F4F: Debunking the Two Pentecostal Distinctives

Fighting for the Faith

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Welcome to Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Rosebrough, I am your servant in Jesus Christ, and this is the program that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the

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Word of God. If you've ever been pressured by somebody in the charismatic movement and told that the gift of tongues is for everybody and all you've got to do to kind of get the tongues thing flowing is to say maybe goo -goo or ga -ga and that from there the gibberish will just start to flow, go ahead and click on the subscribe button below so that you can be notified when we post new content here on our

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YouTube channel. Let's set up what we're going to talk about on this installment of Fighting for the

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Faith. Let me take you back in time, though, to kind of set this up. Back on October 25, 1964, the

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San Francisco 49ers were playing the Minnesota Vikings.

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I think you have to say it like this, though, Minnesota, Minnesota Vikings. And in that particular game, one of the worst plays of NFL history occurred, and that was when

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Jim Marshall, a defensive lineman for the Minnesota Vikings, picked up a fumble and then ran the wrong way, all the way to the end zone, the wrong end zone, and he thought that he had made a touchdown.

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From that day forward, they called him Wrong Way Marshall. Now the reason

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I'm bringing that up is because in the debates that exist between charismatics and cessationists, the

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Pentecostals and cessationists, the charismatics are under the impression that somehow, in order to legitimize what's going on in their churches, that all that is necessary is to prove somehow or poke holes in the idea of cessationism.

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I would like to posit that that is the wrong goal line, totally the wrong goal line.

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And if you know your Pentecostal and charismatic history, then you know what the two primary distinctives are of the

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Pentecostal movement. They are a second baptism of the

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Holy Spirit, which Christians are supposed to be able to receive as evidenced by speaking in tongues.

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These are the so -called two Pentecostal distinctives. In order to legitimize what's going on in Pentecostal and charismatic churches, the goal line is not continuationism versus cessationism.

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That's the wrong goal line altogether. Instead, the goal line is whether or not the two

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Pentecostal distinctives are biblical. And that's what we're going to be looking at in this installment of Fighting for the

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Faith. I'm going to be playing a lecture that I delivered in the summer of 2017 at the 2017

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Pirate Christian Radio Conference held at Kongsvinger Lutheran Church in Oslo, Minnesota, and I think you're going to discover that the argument, the debate between cessationism and continuationism is not where the real action is at when it comes to the

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Pentecostal movement. It's whether or not their two Pentecostal distinctives can hold up under biblical scrutiny.

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So with that, let's get to it. Here we go. All right, we're going to get started on the second lecture today, and that will be me.

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I'm introducing me. If you don't know who I am, I can't help you.

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I'm the next speaker. They just call me Pastor Rose, bro. So today we're going to be talking about the

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Pentecostal distinctives. This lecture will run a little longer than an hour, and I'm just saying that because I want to do this justice.

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This is a lecture that I also delivered in Sydney, Australia, and after re -listening to the lecture that I gave in Sydney and getting some feedback from some of the folks that were there,

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I wanted to work back through it in order to kind of preemptively deal with some questions that naturally come up, see if we can address it in the body of the lecture itself, rather than have it disconnected from the lecture by the question and answer period.

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In our day, since the Azusa Street Revival, the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, they are known for their two primary distinctives.

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Does anyone know, I mean off the top of your head, what are the two primary distinctives of the Charismatic Pentecostal movements?

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Baptism in the Holy Spirit. Baptism in the Holy Spirit is the first. Second, as evidenced by speaking in tongues.

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So how do you know you've received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit? That sounded like you've been having scotch, and it's way too early for that.

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I know it's five o 'clock somewhere. Okay, but yeah, it's as evidenced by speaking in tongues.

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What we're going to do is we're going to do a comprehensive exegetical look at the concept itself.

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If you've been listening to the program, I've been going at this, kind of hitting on this a lot lately, just kind of piecing it apart, and we're going to note here that when you actually look at what

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Scripture teaches and says, and how it interprets itself, especially when we get into 1

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Corinthians 12, 13, and 14, it becomes impossible, impossible for you to maintain a belief in what

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Scripture says and believe that anybody who has received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit must speak in tongues.

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Now the way they get around this idea, and over and again I keep coming back to that clear passage in 1 Corinthians 12, which asks, are all apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers, do all work miracles, do all speak in tongues?

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In the way the Greek is constructed, it's clear the answer is no to each of those questions. And so they get around it by saying that there are different types of tongues.

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If you heard the lectures, if you heard the Eric Pedersen interview, which has just recently been posted,

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Eric Pedersen talked about the fact, and this is a fellow who spent time in the pre -NAR charismatic movement,

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Latter Rain, and things of that nature. He talked about the fact that they were taught that there were different types of tongues, which would include what they call battle tongues.

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Battle tongues, and according to Eric Pedersen, battle tongues, when you have that, it has kind of a Japanese flavor to it.

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No joke. You know, so, that's a battle tongue. I wish

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I was making this up. So, you're watching a bad Japanese samurai movie, you know,

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I'm going to kill you. That's a battle tongue, apparently.

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But scripture doesn't teach this. Scripture doesn't teach this. So we're going to start with a foundational text,

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Acts chapter 2, day of Pentecost, important day. Nobody disputes that this was the day that Christ sends the

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Holy Spirit, does it from heaven, sends the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes and literally fills the

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Christians up, you know, fire, tongues of fire, and they begin speaking in other languages, and kind of that's the important thing.

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We'll kind of work through the exegesis here. And again, long lecture today. Here's, we're going to pay close attention to how this works.

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When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place, suddenly, see there was a suddenly, you can have a suddenly too.

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There came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, it filled the entire house where they were sitting and divided tongues as a fire appeared on them and rested on each one of them.

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And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other, and here's our

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Greek word, glosas, glosas. So if you heard the term glossolea, glosas, tongues.

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Wonderful thing about the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit understands that good way of writing is you don't use the same word over and over again, you use synonyms and things like that.

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And I'm not talking about the spice you put in your cereal, I'm talking about words that mean the same thing.

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So we're going to note here the word glosas is used. So the Spirit gave them other tongues, as the

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Spirit gave them utterance, the question is what does that mean? Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven, and at this sound the multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own different word, dialectos, dialect, language.

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So you're going to see here, scripture interpreting scripture tells us what tongues is. Tongues is the supernatural ability to speak in a language you have not studied and somebody hearing you can understand it.

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Ata mevina vrit, ata, v 'at, lo, ani mereber.

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So clearly he doesn't know Hebrew. Kitzat? Besedo? Okay, so he doesn't know

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Hebrew, none, we've determined that, but if somebody were Hebrew and he hadn't studied Hebrew, and he could speak and proclaim the wonders of Christ in Hebrew, that would be a sign to the person.

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And so we see what's going on here. So each one was hearing them speak in his own dialectos, language, and they were amazed and astonished saying, are not all these who are speaking

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Galileans? And how is it that we hear each one of us in his own, there it is again, language, dialectos,

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Parthenians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, Egypt, and the other parts of Libya beyond Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both

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Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own glossos, isn't that, see?

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We hear them saying in our own glossos, tongues, the mighty works of God. So this sign, when it shows up, is it a sign for believers or unbelievers?

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Unbelievers. They're not believers yet in Christ. And this is a sign to them, and this sign, because they're hearing the wonders of God in their own language, and you note that the text is interchanging glossos and dialectos.

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They're perfectly interchangeable, which tells you what this is. And if you weren't sure, well, it's the language of Cappadocia, it's the language of Pontus, it's the languages of Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, visitors from Rome.

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So there's Latin, Greek, Chinese going on, who knows what's going on, right? But it's everyone who's there is hearing these in their own language.

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And we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God. They were all amazed and perplexed and said to one another, what does this mean?

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Now there's mocks saying they're filled with new wine. I always have to keep pointing out that generally when somebody is filled with new wine, they struggle with the one language they know.

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Just saying. That's how that works. Peter stands up, lifts up his voice, and he begins to preach

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Christ. He explains to them how this is a prophecy fulfilled in Joel, and addresses them regarding Christ that they had killed

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Jesus, that they were the ones responsible, although even despite the fact that most of the people there, they weren't sitting there shouting to Pilate, crucify him.

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Yet he says, you are the ones who killed. So then we get to kind of a key text at the very end of the sermon.

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It says this in verse 37, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, the

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Holy Spirit convicting them, right? And said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?

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Peter said to them, repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the

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Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children.

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That seems pretty straightforward. Baptism is for who? Everybody. For you and your children, that kind of covers the whole age range.

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And you'll note that there's promises given in baptism. Forgiveness of sins and what?

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Holy Spirit. Now, we know in Ephesians, there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, right?

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There's not two, there's one. There you have it. One Lord, one faith, one baptism.

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So, that day, the people who are baptized, what did they receive from Christ?

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Forgiveness of sins and the Holy Spirit. That's what they received. So you get the idea here.

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It seems kind of basic when you just attack it this way and reason and wrestle with the text.

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Now, the issue is, is that in the book of Acts, there are three notable instances where somebody is a believer in Jesus and they receive the

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Holy Spirit differently. I have to say it that way.

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They receive the Spirit differently. But the scriptures themselves, the book of Acts itself, actually tells us how we are to understand these instances.

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Let's take a look. We're going to start in Acts 11. In Acts chapter 10, you're going to note that Acts chapter 10 and the first part of 11 seem ultra -redundant because you have the story of the first Gentile believer in Jesus Christ.

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Actually, believers, because it's Cornelius, the Roman centurion, and his entire family. This fellow is not circumcised.

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This fellow is a Roman soldier as an occupation force in Israel, and he's a

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God -fearer in the sense that he's on his way to convert to Judaism. We know this. God the

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Holy Spirit tells Peter, you go there, and he tells Cornelius, you send for Peter.

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So you've got it on both ends. This is an important thing. If you watch the progression in the book of Acts, especially in the early chapters, the way it starts off is that Christianity begins in Jerusalem, and it's a holy

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Jewish affair. There are no Gentile believers. And then it starts to crack open just a smidge.

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It cracks open just a smidge in the sense that then it gets into Samaria.

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Are Samaritans and Jews friendly with each other? No, not at all. And so you're going to note that there is a different receiving of the

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Holy Spirit when it hits the Samaritans. We'll talk about that. There's a different receiving of the

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Holy Spirit when it comes to the first Gentile believers, and there's a reason for it.

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And then using that same interpretive method that we have been given by God in Scripture, we can interpret the last instance.

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We'll talk about that. So we'll look at all three. So in Acts 11, we have Peter's account of the story of the conversion of Cornelius and his family.

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And the reason is why is because, I've noticed this in the church as well, no good deed goes unpunished.

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You, you can't preach the gospel of that guy, he's a sinner.

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Yeah? And how is that any different than you? So the apostles and the brothers, Acts 11, 1, who were throughout

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Judea, they heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party, love these guys, no,

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I'm not really, they criticized him saying, you went to uncircumcised men and you ate with them.

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What were you thinking? You're acting like this Jesus forgiveness of sin stuff is like, goes to them too.

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Who does it not go to? Who can we not eat with? It's kind of an interesting question, right?

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So you went to the uncircumcised men and you ate with them. Peter began and explained to them in order.

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I was in the city of Joppa praying. I was in a trance. I saw a vision, something like a great sheet descending, being let down from heaven by its four corners.

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It came down to me, looking at it closely, I observed animals and beasts of prey, reptiles and birds of the air.

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And I heard a voice saying to me, rise, Peter, kill and eat. But I said, by no means, Lord, for nothing common or clean has ever entered my mouth.

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But the voice answered a second time from heaven, what God has made clean, do not call common. This happened three times.

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It was drawn up again into heaven and behold, at that very moment, three men arrived at the house in which we were, sent to me from Caesarea.

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And the spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction. And here's kind of your theme here, making no distinction.

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It's going to be our little bit of theme here. So these six brothers also accompanied me. We entered the man's house and he told us how he had seen the angels standing in his house and say, send a

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Joppa to Simon, who is called Peter. He will declare to you a message by which you will be saved and you and your whole household.

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And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them and watch this, just as on us at the beginning.

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There's your distinction. Something really weird happened. These guys got the

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Holy Spirit without being baptized. These guys received the

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Holy Spirit immediately, just like we did. And that was the big interpretive aha for them.

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Just as on us at the beginning, and I remembered the word of the Lord and how he said, John baptized with water, but you'll be baptized with the

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Holy Spirit. If then God gave them the same gift as he gave to us when we believed in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I can stand in God's way? When they heard these things, they fell silent.

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They glorified God saying, well, then to the Gentiles also, God has granted repentance that leads to life.

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So you'll note there's a norm and the norm is when you are baptized in the name of the

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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, sins are forgiven, you receive the Holy Spirit. Then you have exceptions to the rule and the exceptions to the rule teach us that God is saying regarding the group now that is being represented, that they have been accepted by God.

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So it's important that God did it this way out of order. There was an anomaly because by doing it, he made it perfectly clear.

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Gentiles are in on the whole forgiveness of sins thing. Jesus has bled and died for them and they are included and they are not to be excluded.

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And why? Because something unusual happened. Now did they receive two baptisms?

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No. In fact, Peter said, you know, they've already received the Holy Spirit, who are we to keep them from being baptized?

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So they were baptized. So that wasn't a second baptism. They received the Holy Spirit and that was the sign that, hey, the

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Gentiles are in, start preaching the gospel to them. That's the idea. Let's take a look at the next group then.

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Going backwards in the text just a little bit, Acts chapter 8, we see the gospel getting to Samaria.

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Jews and Samaritans, yeah, they're, you know, how do they do it? They're like this. This is the

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Jews. These are the Samaritans. Yeah, they're, they don't get along. So watch what happens.

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It says, now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them

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Peter and John who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. So something unusual happened.

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Here we have Samaritans who believe the word of God. They're baptized. No Holy Spirit. No Holy Spirit.

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They didn't receive the Holy Spirit in their baptism. Why? Because God's basically saying, pay attention, boys.

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This is to make you understand they're included also. That's kind of the idea. So that they might receive the

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Holy Spirit, for it had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And so they laid their hands on them, and then they received the

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Holy Spirit. So the idea is that, who did the preaching to the Samaritans? Philip.

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Philip did the preaching. So Philip, I'm pretty sure he's a layman. He's not one of the apostles.

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So Philip goes out there, and he's evangelistically preaching the gospel to the Samaritans. They're saying, yes, we believe.

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They repent. They're baptized. No Spirit. So they send back the word to Jerusalem.

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We've got a bunch of baptized Samaritans over here, but no Holy Spirit. What? Yeah, better send in the big guns.

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Send in the big guns. So Peter shows up. And Peter lays his hands on them.

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They receive the Holy Spirit. This is, again, an anomaly. What does this tell us? Using the interpretive method that we learned in Acts 11.

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That God was making no distinction. They are to be accepted also. And that was basically saying to Peter, they're in on this too.

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The fact that Peter had to get up, travel from Jerusalem into Samaria, and lay the hands on people, that's an unusual thing.

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And that shows us that Samaritans also are in on the forgiveness of sins.

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Well, actually, you learn this from another text in the book of Acts, that when it talks about being baptized in the name of the

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Lord Jesus, that's shorthand for being baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

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It actually is. And I can show you the text, and let me see if I can do this off the cuff. It's Acts 19, and this is the third group, by the way.

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Let's take a look at this third group. It happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Acts 19, 1,

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Paul passed through the inland country, came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples, and he said to them, did you receive the

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Holy Spirit when you believed? And they said, no. We haven't even heard that there is a

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Holy Spirit. And Paul's sitting there, what? And he said, well, into what then were you baptized?

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If you're a baptized believer in Jesus Christ, you're baptized in the name of the Father, the

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Son, and the Holy Spirit. And so his assumption is, whoa, whoa, whoa, you didn't even know there's a

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Holy Spirit? Tell me about your baptism. Tell me about that. Because the assumption is, you're going to hear about the

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Holy Spirit when you're baptized. He said, well, we were baptized into John's baptism. And Paul said, oy vey.

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It's in the in -between lines. And he said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is

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Jesus. On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. So you're going to note here, how does

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Paul baptize? Trinitarian baptism, name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So when we read in the book of Acts, being baptized in the name of the

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Lord Jesus is a shorthand way of saying you're baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now you're going to note here.

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So this is the third group. Here we have these groups, this group of fellows.

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They are believers in Jesus, and they have not truly yet been baptized. In fact, their theology is not even filled out yet.

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So what are we to say about them? Well, if they died that day, they'd go to hell. No, that's not what this is saying at all.

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In fact, that's kind of the peak part of this idea. Over and again,

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Christians who believe that God actually does things in baptism, people hear that and say, so you're saying if I'm not baptized,

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I'm not saved. No, and this is one of the texts for that. Because God, by giving them the

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Holy Spirit as they're baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is saying he accepts them.

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Now the early church hadn't put this all together properly, and when you read the church fathers, it's rather fascinating, because when

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Christianity is illegal, Christianity is illegal, and after the death of the apostles, catechism took a few years.

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And so if you're new to the faith, you're being catechized into Christianity, and baptisms oftentimes took place on the

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Easter vigil, in the morning time, in a river, in the nude, which

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I think that would make baptisms really awkward, so I'm glad we don't do that anymore. While somebody's being catechized in imperial

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Rome, there were times of persecution where Christians were rounded up and martyred. So it happened frequently under those types of persecutions that catechumens were also arrested and they were martyred for their faith, but they were not yet baptized, which

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I think is just bad practice. But they were not yet baptized. So the early church, it's like, well, they're not baptized, oh my goodness, does that mean that they're lost?

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No, read Acts 19. Read Acts 19, you kind of get the idea, no, Christ accepts them as well.

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The other thing, what they ended up doing is they created a doctrine, it was called the baptism of blood.

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And so if you're being martyred for your faith, and there's a wild animal tearing you apart, your blood becomes your own baptism.

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Now that was a pious answer to the question that is not actually in Scripture.

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So it's not, that's not what Scripture teaches. If you understand how to interpret Scripture the way it's teaching you,

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Christ was saying, yeah, listen, these were my fellows all along. They were baptized and they received the Holy Spirit and their theology was filled out, if you would.

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So that's kind of the idea. So anomalies like this are on purpose because God is saying,

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I love those guys, I love those guys, and I love those guys. They're not out, they're in. Does that make sense?

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All right, you had a question, Mark? Either they have to be the same or there's a contradiction.

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No, no, the baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus is a shorthand saying, it's a way of describing the baptism in the name of the

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's what I'm saying, it has to be the same. They're the same. They're synonyms. They're not two different things. One Lord, one faith, one baptism.

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The idea here is that over and again, the Charismatics and the Pentecostals are going to point to these texts and say, this proves that baptism and the baptism of the

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Holy Spirit are two different things. But when you pay attention to the details, they're not.

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And you pay attention to why these anomalies exist, which Scripture explains to us, then you understand that these anomalies are a way of saying that as the

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Gospel is expanding to these different despised groups, that Christ is accepting them, and then you have kind of the leftovers of John the

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Baptist's people who are believing in Jesus, but they had not even really been properly catechized and baptized.

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Hold your question. Hold your question. Let's keep going or we're not going to get through it. So that's how you deal with these differences.

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Scripture does not teach a separate baptism of the

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Holy Spirit apart from water baptism, and when they too are split apart, it's for a theological point.

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Now for the fun part. First Corinthians 12.

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We have to exegete through these texts concerning spiritual gifts.

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Now if you pay attention to how the epistle of First Corinthians is written, it's a fascinating text because you're going to note that Paul seems to be all over the map as far as topics are concerned.

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Think of this as a letter that is addressing a set of problems that was communicated to him in a letter that we do not have, that he had received, that the church in Corinth says, oh,

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Paul, we're having problems. We got this guy, he's sleeping with his father's wife.

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We got people getting drunk on the communion wine, and we got this crazy stuff going on regarding the spiritual gifts.

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And so you'll note that Paul, as you read through the letter, the different topics change with words like now concerning.

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So he's now changed the subject. He's changed the subject, and now he's addressing the question that was asked him regarding the proper use of spiritual gifts.

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And we can learn then from how he's answering the question, we can kind of backwards engineer what the question was or what the topic was being addressed.

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And the issue was, is that we got some people in the church in Corinth who legitimately have the gift of tongues, and they want to use this gift that they received, and so they're using it in church.

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That's what's going on. But they're using it in a way that's actually kind of nuts. We'll explain.

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So concerning spiritual gifts, I don't want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led.

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Therefore, I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says Jesus is a curse. No one can say

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Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit, and that's a wonderful thing. Good monergistic passage.

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Nobody says that Jesus is Lord except for by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit works that in us. So now there are varieties of gifts, and so notice the shape of his arguments.

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There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are varieties of service, same

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Lord. There are varieties of activities. It's the same God who empowers them all and everyone.

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To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit, for what? For the common good. So gifts are given by the

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Holy Spirit as the Holy Spirit chooses for the common good of the church. For to one is given through the

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Spirit the utterance of wisdom, to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same

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Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, kind of like post -modernity and modernity, to another various kinds of, and here's the word, glossa, again.

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How are we to understand this based upon its first appearance and acts? Human languages, that's what they are.

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To another, the interpretation of tongues. Now this is important.

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When the Holy Spirit gave out the supernatural ability for people to speak in a language they have not studied,

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He did not necessarily at the same time give the ability for the person speaking in that other language the ability to know what they were saying.

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I'm talking to you in Hebrew, I have no idea what I'm saying. You're sitting there going, it's wonderful, you're telling me about Jesus. Glad, that's great.

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So the idea then is that there's people who have this legitimate gift and they can start belting off in Swahili and have no clue what they're saying.

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That's what this text is teaching us. Now that's a kind of a strange thing, which now creates kind of an issue.

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Well if you have this ability given to you by the Holy Spirit, how is it supposed to be used in church then?

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And so you notice that along with it, the Holy Spirit also has given some the miraculous ability to understand these languages.

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And if you've taken this time to study Swahili, even you hearing Swahili, you're going to know it automatically.

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And it's important to know the interpretation literally means here, interpretation, it's like the ability to translate.

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That's the same word. If the foot should say, because I am not a hand,

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I don't belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, because I am not an eye,

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I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing?

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If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them as he chose.

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If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

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Stop here for a second. Does this sound like the Apostle Paul is arguing that everybody can speak in tongues if they have the

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Holy Spirit? No. The whole thrust of his argument is the

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Holy Spirit is going to come and say, all right, you got this gift, you got this one, you got this one, this one, you got that one, that one, and together we function as a body.

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And we all are interdependent upon each other. These gifts are given so that we must then work together to disciple, to proclaim

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Christ, suffer together, all the things we do as a community.

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We are now part of a living body, the body of Christ. And so what a strange body it would be if we were all mouths.

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It would be grotesque. Shut up, I'm talking. No, I'm talking. No, I'm talking. That just doesn't make any sense.

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Or what would we have to say if we were all ears? That's his point. So various gifts are given so that the church is an interdependent, interlinked body and these gifts are given for the building up, for the common good of the church.

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The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the head to the feet,

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I have no need of you. On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.

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And on those parts of the body that we think less honorable, we bestow the greater honor and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty.

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Try this one out on your friend. I think you're probably one of the unpresentable members of the body of Christ. I don't think that would go well.

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But God has so composed the body, giving great honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.

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If one member suffers, all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together.

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Just like in this, like think of it this way. You wake up in the middle of the night and you go and use the restroom and you come back and you stub your toe on that stupid post on the bottom of your bed.

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And you begin speaking in another language and your toe is killing you.

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It's killing, it's only your toe. But when your toe is like on fire like that, doesn't it feel like your whole body is in pain?

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You see what I'm saying? That's his point there. So when one member suffers, we all suffer together.

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Now you, y 'all, are the body of Christ, individually members of it.

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Notice, this is kind of an important thing. Philosophy today, kind of talking about modernism and post -modernism.

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Modernism is all about the individual. I think therefore I am, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me.

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Post -modernity is classically and historically fascistic. It denies the existence of the individual and says that it's the community that exists.

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The Bible says, pah, you are an individual in community.

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You are an individual member of a body. Sounds paradoxical, right.

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That's kind of the idea. Which is God's word? The law of the gospel? Yes.

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You see what I'm saying? Just want to put that little plug in there. So now you are the body of Christ, body as a collective, and individually you are members of it.

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This is a great paradoxical text. And God has appointed in the church, first, apostles, second, prophet, third, teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues.

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A little bit of a note here. Administrating means that you have the spiritual gift of Excel spreadsheets and various kinds of tongues.

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And then he asked these questions. And again, I'll point it out. Let me make the Greek a lot bigger here. These are questions.

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Are all apostles. So this little particle right here, that's just translated, it's pronounced may.

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And when a question is asked in Greek and it has may in it, the may is not translated, but to the reader it is to be understood.

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The question being asked must be answered in the negative. So the question, may pontes apostoloi, are all apostles?

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No. May pontes prophetai, are all prophets? No. May pontes didoscoloi, are all teachers?

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No. May, it's in there. May pontes dunamis, do all work in power?

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Answer, no. May pontes charismata, all possess gifts of healing? No. May pontes glosais, do all speak in tongues?

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No. One Lord, one faith, one baptism.

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One. And not all speak in tongues. At this point, you drop the mic, it's over.

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I'm sorry, but the two Pentecostal distinctives, a separate baptism of the

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Holy Spirit, as evidenced by speaking in tongues, cannot be supported biblically if you work through the texts in context and you let

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Scripture interpret itself. In fact, the whole thrust of Paul's argument is, uh -uh, all do not speak in tongues, just like all are not apostles.

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Well, in the NAR now, I think it's pretty easy to become an apostle. By the way, a little bit of a side note, I forget her name.

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Somebody had asked me about this in Australia, you know, when I was making the round, making the phone calls during the research, it's like, you know, who's the apostle that I'm supposed to submit myself to?

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And she lives in the Devil's Lake area, I know it's a she. Did some follow -up research, and I forget her name, it's the lady that's in that Jesus Camp movie.

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Does anyone remember her name? I forget her name. So, yeah, I won't be submitting myself to her. So do all speak in tongues?

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No. Do all interpret? No. Earnestly desire the higher gifts, and I will show you still a more excellent way.

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Now, we've got to deal with part of 13 here because you can kind of see the thrust of what they do. Watch what

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Paul does. He says, if I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but I have not love,

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I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. Charismatics key in on these words.

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Tongues of angels. Oh, there it is. You can have that.

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Do all speak in tongues? No. But all can speak in the tongues of angels. No. That's not what this text is saying.

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Do angels communicate with one another? Maybe. I'm pretty sure they do.

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I did notice that when we do have angels appearing in Scripture, they have the ability to communicate.

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So you think of Michael the archangel, you know, you think of Gabriel when he shows up, you think of the angel that gave

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John the apostle the tour of heaven, was working with him when he was... And so we know that angels can communicate.

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So that would require language. This text, by the way, is not saying because angels have their own language, you can have that language too.

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That's not what he's saying at all. He's making an argument for using

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God's given gifts in love and service to neighbor.

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So think of it, he's speaking a little poetically here. If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but I have not love,

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I'm a noisy gong. Or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers, and I understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith so as to remove mountains, but I have not love,

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I'm nothing. If I give away all that I have, if I deliver up my body to be burned, but I have not love,

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I gain nothing. So you'll note here that 1 Corinthians 13 does not negate what we just read in 1

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Corinthians 12. Taken as a whole, in context, Paul is making an argument to use these gifts that God has given us in love for our neighbors, in love toward each other.

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And then we get this wonderful text. Love is patient, it's kind. Love does not envy, it doesn't boast, it's not arrogant, it's not rude, it does not insist on its own way, it's not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but it rejoices with the truth.

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Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

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As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away.

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For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

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When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

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For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, and then

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I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three.

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But the greatest of these is love. You see the idea here. So this is an admonition, if you would.

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Use these gifts for each other. They're not for you, they're for you.

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You see? That's his whole point. And then this wonderful text here, you know, over again, I am convinced that this is really kind of the apostolic catechesis.

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Three main points of the Christian faith. Faith, hope, love. Faith in Christ for the forgiveness of sins. Hope of eternal life and Christ's return in glory.

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Love in neighbor and good works. I mean, you can just, you can boil Christianity to that kind of three points, and you got the whole thing catechetically, and it's wonderful.

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But the greatest of these is love, chapter 14. So pursue love. Note where that charismatics put the emphasis.

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They skip 13, desire spiritual gifts. Well, no, no, no,

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Paul says pursue love. Pursue love and earnestly desire spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.

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For one who speaks in a tongue, and now we can see what the question was, as he's now kind of wrapping this up.

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One who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men, but to God. And this is if they don't have the ability to interpret.

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For no one understands him. He utters mysteries in the spirit. On the other hand, one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.

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And so now you can see the problem. One or two, we don't know the number, but there's several fellows or gals, it's got to be fellows in this case because it's going to be in the context of church.

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Several fellows have a supernatural God -given ability to speak in tongues.

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They do not have the gift of interpretation, and they're sitting there going, can you work us into the liturgy, please?

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We want to be right after the Kyrie. But nobody knows what you're saying. But it's a spiritual gift.

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God gave me this gift. So I need to stand up and speak mysteries. And Paul's going, no.

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And so notice he puts a corrective. The one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding, encouragement, and consolation.

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So the one who's speaking in tongues without an interpreter, he ain't building nobody up. Nobody. So the one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church.

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And you can see the whole thrust of what he's saying is, desire the gifts that will build up the church.

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Now I want y 'all to speak in tongues, but even more I want you to prophesy.

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The one who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues unless someone interprets so that the church may be built up.

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And so there we see the rub. So it's like, all right, if you guys have the gift of tongues, we can work in the service.

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We needed an interpreter. We needed somebody who can tell us what you're saying. That's the whole point.

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So now brothers, if I come to you speaking in tongues, how will I benefit you unless I bring to you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching?

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Notice again, how will I benefit you? Do these things in love, pursue love, pursue the building up.

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And he's now saying, how will I benefit you unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching?

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If even lifeless instruments such as the flute or the harp do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is played?

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And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? So with yourselves.

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If with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said?

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For you'll be speaking into the air. There are doubtless many different languages in the world, but none is without meaning.

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But if I do not know the meaning of the language, I'll be a foreigner to the speaker and a speaker a foreigner to me.

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So with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the spirit, good on you, strive in excelling in the building up of the church.

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Does this sound like an argument for or against speaking gibberish in church?

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Against. The whole thrust is against it. Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret.

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Yeah, have you ever had this conversation with the charismatic? It should go something like this. They're sitting there and go, oh, you're just missing out.

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I feel so bad for you. You go to one of those dead churches, it's got the, yeah,

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Luther was a great guy, but I mean, haven't you seen the spirit does not work in your church? Okay, you guys like stand up, sing hymns, sit down.

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Your pastor prays for like five hours, you know, and the spirit can't work with that. This is how they talk.

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So, but you need, you need this radical, amazing thing that you need the baptism of the Holy Spirit and God's going to give you the gift of tongues.

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So, you sit there and go, yeah, that rotten pastor of mine, he never told me about this.

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How dare he? So, you know, I, yes, I want to receive the Holy Spirit. You know, you've already got the

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Holy Spirit, but all right, so they want to, they want to receive the Holy Spirit. So, they go through the whole rigmarole of how you get baptized in the

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Holy Spirit, and then you sit in there going, all right, now what? We're supposed to start speaking in tongues.

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All right, how do I do that? Well, you turn your mind off and just kind of whatever, just let it flow.

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Just like unhinge your tongue from your brain and it'll start flowing. You sit there going, yeah,

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I got nothing. Start off with ga -ga -goo -goo. I wish

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I was making this up. Because the expectation is that everybody receives the gift of speaking in tongues.

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Everybody. But everybody receives the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit decides which gift you get.

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So if you have the ability to speak in another human language, given to you as a gift by the

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Holy Spirit, God the Holy Spirit gave that gift to you, and the ability to operate in that gift should be pretty straightforward.

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No attempts, no pushing necessary. It just does what it does when it does what it does. But if you have this gift,

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Paul says, pray that you should interpret. And there's a reason for this, because the gift of tongues by itself has a particular function.

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And he's going to get into this quite clearly. The gift of tongues was not given to the church for the building up of the church.

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That's not its function. It actually has a very specific function. So pray that you should interpret.

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For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays with me, my mind is unfruitful. What am I to do? I'll pray with my spirit, but I'll pray with my mind also.

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I'll sing with my, praise with my spirit, but I'm going to sing with my mind also. Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say amen to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you're saying?

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For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up.

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And you notice the whole point, building up, building up. It's for your neighbor. It's for your neighbor. It's not for you. So I thank

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God I speak in tongues more than all of you. Nevertheless, in church, I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others than 10 ,000 words in a tongue.

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How many stories have I heard from people coming out of the charismatic movement? I used to pray two hours a day in tongues.

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That means you spent two hours of your day not praying at all. Brothers, do not be children in your thinking.

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Be infants in evil, but in thinking, be mature. That's a polite way of saying to these people, grow up.

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This is not that hard. In the law, it is written by people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners,

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I will speak to this people, and even then, they will not listen to me, says the

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Lord. Watch your cross -reference on that. What's the cross -reference? That's, what is it,

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Isaiah 28, kind of important thing here. How do we know that we're still talking about human languages?

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The cross -reference makes it perfectly clear. Paul here is quoting Isaiah 28, 11, and 12, a prophecy that in the time of the

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Messiah, a future coming time, that people would speak in strange languages and it would be a sign to stiff -necked, unbelieving

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Israel, but even then, they wouldn't believe. Pentecost is in part a fulfillment of Isaiah 28, which tells us the primary, if you would, the primary purpose for tongues was the fulfillment of this prophecy as a sign against unbelieving

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Israel. That was its main purpose. Thus, tongues are a sign not for believers, but for unbelievers.

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Ah, that's its primary purpose. So, would it be helpful here at Kongsvinger if we had somebody speaking in tongues?

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No, I haven't, it doesn't help us a bit. We've got to make disciples, unless it's

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Norwegian. You unbelieving Norwegians, listen to this fellow, but that's really the idea.

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So tongues are a sign not for believers, but for unbelievers. Prophecy is a sign not for unbelievers, but for believers.

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If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues and an outsider, unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds?

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And what's really fascinating in the modern charismatic movement, they argue it's necessary that we practice this gift in public because then that'll prove to the unbelievers that God is real.

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Paul is saying, no, this is going to prove that you're out of your mind. You've lost it.

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You're stark raving mad. So you'll notice the whole flow runs against everything that the charismatic movement says and we're on their text.

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But if all prophesy, an unbeliever or outsider enters, he's convicted by all and he's called to account by all.

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The secrets of his heart are disclosed. And so falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among them.

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Important to note here, prophecy, there's kind of a wide understanding of prophecy and there's a narrow understanding of prophecy.

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And I would argue that this is talking about prophecy in a much wider sense. Now if you really want to know what prophecy looks like, it does not look like Ryan Lestrange's Monday Word.

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I feel a shifting coming right now and there's a mantle being released that will open up the portals and suddenly will hit you.

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You want to know what real prophecy looks like, this is not hard. Read Isaiah. Read Jeremiah.

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Read Malachi. Hosea. And when you read those books, what do you find out?

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These guys were the masters of preaching law to convict people of their idolatry and their sins and their wickedness and telling them over and again, the

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Lord Yahweh, He's slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, return to Him and even now

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He will wash away your sins and forgive you and pardon you and you will come out and go in and you will see

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Him face to face. That's like the recurring theme of like all of the prophets.

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So what do prophets do? They preach the law to you. They preach

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Christ and Him crucified for you. And people are convicted of their sins and they are undone and then they are made whole by Christ.

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So you want to know what prophecy looks like, look at the prophets. It's nice that we have a group of them, large group of them in the

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Old Testament. So people who are claiming to be prophets who aren't prophesying or sound nothing like Isaiah or Jeremiah, they're not prophets.

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But when a pastor gets up, and here's the fun part. So think of it this way, in its narrow sense, prophecy is what?

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You are given words by God and you speak those words to who God told you to speak them to.

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And there's an element in prophecy that is what? The foretelling of the future. Try this on for size.

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I have this book, it's huge, it's got like 66 little books in it. It's amazing.

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And the thing says that it's the word of God. No joke. There's like some of them back there.

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You should see this thing. I'm going to speak prophetically to you. This book teaches every one of us that we are created in God's image.

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He spoke the universe into existence in six days. But that our first parents rebelled against God by eating the fruit that they were told not to eat.

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And this plunged us into the misery that we are currently in. And this is why we die and get sick. And why our children are so awful to deal with.

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I'm preaching here. And here's the terrible part.

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That because of our collective rebellion against God, we have earned His wrath. We learn about God that He is loving and kind, but that He also is just.

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And because we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, we deserve hell. I deserve hell.

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God's word declares that we are all ungodly. And the future is revealed in this book as well.

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It says that God in human flesh, Jesus Christ, is going to return again in glory. And we are all going to have to stand before Him individually and give an account of our lives before Him.

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Now, up to this point, this is starting to get to be scary. Because I know what

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I've done. And I really don't want to have that conversation with Jesus about that stuff.

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And I'm not just talking about stuff when I was in college. Yesterday. And so you know, you're already beginning to feel undone as we consider what

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God's law says. And if you are not sure what this means, you will have no other gods before me,

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God says. That you shall not take His name in vain. That you shall not despise hearing

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His word. That you shall honor your father and your mother. That you shall not murder, steal, commit adultery, covet.

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Now it's getting a little closer, right? Because we can look across our lives and say, yeah, um, man, but, but.

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This book also reveals that this same judge came to earth and was born of the

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Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate. And he himself suffered the wrath of God in our place, on the cross.

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And that he died for our sins. And through faith in Him, we can be forgiven.

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And the great news is that for those who believe and call on Him, all of their sins are washed away.

01:00:00

They receive a full pardon from God so that when the day comes that He will return and He's coming soon.

01:00:06

That when He returns, when you stand before Him, you will not hear Him say, depart from me, I never knew you.

01:00:13

Instead, you will hear Him say, well done, good and faithful servant. And then we're going to party like it's 1999.

01:00:22

World without end. New creation, new heavens, new earth, all given as a gift.

01:00:28

Now what have I done there? I've just taken the basics, you know, the outline of the story of scripture, you know, from both ends.

01:00:35

There's a future element to it. And there's a convicting of your sins and a promise of the forgiveness of sins.

01:00:43

You see? That's what it means to be a prophet. And all of this,

01:00:49

I know, I'm speaking to you, not my words, not my ideas, but words that were given to me by God.

01:00:58

And I have intentionally not monkeyed with the message so that you can hear it the way

01:01:04

He intended you to hear it. Am I not behaving and acting prophetically?

01:01:10

I've even told you the future. And when you read the prophets, that's exactly how they sound.

01:01:17

That's how Isaiah sounds, that's how Jeremiah sounds, that's how Malachi sounds, that's how Hosea sounds. These guys are constantly in the face of idolatrous

01:01:25

Israel, calling them to repent and to be forgiven, and even giving, you know, promises from God of temporal punishment if they persist in sin and unbelief.

01:01:37

It's fascinating. That's what true prophecy sounds like. And Jeremiah tells us that false prophets are the ones who fill your head with all kinds of nonsensical dreams and visions and tell you everything's going to be alright and they never turn you from your sins.

01:01:51

And so here Paul then, take all of that what we know from the Old Testament prophets, pack it into this statement, if all prophesy and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he's convicted by all, he's called to account by all.

01:02:06

That guy just told me I need to repent. That guy, it's the same thing, and that guy, he's convicted by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed.

01:02:15

And so falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among them. That's what it means.

01:02:22

So what then, brothers? Here's the solution. When you come together, each one has a hymn, oh look at that, we have hymnals, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation, let all things be done for what?

01:02:39

Building up. We gather together collectively as the body of Christ for the building up of the body of Christ.

01:02:47

Music, lessons, anything, everything is to be done for the building up.

01:02:53

If anyone is speaking a tongue, you've got this legitimate ability to speak

01:02:58

Swahili. Let there be only two or at the most three, each in turn, and let someone interpret.

01:03:08

If there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church, speak to himself and God.

01:03:16

Seems pretty straightforward, right? How many of you guys have seen the videos, charismatic churches, everybody all at once?

01:03:24

It sounds like the rebel yell, you know, right? That's forbidden in scripture, absolutely forbidden.

01:03:34

And yet that's common practice. If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be two or at most three, let someone interpret.

01:03:40

Why? Because everything is being done for the building up. So let two or three prophets speak, let the others weigh what's said, if a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent, for you can all prophesy one by one.

01:03:53

Now, this is an important thing. Time this is written, this is probably what, 50 AD, 50, so this is 20 years after Christ's death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, 20 years.

01:04:06

You know it's not finished? The New Testament, Bible's not done yet. So you're going to note this, and the church fathers talk about this quite explicitly, that in that intermediate time, so you have the apostles going out, the

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New Testament is not done being written, but they're writing it. And so we know

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Mark is written very early on, in fact, Paul in his missionary journeys, Luke is the author of it, there's good reason to believe from what's internal in there that the apostle

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Paul, his gospel that he preached from was Luke. But the

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Pauline epistles are still being written, in fact, the Corinthians, they just received the word of God when this showed up in their mailbox.

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They didn't have mailboxes, but you get the idea. So the idea then is that in that intermediate period when the gospel has gone out and there is no

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New Testament, how does Christ sustain his church? Answer, through these charismatic prophets.

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That's how he's doing it. And it's not a coincidence then that as the New Testament is finished and believed to be received, that this stuff just tapers right off.

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As Daniel prophesied, by the way. Look at the prophecy of the 70 weeks, that there's 70 weeks appointed and that at the end of that, prophecy would be sealed, keep that in mind.

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So, in that intermediate period, you go to church, you're going to hear an Old Testament text and you're going to hear

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New Testament doctrine via a person who has a legitimate gift of prophecy.

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The apostolic teaching through that fellow. That's the idea. And then as they're filling out the

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New Testament, that's all dropping off. That's the idea. So if a revelation is made, another sitting there, let the first be silent, we can all prophesy one by one so that all may learn and all may be encouraged.

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And the spirit of the prophets are subject to the prophets. By the way, if you've ever read the Didache, the

01:06:08

Didache is a first century document. And it's talk about these prophets who show up at church.

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He says, if anyone asks for money, you know they're a false prophet. Just saying. It's actually in there. So, as in all the churches of the saints, and watch this, in this same conversation, as in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches.

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It doesn't say outside the churches, but in the congregation when the church gathers. They're not permitted to speak, but they should be in submission as the

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Torah also says. If there's anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

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That does not mean it is shameful for a woman to teach people about Jesus. For instance, we have

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Amy Spreeman teaching. We're not in church, we're at a conference. See the difference?

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And so, you know, this is all part of all of this. And then Paul says this. Or was it from you that the word of God came?

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Are you the only ones it reached? If anyone thinks he's a prophet or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things

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I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. That includes the not women preaching thing.

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That's not Paul's opinion. Is that not how the liberals argue? Well, if that apostle

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Paul, we all know that he was a misogynist, he just hated women. And this prohibition against women preaching, well, that's just cultural.

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No, the text just said, if you're spiritual, you must acknowledge that what I just said was a command from who?

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The Lord. Now, pause here and think for a second.

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Based upon just reading all of this in context, should we believe that everybody can speak in tongues?

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No. Not at all. Tongues is assigned for who? Unbelievers.

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If somebody has this gift, can they use it in church? Yes. With an interpreter.

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So if you just work through the text in context, paying attention to how Scripture is interpreting itself, and you'll notice the whole thrust, the whole flow of Paul's argument is not that we all speak in tongues and we need this heavenly prayer language because we can pray in the tongues of men and angels.

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The whole thrust of this is that if you got this, I'm sorry, but if there's no interpreter, you can't use it in church.

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All of the gifts that are given are given for the building up, except for that one. That one's not actually for the building up of the church.

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That one's for the unbelievers. It's assigned for them. And all we did was just walk through the text.

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So the two charismatic distinctives, totally bogus. What does that mean, then, regarding the whole charismatic movement?

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It's bogus. Those are not legitimate signs. Those are not legitimate wonders. That's not real prophecy.

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Those are not real tongues. We're dealing with an entire system that is built from its core doctrines.

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Baptism of the Holy Spirit, as evidenced by speaking in tongues, is square one.

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That's the root of the whole thing. That means the whole root, the root system is rotten, which means the whole plant itself is as well.

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We'll just leave it there. Thanks for taking the time to watch this installment of Fighting for the

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