The Baptism of the Holy Spirit by Special Guest Pastor Costi Hinn | Adult Sunday School

Well, good morning, everyone.

If you want to come in and find a seat here in the sanctuary, we're going to get started with Adult Sunday School.

All right.

Testing, testing, one, testing.

Thank you.

All right.

Our guest speaker this morning was our conference speaker for this last weekend, Kosti Hinn.

He is the president, founder, and director of For the Gospel Ministries.

You can see that at forthegospel .org on the internet, and he produces digital

resources.

Kosti has been talking to us about what it's like to grow up inside the prosperity gospel movement and how he came out of

that, and then giving us counsel and sessions on how to reach loved ones who are lost and caught in error.

So we had a great conference this weekend.

If you were not able to join us, you will at least get the benefit today of hearing Kosti here in Adult Sunday School class, as well as the worship service

that is to follow.

So I'm going to let Kosti give any further introduction that he wants and open us in.

Prayer.

Please welcome Kosti Hinn.

It has been such a joy to be here this whole weekend.

Justin Peters texted me late last night.

I didn't get it because I was asleep.

And I woke up this morning to it, and he said, brother, how is it going over there?

And I said, it's the providence of God that I planted a church before ever coming to speak here

because I would have just moved here if I didn't have a church.

I grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia.

So when I landed in Spokane and drove over, I thought, oh, I'm home.

This is beautiful up here.

The only thing I would add to Pastor Jim's introduction is before resources

and writing and those kind of things, I'm the pastor of a local church.

I get to serve as the teaching pastor at Shepherd's House Bible Church in Chandler, Arizona.

And even this morning, I was peeking in on their services.

My co -laborer and dear brother, Brett McIntosh, one of our pastors and elders, is preaching out of the Book of

Jude this morning.

So grateful to be a pastor.

It's where I love to be, and I was serious when I texted that to Justin.

My feet are anchored firmly until the Lord decides otherwise in Arizona.

We love it, but I will most certainly, if the Lord allows, come back to visit and enjoy.

We have a deacon who comes and vacations here.

They have a place on this lake.

The lake starts with a P, right?

Pend Oreille.

Yeah, they have a place there.

So he's been bugging me to come.

He said, let's do double family vacation.

I said, oh, the kids are so young.

It's going to be crazy.

Now that I've been here, I think the travel would be worth it.

Well, yesterday during the Q &A, a very interesting question came up

about the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

I had planned to talk about sanctification and the three different types of sanctification.

I was going to talk about positional and progressive and then final sanctification and what it means to be

set apart and what that looks like.

Pastor Jim told me he's already preached on that.

So all it would have been was a test to see if I said the same things he did.

And during the Q &A, I thought this would be a great topic to talk about, the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

I have a book coming out September 12th called Knowing the Spirit, who he is, what he does and how he

transforms your Christian life.

And it's all about the Holy Spirit.

And so I've pulled some notes from that and want to walk you through an understanding of

the baptism of the Holy Spirit, along with a chart that I've brought and we can walk through a few things.

So let's pray and then we'll jump in and maximize our time and then look forward to worship and

continuing that together.

Father, thank you for your church.

It is such a privilege to get to come and be with my brothers and my sisters here.

What a visual reminder that all over the world right now, and

because of time change already, people have been worshiping your name,

bringing you glory, serving one another, greeting one another,

evangelizing, discipling, teaching, singing, giving, and

sharing in our common.

Faith.

We praise you for that.

We ask you to bless the teaching of your Word today, receive our worship.

It's all about Jesus and His glory.

He is the one we long to exalt.

And we pray that the Holy Spirit would help us do that, that He would fill us and renew our minds

and He would empower us and equip us to make much of Christ and to serve one.

Another.

Help me to be a faithful servant now, to make things clear and to also be

concise and to help us all better understand and appreciate what it means to be

baptized in and by the.

Holy Spirit.

In Jesus' name, Amen.

The baptism of the Holy Spirit is a pretty debated topic.

It doesn't need to be.

It's fairly simple, but often people will read into the Bible or different

experiences their own interpretation or their own idea of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

And the phrase baptism in or by the Holy Spirit is mentioned about seven times in the New Testament.

And there is also the historical moment of Pentecost in Acts 2 .4.

That reference is only a filling, but something interesting that you may want to make note of already

is it involves the fulfillment of Acts 1 .3 -9, and I'll have you turn there

and you can hold your place there.

We'll go a few other places as well, but this will give us a good setup

for what the baptism of the Holy Spirit was and into what it still is today.

Acts 1 .3 -9,

Jesus is preparing His disciples for the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

He says in verse 3, Luke does, "...To these He also presented Himself alive after His

suffering by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God,

gathering them together.

He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but wait for what the Father had promised, which He

said, You heard of from Me.

For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit, not many days

from now.

So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, Lord, is it at this time you're restoring the kingdom to Israel?

They thought He would just establish His kingdom right then and there.

He said to them, It's not for you to know the times or the epics which the Father has fixed by His own

authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses

both in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and even to the remotest parts of

the earth.".

Hold on to that mentally.

Those places and the extent to which they would be His witnesses.

Something that you should notice right away, and we'll come to understand this shortly as we walk through some key principles and points,

is that Jesus says you will be baptized, and then when Luke is recording what happens at Pentecost, He

talks about the filling.

And so you could right away understand that the moment at Pentecost is very unique.

It is both a baptism of the Holy Spirit predicted by Christ just days before, and

it's also a filling of the Holy Spirit.

We'll understand what both of those are and their distinction by understanding baptism.

To really get a good running start here, let me give you some keys about where the baptism

of the Holy Spirit is talked about and where it's predicted, also in the New Testament.

Number one, John the Baptist predicts the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

In all four Gospels, we have a record of John the Baptist predicting the coming

of one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

Each reference contains the word baptize or baptizes.

You have Matthew 3 .11, Mark 1 .8, you have Luke 3 .16, and John

makes it very obvious that Jesus is the one who's going to come,

and that's what He's preparing people for.

The Jews are to repent and be baptized with water at that time to prepare for the one

who is coming, and He would baptize, Christ would, the repentant sinner in the

Holy Spirit and the unrepentant sinner with fire.

All of these very clear, very obvious, and these type of baptisms harmonize with the

passages in the rest of the New Testament because after the cross, believers would be baptized with water

as a symbol of their identification with Christ, their repentance in faith.

Believers would be baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ, that's 1 Corinthians 12

.13, and eventually, unbelievers would be baptized by fire in judgment, and

that's Revelation 20, verses 14 and 15.

So John the Baptist mentions the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and it's very clear what he means

and how Christ is involved in that.

Number two, of course, we just read it, Jesus prepares the disciples for the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

That's in Acts 1, 3 -10.

And throughout His time on earth, He preached, He casted out demons, He saved repentant sinners,

He healed the sick, and He made disciples, and in all that Jesus did, He never once baptized anyone

in the Holy Spirit.

He prepared His disciples for the coming of that.

John the Baptist never baptized anyone in the Holy Spirit, but he prepared people for the one who would, and so

we understand as well the distinction of the baptism of the Holy Spirit beginning at Pentecost, when

Jesus had already completed the work on the cross, the church now was being birthed, and the

baptism of the Holy Spirit kicks in.

That is what Jesus was talking about.

Number three, talking now about Pentecost, Pentecost is the experienced promise of both

the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the filling of the Holy Spirit.

Ten days after Jesus gave the disciples their instructions to wait in Jerusalem, He ascends into heaven.

The explosive power of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church take the upper room by storm.

You have, of course, the upper room experience, and that's in Acts 2, 1 -11.

If you want to turn there, since you're already in the book of Acts, you can read this and see exactly what happens, and you'll now

understand a little more the picture of what Jesus was predicting.

Acts 2, 1 -11, it says,

And when the sound occurred, the crowd came together, and they were bewildered, because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own

language.

They were amazed and astonished, saying, Why are not all

these who are speaking Galileans?

How is it that we hear each in our own language, to which

we were born, Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia,

Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and the district of Libya, around Cyrene, visitors of Rome, both Jews and

proselytes, Cretans, Arabs?

We hear them in our own tongue, speaking of the mighty deeds of God.

And they all continued in amazement and with perplexity, saying to one another, What does this mean?

Others were mocking, saying, They're full of sweet wine.

According to Acts 115, it's about 120 in the upper room, and there

is a historic moment in which tongues of fire rest upon them.

There is both a baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Why?

Well, because Jesus called it a baptism and predicted that there would be a baptism of the Holy Spirit.

It is also a filling of the Holy Spirit, because Luke records in Acts 2

that they were filled.

And so you have tongues being spoken.

Clearly, something is going on.

It's so important to note that this is a special moment

in church history.

Luke writes, all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other.

Tongues.

And that's distinguished from the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

And we know that because the baptism of the Holy Spirit is never talked about again in

the rest of the New Testament, besides the Acts account and a few other key places, in the way that it is talked about

and described at Pentecost.

Baptism, a one -time thing connected to the birth of the church and the entrance

of believers now, or the attachment of believers, onto and into the body of Christ.

It is not synonymous with tongues in every occurrence.

The baptism of the Holy Spirit, though, is always synonymous with salvation.

And the church began now, and the birth of the church, and the filling of the Holy Spirit associated with the way

that things happen.

There is another moment in the book of Acts, and so turn to chapter 10.

And I want to show you one of the unique instances where we begin to see more, with some

investigation, the significance of speaking in tongues

and the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

So fourth, Peter reports that the Spirit was baptizing Gentiles without

distinction.

So we know that it happened at Pentecost.

And then this other moment happens where Luke records another baptism of the Holy Spirit.

In Acts 11, 15 -16, it's explained, but then in Acts 10, 44 -48, we describe

the moment.

So we can look at both.

In Acts 10, 44 -48, we have Luke recording, While Peter was still speaking these words,

the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were listening to the message.

And all the circumcised believers who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy

Spirit had been poured out upon the Gentiles also.

They were shocked, for they were hearing them speaking with tongues and exalting God.

Then Peter answered and said, Surely no one can refuse the water for these to be baptized, who have

received the Holy Spirit, just as we did.

Can he?

And he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

And they asked him to stay with them for a few days.

Did you notice that the Jews, that's the circumcised believers, were shocked by how the Holy Spirit would ever fall

on these others?

You don't want to miss that detail.

It's the key to unlocking the full understanding of the incredible moment that we just read.

In Acts 11, 1 -18, it's a past tense description that Peter's offering, as he's forced to

defend what happened with Cornelius and explain why in the world he was fellowshipping with Gentiles.

The apostle Peter gets put on the hot seat, and everyone has heard

that the Gentiles were receiving the Word of God.

They took issue with Peter eating with these non -Jews and saying you're eating unclean

things and all of the sort.

Peter then begins to explain to them what had taken place in Caesarea when Cornelius was

converted along with his entire household.

There's something entirely new for Jewish converts happening here.

There are other people being baptized and brought into this

thing.

See, they're still under the mindset that this is Jews.

They're still very ethnocentric.

It's about them.

We had Pentecost.

Okay, we had the offer of the kingdom.

He's our Messiah.

We follow Jesus.

And then the Holy Spirit begins to fall on others.

What do we see from that and know from that?

We begin to understand that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is irrespective of a particular ethnicity.

And there is something bigger happening here as he begins to baptize many different

types of people into the body.

And the evidence of tongues in that moment is unique for a purpose.

It's evidence that they too are going to be a part of this.

And so it's really important to think of Pentecost and then imagine Acts 10 and Acts 11 and the

unique situation where Peter begins to explain, hey, you know what happened there at Pentecost?

Yeah.

Okay, for us.

But guess what?

It's happening here as well.

And so that's establishing the direction and trajectory of the church.

It's no longer Jew and Gentile separate, but all would be baptized and God was doing something

new to them with the Gentiles.

He'd pour out His Spirit on all flesh.

Now, just like Pentecost was a unique sign that God was doing something new and you have the instance with

Cornelius and his household as evidence that He's doing it to Gentiles, you don't have this wholesale

speaking in tongues as the result of baptism of the Holy Spirit.

We know that because you look across the New Testament and you see that, remember when 3 ,000 souls are added to the church, there's

no big record of them speaking in tongues.

You don't have a Pentecost experience.

You have people being water baptized as evidence of now their identity with Christ and

none of the language there talks about speaking in tongues.

Another instance where you have Acts 16 where Luke could have easily talked about the same experience if it

was normative to speak in tongues as part of being baptized into the body.

In Acts 16, Lydia and her whole household, they're at Philippi, and the jailer, they all get saved.

And another church, if you will, locatively or by location is born in Philippi.

No instance of them speaking in tongues in association with them being a part of the body of Christ.

There's a unique aspect to the baptism of the Holy Spirit in association with tongues.

God was always showing the people who were watching it and a part of

it, something new is happening, something new has started.

Pentecost makes that really clear because that is incredibly non -normative.

And then the example that we have from Cornelius and his household tells everyone, oh, the

Gentiles are going to be a part of this too.

And tongues are not gibberish and people saying whatever language they want to babble.

Tongues are known languages.

The list, I believe, I think I counted, and to my recollection, I think it's 11

named dialects for languages at the Pentecost experience.

All known languages.

And so there's no idea in the Bible that you'd be baptized with the Holy Spirit.

It's always evidenced by tongues.

And then you are just going to do that at an altar here in modern 2023 America and say,

shabba -da -ba -ba -ba, and that's going to be tongues.

That's not at all what the Bible describes as baptism.

And as the New Testament unfolds, and we take the book of Acts as

descriptive, not prescriptive, nowhere are we commanded to be baptized by the Holy Spirit in the same

way that happened at Pentecost with tongues coming down.

This isn't what's waiting for you at the main service after Sunday school where we are going to, by way of

normative patterns, say, how many here for the first time?

Any new believers?

Great, come on forward.

Watch for the fire tongues to come down.

This is normal.

Don't freak out.

None of that is the normative experience.

How do we know that?

Well, because in 1 Corinthians 12, verse 13, when Paul is describing the

body of Christ and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, he says so helpfully that

for by one Spirit, capital S, we were all

baptized into one body.

He begins to explain we've all been baptized into one body.

The doctrine of Spirit baptism is that, that when you

become saved and you are converted, you are spiritually,

you don't see it necessarily physically, although it will manifest itself when we are attached like this in love and in

a bond in the body, but spiritually, you have been grafted into, onto,

attached to the body of Christ, baptized into the body of Christ.

You now identify as part of the church.

This is why it is completely unbiblical and foreign to Scripture for someone to say, I love

Jesus, I just hate His church.

I don't go to church, I am the church.

Or, you know, I really just don't want to be a part of organized

religion.

I just follow Jesus, but I do that on my own.

My faith is more of a personal journey, people say.

Not okay, not biblical, not even logical when we understand

Scripture, why?

When you were saved, truly, you were attached spiritually to the body

of Christ, you were baptized in.

You didn't have to speak in tongues to be baptized into the body.

It was through faith, and you were converted.

What's the difference between the Pentecost experience?

Well, the church was starting,.

It was the birth of the church.

And so you had a baptism in the filling all at once, you had tongues as evidence to unbelieving Jews and to people

in that area that God was doing something new and the church was now starting.

From there, everybody baptized was simply being brought into the body of Christ.

Now we are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

He dwells within us.

And so the baptism of the Holy Spirit is not some euphoric or subjective

experience in which you speak in tongues and you have to speak in tongues.

It is a spiritual moment in which you are saved, at salvation rather, and you

are baptized into the body of Christ.

What this does is it removes any type of elitist mentality where people say, well, have you been baptized by the

Holy Spirit, speaking in other tongues?

Well, no.

All right, well, there's more for you.

And you think, okay, what's the more?

Well, you're in, you might want to call that the outer courts.

Go, what?

This is what they used to teach in my parts.

You're in the outer courts, but there's more.

So there's the Holy of Holies.

Like, wow, sounds amazing.

Am I, so I'm not getting all of God.

No, you've got a part, you've got a little bit of Him.

You know, a lot of Pharisees stay in the outer courts.

You know, they got a little bit of religion, but you want to really have intimacy with God.

You want to really know Him.

You're like, okay, that sounds a little weird, but I think I need it.

I don't know, I'm new to this.

And well, then you need to be baptized by the Holy Spirit, speaking in

other tongues.

And so you get this second blessing or this idea of being a second -class citizen.

And what many Pentecostals and some perhaps just poorly taught, others ardently defending these

doctrines will consider all of you saved.

Sure, you're kind of like the adopted family members that aren't

really in, or the weird family members sort of on the outskirts.

You're not fully in though.

You're kind of Baptists.

That idea.

And you've got a solid Word.

You guys preach.

People stand up and do Sunday school, and you sing some hymns, and it's good.

We have a smoker outside, and we have good fellowship.

But if you really want to experience the Holy Spirit, there's more.

All of that, completely foreign to Scripture.

Completely.

There's a helpful summary that I want to give you as we kind of make our turn now and start our

descent.

What should we believe about the baptism of the Holy Spirit?

Number one, of course, the book of Acts presents a unique and foundational picture of the church being

birthed.

It doesn't ever happen again.

Even when new churches start from Paul's missionary journeys, they don't start like

Pentecost.

Number two, no one's ever commanded to seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but we are commanded in Ephesians 5 .18 to

be filled, and it's be being continually filled.

So the filling of the Spirit is ongoing.

You might say it this way, and many good theologians do, there's one baptism, but many fillings.

The filling of the Holy Spirit is synonymous with Colossians 3 .16, let the Word of Christ dwell within you richly,

Ephesians 5 .18 -21, don't be drunk, don't be under the influence of alcohol, but be under the influence of the

Holy Spirit, and what results from that, and what is even a means by which we are filled,

singing psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, making melody in your heart to the Lord, letting the Word of Christ dwell within you richly, all of these

things are part of how the Spirit gives us both the evidence of being filled, and fills us.

Here's how I'll prove that.

Have you ever woke up on a Sunday, and thought, I don't want to go.

Few of you are being honest.

Or, like, oh, I just, I feel horrible today.

You come into church, you start singing,

and you start feeling more uplifted, however you want to describe that.

And all of a sudden, you feel the weights and encumbrances kind of rolling off.

And then you see so -and -so, and so -and -so, and they say, hey, how are you?

Oh, yeah, I'm doing good.

They pray for you.

And then you hear the Word taught, and all of this is worship and fellowship.

And you go out those doors, you get in the car, you make your way home, and maybe your husband or wife

looks over at you and says, aren't you glad you came today?

And you say, yeah, I, and then we say that I needed that.

And you're uplifted internally, your lowercase s spirit, if you will.

Your inner man is encouraged in the Lord.

What happened?

Colossians 3 .16, Ephesians 5, 18 through 21.

You got around the singing of the truth, the reading of the truth, the praying of the truth, the preaching of

the truth, and what happened?

The Holy Spirit renewed your mind.

You were filled.

This is why I would make the connection between church attendance and the

Spirit's work in our lives.

I would ardently defend that.

Not just so people fill seats.

Not just so you make sure everyone comes to church now, obey the rules, no.

But this is a means of God's work in our lives.

That happens over and over and over.

That's why we say I needed that.

Why?

Because you need it.

The baptism of the Holy Spirit, though, occurs once.

And so, don't ever disconnect the Spirit's filling and His evidence of His filling and His work in your life from

what happens in the body of Christ and connected with others and in your own prayer life,

of course, individually, but as well, corporately.

We're never commanded to seek the baptism.

We are commanded to be filled.

Number three, the baptism of the Holy Spirit was accompanied by tongues and extraordinary events, primarily

as a sign that God was doing something new.

I already explained that, so that's just a summary statement.

And what I want to show you on my chart here, which is in the book, I really like charts.

I got really into charts.

If you want a footnote for this, it is from page 356 of John MacArthur, Richard

Mayhew, Biblical Doctrine, that systematic theology on page 356.

We see four special cases of conversion, and here they are, we can see them together.

And I want you to catch something.

This is just a hypothesis right now, but I think it plays out.

I believe that prophecy in the Old Testament is literal, it'll be literally fulfilled.

I believe in a literal hermeneutic, that what God says He'll do, He'll do.

And so I think about what Jesus said when He says, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and even to the ends of

the earth.

And I look throughout this chart, you see in Acts 2, something happens in Jerusalem.

It's very unique.

And it establishes Him as a true Lord who could

predict what's going to happen, but also establishes the disciples as true witnesses.

And then, happens in Samaria, in Acts 8, as the

Samaritans are now brought in.

They receive the Holy Spirit.

There's no sign recorded with it, but there's something remarkable that happens.

And it happens through the laying on of hands.

In Caesarea, Gentiles.

They speak in tongues as a sign to the Jews.

And then one more time, in Ephesus, in Acts 19.

Disciples of John the Baptist are approached.

They said, oh, we got John's baptism.

They're told, oh, there's something else going on here.

They receive the Holy Spirit.

They speak in tongues, and they prophesy as a sign to the Jews.

And that happens through the laying on of hands.

Four very unique instances in which we are seeing the fulfillment of what

Jesus said would happen.

That in these different places, the disciples and other believers,

primarily Jews, are seeing something bigger is happening.

The church is starting.

Others are being brought in.

That already happened, and it no longer happens today, because all that

Jesus said would happen has been established, and now we are the witnesses of what has

been done.

Number four, after the foundational moment in Acts, moments, plural, Paul

only ever references the baptism of the Holy Spirit as being associated with believers being added into the

body of Christ.

It's never mentioned again.

In none of his epistles is it described in the same way.

If anything, it's the opposite.

For by one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body.

The signs have come.

It's all clear.

The church is birthed.

Now we roll.

Number five, baptism of the Holy Spirit doesn't always result in speaking in tongues.

So you can't say, have you been baptized in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues?

Because even when unique things were happening in the birth of the church, it doesn't happen.

Tongues doesn't happen.

Acts 8, 14 to 24 records a moment when those in Samaria were baptized in water

and had not yet received the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And we have then the Holy Spirit coming on those in Samaria through the laying on of hands and nowhere in this

entire section is it mentioned that they speak in tongues.

They were simply receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit.

So you can't make blanket statements about baptism being associated with tongues.

Of course, I've already mentioned, but I'll mention it again.

The baptism of the Holy Spirit then is not a normative second blessing as some would teach it to be.

And the baptism of the Holy Spirit then is distinct from the filling of the

Holy Spirit.

And there's no guarantee of tongues with it.

One of the clearest evidences of that would be when Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12, 30, not all

speak in tongues, do they?

And he's being rhetorical.

He mentions other gifts as well.

That tongues would not be a normative continuing experience and that the baptism of

the Holy Spirit was a one -time experience.

And throughout his key epistles about that topic, mainly Colossians and Ephesians, the filling of the Spirit is

synonymous with the ongoing obedience and worship and filling of God's Word and worship in

the Christian life.

So that helps us better understand the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the uniqueness of

it with the evidence of tongues in the early church, the continuance of it with salvation in

1 Corinthians 12, 13, being baptized in the body and then the filling of the Spirit being distinct.

I believe I'm allowed to ask questions.

How much time do we have?

Oh, perfect.

You want to do open Q &A?

Seems dangerous, but this can be, why don't I open it up as well?

This can be if you were at the conference and you didn't get to ask something that was theological or practical.

And based on this, this is fun.

You're all allowed to just raise your hand and I'll just call on you and you can shout stuff at me.

No heckling though in this hour.

What questions or comments or feedback or other elements would you want to

bring up.

For questions?

Yes, ma 'am.

Oh, I'm so glad.

Yes,

that's

a great question.

Sure, that's a great question.

Yeah, she said yesterday, you and Pastor Jim were joshing around about raising hands.

And so, would you cause a little trouble and tell us all to raise our hands so we could get in

trouble after you're gone?

Now, she said, is there something intrinsically wrong or that we would want to be careful with?

Here's what I would say.

You have pendulum swings, okay?

You have emotionalism, rampant emotionalism in the church that says, if you're not raising your hands

and if you're not really feeling the feels that you're not really worshiping, I would be

so against that type of dogmatic teaching.

Why?

Well, because different personalities, different people might express themselves differently.

So, for one person, they may be standing there with their hands like this, singing and

meditating on the rich truths and you may see them from the back and think, what a stoic,

religious Calvinist they are.

And if you come around to the front, you might see a tear in their eye

because they were meditating on the reality that it is well with their soul.

Whatever comes.

They're just thinking about the trial they're going through or the sickness they're enduring or the loved one they just lost and

maybe their eyes are even closed and they're thinking about these truths and it's impacting their heart.

And then you have someone else who, because we played a minor key a certain way, starts

getting goosebumps and going, oh yeah, just yeah, it's Lord.

And they're swaying around and you go, wow, okay.

And they're just feeling what you feel if right now, for some of you, and I won't

make you admit this because you don't want to be accused of being carnal, but if we get in your car and go to lunch

today and we put on whatever right now, you can't change it, but I get in your car with you and we put

whatever is on that radio or that Pandora playlist or Spotify or whatever you're listening to and

some 80s song or old love song.

Or something, you just go, oh, I just love this song.

You get goosebumps and you think you're wet.

What's happening there is an emotional thing.

So you want to be real careful with that.

What is causing the expression and the excitement?

I very often, in certain songs of praise, because of the lyrics, am

taken back to how Jesus saved me, how lost I was, how good He is to save me,

how kind He is, and you might see me this or thank you, Lord,

and I'm not going back.

I'm not becoming charismatic.

No one at my church is worried.

Like, oh, there he goes.

Like, we're losing our pastor.

Yeah, there he goes.

There may be a brother that is singing something about the Lord and he just begins to point to Him.

You, and you can think of all the you statements, second person pronoun, you statements in hymns

about the Lord and about His goodness, about the Gospel, and He's just you, and He doesn't care, and just kind of forgot

that there was anyone around.

And then you have others that are perhaps just doing it because they were told to or

they thought.

You know, I guess we just raise our hands when the chorus hits, when the crescendo hits.

Like, yeah, we just, like it's a concert.

Well, you want to be careful there because now we're on cue with our expression.

So, I'm of the mind that motive is important.

The heart behind it is important.

We have in our church a wide variety of folks who may raise a hand at

different moments.

We have people that sing very expressively,

almost like you can hear them.

We have others that sing very quietly.

My wife and I are great examples.

She is introverted, she is mellow, and she loves to

stand and just sing to the Lord.

She'll close her eyes because she gets easily distracted.

Or we keep the lights on.

We're one of those churches that doesn't dim the lights because we believe we're to sing songs to one another as well

as to the Lord, biblically, and she will sing.

And I can't help it.

Even if I wasn't a former charismatic, I just am an expressive, passionate, fiery guy.

That's just who I am.

And so if I begin to sing a song, my feet, I just can't help it.

I'm like, yes, and I forget where I am every time.

I'm just thinking about the Lord.

And so that's going to be very personal, very unique, but I'm not trying to raise my hands or saying I don't ever get up in

my church.

I don't think any pastor ought to get up in his church and say, you people sitting there just

staring at the screen singing, I want you to lift your hands.

We're going to worship God.

Like, whoa, you just mandated expression.

What I would say we will command, and I just commanded this by way of scripture at my church a few weeks ago when I preached out of

Ephesians.

I said, you may want to raise your hands in exaltation to God.

You may want to sing loud.

You may sing off key.

And some of you may pump a fist and think about the Lord.

Some of you cry because you're just filled with moments of reminiscing.

I'll tell you what you will do, though, if you're in this church and you want to obey this Bible, you will

sing because we're commanded to sing.

And our church since that Sunday is very loud.

We sing very loud.

And that's the extent of my authority.

But even then, I'm careful with regulative principle and things like that that I want to say, well, if it's not committed,

I want to just stick to what the Bible says and presents.

But no dancing in underwear like David.

That's fair.

Yes, sir.

It's a great question.

I find that it's safe to have distinctions.

He said, is there a difference between being a Pentecostal and being a charismatic?

Based on conversations with folks, and Pastor Jim could speak to this as well, I find that

more and more, us, men who are in these conversations, want to be

accurate.

So, an assembly of God, pastor or parishioner who has reached out maybe to our ministry or one

of us and says, hey, we agree with a lot of what you guys are saying.

We just think tongues are still for today.

But man, the guys that Justin Peters says are heretics, we totally agree.

They're not allowed in our church at all.

We don't even have them in our bookstore.

I would think that's going to be your general mainline, old school, just Pentecostal.

That in the old days, we would disagree on things, but they're fairly

logical in a sense, though we disagree on tongues.

Then you've got your charismatics that are highly rambunctious, I'll call it.

They would be different than the conservative Pentecostals, which are, I grew up in some of this, where no

earrings, no makeup.

You ever heard of those?

Yeah, some of you, you know what I'm talking about.

So, you want to distinguish what is Pentecostalism.

I, of course, still would disagree with them theologically, but old school Pentecostal is different than modern day charismatic.

The charismatics are those third wave types out of that John Wimber Vineyard movement.

A lot of expression and very aggressive power evangelism.

And you've got to do this.

Now you have charismatic Catholics and they're going everywhere.

And everybody's just expressing themselves however they want.

And then you would have today, people in the new apostolic reformation, much more

akin to not just seek experience, but seek authority and power.

And I'm an apostle, I'm a prophet.

I can this, I can that.

And so those distinctions become key, but it's still fair to call them Pentecostal charismatics.

What that does is it gives an umbrella term for, in a kind way, I would say this, those people

who believe in tongues, who go around saying they can heal, or they want you

to maybe get past your dry, dead, little Baptist theological upbringing

and move into the fullness of the Spirit.

That group is different than what I assume you believe and have been taught.

Brother behind you.

Yes, he asked, is there a general tips or advice on how to evangelize or reach out or dialogue

with people you love who believe these sort of things that we've talked about?

We talked about this a little bit yesterday.

Were you at the conference or no?

Okay, so the last one of the sessions, not the last one, but in the, there's a session called Reaching Those

Caught in Deception.

And I believe it was the second or third last session.

It'll be up on the YouTube channel here at the church.

And I walked through three categories that Jude seems to give by way of application.

You got people, he says, have mercy on some who are doubting.

And then he says, save others, snatching them from the fire.

And then he says, with others, have mercy on others with fear, hating even the

garment stained by the flesh.

So I would say you have some categories there by way of application.

Number one, you've got friends that are just doubting.

I will describe this.

This is a real story.

A guy who once told me that he loves Joel Osteen and John MacArthur.

Those are his two favorite preachers.

I'm not kidding.

He was holding, it was after church.

He was holding a John MacArthur study Bible.

And that's what I pointed to him.

He's like, I just love, I just watch Osteen to get inspired.

It just uplifts me so good and just positive.

And I was like, you are holding a John MacArthur study Bible.

What is wrong with you?

You're like out of those two things.

And he began to explain to me, I would put him in that category.

He said, he's doubting, he's sort of wavering.

You know, one day he's like, yeah, Osteen is a little weird.

Maybe my pastor was right, or this guy.

And he's like, ah, but John MacArthur is so harsh.

He's so dogmatic and black and white.

I don't know.

And just back and forth.

That person, you want to keep having coffee with them, lunch, keep the relational door open.

Reach them, love them, walk with them.

They drive you a little crazy, for sure.

Which is why I think Jude says, have mercy on some who are doubting.

They're the one that you want to whack with your Bible and go, are you awake yet?

See what I mean?

They go, yes, I do.

And then a week later, they're like, hey, so I know you don't like Bethel and Bill Johnson and they do a

little weird, but I heard this song and I'm going to go to this conference just to be encouraged.

They're like, are you serious right now?

So there's that.

Then there's save others, snatch them out of the fire.

This is like your friend, your loved one.

There's just in it and you're going in Coast Guard.

I describe this as coming in hot, you're flying in, you're dropping the rope and you're saying, grab that thing.

You are in heretical, blasphemous, damning doctrines.

I love you, please, would you hear me out?

And they go, fine.

Please, please, please.

Here's five reasons why.

The three reasons, the person you're following, the pastor that you're under, the church you're at are completely off the rails.

I don't want to, I'm not trying to sling mud.

I just care about you.

So you're going in, you're trying to snatch one from the burning.

And then potentially with false teachers and very dangerous, what Peter describes as smooth talking

flatterers.

You're going to keep a little distance.

That would be like maybe my uncle.

I'm not like, hey, I know you're kind of a heretic still, but let's have dinner because we're still

family.

Why?

Because he's the head of something still.

He's incredibly dangerous.

You could be pulled in by the smooth talking flattery and begin to lower your discernment.

And so you want to figure out where these people are in.

Is that helpful?

Perfect.

Yeah, don't light everyone on fire.

Your friend that's just like, I don't know.

You're like, heretic.

No, just relational evangelism.

We got to wrap it up.

So if you want to catch me after, we can talk more.

Let me pray.

And then we're going to get to continue worshiping together.

Father, thank you for your truth, your word, the community of faith you give us in the church.

And I pray that you'd bless our time together in the word that our singing, our

preaching, our listening, our serving, our giving, our fellowshipping would all be

considered worthy worship unto you.

In Jesus' name, amen.