Midweek Review #3 (Acts 2:1-13)

Hello, and this is midweek review number three. I'm here with Dave helping me out, and thank you for running the camera. So we are talking in church about the book of Acts, and we were in chapter two.

Rooted Charismaticism and the Book of Acts

The main idea I wanted to communicate was this concept of rooted charismaticism. That kind of off to one side, you have charismatics or Pentecostals that tend to be a little bit unhinged in some of the things that they allow that we don't find in the scriptures.

On the other side, we have this group called the cessationists, which believe that none of the gifts of the Spirit are for today. Well, they wouldn't say that. None of the miraculous spiritual gifts are for today.

And I believe that the truth is in the middle of those two things, what I'm calling rooted charismaticism. You're rooted because you're focusing on Psalm chapter one to be like a tree planted by streams of water.

But at the same time, you expect the extraordinary. These things still happen. Things like the gift of tongues. We were studying in Acts two, one to 13. A big part of that passage is about the gift of tongues.

So is that for today? That's the question. Well, you have to correlate that with other scriptures to see, and it seems to be the case that you go chapter eight, 10, 19. It's continuing in the book of Acts, no doubt.

The question is, does it end then when the apostles died? Well, we find in first Corinthians 14 that Paul is giving instructions to the Corinthians for how to rightly practice that particular gift. So it seems that you would expect a continuation unless something else steps in to put a stop to it.

That's the big point. And that's the kind of the takeaway from the message. But one of the things that I was sharing is that it's not just about that one gift. There is this bigger question of what should we expect?

Should we expect the extraordinary in our life? And I shared some examples from my life about when I was in Dallas and the Lord told me to go to a very certain location to meet a particular person. And it happened just the way I felt led.

So it's kind of that subjective part of Christianity where the spirit can actually speak to us in our thoughts. And sometimes he's doing supernatural things in that way. Well, last night, another example of this just took place.

A Providential Encounter at a Baptism Service

Dave, you remember when about early December, this young man came in and sat down to hear the gospel. He had found on the internet, you know, through the website, called us up. I said, come on in, let's talk.

We spent a couple hours together and he prayed to accept the Lord. He then came to church on Sunday, but found that the church didn't fit kind of where he was in life and what he was looking for. So we talked about that and he found a different Bible believing evangelical church.

Okay. Fast forward. I didn't see him really since then. One other time I ran into him. Fast forward to last night. I'm going to my daughter's basketball practice. Thing runs from seven o 'clock to eight o 'clock.

As I'm driving there, I pass the assembly of God and I feel in my spirit that I should go pray with them, but I'm on the way to basketball practice. So when I get to basketball practice, I talked to coach Nick.

Hey, would it be okay if I left her here with you and I just go and come back? Would you watch her? Sure, no problem. Do that. I didn't know why I was feeling compelled to go pray particularly. I had some things in my mind that I thought, you know, I'd really like to pray about this.

Something that had come up, but it had nothing to do with this young man. I go into the prayer meeting. I'm running about 10 minutes late. They've already gotten started with the praise and worship. I sit in the last row back to the right.

I left one seat open to the aisle. After a minute here, Dave, you're going to like this. The young man that came in here and accepted the Lord sat down next to me. He had gotten up from that particular seat and gone to the bathroom.

I came in and sat in the very seat next to where he was. When he came back from the bathroom, he sat down and told me he's getting baptized that night. It was a baptism service. I thought it was just a standard prayer meeting.

So I'm sitting next to him. We take a little selfie together, pray a little bit, talk for a second, and then it's time for them to go do baptisms. During the baptism service, Pastor John and he talk in front of everybody.

He calls on me to stand up and pray for him and pray the gifts of the Spirit would operate in his life, that he would be an evangelist, that he'd bring the gospel to the end of the earth. I'm praying across the sanctuary and Pastor John and I are having this conversation.

He's like, how are you anyway? I'm like, I'm good, brother. How are you? We got to get lunch. It was really funny. But it was amazing because who could have orchestrated that? Those are the extraordinary things that you want.

The odds that we would sit down, the sanctuary has got 400 seats in it. Right. With all those seats in it, he chose that one. He chose that one. I've never been to that prayer meeting. I wasn't even going to a prayer meeting.

It was just, it was one of those things that, do we need those things? No, all we need is the Word of God. But they're encouraging. I left there on fire. I was praying more than I prayed in a long time.

Just, God, you are so good. This young man gave a great testimony, got baptized, and I got to see him afterwards. Back to the basketball practice, picked up my daughter and call it a night. Just wanted to share that with the church that the Lord does extraordinary things.

Scripture, Supernatural Gifts, and Staying Rooted in the Word

Let's believe for the supernatural works of the Holy Spirit, but let's be first and foremost rooted in the scriptures and let that govern what we do.