Thank you. Morning, everybody. Children are dismissed to go to Children's Church so they can go up and meet in the front. We're going to pick it right back up where we were a couple of weeks ago on living out your faith in Jesus Christ and on this topic of spiritual gifts and how gifts are part of our walk of faith. Now, you know, I have several comments that would be introductory to the whole thing, kind of shaping the message in for this particular continuation. But you know what? I'm going to skip a lot of this intro stuff that was reviewing because we have a full plate this morning, including the Lord's Supper, and you know, I'm just going to make that executive decision, and I might even make an executive decision to go a little extra time even before we have the Lord's Supper. So, having said that, you're all ready for it. We began looking at spiritual gifts that are God-spirit-energized capacities for serving Christ. They come to us at the moment of salvation, They're for the purpose of serving others. They come at the moment of salvation. You cannot chase a gift. You can't seek a gift. You can't learn a gift. People can't give you a gift. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. That is at the moment of salvation. So far, we reviewed a series of different gifts. We looked at five different kinds of prophetic gifts, apostle, prophet, discerning of spirits, word of wisdom, and word of knowledge. All of those were prophetic gifts that came in the first century, and they ended. God had a temporary purpose for those. We look at five different kinds of miraculous sign gifts. These are miraculous gifts that attest the apostles, and that would include gifts of tongues, interpretation of tongues, the gift that is called the gift of faith. It's not normal faith, but that was actually a miraculous gift. And there were gifts of healings and gifts of miracles. And we stopped off partway into that and we ended with tongues. So we're gonna pick it right back up with this subject of tongues, which you hear about from different kind of circles. The gift of tongues was a supernatural ability to speak a real human language that you have never before learned. The gift of tongues was a supernatural ability to speak a real human language that you never before have learned. Now, I want you to turn with me to Book of Acts as a starting point right here, because this is the first time where we ever see this happening. And tongues, God used tongues as a way of proving who it was that was getting saved and who had the Holy Spirit. As soon as a person got saved, what God did in that first century for not everybody, but for some people, when the spirit baptism brought somebody into a union with Christ, For some people, God gave them that ability to speak foreign languages that they didn't already know. And that was a proof and an evidence to everybody that these people were saved. So the first ones that this happened to was in Acts chapter two on the day of Pentecost when the already saved disciples of Christ received spirit baptism because Acts chapter two was the birth of the church. the birth of the body of Christ. Prior to this day, the body of Christ did not exist. It was the resurrected, glorified Jesus Christ, the glorified Son pouring His Spirit out as the victorious Savior upon His people that created the church, the body of Christ. And what happened on Acts chapter 2 is that the disciples began speaking in foreign languages. Now, we see tongues happening again in Acts chapter 10 when Peter the apostle went to a Gentile for the first time, Cornelius, and when Peter was preaching the gospel to Cornelius, as soon as Cornelius and his family, his household, his servants, whoever it was that was there that believed, as soon as they got saved, they spoke in tongues. And Peter knew these guys are saved. They're speaking in tongues just like we did at Pentecost. You see tongues happening again in Acts chapter 19 when Paul came across some people up in Ephesus. And then we see Paul talk about tongues in 1 Corinthians chapters 12, 13, and 14. It was God's way of saying, this person is saved, they're a part of the church. Now the reason why this was a really big deal back in the first century is because it was difficult for the Jews to believe that the Gentiles, the non-Jews, could become full members of God's family through faith alone. Because for 2,000 years, there had been a very, very long tradition coming from God himself, telling people that if somebody wants to come in from the outside world and become part of the people of Abraham, the people of Israel, if they want to come in and be part of that community, they have to become a Jewish convert. which means that men have to receive circumcision, outward physical circumcision, as a way of saying, I believe in the promises that God spoke to Abraham and the people of Israel. Now that doesn't mean that was how somebody got saved. The way that anybody has ever gotten saved, past, present, or future, is through faith in Jesus Christ. By trusting in the God of Israel, by trusting in the true and living God, that's how you get saved. Always has been, always will be. But if somebody wanted to join into the people of Israel in Old Testament times, well, you'd had to become a Jewish convert. So for 2,000 years, this has been a very, very heavy part of their cultural background as a Jew. And when you have the early church happening here in Acts chapter 2, and you have this outpouring of spirit, what God began to do is God began to use tongues as a way of showing, especially the apostles, the church leaders. He began to show the church, no, they don't have to become Jewish converts. And the classic first example of that would have been Cornelius in Acts 10, because Cornelius is a Roman centurion, a Gentile. They start speaking in tongues, and everybody said, wow. Okay? We have to readjust our thinking here about the non-Jews. That's how God used tongues. Now, if you notice here in Acts 2, it says in verse 1, to them, tongues like fire. When it says tongues as fire, this has nothing to do with the tongues itself, but if you look at a flame and you see the little tongues of the flame going up. So when the disciples were there and the Spirit of God descended, God gave a visual kind of manifestation of the Spirit coming upon these believers. and looked like tongues of fire. It says in verse four that they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit was giving them utterance. Now, says Luke, there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven. And when the sound occurred, the multitude came together and were bewildered because they were hearing them speak in his own language. They were amazed, and they marveled, and they said, Why are not all of these who are speaking Galileans? How is it that we hear them in our own language to which we were born? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and the districts of Libya, around Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, we hear them in our own languages, speaking of the mighty deeds of God. And they all continued in amazement and great perplexity, saying to one another, what does this mean? Now, if you notice here, it is really, really clear. These are languages, human languages. The reason why I make this point, and I'm going to hammer this point, is because we know that something started happening 120 years ago in the 20th century. It started the first time on January 1st, 1901 in Topeka, Kansas, that people began to say, oh, I'm speaking in tongues, but it was not languages. It was some kind of ha, shalabala, balabala, kind of gibberish, repeated gibberish. And they said, oh, we're speaking in tongues just like in the Bible. That is absolutely not true. Tongues was a real language. This is very important for us because I'll tell you what, I guarantee you, there are a lot of people even here in Colorado Springs who will say, well, that's what tongues is, this is what we are doing, it's biblical tongues, and if you don't do this, you're not a Christian. Somebody told me that two weeks ago. Somebody from our church said that somebody else had told him, well, if you're not speaking in tongues, you're not a Christian. That is such terrible, terrible teaching. So that's why we're going to go through these things and use a degree of detail on this. You know, when you look at this passage right here, we can see that in verse 4 and verse 11, in these two passages, it says that they were speaking with other tongues, all right? There is a word that is used for this. The Greek word is the word glosa, G-L-O-S-S-A, and that word is used in verse 4. It's also used in verse 11. We hear them in our own glosa, our own tongues. Now here's something very important in terms of Biblical studies. We do historical research and say, okay, what is this word? What does this word mean in its original setting? The word glosa never anywhere meant ecstatic gibberish. In the Bible, outside the Bible, before the time of the first century, during the time of the first century, Glossa always meant real language. So we cannot take some kind of practice today, like the ecstatic gibberish, and we cannot, must not, cannot say, well, that's what was happening back then, because it did not mean that. did not mean that. I mean, it would be, to use another illustration, just imagine if we read a verse in the Bible where it said that Solomon was having a problem with a mouse in his temple. Nobody would ever think that he was having a computer problem. Because the word never meant that 3,000 years ago. We would know it's a rodent problem. The word glossa never, ever, ever meant ecstatic, unintelligible gibberish. What's happening today is not biblical. It's not the biblical gift of tongues. Now Luke uses a second word here in verse six and verse eight. It says that they were hearing them in their own language, verse six. And then in verse eight, we hear them in our own language. That's a second word. It's the word dialectos. Obviously, we get the word dialect from that. The word dialectus means a national language, a language of some kind of nation or people group. So four times right here, we see really explicit illustration of the fact that these are real human languages. And we must not get sucked into this idea of saying, oh, well, these guys that I hear doing it, they're really nice people. My neighbor is really nice. Yeah, he's a charismatic, but he's nice. And so these things have to be true. No, absolutely it's not so. So we're going to talk some more about this in a minute as we get a little bit further, but I'm going to kind of walk through some of these other gifts right here. John Whitcomb was a professor at Grace Theological Seminary, and John Whitcomb makes this comment. He says, in every generation, men have gravitated to religions that offer signs and wonders as their basic appeal. Old-line Pentecostalism, which began in 1901, and the Neo-Pentecostal movement, which is talking about the wider charismatic movement that started branching out in the 60s, He says, these offer the miracle of tongues, the interpretation of tongues, and even faith healers that attract millions. If Satan, says Whitcomb, cannot take away the true God by the pressure of practical atheism in the academic world, he'll attempt to do so by pushing men to the invention of false gods that really cannot save or satisfy. And he says, that surely is the crisis of the present hour. Those are really clear and direct words, but he's exactly right. Now, I'll just tell you this. When you look at the, again, the kind of things that you're going to come across, you're going to, you know, you probably have friends or family that are into this movement, or you know somebody, and you say, man, that person, they're really nice. I'm sure they are. Okay. What does the Bible say? That's what counts. You know, when God told Adam, don't eat from this tree or you will surely die, that's exactly what it meant. So we have to go to the word of God and say, what does the Bible say? Tongues that happens today is not real. Whether it's zealous, you know, fascination with fitting into a crowd, or some kind of spiritual work, but leave the surface, stirring people to these things, It's not biblical, it's not true. Now, going along with it, so we talk about tongues, okay? there is a gift that went with this called the interpretation of tongues. And we see this spoken of very, very explicitly in 1 Corinthians 12, verse 10. What is this? Very simply, this was an ability for people who were not necessarily receiving these messages from God in a foreign language, but these people could understand the messages being spoken in those foreign languages. So you may not have the ability to speak in that foreign language, but if you heard that foreign language, you could understand it. Now, when Luke talks about what was going on in Acts 2, Luke makes mention of people from 16 different Gentile regions of the world. These people had been born in other places. For example, it mentions Libya. I've never been to Libya. Some of you have been to Libya, but they had their own language. So here what Luke is talking about are people that were born in other countries, specifically probably Jews that grew up and were born in other countries. So they knew those languages because they grew up there, but now they have moved back to Jerusalem. They are Jews living in Jerusalem in Judea. So when these people heard the foreign languages that the disciples were speaking, They understood them immediately. They said, this is the language of the country I was born in. I understand what this guy is saying. Now, at the end of this whole thing, when you get down to verse 12, what happens is they said, what does this mean? This is really strange, because I can tell from this guy's accent that he's a Jew coming from Galilee, because the people in Galilee had pretty thick accents up there. You could tell where they come from. They're from Kentucky. They could tell that they were Jews from Galilee, but then they hear them speaking these foreign languages, and they go, this is really strange. What in the world does it mean? Well, what God was doing is God was saying, Jesus Christ is my son, these are my people, and I'm giving them a miracle to show you that Jesus Christ is the son of God. Then, as I mentioned, you have this gift of interpretation. Now, with those two explanations, and if you say, well, what about the other ones? You didn't talk about apostle or prophet today. Go back and listen to the message from two weeks ago. I'm not going to go back because I don't have time. But I want to bring you here from those first five gifts, the prophetic gifts that we looked at, and then there were five miraculous sign gifts that just ended with interpretation of tongues. Now there's another category of gifts. And this category of gifts are what we call the speaking gifts. And you see this kind of breaking out of another category of gifts called the speaking gifts. And those would consist of evangelist, pastor, teacher, and exhortation. As I told you before, if you want to have the notes with all the breakdown, just email me or text me and I'll give you these notes and probably about 1,000 more pages on the whole topic, literally. Okay, so talking about evangelist, what is an evangelist? This is somebody who's wired, that has the gift of evangelism, somebody that's wired to want to tell others about Jesus Christ, you know. Classic example is sitting right here in the fourth row with Josh Kelly. I think God's wired Josh with that gift of evangelism, because he loves sharing the gospel with people. I think we look at somebody like Steve Johnson and Robert Gray. These are people that are wired. And there's others here within the congregation that just love to go and share Christ. That's an actual spiritual gift. Now guess what? Every one of us can and should go out and share the gospel, right? Absolutely. So you don't have to say, well, that's not my gift. That's kind of like when you have to clean up after a potluck and say, well, we need somebody to come help clean up. And you say, well, I don't have the gift of serving. Sorry. Now, we can all do this, but some people are driven with this passion. That's giftedness at work. Then we have this gift called pastor. What is this? This is the person that has a heart for edifying the church with God's word and protecting the church from dangerous influences. And we see this throughout, you know, different passages. And, you know, I would like to, it'd be fun to spend more time on details, but I'm trying to keep this whole unit of a topic going together. This is teaching. This is also chasing people down and protecting people. I had one of our sisters come in a couple days ago on Friday and crying because of problems of life that are crashing down upon her. And my heart breaks for what she's having to go to. So coming beside this sister and encouraging her and say, okay, what can we do in this situation? This is what a pastor has a passion to do. Now, we can all care for others and we can all chase other people down. But some people are driven for that, and there's a giftedness that we have in this. And a key part of this idea of being a pastor is equipping God's people for ministry, especially the next generation. Paul writes about this, and he says to Timothy, the things that you have heard from me, Timothy, in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. You have five generations being represented. Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Timothy, and he says, Timothy, teach others who are gonna be able to teach others. Because if we do not give a significant amount of energy to equipping the next generation, we're failing. And that's why we have a Bible Institute here. That's why we have church on Sunday morning, and Sunday school, and Sunday night. We have Sunday night service, did you know that? Only 5% of all the churches have a Sunday night service. We're one of them. Why do I and why do we as a church pour so much energy to try to help? Because God commanded us to equip saints for ministry and especially to lead up people for the next generation. 1 Timothy 4, Paul says, Timothy, until I come to visit, give attention to the reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. Do not neglect that spiritual gift which is within you. Take pains with these things. Be absorbed in them. That's what pastors do. Now, there's also a gift called the gift of teaching. And there's a close overlap between pastor and teacher. It seems like the gift of teaching is that some people are more drawn to the idea of spending time in studying the Bible and learning the Bible and teaching the Bible, perhaps more so than other pastors that are more fellowship-oriented and driven to spending time with people. I mean, there's a close overlap in these two things. But we do have a specific gift called the gift of teaching. Both of these gifts of pastoring and teaching are permanent gifts that began at Pentecost, and they're gonna go all the way until the return of Jesus Christ. Here is a final speaking gift. It's called the gift of exhortation. This gift, as you might expect, would be when you find people who are just really great at encouraging one another. Now we should all do that, right? And by the way, none of us should be discouragers. You know, we have enough of those in the world. So we don't wanna be discouragers, but neither do I think that we should be simply, you know, middle of the road passive, We can be encouragers to one another. Man, it's a great thing when you have people coming beside you to encourage you. And I can think of really sweet people here in the church. You know, that song we sang, Twila Paris, how beautiful is the body of Christ. I love that song. You look at the beauty, because the beauty of the body of Christ is because this is Christ pouring himself into his people. Ephesians 4.10, he's filling his people with himself. And then as you see how this works, and I love Mason Hill Bible Church. We have a beautiful body. God's love is here in this church, and we have so many people in so many ways that serve and love, and it's like, I just love it. This is so beautiful. And exhortation is so important that we would be part of this. And everybody can do this, and everybody should do this. Now, let's come to another category. And this would be the final six gifts that we can call, for lack of a better word, helping gifts. six different kinds of gifts, permanent gifts. So the four speaking gifts, evangelist, pastor, teacher, exhortation, those began at Pentecost and continue all the way until the return of Christ. And these six helping gifts also go all the way until the coming of Christ. Now, the first two that I'm gonna make mention of right here are called the gifts of serving and the gifts of helping. The gift of serving is mentioned in Romans 12.7. The gift of helping is mentioned in Corinthians 12.28. You say, well, what's the exact difference between the gift of serving and the gift of helping? I don't know. It doesn't really break it down, but it does mention these two different gifts, and somehow there's maybe a distinctiveness that exists between the gift of these two different gifts. Now, going back to the cleaning up after the potluck, right? I mean, everybody can help, but there are some people who just, they really delight in coming beside and quietly helping. And when you see this, what a valuable gift that we have people who love to simply help and serve. I'll tell you what, I guarantee you, people do this here all the time. And if we didn't have people doing that all the time, there would be all kinds of griping and complaints because of things that aren't getting done. And when I say there would be griping and complaining, it's because we'd be saying, man, this didn't happen, that didn't happen, and it's inconvenient. And we would understand why there would maybe be some kind of, whatever, anxiety about stuff that doesn't get done. Some people just love to help and serve. This is a particular kind of giftedness. We see it in the New Testament. Then there is also a third helping gift called the gift of giving. What is this? I would say this. It's a God-given heart for meeting material needs. This kind of person with this kind of giving giftedness will be the kind of person who gives because of a strongly felt desire to meet the needs of others. We see this gift spoken of in Romans 12, 8 and 1 Corinthians 13, verse 3. Once again, everybody can give and help others, right? But some people have a real passion for that. That's God's spirit at work and God's people stirring them to help make the body of Christ what it needs to be. And then there's also a gift called the gift of showing mercy. Romans chapter 12 verse eight. Every one of us can have compassion and mercy for others in their need. And yet you're gonna find that there are some people who are always on the spot to be there with that extra touch and that extra effort. We should all try to do that. But some people are doing that. And Paul says, if you have the gift of mercy, do so with cheerfulness. Because if you're always there trying to help people who are down and out, sometimes you might get a little down and out yourself. You know, I think some of you who work maybe in the medical industry where you're always helping people who are so beaten down with health problems, it might get a little bit tiring sometimes. I think it might, I don't know. So, gift of mercy. And then the final two helping gifts that I wanna make mention of, this is one called the gift of leading that is mentioned in Romans 12, eight, and a gift called administrations in 1 Corinthians 12, verse 28. The gift of leading, just kind of like as it sounds like, would be that you have some people who are particularly driven and skilled in saying, okay, here's the direction we need to go and understanding vision and direction. Some people are good at that. especially good. And then this gift of administration is more of the idea of coming into the process and making it happen, putting things together, making sure things are happening. I really don't like doing those things. I have to because I've got certain responsibilities. And I do it, you know, kind of by default because I have to. But that's not, that's not, you know, would not be my first choice. Leave me by myself and I'll spend the entire day in the Bible putting together studies. or meeting with somebody, I think, say, hey, let's get together, and let's talk, and let's talk some Bible. So this teaching and pastoring is, but you know, some people, they're really good at making things happen. And if you have that, man, what a blessing that is to the entire church. Use your gift. Romans 12, verse six, here's what the Apostle Paul said. Since we all have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let each one of us exercise them accordingly. Kind of like what Nike says, just do it. Peter in 1 Peter 4.10 says this, as each one has received giftedness, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. Notice what he says here, serve one another. That's another one of those one another's that we looked at several weeks ago. And then in verse 11, Peter says this, whoever speaks, so now he's kind of referring to those speaking gifts, whoever speaks, do so as one who is speaking the utterances of God, whoever serves, the serving gifts that we just looked at, six of them, whoever serves, do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies so that in all things, God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. Yeah, we all have giftedness. Now, here's the reality. There may be health situations or whatever kinds of things where you say, I just don't have the ability to be part of normal active life like I used to in terms of life. Maybe it's a health thing. Okay, well, you don't feel guilty if you can't. But you can always pray. There's lots of things we can do, even if we have a limitation. Now, here's the final point that I wanna get to in talking about gifts. So I've already mentioned to you, I have made the statement that some gifts are temporary and that some gifts are permanent. So I made that theological statement. Now I've got to support that. And that's what I'm gonna do here in this final point. As I mentioned, these permanent gifts would be those four speaking gifts and the six helping gifts. There are five prophetic gifts. Apostle, prophet, discerning of spirits, word of wisdom, word of knowledge, and there are five miraculous sign gifts. The gift of healing, the gift of miracles, the gift of faith, the gift of tongues, and the interpretation of tongues. I believe from the Bible that those ten gifts that I just mentioned were temporary gifts that ended with the close of the apostolic age. And there's three reasons why I believe this. Now, if you hold the viewpoint that, yes, some gifts are permanent throughout the entire age until the return of Christ and the rapture of the church, but certain gifts ended, if you hold that viewpoint, then the label that we would put on you is a cessationist. to cease, a cessationist. A cessationist says, well, I do believe that spiritual gifts are here at work today, but I think that some of them did end. If you hold the viewpoint that says, well, no, I think that everything that started at Pentecost is still happening, and it's gonna go all the way until the end of the age, then we would call you a continuationist, okay? Now, there's three reasons. Turn with me to a couple passages. First of all, turn to Revelation 22, and then have your finger ready to also open up to Ephesians 2, and a third finger to go to 1 Corinthians 13. So we're gonna look at three passages from the Bible, because if we say that something is true, we better be able to show a biblical reason why that is so. So I'm taking you here to three different passages that indicate an end of certain kinds of gifts. Not all of them, but certain kinds. So the first passage I gave you is Revelation chapter 22. Notice what happens here. at the end of the book of Revelation. Revelation is the last book of the Bible. There was no prophetic scripture written after the book of Revelation. Revelation was written in the year 95 AD, 95. I was gonna say 95 AD, but that's grammatically backwards. And I caught myself and I didn't say it. That's a joke. AD 95. Why do we say that? We know this from early church history, second century, that says that John was sent onto an island called Patmos, a penal colony island off the edge of Asia. And he was sent there to break rocks. And he did so at the end of Domitian's reign. Domitian was the emperor from 81 to 96. And John received the book of Revelation while on Patmos, and then Domitian died. And as soon as Domitian died, John was allowed to go back to Ephesus for the remaining several years of his life. Revelation was written in 95. Now, the reason why I say this and make a point about this is because some people try to say, well, I think Revelation was written in the 60s, and that it was all fulfilled in the first century when was invaded by Rome in 66. That absolutely is not true. That is completely not legitimate. Revelation was written in 95. So here's the last book of the Bible, the last prophetic book, and listen to what the Spirit of God says to John, verse 18. I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to these, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of this book, of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city which are written in this book. Now, some people debate, well, does that only mean to the book of Revelation we can't add something? I think there is strong reason to say this is the end of prophetic giftedness. So if you try to add anything beyond Revelation 22, 21, you say, thus saith the Lord, and you try to make prophetic utterances and claim that beyond 22, 21, God says, I'm not happy with you. This is a clear and direct statement. Now, go with me to Ephesians 2.20. Now, I'm not spending a whole lot of time on these. I've got, like I say, plenty of stuff you can, I can set you up with about a thousand pages of reading just like that. Ephesians 2.20. is another significant passage on this topic. And it's where Paul makes his comment here in 2.19. He's talking to the church in Ephesus, which had a huge Gentile element, primarily a Gentile makeup in this church. And he says to these Gentiles, who are now believers in Christ, now because you're a believer, verse 19, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but your fellow citizens. You know, apart from Christ, you Gentiles, you were out there. You had no covenant relationship with God. You were just out there in the Gentile pagan world. But now as a Christian, you're a fellow citizen. You don't even have just a green card. You're a citizen, but more than that. You are part of God's household. You're family. Let's sing it together. We are family. Now he says here, we belong to God's household, and then he says. This household, notice what it says in verse 20, has been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets and Jesus Christ. Now there's a lot of grammatical stuff here that I could spend some time on, and I'm not gonna go any further on the details, but it is extremely clear in terms of Greek grammar that when he says this is a foundation that has been laid already, it's a historical foundation. It's Christ, his apostles, and his prophets. The apostles and prophets are a permanent foundation that was with Jesus Christ giving us the New Testament Scriptures. The church keeps growing. So in verse 21, he says, the whole building is growing together. We're all growing into a holy temple. Verse 22, we're all being built up together. And those are present tense verbs. So the building is still growing, but the foundation, once for all time laid. do your studies on this one, okay? But I'm telling you what it says here. It's a historical foundation. There are no more apostles. There are no more prophets here today. So when you have people saying, well, I'm a prophet. Yeah, false prophet. Now, look with me at Corinthians 13. Here's the third significant passage on this subject. I wrote 500 pages in my PhD dissertation on it. So you want to do a lot of reading? I'll give it to you. Just be ready to fall asleep. So it's really good, late at night, can't sleep, start reading my book. Okay, now what Paul says here, he's rebuking the Corinthians for their arrogance, and that they were walking around practicing tongues in church, real languages, but they were doing it when nobody knows what was being said, because there was nobody who knew those languages already, and they had situations where nobody had the gift of interpretation. Paul says, this is very unloving of you. You're just bringing attention to yourself. You need to repent of this pride and this selfishness. And what he tells them is this. He says, you know, you have to understand something. These miraculous gifts like tongues and prophecy are very, very short-lived. You should be thinking about things that are very long-lived. When Adam and Eve committed sin in the garden, God gave a promise, and God said, one day I'm gonna bring a savior. And Adam and Eve exercised hope in this promise. Hope is gonna carry us all the way until Christ returns and brings us into heaven. But when God created Adam in the garden, even before they sinned, did Adam and Eve have to believe God's word, even living in the Garden of Eden? Yeah. So they had to have faith. So faith began with their creation. And faith is gonna take us all the way until the return of Christ and bring us into heaven. So hope is very long. Faith is even longer. What's even longer than faith and hope? Love. And so what Paul says here is that you should really change your arrogant attitudes, and you should be loving one another with humble, gentle love. So look at Corinthians 13, 8. Love never fails. If there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away. If there are tongues, they will cease. If there is the gift of knowledge, the word of knowledge, it will be done away. He singles out three, representing all 10 of the miraculous prophetic gifts. And he says, these things are gonna end for, verse nine, we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. Paul illustrates this maturity. The word perfect means maturity. Literally, that's what tatelion in Greek means. He's talking about a mature body of Christ growing the church out of its initial immaturity. And then he uses an illustration of the growth process, verse 11. And when I was a child, I used to speak as a child, think as a child, reason as a child. But when I became a man, I did away with childish things. So Paul is illustrating how a growth process takes you from being an infant to becoming a grown up. And Paul is saying the church is going to go through that process as well. But guess what? This growth process might become immediate and final and perfect with Christ's second coming. And Paul thought that Christ might come in his own lifetime. So in verse 12, he uses a second illustration of coming to this maturity. Right now, verse 12, we see in a mirror, dimly. But then, Christ coming, we'll see face to face. Right now, I know in part, but then when Christ comes, I will know fully, just as I have been fully known. Paul knew that Christ could come at any moment. And then in verse 13, he closes this discussion. He says, but now abide faith, hope, love. These three. But the greatest of these is love. Why? Because love had no beginning point. It's eternal with the Trinity. And love is going to go forever when Christ returns and brings us into his new heavens and the new earth. He says, change your attitudes. But what he does do is he does tell us there's going to be an end of tongues and prophecy. And guess what? It ended. You know, we do not have people in the world today giving biblical prophecy. There is nobody today that speaks 100% accurate, authoritative, infallible prophecy. Oh, you get all kinds of people out there that say, oh, well, the Lord told me. Really? Oh, man, guess what? He told me you were supposed to give me $1,000. Oh, and we don't want to. So when we look at present day experience, there is nobody in the world, and even the charismatic world knows this is true, and they don't try to claim this. There is nobody in the world today speaking real language they haven't learned. Tongues does not exist. We don't have anybody in the world today that is giving perfect prophetic utterances without error. Got a lot of false prophets. So it's not here, okay? This is our present experience. And you get these quacks, these frauds that are claiming to be faith healers, they're not real. I've got a whole lot more to say on this, but I'm not going to say it because we don't have the time. I've got documentation on these things. By the way, this is kind of funny here. You know, up in Woodland Park, you know, we've got Andrew Womack and Karis Bible College, right? And these are faith healers, just like Benny Hinn and all these others. You know what happened a few years ago when we had the COVID outbreak in 2020? Karis Bible College, where they talk about their ability to heal people, all the people at Karis Bible College got sick with COVID. So they had to cancel their healing conference. And Andrew Womack came out and said this. He says, I know it seems ironic that I'd be canceling a healing conference due to a sickness outbreak, but that's what I gotta do. Not real. Don't get sucked in with these things. Now, we believe that God can and does bring miraculous healings according to his will. according to the prayers of his people. So we don't doubt God's ability to do this, but the faith healers, not real, not real. Okay, so now I'm gonna close with three quotations here from church history, because I'm, you know, I do want to give you these quotations from church history. that I think are very interesting. If we go to the fourth century and the fifth century, we had two very significant figures in church history. You've heard of the theologian by the name of Augustine, right? Augustine, Augustine. Augustine lived from 354 to 430. He was the bishop of North Africa, a place called Hippo. He was from Rome, but he got saved, and he was a bishop in North Africa. I remember about 40 years ago, I went to a Christian bookstore in Las Vegas, and I'd never been to Christian bookstores before. But I saw this book, and it was a commentary on 1 John by Augustine. And he was preaching some Easter messages. And I bought that, and I read some interesting things. Here's what he said. In the earliest times, the Holy Spirit would fall upon believers and they would speak in other languages that they had not learned as the Spirit gave them utterance. This was a sign suited to the time. It was fitting that the Holy Spirit would be signified by all languages because the gospel of God was going to spread over the whole earth by means of those languages. The sign was given and then passed away. Do we still expect people to speak in tongues? No. When we had people get baptized last Easter and they didn't speak in tongues, were you shocked that they didn't? So here's a guy that lived from 354 to 430, arguably one of the biggest theologians in all of church history, certainly in the 4th and 5th century. And he says, it ended. Here's another guy that lived right at the same time, but he lived in the eastern part of the Christian world. He was the patriarch of Constantinople. His name was Chrysostom. He lived from 345 to 407, basically contemporary of Augustine. And in his writings on 1 Corinthians, here's what he says about tongues. This whole matter is very obscure. But the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of these facts referred to and by their cessation, being such as then used to occur but now no longer take place. And why do they no longer take place? Well, look, the cause of the obscurity has produced another question, namely, why did they then happen and now do so no more? You know, this movement that we see, the Pentecostal Charismatic movement, it did not exist before 1901. It's a 20th century American California, land of fruit and nuts. I know, I lived there 14 years. It's an American phenomena that Satan has used to give people a false sense of spirituality. There's some nice people in it, okay? No question, there's some nice people. but it's a false brand of spirituality. So in closing, God gives gifts, and what we put into your bulletin today was kind of a listing, I gave you the listings of these different gifts, and then also things that, you know, where you can serve in some way, and you know, we should all be serving in some way. I don't like to put guilt trips on people. I don't like to do things that way. But it's good when you can become active and involved. So be willing to come up and say, hey, what can I do? All right? We're gonna have the Lord's Supper right now, so I'm gonna close our time here in prayer, and we'll try to keep a semblance of staying on schedule, huh? Father, we thank you for your goodness to give gifts for serving others and glorifying Jesus Christ. Help us, Lord, to love you and serve you with the gifts that you give us. Thank you for the opportunity of serving And as we think about loving and serving, we go back to Corinthians 13, and Paul said, the greatest of these is love. So I know, oh God, I know that what is more important than us having some kind of super skilled giftedness, what's really important is that we're loving one another. Help us, oh God, to love one another the way that you've loved us. Because if we're not loving one another, we're really falling short. Thank You, O God, for this beautiful church. Thank You for this body. I pray multiply the love of Christ more and more until that day when He comes, and I pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Jesus, on the last night of His life, was having a Passover dinner with His disciples. This Passover dinner is something that they had been practicing and celebrating for 1,400 years, ever since the Exodus. And in the course of a Passover meal, they would eat a large meal. They would drink four different glasses of wine at different points with prayers as part of their meal. And as Jesus came to the end of their meal, he told the disciples, see this bread that we're eating right here? This is my body. eat this, do it in remembrance of me. And Jesus took a meal and he created a living illustration that we're supposed to practice. And it is that the bread, when we have meals together, and we do this right here in a very, very limited way with a small loaf of bread, wafer of bread. But Jesus said, think of me when you eat together. this bread, my body that has been given for your sins. And as you drink from the cup of the juice or the cup of wine, he says, think about my blood that has been shed to pay for your sin. And so he basically took the Passover meal and he elevated it from the exodus and he said, I am the true Redeemer. and we remember the blood of Christ, the body of Christ together. So we're gonna pass the bread, hold it until we all have it together, and then we will eat together as one body. you In Exodus 12, it was the night of the Exodus, and God told the people of Israel, tonight I'm gonna strike Egypt with a horrific judgment. I'm gonna take the life of every firstborn son, and Pharaoh's gonna finally break down and let you guys go. I'm gonna take the life of every firstborn. But here's what you are to do. Take a lamb, kill it, and eat it. And if you will obey me, I will not bring a judgment upon your household. Stay inside. That's the Passover lamb. In Corinthians chapter 15, Corinthians chapter 5 or 7, the Apostle Paul says, Christ, our Passover. has been sacrificed for us. And so when we eat together, we're remembering, by thinking of the bread, thinking of the bread, and remembering His body, we're remembering the Passover lamb, which is Jesus Christ, amen? Oh God, when we look at your Word that shows us this unfolding promise of a Savior, starting with Moses in Genesis 3, we see this unfolding promise of redemption, and we see that you fulfilled it when you sent your Son into the world. Oh God, we know that we don't bring anything that makes us worthy in your sight. The only thing we bring is our sin. You gave your Son to take our sin and to pay the price, and we praise you and thank you. In Jesus' name, amen. you so so you Blood was kind of a big deal in the Bible, wasn't it? We don't think of that too much in our culture, but when God told the people of Israel to kill His Passover lamb, He also gave them an instruction. He says, take the blood and then put it on the doorposts of your house. You've got to kill the lamb, but you also have to apply the blood. And you say, why? What's this deal about blood? In Leviticus 17, Moses wrote, talking about the Day of Atonement rituals and the Day of Atonement sacrifices that happen only once a year, he says, the life of the flesh is in the blood. And so blood symbolizes life. That's kind of what you see in the ancient world, that's what you see in Israel, that blood represents the life. And so as you look at this commandment that Jesus gave, he says, take and drink this cup and remember me, remember my blood. It's saying to us, remember that the Son of God gave his life to take that sin punishment. And that's what we do when we drink together. Lord, we know that the Apostle Paul said if salvation could have been achieved through any other way, then your cross would have been meaningless. But there was no other way that we could have forgiveness because we cannot pay for our own sin. We cannot cleanse ourself. We cannot make ourselves innocent when we're already guilty. You had to come, Lord Jesus. You had to live a life of perfect submission to the Father. You had to give yourself on the cross as the sinless Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. We believe in you. Your word promised this sacrifice. You came and you carried it out. You conquered death. You rose again. You're the living Savior. And you tell us that you're coming back to bring your kingdom. Thank you for everything you've done and are going to do. We pray, come quickly, Lord Jesus, and God's people said, amen. All right, guys, so we are gonna have our annual church meeting here in about 10 minutes. Take a break if you need to, and if you're not gonna come and sit in as a meeting, if you're a member, it'd be great to come. Anybody can come and sit in on it, but if you wanna just go next door, there are snacks for fellowship next door. But we'll start basically at 12 o'clock. So we're gonna be here tonight at 5.30 with Iwana Youth Group, next door at 5.30. We'll be here at six o'clock in 1 Samuel, chapter one at six o'clock. If you have not gotten baptized, look at signing up to get baptized. Or if you haven't become a member of the church formally, get into the membership classes that are coming up. And on that IFCA National Convention that comes up in June, we are gonna make a trip back. Whoever would like to go and join in with it, let me know if you would like to be part of that. I've been to several of them in my years, not as many as I'd like. It'd be a fun thing. If you want to come in and join in, you can. And lastly, pray for Diana Dean. We had the note this morning that Jeff had to take her into the emergency room because it looks like she might be getting a detached retina. So, you know, some pretty serious stuff. So pray for Diana. God bless you. See you in 10 minutes if you're in the meeting. Hi, Sandy. Hey. Good to see you. Thank you, Pastor. Hey, how are you doing? Good to see you. Hey brother, good to see you man. This is June's brother? What's your name? Pablo. I'm sure I probably did meet you but I don't remember so sorry about that but good to see you and good to meet you. You live here