Spiritual Gifts 101 (Part 2)

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Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth.

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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.

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

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Exodus 4, Then Moses answered, But behold, they will not believe me, or listen to my voice.

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For they will say, The Lord did not appear to you. The Lord Yahweh said to him,

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What is in your hand? A staff. Throw it on the ground. So he threw it on the ground, and it became like a serpent.

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And Moses did what you would do, and Moses ran from it. But the Lord said to Moses, Put out your hand and catch it by the tail.

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So he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand. Listen, that they may believe that the

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Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, has appeared to you to affirm and to confirm the messenger.

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Again, the Lord said to him, Put your hand inside your cloak. He put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, the hand was leprous like snow.

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Then God said, Put your hand back inside your cloak. So he put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh.

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If they will not believe you, God said, or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign.

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Miracles were done in three time periods mainly, and they were done to confirm the message and the messenger.

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Time period two, Elijah and the prophets. Turn your Bibles to 1 Kings 17. You're going to see the same thing.

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That's why if you go down to the DCU Center and there's a big healing ministry, and there's no

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Bible teaching, which there hardly is, a few verses out of context, what's the healing ministry pointing to?

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I'll tell you what the healing ministry is pointing to, the teacher. So he can point to the big popcorn bucket so you can put money in it, but we'll get to that in a second.

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First Kings chapter 17. Signs and wonders were done in a day and an age where the canon wasn't complete, and the messenger needed to be confirmed.

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The message needed to be confirmed as from God. So 1 Kings chapter 17, we have the passage you're probably familiar with, with Elijah and the widow.

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1 Kings 17, let's pick it up in verse 19, and he said to her, give me your son and he took him from her arms and carried him up into the upper chamber where he lodged and laid him on his own bed.

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And he cried to the Lord, Yahweh, O Lord, my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom

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I sojourned by killing her son? Then he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the

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Lord, O Lord, my God, let this child's life come into him again.

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And the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah and the life of the child came into him again and he revived.

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And Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper chamber into the house and delivered him to his mother. And Elijah said, see, your son lives.

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Verse 24, and the woman said to Elijah, now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the

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Lord that is in your mouth is truth. Who does these things?

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It's easy to say, thus sayeth the Lord. It's harder to raise somebody from the dead and if I meet somebody who can raise someone from the dead,

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I will listen to them, won't you? The canon's not put together and all kinds of people were saying,

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Jesus told me this, Jesus told me that. Well, they weren't saying Jesus back in the Old Testament, but this is what God told me. Really?

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He told you that? Yeah, God told me to give, to take all your money and put it for seed money and give it to me.

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Oh, he did. How do we know? Let's turn to Acts chapter 14 for our last illustration of miracle signs and wonders aren't the end of themselves, they're pointing to something and to someone.

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The something is the message, the someone is the preacher. Acts 14 .3, three time periods where there's lots of miracles, the three times periods of inscripturation, the

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Bible coming together, Moses and Joshua, Elisha and Jesus and the apostles.

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Acts chapter 14 verse 3, so they remain for a long time speaking boldly for the

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Lord, Paul and Barnabas, who bore witness to the grace, the word of his grace.

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How do you bear witness to the word? Granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands.

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It's the same thing. How does God, when the canon's not put together yet, confirm the messenger and confirm the message?

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Answer, sign gifts, above and beyond revelatory gifts, fantastic gifts, gifts that would make you say, if I got up here and said,

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Jesus said he's coming back tomorrow, and somebody else got up here and says, Jesus is coming back tomorrow, but this person did something that would wow us, not like making some kind of leg, you know, that's longer than the other back, but taking somebody up out of their wheelchair.

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You would believe this person. I want to throw one other thing in here just to make you think through it.

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As time goes on, in the New Testament, book after book are being written, and eventually we get the last book written and the canon is complete.

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When was 1 Corinthians written? Was it written early on? Were there needed to be some signs given to confirm the message, or was it written really late in the process when most of the canon's already done?

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That'd be a good question to ask yourself, because if 1 Corinthians is written early, it would make sense, because Paul is saying, yes, all these gifts are true, you've just got a wrong order of them, but they're true and they're confirming something, and some one.

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Did you know there are four places in the Bible that are spiritual gifts? The way I remember it is 12 and 4. 1

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Corinthians 12, Romans 12, 1 Peter 4, Ephesians 4. Those are the four places.

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I have another question for you. By the way, you're all paying attention. It's getting, as my mother would say, it's hotter than blazes in here, but you're all paying attention.

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I forgot what I was going to say. Yeah, that's pretty good.

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Let me say this. Three kinds of gifts in the New Testament. Simply, generic categories.

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Signed gifts, pointing to the message and the messenger. Speaking gifts, teaching, etc.

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And then everything else that's not a signed gift and a speaking gift, it's just a service gift. Signed gifts, speaking gifts, serving gifts.

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If you had to predict out of the four New Testament books, which one would have the signed gifts, which one would you pick?

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The one written early or the one written late? I'd say early, because the canon's not put together yet.

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Did you know that signed gifts are not in Romans, they're not in Ephesians, they're not in 1 Peter, they're not in any other book of the Bible except 1

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Corinthians. And you know, 1 Corinthians was written in 54 AD, the earliest book in the

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New Testament that has gifts. Romans 58 AD, Ephesians 63

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AD, 1 Peter 64 AD. In other words, early on when the canon's not put together, sign, sign, sign, sign, sign.

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That is the Bible, that is the Bible, that is the Bible. As time goes on, Romans, Ephesians, 1

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Peter, we don't need signs anymore because we have most of the Bible. So let's go back to 1

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Corinthians chapter 12 and see some of these signed gifts, revelation gifts, and we'll hone in on a couple in particular.

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Here's the bad news. Some of these we don't know what they are. Why? Because they're not happening anymore.

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If they would happen, we would know what they are, but we don't know what they are because they don't happen anymore.

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We do know they have to do with signed gifts and revelation gifts and things that people would have so others would go,

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I believe you, I believe you. The first one, there's nine of them, is in 1 Corinthians 12, 8.

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For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom. Well, what is the utterance of wisdom?

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I don't know, ask Chrysostom. He didn't know either. Okay, next one. No, just kidding. It is very difficult to know.

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It has something to do with a speaking gift, hence utterance, and it has something to do with wisdom.

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See, I know Greek and Hebrew. It's very important to know that, utterance, wisdom. Dr. Thomas said, this is a special ability to receive and pass on to others a disclosure of God's mysteries during the period when he was granting direct revelations to the members of the body of Christ.

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We only know that it's divinely imparted revelation, and it was a sign gift to point to the messenger and the message.

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The second one is similarly difficult to understand 2 ,000 years away. By the way, if these were all happening today, we would know what these are.

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The word of knowledge. This isn't a typical charismatic Pentecostal, I have a word of knowledge.

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Somebody has a bad back getting healed or someone has cancer. This is a revelation from God, maybe applied to the situation of the utterance of wisdom.

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Special ability to grasp objective data, Dr. Thomas said. The next one, faith, is a little bit easier to understand.

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First Corinthians chapter 12 verse 9, to another different kind here, he's using a different word for another there, to another faith by the same spirit.

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Who here has saving faith? You don't have to raise your hand, but every Christian would have to raise their hand. This has nothing to do with, are you a

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Christian? Does God give you faith? This is a spectacular gift that when everyone else is saying,

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I don't know how God can move that mountain, I think he can. And then when it happens, we all say, wow,

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Paul knew that that ship wasn't going to get wrecked in Acts 27. Everybody else thought he was,

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Paul must be somebody because he had an extraordinary faith given to him by God. An unusual ability to believe

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God in the face of a horrible obstacle. These are all sign gifts. Now let's come to this one.

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We're going to camp here for probably the rest of the time, the gift of healing. Verse 9, to another gifts of healing by the one spirit.

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All right, let's talk about this. Does God heal today? Yes. How does

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God heal today? Well, the one thing I want to say before I go any further is, if someone asks you, does

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God heal today? You must answer yes. Now the question is, does he heal in the same fashion?

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Does he heal through a person? But God heals today. If you have a friend who's got a sickness or has cancer or who has an inoperable tumor, can you pray,

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God heal them? Would that be an honoring prayer? Absolutely. God could heal through time.

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God could heal because he's made the body to heal itself. God could heal through a direct primary miracle where the tumor is now gone.

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Do you believe that could happen? I believe that could happen. He could heal through medicine and radiation. Or he could heal through your promotion to glory.

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Then you'll be all healed. True? God heals today. But this was a gift given to a person and that they then could heal.

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They're the secondary cause. They could heal everybody and anyone. God heals today. But this isn't talking about this.

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The gift of healing is you have the gift of healing and you can heal anyone and everyone.

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Ever met anybody like that? The only healers I see outside of the AKC Kennel Club are people down in the

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Worcester DCU Center and other places on TV and they can't even heal their own eyesight or their own balding hairline.

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They can't heal anybody. And by the way, I know they can't heal people because the biblical gift of healing, the person who had that spectacular gift, that extraordinary gift, if they had that today, they wouldn't go to the

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DCU Center. They'd go to Children's Hospital Ward in St. V's First.

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And every single person would be healed. Because that's

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New Testament healing. That's what the gift was. You mean to tell me you're going to heal somebody that's got a bad back or lengthened legs or you're going to get gold fillings in the

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DCU Center? I remember I went to Anaheim once with a friend and we were trying to get in to see

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Benny Hinn. We couldn't get in. Because the only people that they were letting in, his people, his handlers, his managers were outside looking for people not who didn't have arms.

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There were some of those people. They didn't get in. Not for people who didn't have any eyes.

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They were letting in people who had crutches and who could walk but pretty much needed a wheelchair to get around.

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Everybody else they couldn't get in. And I'm telling you, friends, if somebody has the gift of healing today and they're not at Children's Hospital Boston, they are a fraud and a wolf.

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I worked in Children's Hospital Los Angeles for years as a sales rep. I had to have the gowns on. Everybody thought

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I was a doctor and I was glad that when they called me doctor I would just smile high, try to think of some big word, reanastomosis or something.

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I always remember going to Children's Hospital in L .A. and I would always wear my Batman watch because I would be by the patient and they would see my watch and stuff and we could talk a little bit about Batman.

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I just remember the parents, they're on the other side of the red line. You can't come in to here. This is a sterile field and we've got to take the kids in.

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I just remember their faces. And then to think someone today says, I have the gift of healing, but I won't heal you unless you've got the right amount of money, you have the right kind of seed offering, and it is diabolical.

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It has nothing to do with this gift of healing. Here's the gift of New Testament healing. Spectacularly, undeniably, without discrimination, they were healed of organic sicknesses and diseases including raising people from the dead.

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And if you can't do that, you don't have the gift of healing. To remind you one more time, God heals.

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But He heals through, again, providence, the way He's created the body, through glory, through medicine, and through directly making someone cancer free.

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But He doesn't do it through a person. Turn to Acts 3 if you would for a moment. I want to show you, number one, that healings were spectacular.

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Let me show you just how spectacular these healings are and were. So if somebody says they've got a gift of healing today, you'll easily spot them as the fraud that they are.

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I remember a guy who had the gift of healing at Gold's Gym in North Hollywood, and I said, I've got a really bad back, and he was just a brother in Christ.

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I said, if you could pray for me, that'd be great. He said, well, I can't really pray for you. I've got to have you come to my revival.

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Okay? That was the American Gladiators worked out at the gym, and I thought,

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I think they probably need more healing than I do when it comes to a bad back at your revival. So I'll just pass.

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Thank you. Spectacular healings. Take a look at Acts 3. I'm going to read NAS. Now, Peter and John were going up to the temple at the ninth hour, the hour of prayer, and a certain man who had been lame from his mother's womb was being carried along, whom they used to sit down every day at the gate of the temple, which is called

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Beautiful, in order to beg alms of those who were entering the temple. And when he saw Peter and John go to, about to go into the temple, he began to ask them to receive alms, asked them to receive alms, and Peter, along with John, fixed his gaze upon him and said, look at us.

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And when he began to give his attention, expecting to receive something from them,

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Peter said, I do not possess silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ the

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Nazarene, walk. And seizing him by the right hand, he raised him up, and immediately his feet and his ankles were straightened.

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And with a leap, he stood upright and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them. And kids, you know the song.

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And he went walking and leaping, and what, praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising

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God, and they were taking note of him as being the one who used to sit at the beautiful gate of the temple to beg alms.

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And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. Almost every

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Bible miracle is instantaneous, complete, organic.

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Also, they're undeniable. Turn to Acts chapter 4. We're just going to look at Acts 3, Acts 4, and Acts 5.

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Acts chapter 4, they were undeniable. If people have the gift of healing at DC Youth Center, then they should be calling whoever the next

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Mike Wallace is. He has a son, right? I always thought of Mike Wallace, but I think he has died.

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Call CNN. Call Wall Street Journal. And call every skeptic of the

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Christian faith. And they will go in there, and they'll watch, and they'll go, it's true. That really happened.

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Because that's what happened in the New Testament time. Even the unbelievers who had no faith, who wanted to hate

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Christ Jesus, they all said, yep, that happened. Look at chapter 4 of Acts. But when they had ordered them to go outside of the council, go aside out of the council, they began to confer with one another.

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What should we do with these men? For the fact that a noteworthy miracle has taken place through them is apparent to all who live in Jerusalem.

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And even though we'd like to, we cannot deny it. What'd they do back in the

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New Testament times? They knew there was a healing. They knew it was a miracle. So what are we going to do? You know what?

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That's Jesus healing, but it's through Beelzebub. It's not the Holy Spirit who's helping Jesus, it's Beelzebub, but they couldn't deny the miracles.

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I love these hoax folks that say, you know what?

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We offer $10 ,000 to any faith heal who can validate one of their faith healing claims and we'll give you $10 ,000.

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And not one can do it. Not one can do it. Healings were spectacular. They were undeniable.

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And lastly, they were done indiscriminately. Turn to Acts chapter five.

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Everybody and anyone. It wasn't people who had faith. It wasn't people that paid the money to get into the DCU center.

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It wasn't people that gave some money. It wasn't people that were anything. Sometimes even unbelievers got healed.

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Acts chapter five, where are the faith healers today? Answer, there are no faith healers today.

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We don't need faith healers today because the real faith healers in the Bible weren't faith healers.

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They were healers trying to promote the message of Christ Jesus and they confirmed the message of Christ Jesus by healing.

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The end is never healing. You can be healed and go to hell, right? Every person here is going to die short of your eschatological system.

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We're all going to die unless their one eschatological system is true. Then you think, you know what?

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We're going to die. And then what? You might have great health now or you might have horrible health now, but you're going to die and stand before God and you need something more than your physical health.

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You need to be forgiven. You need a substitute. You need atonement. You need Christ's righteousness.

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It's not the end. So when people are saying the end all, I have a healing ministry. No, you have a farce ministry called wolf ministry, run.

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But people are so desirous of healing because they're suffering. I don't blame them for that.

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But sometimes, beloved, in John chapter nine, people are born blind for the glory of God.

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Sometimes you suffer physically for the glory of God. This is a fallen world.

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Acts chapter five. This is an amazing passage. I don't know if I could believe it if it wasn't in the Bible. Just shows you how

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I underestimate the power of God. And all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women were constantly added to their number to such an extent that they even carried the sick into the streets, laid them on cots and pallets.

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So when Peter came by, at least a shadow might fall on any one of them. And also the people from the cities in the vicinity of Jerusalem were coming together, bringing people who were sick or afflicted with unclean spirits.

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And they were, notice it friends, all being healed. Not the select ones.

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Not the ones with crutches. All being healed. Not the ones with weak faith, didn't get the healing.

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Oh, you don't believe my healing ministry? Oh, you're not healed? Oh, it must be your faith. Could there be anything more demonic than to tell someone who's not physically healed, you're not physically healed because you don't have enough faith.

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And they wipe their hands and they wipe their mouths and move on to the next person. Healings in the

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Bible are true because they pointed to the message that Jesus is

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Lord. Well, how does this all relate to spiritual gifts?

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Well, here's how it relates. They knew what all these things were. Corinth, a gift of healing, they knew.

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Well, we don't know so much and it's good to be reminded of what really happens through these gifts and why they're around.

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Say, well, I wish I had one of those wonderful gifts. I don't even know what my gifts are. Here's what

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I do know and I'm going to leave you with this. If you're a sinner saved by grace and born again,

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God can use you to do great things. You can serve other people. You don't have to have one of these revelatory gifts.

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God uses sinful people for his glory. Why? So nobody says, wow, look at that person.

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They all go, well, you know what? I know what my friends say. The friends who knew me and grew up with me, I'm sure whatever

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God has done through me, they've all looked at me and they said, surely that is a miracle of God.

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That can't be happening through that guy. And it happens here in the local church too.

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And I saw in a little magazine called The Fourth Dimension some people that God used even though they weren't on the top of their game.

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Because I want to encourage you that you can use your gifts even though you stumble, even though you're not glorified yet.

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If God used these people, he can surely use you. Moses stuttered.

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John Mark was rejected by Paul. Timothy had ulcers. This next one is kind of a big one.

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Hosea's wife was a prostitute. David had an affair. Solomon was too rich.

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Abraham was too old. David was too young. Peter was afraid.

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John was self -righteous. Naomi was a widow. Paul was a murderer.

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Moses was a murderer. Jonah ran from God. Miriam was a gossip. Thomas doubted.

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Gideon doubted. Jeremiah was downcast. Elijah was burned out.

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John the Baptist was a loud mouth. I don't know how good that one is, but it elicits a response.

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Martha was a worry wart. Samson had long hair.

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Noah got drunk. Did I mention Moses had a short fuse?

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And my all -time favorite one of how God can use someone who doesn't bring anything to the table for his glory,

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Lazarus was dead. If you're a

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Christian, you have been given a spiritual gift to be used for other people to maximize the glory of Christ Jesus.

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No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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.

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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.

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We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org

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or by phone at 508 -835 -3400. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff, or management.