From Corinth to Azusa

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Open up your Bibles with me and turn to the book of 1 Corinthians.
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Find your place at chapter 12, 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verses 1 to 3.
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The title of this message is, From Corinth to Azusa.
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And if that sounds like an odd title, hopefully by the end of the message you'll understand.
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The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, Father, I thank you for this opportunity to preach again your word.
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Lord, it is a fearful time.
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Every time I come into this pulpit, I am reminded of the weight of the ministry of the word that is given to this time.
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Your word tells us that not everyone should be teachers because teachers will be held to a higher standard.
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And I believe that it is in teaching that that standard exists most of all.
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Lord, keep me from error.
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By the merciful grace of God, keep me in the truth.
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Open up the hearts of those who are yours to understand it.
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And Lord, for those who are here today, maybe have been here a long time and yet have not bowed the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ, may it be that today that they see in Christ the love and mercy and grace of God and see that he is wonderful and he is worthy of our praise as we just sang and that he is the only Savior.
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Lord, may we turn to him.
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May you cause us by your infinite grace to turn to him today.
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And it's in his name we pray.
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Amen.
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Please be seated.
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According to an article by Christianity Today, in the early morning of April 18th, 1906, just a little over a hundred years ago, San Francisco residents were awakened by the deadliest earthquake in North American history.
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A devastating fire fed by ruptured gas lines finished off what the earthquake began, which was later estimated at 8.3 on the Richter scale.
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And some 700 people died among a decimation of 514 city blocks.
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That same morning, 400 miles south of San Francisco, the world took notice of another movement.
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One that has aftershocks that continue to today.
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In a skeptical front-page story titled Weird Babble of Tongues, a Los Angeles Times reporter attempted to describe what would soon become known as the Azusa Street Revival, which was happening in Los Angeles, California.
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How many of you have ever heard of the Azusa Street Revival? Okay.
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All right.
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A few of you have, but most of you have not.
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And so today we'll be somewhat educational in the beginning, as it leads into understanding what this is all about.
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Obviously, the title, From Corinth to Azusa.
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The Azusa Street Revival actually began in the Midwest, did not begin in California.
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Methodist preachers and others associated with the holiness movement had become fascinated with the possibility of experiencing divine healing, as well as the gift of speaking in tongues, which many believed had ceased at the end of the apostolic age.
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A leader in the movement was the man by the name of Charles Parham, and he taught that speaking in tongues was the inevitable evidence of being filled with the Holy Ghost.
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If you had been filled with the Holy Ghost, you will inevitably speak with tongues, because you've been baptized in the Spirit, and the evidence of being baptized in the Spirit is to speak in tongues.
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And so he began a Bible school in Topeka, Kansas, and one of his students was named William Joseph Seymour.
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William Joseph Seymour, having graduated from the Bible school, moves to Texas and begins to preach, and then he's invited out to California, where he goes there to preach.
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And while he is in California, he's preaching that the gift of the tongues is the evidence of being filled with the Spirit, and the elders of that church ban him from preaching.
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The elders of that church won't allow him to preach, but he still had people who wanted to hear what he had to say.
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So he began to have private Bible studies with these people from the church, and he began to develop somewhat of a following for himself as a result of sort of drawing people into these private Bible studies.
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Soon they would get a building that they could all begin to meet in, and the building was at 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles, California.
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And now he was preaching to crowds that numbered into the hundreds, and the meetings were loud, and they were boisterous, and they held reports of people being healed and people speaking in unknown tongues.
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And the leaders were sure this was the new Pentecost.
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This was a new age in the church, a new dawning of history in the church, and this would become known as the Pentecostal movement.
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Pentecostalism was born on Azusa Street in California, so that's why the title, From Corinth to Azusa.
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Interestingly enough, though, it didn't catch on everywhere.
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The Pentecostal movement actually had a very slow-going beginning, even though they were seeing crowds come out in California, and there were little speckles going out throughout the United States and even into the world.
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It was relatively small until the 60s.
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It's amazing all the things that happened in the 60s, but what rose in the 60s was something called Charismaticism.
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How many of you have ever heard of Charismatic churches? Okay, you're familiar with that? That's a little bit more common.
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We're all familiar with Pentecostal churches.
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Well, Charismaticism did what Pentecostalism had not done up until that time, is it began to spread into other denominations.
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So rather than people being Pentecostal, people were bringing the Pentecostal experience into Anglicanism, and Episcopalianism, and Methodism were starting to have them.
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So now you could be a Charismatic Baptist, or a Charismatic Episcopalian, or a Charismatic Methodist, right? So it began to spread into the denominations.
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Even in 1967, there was the Catholic Charismatic renewal.
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So even the Roman Catholic Church experienced, as it were, an acceptance of the Charismatic gifts.
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And that was really what unified them all.
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The thing that unified Pentecostals and Charismatics was the belief that all of the gifts that were active and normative in the early church, all of the gifts that were active and normative in the time of Peter, and Paul, and John, and all the apostles, all of those gifts were meant to be active and normative for all time.
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And that's pretty much the explanation of, if you talk to a Charismatic or a Pentecostal person, they'll say, yes, we believe that the gifts of the early church were not meant to be only for the early church, but were meant to be for all time and for all Christians.
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And so it's to be active and normative for all time.
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Now, on the other side of that, you have Pentecostalism and Charismaticism on one side.
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On the other side of that, you have something called cessationism.
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Now, I'm not here just to throw out big words.
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It's important that we know these things because the opposite side, cessationism, comes from the word to cease.
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And the belief among cessationists is that there are gifts that were given to the early church that had the purpose of identifying the church as a different movement of God, identifying the leaders of the movement as having the authority of God, and differentiating them within the people of God as having these particular gifts.
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But after the first century ended and the death of the last apostle, which would have been the Apostle John somewhere in the 90s, we would have said that those gifts have ceased.
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Now, there's an extreme form of cessationism that says every gift ceased.
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And there's no more gifts in the church.
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Now the church functions only on its own steam.
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There's no more ministry of spiritual gifts.
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Very few people take that extreme position that all cessation or that all gifts have ceased.
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And so you understand there's two vast extremes.
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Like you have the far, far extreme of charismaticism that says, unless you speak with tongues, you can't be saved.
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And that is what some of them teach.
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And I would say that's the far extreme over here, right? Unless you speak with tongues, you cannot be saved.
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You can't be filled with the Holy Spirit.
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And then you have the far, far on this side.
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And I don't mean to be like a big ping pong ball running from side to side.
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But you have the far extreme on this side that would say that if you claim to have any gift of the Spirit at all, that you're wrong because all of the gifts ceased.
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And so there's these two vastly different extremes, extreme charismaticism, extreme cessationism.
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Now I do want to point this out, that within the history of the church, the more common position has been tending towards cessationism.
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Meaning the more common position in the church has always been that there were certain gifts that did not continue after the first century.
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Typically those gifts are known as the gifts that were signed gifts.
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Paul uses the phrase signed gifts, or ones that were intended to show something.
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And those gifts were gifts such as miraculous healing and the gift of speaking in tongues.
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And so generally cessationists will fall into that category.
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They'll say all the gifts haven't ceased, but particularly the gifts that were intended to be signs to Israel that this new movement had happened.
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In fact, in 1 Corinthians 14, we're going to talk about the gift of tongues as being particularly for Israel to show that the gospel was no longer held in one language, but now it was going out into all languages of the world.
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That was very important as to the reason for the gift of tongues to begin with, was so that the gospel would go out into all the world.
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But that's where we need to understand the difference.
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I don't think anybody can defend the position that all gifts have ceased.
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But we have to ask ourselves the question, have all the gifts continued? So that's where we really come to, if we say have all the gifts ceased, I don't think anybody in here would take that position.
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But if I said have all the gifts continued, I don't know that anybody in here would take that position either.
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In fact, I want to mention just the fact that in the early church, when I say the early church, you've got the first century church, and then you've got the 200 to 400.
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That is what we call the time of the early fathers, the early leaders of the church.
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This is the time before the great councils and Isaiah and others.
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And during that time, there are people who are writing and talking about these things.
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One of the men who wrote in this time was a man named John Chrysostom.
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John Chrysostom said this about the gift of the tongues.
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He was teaching on 1 Corinthians 14, and he said this.
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He said this whole section, talking about 1 Corinthians 14, he said this whole section is very obscure, but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation being such as then used to occur, but now no longer take place.
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He said these used to take place, but now they no longer do.
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So how can I talk about something that's no longer happening? So this is John Chrysostom.
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He's writing between 347 and 407.
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So right in the middle of the fourth century.
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And he's saying we can't talk about the tongues because we don't know what they are.
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They're not happening anymore.
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So even as early as the fourth century, there was this understanding among some that something had happened.
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Later, Augustine of Hippo, Augustine, for those who like to correct, St.
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Augustine of Hippo also wrote on this.
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He said this.
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He said in the earlier times, the Holy Ghost fell upon them that believed and they spake with tongues, which they had not yet learned as the Spirit gave them utterance.
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These were signs adapted to the time for their behooved to them, the holy gift of tongues to show that the gospel of God was to run through all languages of the earth.
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That thing was done for a betokening and it has now passed away.
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So at least there were two that I've quoted, Chrysostom in the third or fourth century and Augustine in the fifth century, both who are saying by their time, they felt like this gift had at least ceased to be normative.
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It had ceased to be active in the church.
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And here's the interesting thing.
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If a person came to me and said, well, I believe that the Pentecostal experience and Azusa was of God.
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And that was a reawakening of the spiritual gifts.
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What is it? What is the implication of that? Well, they believe they ceased to.
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Because if the Pentecostal experience in Azusa in 1906 was a reawakening or a revival of something, that means it had stopped.
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So even they are accepting at least some form of cessationism by saying that this revival brought it back.
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So you understand that it was relatively normal in the church to understand some type of cessation had occurred after the death of the apostles.
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And so here's where we go from there.
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Cessationist churches tend to be divided because it's hard to always know for sure how we are to respond to folks who are claiming to have these gifts or claiming to exercise these gifts.
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Because we don't want to write off someone as not a brother in Christ just because they have a different experience than us.
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And we have to be careful not to simply say we're no longer your brother because we don't necessarily understand your experience or agree that your experience is of God.
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I mean, do you understand what I'm saying? We don't just go around with our holy hammer and knock people upside the head because they're doing something different than we do.
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So we have to be careful how we address this issue.
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Scott Phillips is a missionary that we support.
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Scott Phillips goes to the Tao tribe in Indonesia and he meets with a man who had never seen a white person before.
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This tribe had not seen anyone that wasn't like them.
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He goes into their tribe and they accept him and welcome him in.
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And he wonders why they're so welcoming.
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And so after a time of getting to know them and learning about them and learning their language so that he can communicate through them, he asks, why were you so welcoming? He said because one of our forefathers had been given this promise, this dream that someone was going to come who looked different than us and he was going to bring us a very special message and here you are and we believe you're that person.
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And I say to that, praise God.
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I don't have a reason to say that can't happen.
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In fact, I'm thankful that it can.
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So I have to be careful simply saying this can't happen or that will happen.
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Yet having said that, it seems very apparent to me that much of what is done today in many circles that call themselves Pentecostal charismatic is simply not of God.
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You say, no way, didn't you just say don't judge? The Bible says we have to discern the spirits.
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We do have to test things according to the word of God and writhing around, laughing maniacally, barking like dogs, knocking people over is nothing that is ever seen as an expression of biblical Christianity ever in the Bible.
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Gold dust falling and angel feathers falling from the rafters.
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These are things that are claimed to have happened.
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Yeah, the angel feather thing, look it up.
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So it is no exaggeration to say that we have to be careful.
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What are we accepting? What are we hearing? What are we listening to? Much of the false teaching, much of the false teaching, which has become very prominent in the last hundred years, particularly the last 50 years since the 60s, much of the false teaching that has been promulgated throughout the church has had its home in the charismatic movement.
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There is a group called oneness Pentecostalism.
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Oneness Pentecostalism gets its name as a denial of the Trinity.
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Oneness is also known as Jesus only, meaning that the Father becomes Jesus, then he becomes the Holy Spirit, but it's all Jesus.
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It's all one person.
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There is no triunity of God.
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There is no Trinity.
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God is one person, and he simply shows himself in three different ways.
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That is an ancient heresy known as modalism, and the modalists were defeated in the 2nd and 3rd century, and yet they continue today through what is known as oneness Pentecostalism.
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Dangerous false teachings arise if they are not addressed, and that's the danger.
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In fact, how many of you ever heard of Michael Brown? Michael Brown is a Pentecostal preacher, and he has written a book addressing the issues in the Pentecostal movement, saying there are false teachings, there are dangers, and we're not addressing them, and this is coming from their own side.
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I got to meet Michael Brown a couple of months ago.
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He's a very nice man, and he has written a book to say, yes, there's things that we're not addressing here.
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There are things that need to be dealt with.
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In fact, I would say that the most dangerous and most perversive teaching that is in Pentecostalism charismatic circles, and now has spread throughout the church, is the doctrine called health and wealth.
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The movement known as the health and wealth gospel.
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This teaches that if you're a believer, and you express the right kind of faith or the right amount of faith, you will not only experience perfect health, but also an abundance of physical prosperity, in the way of cars, clothes, money, homes, what have you.
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In fact, what's always so silly to me is, I see these guys preaching that you're going to have perfect health, and they're wearing glasses.
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It's an issue, right? I mean, I'm not mocking, but if you're telling me I'm going to have perfect health, and you're wearing a hearing aid.
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One author indicated, he's a very famous guy from Texas, you'd know him if I mentioned his name.
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He said, God's will, this is in his book.
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I saw it at Walmart, picked it up, read a few pages.
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He said, God's will is that you have the best parking place at work.
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Well, what if you work with another Christian, and they have more faith than you? Again, the silliness of the health and wealth movement, the gold dust, the feathers, the idea that if you just send your seed money, God's going to return it a hundredfold, and I've claimed the billion flow.
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That's a recent thing, because his ministry went from making millions of dollars to billions with a B.
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And so now he said, the reason that happened is because I named and claimed the billion flow.
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A few years ago, Dr.
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John MacArthur wrote a book called Strange Fire.
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He documented the excesses and the dangerous theologies which have arisen in the wake of Azusa.
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And really, that's what it is.
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It is a wake that has created.
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And as I said, I'm not here to claim that everything is bad, and every one of them are unbelievers.
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Some people would.
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But I'm not going to do that.
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In fact, I'll tell you this.
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I just finished reading Bruce Shelley's History of the Church in Modern Language, or History of the Church in Plain Language.
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And one of the things he points out in the last hundred years is that one of the great revivals south of the equator, which we used to call the third world, right? I guess we still do in a sense.
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But the great revivals that are happening down there are often charismatic in nature.
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People are being saved, we hope.
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And so we don't write off everything, but we do have to address the excesses.
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We have to address that which is false.
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We have to address that which does not conform to Scripture.
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So, why am I talking about this? Because the Apostle Paul says, Now concerning spiritual gifts.
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If this were 1905, I'd be preaching a different sermon.
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Because even though the exegesis of the text doesn't change, our context has changed in the last 110 years.
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We have to address what's happened all around us in the last 112 years.
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We live in the wake of a giant charismatic renewal, which claims that all of the spiritual gifts are meant for all believers of all time.
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And yet in our church, we do not practice where one of you would stand up and speak with a tongue, and another would stand up and give an interpretation.
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We wouldn't do that in a worship service.
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And so people say, Why? And so over the next several months, because I know for three chapters, it's going to take me a couple of months to get through it, as slow as I go.
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But over the next couple of months, we're going to address why we don't do certain things and why we do other things.
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And hopefully this would be important that you know this.
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Hopefully this will matter to you.
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I hope you don't just believe it because I do, or don't believe it because I don't.
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Hopefully you're grounded on the Word of God.
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Somebody says, What are you, pastor? Are you over here? Are you over here? I'm what you call a cautious cessationist.
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Meaning I do believe some of the gifts ceased in the early church, but I'm cautious to say that if God were to use those gifts today in the ministry where they were needed, I would praise him and thank him for that.
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But in a room full of people that all speak the same language, where the gospel has already gone into all languages, there's no need for the gift of tongues in here.
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So there's a purpose of necessity and need, right? And so I'm cautious to say I don't cut it all off, but I certainly don't question the will of God to do whatever he chooses.
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But I do believe there's a difference between what was happening in the first century church and what's happening today.
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And yet when Scott Phillips goes out to that mission field, it's almost like he's back in the first century.
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And so if God does something miraculous there, I accept it and I say, Praise God.
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Now that puts me at odds on both sides, by the way, because the hard cessationists would say you're not being strong enough and the hard charismatics would say you're not being loose enough.
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So it puts me in a precarious position.
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And so I say I'm being cautious so as to not bind the hands of the Lord, but also not to open ourselves up to any dangerous false teachings.
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I'm going to talk about this more in the weeks to come, but there are churches that produce literature to teach you to speak in tongues.
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I've seen it.
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I've read it.
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I know this is not me making things up.
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I've held it in my hands and read it.
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If it is a spiritual gift, you don't have to teach it.
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If it's a miraculous work of God, it doesn't need a pamphlet.
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And so, yes, there are issues that have to be addressed, and that's what we're going to do.
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But I wanted to begin the series because, like I said, we're in 1 Corinthians.
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We've been studying 1 Corinthians for a long time.
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We're at chapter 12, verses 12, 13, and 14.
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All deal with spiritual gifts.
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Chapter 12 deals with the different types of gifts and how they work together for one body.
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Chapter 13 talks about the gift of love being the greatest gift, and that if you're not exercising your gift in love, then you're not exercising your gift in the right way.
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If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I'm a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
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The apostle Paul says so.
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So we understand that love is the greatest of gifts, and if our gift isn't exercised in love, it's not right.
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And then in chapter 14 he says, now addressing prophecy and the gift of tongues, two gifts that were in the church that were vocal and verbal and being used by, I believe, the Corinthians as a way to show off their spirituality.
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Paul addresses that specifically.
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So that's what the next couple weeks, several months maybe, will be about, going through and breaking down those texts.
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But today we're looking just at the first here, first three verses.
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He says, now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers.
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By the way, that was all introduction.
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Now we're to the text.
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Notice the word now.
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Now concerning spiritual gifts.
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If you have another translation, it might have another word, but I believe most of them start with the word now, concerning spiritual gifts.
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That word now indicates a transition.
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The last thing he said in chapter 11 was, there are other things you wrote about, and I'm going to talk to you about them when I get there.
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That lets us know that he stopped talking about some things, because they had sent him a list of questions, and he had been addressing that list.
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He talked about marriage.
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He talked about the Lord's Supper.
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He talked about men and women in the church.
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He talked about a lot of stuff to get there.
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But at the end of chapter 11, he says, now concerning the other things you wrote, I'm going to talk to you about it when I get there.
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Now concerning spiritual gifts.
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I'm going to go on to another issue that you need to understand.
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So this is a hard mark of demarcation in the text.
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The word now creates a new chapter.
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Even though the chapter divisions weren't put in until much later, this is a chapter in the mind of Paul, starting something new.
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And Paul does not say, they wrote to him about this.
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So why is he talking about it? I believe he's talking to them about it, because he knows they're misusing the gifts.
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The whole issue of 1 Corinthians, Paul is writing to a church of people that are doing wrong things.
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From the very opening part of 1 Corinthians, he's been talking about what? Some of you say I'm of Paul, some of you say I'm Peter, some say I'm of Paul, some say I'm of Christ.
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You're divided.
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Well, what's one of the most divisive things in the church? Spiritual gifts.
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Especially when people think one gift is more important than another.
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I speak with tongues and you don't, that makes me better.
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I have the gift of healing and you don't, that makes me better.
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I have the gift of preaching and you don't, that makes me better.
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Right? So what does Paul say in chapter 12? The hand can't say to the eye, I have no need of you.
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Because if all you were was an eye, where would be the gift of hearing? Where would be the gift of speaking? You can't say to another person, because they're different than you, that they're more valuable or you're more valuable than they are.
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So the whole issue of 1 Corinthians 12 is the issue of understanding this division that was happening about the gifts was not of God.
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You don't need to be divided over the gifts.
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If anything, they should draw you together, not push you apart.
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Because I need you.
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You need me.
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We need each other.
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In fact, it's the most dangerous man who says, I don't need the church.
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I am the church.
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No, you're not.
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Not by yourself.
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The word church means assembly.
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And you can't assemble all alone.
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You just can't do it.
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It means assembly.
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You're not the church by yourself.
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You're part of the church, but until you come together, you're not the church.
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It's the assembly.
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This is now concerning spiritual gifts.
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By the way, if you have a King James Bible, the word gifts is italicized.
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You know why? Because anytime in the King James Bible, there's an italic word.
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That means it's not in the original.
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The word gifts is not in verse one.
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The word is pneumatikon.
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Pneumatikon is the word for spirituals or spiritual ones or the spiritual things.
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So we say, well, why do we say gifts? Why does the ESV translate it spiritual gifts? Why does the King James add the word gifts? Why is the word gifts there? Because in verse four, he uses the word charismata, the gifts.
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And so when he talks about spiritual things in verse one, it's spiritual gifts.
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That's the subject.
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So even though it's not in the Greek, it's implied in the word pneumatikon.
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It's implied in that word.
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And he says, I don't want you to be uninformed.
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The Greek word there is agnosis.
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It means ignorant.
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I don't want you to be ignorant of these things.
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Verse two, you know that when you were pagans, by the way, just stop right there for a second.
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You know that when you were pagans, what does that say? You used to be pagans.
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Yeah, apparently the people he's talking to used to be pagans.
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And by the way, so were you.
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We were all children of wrath until God saved us.
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Even if we were young, when we got saved, even if we were older, when we got saved, doesn't matter.
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We were born D.O.A.
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You were born dead in your trespasses and sins.
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It wasn't until God opened your heart.
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You believed and God gave you a new life in Christ that you became a believer.
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And you were now made part of the family of God.
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Prior to that, you were a pagan.
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You were a heathen.
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You were an unbeliever.
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Praise God.
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He doesn't leave us where we are.
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That's the whole thing.
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People say, we want to come as you are.
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Well, if that means come dressed however you want, I don't care how you dress.
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But if you come as you are, the goal is to pray that God would change you.
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Not to make you look like me, because heaven forbid.
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It ain't about how you look.
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But we don't stay as we are.
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God changes our hearts.
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We go from death to life.
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We go from old man to new man.
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We go from children of the devil to children of God.
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And that's what he's saying here.
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You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray by mute idols.
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By the way, why does he say mute idols? Because that was the point of the Old Testament that always made the distinction between the idols and God.
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God speaks and the idols don't.
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Remember when there's Elijah on Mount Carmel? And he's there with the prophets of Baal.
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And he says, OK, we're going to have a God contest.
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And you let your God speak from heaven.
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And so the guy started praying and nothing was happening.
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And what does the prophet say? Your God must be on the toilet.
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That's the vernacular.
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That's exactly what he said.
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Was your God in the bathroom? He's not answering.
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Why don't you cut yourself a little deeper? Because they were cutting themselves to try to get God's attention.
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To get the attention of the God Baal.
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Why don't you cut yourself a little deeper? He's not listening.
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The gods of the Old Testament were always designated as being false because they could not speak.
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They were mute.
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In fact, two texts for you.
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Psalm 115, verses 3-8.
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Psalm 115, verses 3-8.
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Our God is in the heavens.
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He does all that He pleases.
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Their idols are silver and gold, the work of the human hands.
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They have mouths, but do not speak.
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They have eyes, but do not see.
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They have ears, but do not hear.
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Noses, but do not smell.
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They have hands, but do not feel.
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Feet, but do not walk.
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And they do not make a sound in their throat.
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That was the point.
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Our God speaks.
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Our God is alive.
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Their gods don't speak.
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They're not even real.
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Habakkuk 2, verses 18-19.
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What prophet is it in an idol when its maker has shaped it? A metal image? A teacher of lies? For its maker trusts in His creation when He makes speechless idols.
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Woe to him who says to a wooden thing, Awake! To a silent stone, arise! Teach me! Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and yet there is no breath in it at all.
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The idols are mute.
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And so Paul says, you were pagans.
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You came out of the mute idols.
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And you say, well, what does this have to do with the text? What does this have to do with anything Paul's saying? He says, now concerning spiritual gifts, I don't want you to be ignorant.
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Know that you came out of paganism and all those mute idols.
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Now, verse 3.
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This is where it ties it together.
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Therefore, I want you to understand.
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No one speaking in the Spirit of God says Jesus is accursed.
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And no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit.
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God, who is genuine and true, speaks through His people.
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The Spirit of God comes to live within us, and He speaks through us.
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You say, well, what does this matter? Why does this matter? Because here's how He speaks.
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The believer says, Jesus is Lord.
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And those who have not been changed, those who are not believers, say, Jesus is not Lord, or Jesus is accursed.
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And you say, no, wait a minute.
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And I've actually heard preachers say this.
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I've heard preachers say, if you can say the words, Jesus is Lord, that means you're saved.
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One guy even carried a microphone.
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Mike Collier and I were talking about this.
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One guy carried a microphone around the room.
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And he said, if you can say, Jesus is Lord, that means you're filled with the Spirit.
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Can you say, Jesus is Lord? And he held the microphone down.
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The person would stand up, Jesus is Lord.
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And the next person, Jesus is Lord.
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That's not what this is talking about.
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Just because you can verbalize, Jesus is Lord, you can put the noun and verb together, and you can do that, that does not mean you are saved.
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And how can I prove this? Well, from the Bible.
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Jesus said, not everyone who calls me Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven.
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Right? So, Jesus is not contradicting Paul.
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Paul is not contradicting Jesus.
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There is a context here.
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And the context is very important.
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In the first century, which is the context of this passage, a public proclamation of Christ separated people from family, friends, comfort, employment, and sometimes death itself was the result of proclaiming Jesus as Lord.
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And no one could do that under their own power.
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No one can separate themselves from the comforts and the cares of this world for Christ unless they be filled with the Holy Spirit of God who empowers them to do so.
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I want you to imagine this.
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And this is not an exaggeration.
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This is not Pastor Keith making up history.
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This really happened.
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In the first century, the rule was in the Roman Empire that you had to see Caesar as Lord.
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You could worship anything else you wanted to.
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But you had to first proclaim Kaiser Kurios.
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Caesar is Lord.
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And they had tables where there would be incense on the table.
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And so long as you were willing to pick up a piece of incense and make an offering to Caesar, you could go and then worship however, wherever, whatever you wanted.
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But you had to first offer up an incense to Caesar and say Kaiser Kurios.
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Caesar is Lord.
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Now imagine you're at work and you're working with the other people there out in the field.
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And here come the soldiers expecting the offering to Caesar.
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They brought with them the cart that has upon it the incense table.
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And they say, are you ready to make your offering to Caesar? And everybody else, sure, no problem.
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Caesar is Lord.
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Caesar is Lord.
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Caesar is Lord.
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And now you're in line.
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And you're thinking about your kids.
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And you're thinking about your spouse.
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And you're thinking about the fact that as soon as you pick up that offering, you are committing blasphemy against God.
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And yet, you know that if you don't commit blasphemy against God, you are taking your very life at peril.
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Because those soldiers are committed to killing you if you are not willing to say Caesar is Lord because you are a traitor to the crown.
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Only by the Spirit could you say Jesus is Lord.
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Now does it take on a meaning that matters? When Paul said, no one can do that.
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No one can do that except by the Holy Spirit.
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And that's God speaking.
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Because God is speaking through His people, empowering them to say, Jesus is Lord.
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And the continual speaking of the Spirit in the church is done through the ministry of the gifts of the Spirit.
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You say, what do you mean? When you come into this place, you bring a spiritual gift that God has given you, and the ministry of that Spirit is how God speaks in His church.
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When God is moving people toward holiness, toward love, toward devotion, toward joy, that's when the Spirit becomes manifest.
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When people are being saved, when people are being sanctified, when people are being moved towards closer conformity to the Lord Jesus Christ, that's the Spirit shouting in the church.
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God is not silent.
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He is not a mute idol.
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He's speaking through His people and through their gifts.
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My genuine hope is this, and I will say this, my genuine hope is that when I preach, there is a manifestation of the Spirit.
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I don't mean gold dust, and I don't mean angel feathers, but I mean this, that the understanding that the Spirit is empowering what I'm saying, and some people confuse emotionalism with the Spirit.
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Don't do that.
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Just because somebody gets emotional and shouts doesn't mean they're filled with the Spirit.
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But do you know how we know that we're filled with the Spirit? Truth is proclaimed.
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Every time a spiritual gift is used among God's people, that's a manifestation of the presence of the Holy Spirit of God.
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And it's not limited to what I do.
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It's not limited to the preaching and teaching.
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Every one of you who is a believer has been given the Holy Spirit.
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By the way, Romans chapter 8 tells you if you don't have the Spirit, you are not gods.
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So the idea that you get saved and later get the Holy Spirit is not biblical.
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The Bible teaches that when you get saved, the Holy Spirit makes His abode in you.
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He becomes the seal of your salvation.
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He is the down payment of that which Christ has done, and it will not lapse.
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The promise, the seal is put on your heart and will be there forever.
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And that is the Spirit of God who lives within you.
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And He has gifted you for some kind of work in His church.
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Whether it be mercy, whether it be teaching, whether it be administration, He's gifted you for this church.
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And when you use what God has gifted you to do, you become a voice of the Spirit in the church.
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Crying out, Jesus is Lord, with every act of service.
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In a church where the gifts of God are present, the Spirit of God is obvious.
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Let me say that again.
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In a church where the gifts of God is present, the Spirit of God is obvious.
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People don't have to say, is the Spirit of God among them? No, He is among them, and He is seen among them by what they do.
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That's what made the early church so special.
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The early church was known as being so different than everything else because the gifts of God were at work within them.
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Not so much the miraculous, but the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control, against which there is no law.
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So in the weeks ahead, we're gonna be examining the variations of gifts.
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Which ones are most evident today? Which ones were more common in the life of the apostles? What gifts should we expect to see in a biblically functioning church? And the all-important question that everybody always asks, especially after a sermon like this, what's my gift? So I hope that you'll be here.
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I believe this is a valuable study for the life of the church.
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But as we close, I want to say this.
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Paul is correct.
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Of course he is.
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He's speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
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He's writing God's Word for us.
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But Paul is correct when he says, no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Spirit.
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There are people who make false professions of faith, which are just verbal expressions.
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But the only way that anyone can truly claim Jesus is Lord is by a genuine work of the Holy Spirit.
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You were dead in your sin.
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God's Spirit reached down into that deadness and made it alive.
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Whereby, when He did, He made you part of the family of God.
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He indwelled you and now lives in you.
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And you are now the temple of the Holy Spirit of God who lives within you.
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And He is not a useless tenant.
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He didn't just come to lounge in your heart.
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He came to work in you and through you.
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And He has gifted you to do something for Christ among His people.
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Every single one of you who is a believer has the Holy Spirit.
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And it's the same Spirit that empowered Paul.
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It's the same Spirit that empowered Peter.
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It's the same Spirit that empowered James and John.
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It's the same Spirit that empowers all believers.
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And you didn't get a portion of Him.
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You got the whole thing.
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He doesn't give you a piece.
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He gives you Himself.
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And in Christ, you are gifted for a purpose.
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And it is not just to attend worship and warm a seat.
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Even though I do want you here.
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And we all want you here.
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We also want you in the kingdom working for the cause of Christ.
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God has empowered you to do something for His people.
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And my prayer is that He would manifest Himself here through the gifts of His people.
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Because that is how we will see God among us.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You.
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I thank You for the gift of the Spirit.
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I thank You for the promise that every person who is a believer has been given something from You.
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And everyone has value.
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And no one can say to someone else, my value is less or more.
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So Father, in the weeks ahead as we look at these gifts.
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And we look at how they manifest.
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And sometimes how certain people look as if they have more than one.
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Or there's a bleeding over of certain gifts.
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And how that works out.
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Lord, we know ultimately the truth of the matter is.
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Your Spirit is working through each of us individually.
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And You've called us to this church.
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No one is here by accident, Lord.
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No one came into this place this morning just because.
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Lord, You brought them here.
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I pray that first it was to hear the Gospel.
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Lord, that they might hear that there is salvation in none other.
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Because there is no other name under heaven given among men.
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By which we must be saved in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And Lord, that they would know.
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That salvation comes by repenting of sin.
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And trusting in Him.
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And Lord, that there is salvation in no other.
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Father, may that be the word of our proclamation this morning.
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And that every gift that we have.
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And every good thing that we do.
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And everything that we do under the gift of grace.
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Would be done to lift up the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And it's in His name we pray.
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Amen.