Book of Romans - Unity in the Church | Understanding Spiritual Gifts, Pt. 5 (10/31/2021)

Prayer for Control, Truth, and the Word

Let's pray because we've had some distractions all the way through Sunday school and all the way through now, so. Could be the enemy even so indirectly doing things who knows. Lord, we thank you that you are in control of all things and you have bought us with the price and we are yours.

We have no part with satan either. This is building or this equipment. It's all yours. We ask you to take complete control of the service. And of our minds and hearts keep us in the scriptures keep us in the word keep us in the truth.

We're asking in jesus name. Amen. All right. Okay, well just to review a little bit. We are looking at the fact in romans chapter 12 where it speaks about spiritual gifts. That in in general the whole chapter is talking about church unity and One aspect of that room.

Actually, we've done six points. The sixth point that we came across is that a church will have more unity. If it understands properly what the bible teaches about the spiritual gifts. Because there's a lot of misunderstanding about it in the world today and it's been that way for quite some time.

But the scripture makes it clear. And we can also look at church history and you might say well, why can we look at church history? We should just stick with only the bible. That's a problem. There are a lot of people that say that and they sound super holy when they say it.

But they're incorrect because if you remember a couple of sundays ago We looked at a scripture together where the apostle paul Asked them to bring his cloak and his books and his parchments. And the parchments were the old testament scriptures, so yes, he he gave them the highest authority obviously.

The highest authority is the word of god, but he also wanted his other books which could have talked about anything from science to philosophy to anything and just knowledge. Because the lord didn't write just one book.

He wrote two. One of them is the bible. The other one is his universe that he created and it teaches it shows himself. It reveals him to us. So if science is true True science will reveal things that god has done to us.

And so that's important to study history to study science math. All the different things god's given us all of that has been given to us. And much of it given to us by christian scientists. I don't mean christian scientists but christians who were scientists and mathematicians, but also from lost people.

Uh who didn't know the lord but who god put here to bring that knowledge to us and remember God always has his children in mind when he does these things not the lost world. Jesus said I don't know them.

He said I didn't put them here. Satan put them here the tares and I put the wheat here and from god's Heart everything good that he puts in this world whether he puts it here by lost people or saved people.

He puts it here for the good of his children. Now, yes, he makes the sun shine on the lost farmer. And he makes it rain when he chooses to on the lost farmer. And so he's great he's. I won't say he's gracious to them, but I will say he's merciful to them.

But to his children he's gracious and. So the grace is for us but everything that god brings to pass Through all of his creation, which which includes all the tares and all the demons of Of the universe that he's put in different places and satan himself.

All of those serve god because god is sovereign and they're doing exactly what god puts them here to do. They would hate to know that if you told them, but it's a fact so We see that other books are important.

Now i'll say this one of the most important things other books are for according to scripture. Is that we're not allowed to have a private interpretation of anything? That means we have to consult what our brothers and sisters have believed for the last 2 000 years about certain parts of the scripture.

To make sure we didn't just make something up new. That no one else ever knew all for 2 000 years god never showed it to anybody. But me see that is a dangerous type of interpretation when you get one like that.

And that's where cult groups come from and false christian groups, you know christian groups are into Peripheral things that aren't true. It's because somebody said oh look what I just saw no one's ever seen this.

Now I will say this jesus did say that a good teacher brings forth both old and new but what he means by that. Is he will bring old things to remind you of that you already know? Because paul was always saying let me remind you brothers of this this and this.

We need to be reminded of the things we already know often. That's how our brains work. And we need that but secondly the new part is just where A teacher or a preacher would go or even you in your own personal bible study.

You go into an old familiar passage and you see something in the passage. That you never saw before that you doesn't mean no one else saw it just means you hadn't seen it before or for example in in church here, it could be.

None of us have seen it before. But we all agree that it's in context and it fits the whole of the scripture and it fits all the ten rules bible interpretation. It's always been there. We just saw it today as a group here.

That's new. But it's not like god is adding new inspirational scripture inspired scripture anymore and we'll see that in a minute. As we reviewed something we talked about last time. So we have two aspects to study.

The Ceasing of the Sign Gifts

Which and here's the topic for today which of the sign gifts? Spiritual gifts. There are certain of a subset of the spiritual gifts. Are what we call the sign gifts? Because they were given to authenticate god's messengers when we switched from old testament to new because.

The whole dispensation was different. We went from law to grace. It's a huge change, especially for the jew and the bible says the jew requires a sign. The gentile requires evidence. We don't think like the jew.

And the jew doesn't think quite like we do they need a sign. We don't we gentiles the bible says don't need a sign. We need we need like scripture. We need evidence and that's one thing I find odd about the modern church in america wanting to speak in tongues and Do these different things that have already ceased according to scripture?

But they still want to keep doing it because they want to sign like the jew, but they're not jews. So even that is unnatural. You don't need a sign if you're a gentile and you know when they asked jesus to do a Perform a sign for him and then said they they would believe he called him an evil and adulterous generation.

He said i'm not going to give you one. The only sign you're going to get is my resurrection and he's already given that sign, right? So people that require to see with their eyes in order to have faith.

Have a problem. They've got a spiritual problem for one thing. We're in the church age and it is a dispensation of faith not sight. Now the church age between the old testament and the church age was a transitional period.

And that confuses people the book of acts is a transitional book. But you don't even have to get halfway through the book of acts and all of a sudden it's operating just as it does today. But in the early parts you still had a lot of jewish things happening because the early christians were jews.

They were for example, they had to lay hands on people for them to get the holy spirit. And you know full well that does not happen with gentiles today in the church. We hear the scripture and if we're saved we're indwelt by the holy spirit without anybody touching us.

So that's just one example of how you had a transition from jewishness from old testament to new testament. Dispensation or we call it the new economy the way it works the way god deals with us now is different.

So you had that transition that confuses people. But it doesn't need to all it requires is a little study of the word of god and history church history. And church history they'll say oh, we're not going to look at that.

We just want to stay in scripture. Okay, there's a hyper spiritual person right there. Usually what they want to pretend they're a jew even when they're not and they're just going to stick with scripture.

I really don't have a problem with that. I can prove everything i'm going to say today is true and of god with scripture only. But we would be fools to make a rule like that. Because paul had his other books and studied them and every great scholar of god when god said study to show yourselves approved unto god.

He didn't mean just to only study the bible. Can you imagine if you didn't know how to read? How could you even read the bible? So you had to study some other books to learn that? If you didn't know if you thought the world was flat not round.

You might not have very many people listen to you when you witness to them. If you don't know some in our society if you don't know math and some higher level math and science and physics and chemistry some zoology and botany.

There's a you know, there's probably 10 of the whole society wouldn't even listen to you now. 90 would because 90 don't know that stuff either but you what i'm saying is In order to study to show ourselves approved.

We need to be knowledgeable. Paul was one of the most knowledgeable human beings on the earth when god saved him. He was lost as a goose. Killing christians because he thought he's doing god a favor because he's old testament and he thought that's not Judaism, so let's eliminate it and god appeared to him.

And called him with an effectual calling and say it regenerated that man and He never looked back at that point. Totally changed him, but you know what? He still had when he got saved all that knowledge.

He had learned in the secular school. And god picked him for the purpose of being the apostle to the gentiles. Think about this because the scripture says the gentile does not require a sign but knowledge.

So god chose a knowledgeable individual to witness to them. Do you see it all? I mean, it's so orchestrated. So we need to be the most knowledgeable we can be but make sure it's not science falsely. So called make sure it's true.

The way you can tell is it will line up with scripture and god's revelation of the beginnings of all things. If it's true science, anyway, that's free. So we have two books. We have the book of history.

And which would include all of our knowledge. And we have the word of god, which has the highest authority. So we've looked at that now we see from the book of scriptures in first corinthians 13 8 through 10.

That the holy spirit said There are certain of the spiritual gifts that will cease and he named some of them and I don't pretend to think that's all Of them, but he named three in particular tongue speaking.

And that's one of them and by the way from a biblical viewpoint that meant speaking a an actual Language in the world today. I could prove that but it's beyond the scope of today. It's easily proven in scripture.

Because the scripture the holy spirit said it's a language without. Not without signification, which means it's a significant language of the world. And you can speak that without studying it. That's the that's the miracle part so that's the gift of.

And if you translated it properly in english, it would be languages not tongues tongues. It's like an old. Well, it's both old english, but it also is the greek because the greek word for languages is their word for tongue.

They don't have a word for language. It's tongue it's called tongue, but you can see how when you translate that into english. It's confusing because you've got all these false teachers. Speaking in what they call tongues.

And they're doing gibberish. It's not languages. And yet the bible says tongues and it makes you think what they're doing is right it's just a it's a it's a problem of language because. If you had a pure translation of the greek, it would say they spoke in languages not tongues.

They spoke in languages. Which they had not studied in school or anywhere. It was a miracle that gift has ceased. Let's read it. Love never fails. I'm in first corinthians 13 8 love never fails. But whether there be prophecies.

They shall fail and we know that means the kind of prophecy where you're telling you can tell the future. You can tell people stuff god said it's not in the word of god that kind that kind has failed.

Now if what you mean by the greek word prophecy, which was the typical meaning of it in all of greek usage other than bible usage. It simply means to speak forth something publicly to be a public speaker that hasn't ceased.

We still have preachers. So you can call me a prophet if that's what you mean. But if you think I can tell you god told me something that he hadn't told you. That i'm that kind of a prophet. I will tell you no i'm not.

They don't exist anymore. Because the holy spirit inspired the apostle paul to say That prophecies will fail and tongues will cease and the gift of knowledge Will vanish away. When when that which is perfect has come we've already shown what that is.

It's in the neuter in the greek. So it's a thing. It's not a person. It's not the holy spirit. It's not jesus coming again. It is the word of god when they had the new testament. They already had the old testament when they got the whole of the new testament.

By that time all these gifts had ceased because their purpose was over. You don't need someone to stand up and say I got a word of knowledge and quote me. Ephesians 2 8 9. Because now I need my bible up here.

I'm always reaching for it. Here we go. Because i've got it. Ephesians 2 8 9. The perfect is here. So I don't need you to tell me What god told you to tell me. I need you to tell me what you learned in the scripture from the holy spirit.

And then i'll i'll go with you on that one because you can teach me all kinds of stuff I hadn't seen yet, right bill. I mean we're talking about that after sunday school you like there is so much That we can learn from each other because god reveals stuff to us from this scripture that I hadn't gone there yet.

You can share it with it, right? So that's what I try to do up here when i'm preaching share stuff with you. Maybe you just hadn't gone there. It'll save you 50 years. You might not have found it for 50 years, but since you were here now, you know it but you can do that for me, too right.

So but. So but these gifts have ceased the scripture says so right there now. Then we moved on to this amazing passage. And i'm going to pop it all up here. Because notice right here. We already covered it.

So i'm not going to read the whole thing. It says earnestly contend for the faith. Which is once delivered to the saints now the faith means the whole of christianity, which means god's revealed Word like the new testament and the old testament now we got all of it.

It says it was once delivered. Well in the greek, what does that mean? Well, look at this word once right here once delivered. Hoppocks is the greek word. It means one single time. Now does that sound to you like god is telling us that yeah, but after I get the book of revelations to you I'm going to just keep adding stuff through these words of knowledge.

And modern day apostles and prophets that Still claim they're apostles where if you look at the list the scripture gives for what you have to do to be an apostle. It's impossible to have an apostle today.

So they're lying. They just want to have more, you know marks on their shoulder military stars than you do is what that is and and then have authority over you is what that is and they're lying and they know they are the holy spirit if they're Saved all those people tell them look you're not an apostle you can play like you are all day.

But some of us aren't going to play with you. I'm not. You say you're a prophet i'm not playing with you. You say you can speak in tongues. I'm, not even going to be in the room with you because you're demonized.

All right, you are demonized if you're speaking in tongues I can prove it. I will prove it if I have enough time if I don't will lord will and come back next sunday uh I don't think the enemy would want our pa system to work today.

Do you? Think about that. Be surprised if zoom keeps working guys. Let's hope it does. All right. So the faith Was delivered one time completely and it's in the past tense. By the way, it's actually the earliest passive tense here uh and It in greek that means it has happened and we now have it now delivered is interesting.

It means surrendered are yielded up and I like this are entrusted with. Now when you think about that a minute. When the holy spirit delivered this book to us right here. That was your mic bill, I hope I didn't break it he entrusted this with us All right now.

That means it's the job of the church to protect this truth. We're not to allow people to teach things. To in other words to take this bible and abuse it and misuse it to prove things that are false. Because a correct interpretation of this book will give you nothing but truth.

So when they use it and abuse it to try to prove something that's false that is a false prophet. Probably one of the kind who is foreordained to go to hell when they die and god you say well Why would god put them in churches to?

Test churches because the bible says in the end time churches will have itching ears and they will want False prophets who will mess with this book and change it to teach false things and that's who they hire on purpose.

And god's going to have a greater judgment on that church body because they're the ones that brought the fool in. Right, and they let him stay and they got a bible and they still let him stay more judgment on that church than others and so uh, it's it.

To abuse the scripture is that one of the highest sins that a man of god can do and most of them are not men. Of god, they're the type false prophets in the book of jude go read the book of jude says that they were foreordained.

That's talking about predestinated unto the darkness of blackness forever. And that they're like dark clouds with no rain. In other words, you see like in texas we get at the end of august. We need some rain for our poor old trees and and what we call scrubberies.

Bushes we need some rain, right? You see this big dark cloud come up. Everybody goes. Oh, we're so happy. It just keeps going and never rains. That is a picture of a false prophet. He looks good. He looks like he's full of water which pictures the word of god.

Does it not and he's just going to rain that water on us? We're all going to benefit and he just all he does is just look good. Wow, that's what it's all about nowadays all right, so that we talked about last time so.

Church History on Tongues and Counterfeit Miracles

Let's look at a few examples now. And switch from the word of god which we talked about predominantly the last two sundays of where it says these Signed gifts have ceased and let's look at church history.

And I this is the part i've been really wanting to get to because most people never see this ever. But not too many christians sitting in pews today in our churches that go and read the early church fathers.

Which bizarre to me? Why wouldn't you I mean? I when I was in my 20s and 30s, I couldn't get enough of reading it. It's just amazing. Can you imagine going back to 170 ad which was only? You know to. Roughly 200 years actually less than that subtract another 90 about 110 years after john died.

The apostle john who wrote the book of john first second third john after he died maybe 90 years later. This man named chrysostom. Writes a commentary on the book of first and second corinthians. First corinthians is the biggest book used to talk about tongue speaking and he says I can't really tell you exactly what this means.

Because it ain't happening anymore. It doesn't happen anymore in the church today about 300 years after that one of the greatest church fathers of all time augustine said the same thing so. And there are others who said it.

But no no one sees that and it's so easy to like if you are a false prophet and you want to misuse the scripture. You want to do two things you want to misuse the scripture. You want to hope no one can read very well in your congregation.

Secondly, you hope if they can they don't read history. And if you can make that happen, you have a perfect cult group. You can teach them anything you want to teach. You can move you can listen. You can tell them, you know, it's okay to have five wives 15 wives start marrying the other men's women.

This is what most cult groups do did you know by the way that where you have seen tongues arise During church history. There's never been a time That I can find Where it's absent of false doctrine and immoral sexual immorality.

It's combined with false doctrine, which is like spiritual immorality, isn't it? And sexual immorality along with the tongue speaking. So that's just church history and if you if you want to disagree with me then you need to become a student of church history.

Because and and so probably what you'll do if you disagree is you'll go find one book written by charismatic. That gives his view of church history. I've read that book or parts of it uh, and It's just pure hogwash.

It doesn't agree with any of the great church historians of all of all of the church times. It's just a it's another lie. Uh, and it names individuals no one's ever heard of. I mean I gave a list what three Sundays ago of maybe 20 to 50 of the greatest men and women of church history that everyone's heard of get people that started the greatest mission work like carrie people that turned two continents upside down like moody people like tory people like Whitfield who.

Who brought revival to the united states in the colonial days and set up all the colleges as preacher schools. Harvard yale william and mary. You name them. They're all preacher schools. None of them spoke in tongues.

What god just chose not to give them the gift and yet they turned continents upside down by the power of the holy spirit. Something doesn't fit the story that these false prophets are teaching. But if you don't know history.

You you're very gullible. All right, so it's evident that These church historians believe that the modern manifestation of the sign gifts that i've mentioned those three in particular tongues prophecy and words of knowledge.

The church historians that have been renowned throughout church history the men who have gone and spent their whole life writing books that thick about church history. Including fox's book of martyrs all these amazing books.

They're in unity on one thing the sign gifts that are happening today are counterfeit. In other words, it's not the holy spirit causing it. It's another spirit. In other words unclean spirits many of the outbreaks of tongues which.

Charismatics such as john sheryl. And people like that when they write their history books and they sign. Oh, well, we've had tongues in the modern church, you know in fairly recent history. They'll go back point out an example of it.

But what they don't do in their book which other historians do in their book is they don't show the false Doctrine that was associated with it and the sexual immorality they leave that out. But you can go to newspapers of the day and find the sexual immorality in the newspaper.

For example, amy sample mcpherson who started the four square church in california. It's still big movement out there one of the biggest perpetrators of tongue speaking. When we it's a good day to have children's church, that's great so she goes into the ocean into the surf in california and disappears and feigns that she Drowned and she swims around the point goes over and has sex with some other man than her husband for a few weeks.

And then swims back underwater and appears as if she's been resurrected gets back on the stage. And talks about how speaking in tongues is the most important thing in the church. That's that was in the newspapers but if if I'm this book was probably written.

No, let's see. No, it probably wasn't. I doubt that that's in cheryl's book. He left that out. Isn't that convenient? So let's talk about true church historians who talk about the good the bad and the ugly, you know, they just tell you stuff that's happened.

To the churches throughout the last 2000 years. They will say that the tongues movement. In modern days and by that I mean beyond 390 ad from there off till now is counterfeit now what's interesting is.

When you look at the rest of that sentence many of the outbreaks of tongues, which charismatics cite. Were in clear connection with known heresy. Known heretical movements. I mean and you can go back to the second century you can find Heretics who are branded as heretics throughout all of church history till now and those are the ones that spoke in tongues.

I mean you had some of them. Uh, like montanus or montanus. Who lived in the second century? And he could speak in gibberish and and that's what this false tongues is. It's not languages. It's it's just ecstatic utterances that are meaningless.

But this man lived in the second century. He was branded a heretic by the known church of the day the true church. Because he claimed now listen this that he was the paraclete. Now, do you know who the paraclete is?

It's the holy spirit. So this man is teaching them to speak in gibberish. And he claims he is the holy spirit through who the holy spirit speaks. So he's the paraclete of the paraclete. Because he proclaimed that he was now.

This is the type person throughout all of the 2000 years of church history that start what we call modern tongues movements. Where it's not biblical languages, it's modern gibberish movements. It's around men like this.

Through whom the holy spirit spoke to the church just as the spirit had spoken through paul and other apostles. So they always claim to be an apostle. And yet if you look at the bible definition of the possible of an apostle it cannot happen.

Because one of the things is they had to be in the presence of jesus christ to be an apostle. And that's not happening to people now because jesus is in heaven. At the right hand of the father. And I gave I cited the book yet and yet this man named cheryl cites a revival led by montanus as A legitimate tongue speaking episode in church history to try to prove that it still exists.

Do you see my point? But he doesn't tell you what montanus believed. That he claimed to be the paraclete of the paraclete so it's all Magic folks. It's just magic. It's magically causing people to be lured into a trance of believing in something that is not done by the holy spirit.

It's done by counterfeit unclean spirits and Taking the church in totally different directions than it should be going. Bb warfield is perhaps the greatest church historian that I have found in my theological studies.

He wrote a monumental book called counterfeit miracles in the year 1918. And he points out that many miracles cited by historians indicate a merger of christianity and heathenism. So like if you can find what?

Witches do or if you can find what voodoo Believers do and mix that with christianity like the roman catholics have done so much where they would go into country. They would just absorb all their beliefs and say well, we'll mix that with what we're doing so that they'll convert.

And history proves that they've done that and it's such a great compromise and you know Protestant church does it in different ways? It just says look, we'll just look and act like lost people. So they'll come to our church.

We'll talk like them. We'll look use music. They use dress like them and be be like them. So they'll come to our church. It's the same mindset. The catholics took it a step further and said well if they're into witchcraft, we'll just have you ever seen that?

Uh on tv have you ever seen like mardi gras picture shot video shots of mardi gras? See that's roman catholicism mixed with voodoo. Anyway, that's free because you didn't know that but I mean you don't have to study far to figure that stuff out.

And so bb warfield said well when you see these sign gifts and things they're mixed with this sort of thing where you're taking heathenism and mixing it with christianity. The judgment of the leading church historians agrees that there has been No reoccurrence of the tongues phenomenon of the first century in the succeeding centuries.

There's been no legitimate recurrence of it. Philip schaff who wrote history of the christian church in the year 1910. And I I have these books in my study at home that i'm citing. Some people call philip schaff the acknowledged dean of church historians.

And he said this. Historically the gift of tongues passed from the church passed away. From the church at least by the time of christ austin who I mentioned earlier. Which would be sometime between 353 and 430 ad which I think it's more like 297, but I may I may be remembering um.

The exact course I may be talking about when he was born probably so christ austin was an adult after that obviously, but he wrote um this Commentary on first corinthians and this is who philip schaff is referring to is by the time.

This man wrote it had already ceased the gift of tongues no longer existed in the churches. He further said that analogous phenomenon. Of an inferior kind to the new testament gift of tongues and not miraculous.

Yet serving as illustrations either by approximation or as counterfeits appeared from time to time in seasons of special religious excitement. He's talking about like big revivals in england things like that and so he's saying some interesting things could happen in these revivals like people getting overly excited and and Doing various things and yet we know that one of the spiritual gifts of the holy spirit one of the mentioned Named the gifts of the holy spirit is self-control, don't we?

So we're to maintain self-control even when our emotions are telling us to jump up run out the door run around the church twice. And come back in i've been in a meeting once where I felt like that, but I didn't do it because I exhibited self-control.

But people that do these things don't and i'm i'm gonna the lord willing here in a minute I'm going to show you an illustration and oh, let's see. Yeah, I guess I could um if I have time to do it so the actual gifts Ceased but counterfeits have occurred from time to time throughout church history is what philip schaaf the dean of church historians says.

He mentions that this phenomenon has occurred among the mormons. So if you want to talk about tongue speaking philip schaaf says it is documented that the same stuff. Speaking in ecstatic utterances mormons do it.

And other non-christian sects and he is referring to ecstatic utterance or gibberish. Okay, which is what tongues is they can tell you they can pretend it's a language it's not a language. It's not even an angelic language because when angels were on the earth they spoke uh greek.

They spoke the common language of whoever they were talking to they didn't speak in gibberish. So all of that's false too acts 1911 and god wrought special miracles by the hands of paul. Now we're back in scripture.

Now. Who was paul. Was paul just an average christian. Uh, like we are today or was he an apostle? He was an apostle and god wrote special miracles by the hands of paul. Now you say well paul Never saw jesus christ alive.

So how can he fit that definition? Well, we don't know that he didn't because he certainly saw Some of the other apostles and was happy that they were being killed and He quite likely did see jesus alive, but we know that jesus appeared to him in a bodily form.

On the road to damascus when he regenerated when he called him he did it. Jesus did it instead of sending the holy spirit. I'm sure the holy spirit was there too but jesus appeared in company with the holy spirit and Regenerated paul.

And then we know that for the better part of three years in the arabian desert paul claims under the inspiration of the holy spirit. That jesus christ met with him in person. And Gave him the information he needed to write most of the new testament and the rest of the scripture says that once that was written.

It was a done deal. We read that Previously this morning that it was given once one time To the church and it's done and that was when paul was finished. All right. So paul had special miracles. Why because do you really think that peter and the rest of the jews would believe that paul was actually an apostle if he couldn't?

Do miracles like they could. No, they they required a sign peter required a sign. And so god made it possible for the apostle paul to do sign gifts. So that his message which is most of the new testament would be authenticated and it certainly was.

So that from paul's body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched paul and they could then put those anchored handkerchiefs on the Sick person and the diseases would depart from them and evil spirits would go out of them.