways in which they spoke, God doesn't speak that way anymore.
Name a couple of them. What's one? Did they have dreams where they could act like Daniel, where they have a dream or interpret dreams? That's how he used to speak to them. Did they ever hear a voice coming out of a burning bush that didn't get extinguished?
I mean, didn't get burnt up by the fire. So that's the way God spake. So he doesn't do that anymore. Did they ever speak to the people as if they were God? Didn't they? Doesn't do that anymore. Did God talk to them in audible voices and then they would come tell the congregation what God said?
Doesn't do that anymore. He said he used to in many different ways in times past. So you got that, right? That's how he spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But now in verse two, now he has in these last days spoken unto us by his son.
Has spoken is interesting in the Greek because it implies that it is finished. He spoke it, the apostles and their followers wrote it down. And after he sent it into heaven, Jesus gave them complete instructions.
He said, there's stuff you weren't even ready for that I could have told you, but I will send my spirit, the Holy Spirit to teach that to you after I sin. So he sent the Holy Spirit to teach them that.
And they wrote that down. And now we have the entire new testaments called the Canon, the old and the new Testament finished. And we have all that now. And that is how he speaks to us through the son.
So he used to speak through all these different prophetic manners. And now he doesn't. And now he speaks through the word of God, the written word of God and by his Holy Spirit, helping you interpret it correctly.
That's it, the water and the spirit. That's what we have in this dispensation. We don't have that other stuff because the Holy Spirit said he won't do it anymore. So when your friends start telling you about all this wonderful stuff that's happening in their church that you ain't got, and you don't even believe in the Holy Spirit, read that verse to them.
They won't believe it even when you show it to them. Read verse one and two. But you better break that verse down and know it really well before you take it to them and say, okay, so you're telling me God still does this stuff and God said he doesn't.
So who am I supposed to believe and smile at him and then tell him, God hates you. No, I'm kidding. Or tell him this, you're a minister of Satan. Even though you think you're a minister of righteousness, you're a minister of Satan and I got you figured out and smile at him.
No, don't do that either. But do what the Holy Spirit leads you to do. But you have the equipment here to know the truth about it. And you have to deal with them as the Holy Spirit says. And I know Charlotte's over there thinking, David, the scripture tells you how to deal with them.
It says, deal with them in meekness and don't try to win a debate with them, but rather instruct them. Now, let me ask you that. Where's your textbook when you're instructing someone? Just show them scriptures.
You don't have to tell them they're Satan's wife or whatever. You don't have to tell them any of that. Just read them these scriptures. I like telling them they're Satan's wife though. Let's stand and have prayer together.
But my wife works on me and tries to make me be meeker and all that good stuff. And she would tell you that I'm much better. Let's pray for Charlotte. Lord, thank you for your word. We ask you to bless it.
Father, give us time in our life to, or help us make time to study and know the scripture as well as these false prophets know it so that we can answer them from scripture and instruct them. And Lord, we know some of them, they're not all reserved for the blackness of darkness forever, for hell.
Some of them are just people that have been misled and they can't actually change. And we've seen that happen. So help us to remember that as well. And Lord, we ask you to go with us into our time of fellowship, bless our food, bless our time together in Jesus name, amen.
Wish you guys could be here and have dessert because I saw what's back there. See you next time. So proud. Thank you. Thank you.